by Bill Sardi
Witch hunt (definition): An investigation carried out ostensibly to uncover subversive activities but actually used to harass and undermine.
Even after passage of the Dietary Supplement Health & Education Act of 1994, and greater public scrutiny of dietary supplements, do dietary supplement companies still continue to hide a growing number of adverse reactions that are related to their products? What do you think?
Careful now, how you answer that question. It’s the same as asking, "Do you still beat your wife?" A yes or no answer incriminates you.
So along comes author Dan Hurley with his new book Natural Causes: Death, Lies and Politics in America’s Vitamin and Herbal Supplement Industry (Broadway Books), that asks the same kind of question.
The more the dietary supplement industry responds to Hurley’s seemingly accurate claims, the more supplement makers sound guilty and have something to hide.
Trumping up a case
Various parties have attempted to trump up a case against dietary supplements for some time now. But when Senator Orrin Hatch said in 1993, in defense of these products, that they have "been on the market for centuries, and there is not much risk in any of these products," the anti-supplement forces didn’t have enough data in hand to refute his claim.
Since then Big Pharma has donated money to Senator Hatch and bought his support for legislation that requires adverse events associated with dietary supplements to be reported. The top two industries supporting Hatch since 1989 are lawyers/law Firms ($1,139,713) and pharmaceuticals/health products ($1,062,593) [Source: OpenSecrets.org]
The vitamin supplement antagonists collected data over a 23-year period that looks like the supplement industry is derelict and in need of more regulation. (Don’t mention that the regulated pharmaceutical industry kills off far more Americans due to side effects from properly-used drugs, administered by a nurse, in hospitals – estimated at 106,000 – which is akin to wiping out the entire population of Ann Arbor, Michigan in a year.)
Making small numbers look big
So with 23 years of data in hand, the anti-supplement forces finally mustered up 1.6 million adverse reactions and 230 deaths (20-year period). That’s about a dozen deaths a year, and lots of reports of trivial diarrhea, nausea and drug/supplement interactions (the drugs are mostly to blame, not the essential nutrients in vitamin pills).
So in the past 23 years the reports of adverse reactions associated with dietary supplements has grown to the "alarming" number of 125,595! Whoa baby!
But the US population grew from 233 million to over 300 million during that time. According to a series of surveys among older age groups, the prevalence of dietary supplement use increased from 44% in 1980 to 55% by 1994, and 63% by 2000.
At the time the Dietary Supplement & Health Act was enacted, an estimated 600 U.S. dietary supplement manufacturers produced about 4,000 products (Commission on Dietary Supplement Labels, 1997). The Food and Drug Administration now estimates that more than 29,000 different dietary supplements are now available to consumers and an average of 1,000 new products are developed annually.
Furthermore, it is consistently shown that supplement use is higher among older age groups than younger age groups. Older adults may suffer with mental confusion or poor eyesight, and may easily misuse dietary supplements.
So it’s not surprising that there has been a rise in side effects reported among users of dietary supplements over the past decade.
The problem with herbal supplements
Oh my, over 23,000 side effects reported for herbal products and 13 deaths! These are not to be trivialized, but with six out of ten Americans taking dietary supplements, the likelihood that any American who experiences a heart attack (over 1 million a year), or liver problem (35% have fatty liver), and also happen to be taking supplements is very high. This is guilt by association.
Take for example a survey of children involved in pedestrian accidents. A survey might find that 9 out of 10 kids were wearing tennis shoes at the time of their accident. Does this mean the tennis shoes caused the accidents? No, the tennis shoes were just by-standers, like the vitamin pills.
Guilt by association reigns in the witch hunt to condemn dietary supplements, which are far safer on a relative basis than table salt (causes hypertension), aspirin (causes gastric bleeding ulcers and adult onset asthma) and chlorinated tap water (long term, causes kidney cancer).
And the 13 deaths from herbal supplements – that figure would approach zero if the deaths associated with ephedra weight-loss pills were deducted from the total. Even then, courts could not find a cause-and-effect relationship between ephedra and many of these deaths may have been caused by dieters on a crash weight-loss program, trying to fit into a summer swim suit, by over-dosing on ephedra pills.
Furthermore, the rationale for the reason why so many prescription drug-related deaths and side effects are tolerated is because the benefits of the drugs are alleged to outweigh the risks. Didn’t ephedra, the most profound lean body mass agent ever, save the lives of far more obese Americans than it is alleged to have killed?
Nutriphobia spawned by doctors
According to American Association of Poison Control Centers statistics, there were 813 side effects reported for glucosamine and chondroitin supplements. These reports often emanate from "nutriphobic" physicians, based upon pseudo-scientific reports published in medical journals.
For example, when glucosamine, given intravenously, was reported to have raised blood sugar, doctors began asking their patients with first-time elevated blood sugar if they take glucosamine supplements. The patients typically respond by saying they didn’t know glucosamine could cause elevated blood sugar. But did the glucosamine actually raise blood sugar? When doctors tested whether glucosamine triggers a rise in blood sugar among healthy adults in two separate studies, they couldn’t reproduce the problem. (Osteoarthritis Cartilage 12: 506–11, 2004; Archives Internal Medicine163:1587–90, 2003).
Similarly, there have been sporadic but repeated reports of bleeding and hemorrhage associated with ginkgo biloba, a popular herbal supplement. But researchers could not reproduce these same side effects in animals or humans even at blood concentrations 100 times greater than the recommended dosage for ginkgo. (Phytomedicine 12:10–6 2005; Blood Coagulation Fibrinolysis 15: 303–09, 2004).
These are examples of the many adverse reactions prompted by supplement-phobic physicians that will continue to overwhelm dietary supplement companies now that toll-free numbers will be printed on product labels to invite Adverse Event Reporting.
Attorneys, news reporters ready to pounce
Once dietary supplement companies are forced to keep records of adverse events (defined as any adverse reaction that requires a visit to a health professional), lawyers can start advertising for clients that allege they have been harmed by dietary supplements, file suit, and during legal discovery can acquire all the adverse reaction reports tabulated by a particular company. The lawyers can then begin to mine these records for lawsuits and even hold companies for what amounts to be legal extortion.
News reporters will be given access to these records and will likely, using a guilt-by-association rationale, open their TV news reports reading scripts that say "a dietary supplement, made by ABC Supplement Company, is associated with 184 adverse events, say lawyers who represent consumers who are suing the company." Things are going to get ugly in the supplement industry.
The horrors technique
Author Dan Hurley uses one of the best mechanisms to get supplement users to throw away their vitamin bottles. It’s called the "horrors" technique. Here is how Hurley presents it: "But an analysis of the National Maternal and Infant Health Survey, published in the journal Pediatrics in 1997, found that 54 percent of parents of preschool children gave them a vitamin or mineral supplement at least three days a week!"
Horrors, can you imagine that? This is the kind of sensationalist yellow journalism that is being used to denigrate dietary supplements. Where are the dead infants, Mr. Hurley?
Why?
And why is all this happening? Americans need to recognize that drug patents are expiring. Between 2001 and 2005 patents on over 200 drugs expired, representing $30 billion of sales. About $21.4 billion worth of branded drugs came off patent in 2006, and another $17.7 billion will come off patent in 2007. In Europe, supplements like ginkgo biloba, kava kava, bilberry and even a citrus fruit extract for hemorrhoids, are all prescription drugs.
Resveratrol, a red wine molecule, sold as a food supplement, is now being widely hailed for its broad biological action. Resveratrol could virtually wipe out all existing medications for diabetes, cholesterol, heart attacks, strokes, cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, or as Fortune Magazine says in their upcoming report on this miracle molecule – "Hell, pretty much all age-related disease." Why, one sole dietary supplement threatens to bring down the entire pharmaceutical industry.
On a technicality, resveratrol has already been classified as a drug, though resveratrol supplements are widely sold as well. But their notorious poor quality could prompt the FDA to remove resveratrol supplements from the market, or limit their dosage. Korea and Germany have already taken action to block or inhibit resveratrol supplement imports or sales.
Let the propaganda begin
If the public can be frightened into thinking dietary supplements are dangerous, a bought-off Congress, along with popular news anchors and authors like Dan Hurley, could orchestrate a groundswell of public opinion to designate dietary supplements as "drugs."
CBS News has launched the first round with a series of biting reports that are critical of the dietary supplement industry. Referring to exaggerated advertising claims for weight loss supplements, CBS News asks: "So how did they get away with it in the first place?" CBS News says the FDA has their hands tied since the passage of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act in 1994.
Did any of the CBS reporters look to see how many drug company advertisements have been sanctioned in the past few months? It’s quite a few. And did you notice who the major sponsor of evening TV news is now – American Pharmaceutical Companies. The newsrooms at these TV stations know how to beat the drum for their advertising clients, and make it sound like unbiased news.
Broadway Books, a Division of Random House, and publisher of Hurley’s book, is a subsidiary of the $17-billion dollar Bertelsmann AG media empire, headquartered in Germany. Bertelsmann AG would have no problem orchestrating such a campaign with the experience gained during World War II as part of the Nazi Party publishing propaganda campaign aimed against European Jews. Revelations of this were disclosed during Bertelsmann’s takeover of Random House in 1998. Bertelsmann then used a revised account of their Nazi past to smooth the deal. Germany is the home of drug giants like Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Schering and Merck K GaA.
What to do?
An aroused public wants to know what to do to oppose restrictions against dietary supplements, but there will certainly be opportunistic consumers who will be more than eager to extract a financial settlement out of a supplement company for an alleged bout of unremitting diarrhea. The public may bring the demise of the dietary supplement industry upon themselves.
The fear is that the public will accept restrictions against dietary supplements like they passively accepted the rise in gasoline prices. Congress is too bought off to raise a public protest unless there is an overwhelming outcry.
Health organizations representing the supplement manufacturers (Council for Responsible Nutrition), health food stores (Natural Products Association) and the grass-roots group that captained the passage of the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (Citizens for Health) surprisingly did not oppose, and actively backed, the recent Adverse Events Reporting legislation, even though there had never been a demonstration to prove its effectiveness and the unlikelihood it will ever save one life. There is suspicion that anti-supplement forces are infiltrating health freedom organizations.
The National Health Federation based in Monrovia, California, is the only organization that stood boldly against the Adverse Events legislation and may be a resource to rally the public around. The Health Freedom Foundation based in Washington DC may be another resource.
Dietary supplement users should be aware, a dark cloud is approaching.
January 18, 2007
Bill Sardi [send him mail] is a consumer advocate and health journalist, writing from San Dimas, California. He offers a free downloadable book, The Collapse of Conventional Medicine, at his website.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Nifong, Fitzgerald, and Earl: American Justice Defiled
Chris Adamo
A pattern of abuse is spreading and escalating throughout America, at the hands of out of control public prosecutors, who are clearly pursuing their “duties” with no intention towards justice, but with personal and political agendas. As such, they undermine hope for justice to result from any situation.
Since the perpetrators of this malignancy work so closely in league with those who must hold them accountable, little has been done to restrain or control them. To date, only cursory efforts are being suggested to address the problem. Clearly, those entrusted to enforce the law must be held to the highest standards of conduct, lest by exceeding the boundaries of that law they become the worst version of the threat they are sworn to avert.
No doubt the loudest and most publicized event of this nature involves Durham County North Carolina prosecutor Michael Nifong and the Lacrosse team from Duke University. Lately, details of Nifong’s malfeasance have come to light, representing a degree of injustice and malice so outrageous that Nifong has finally been forced to recuse himself from the case.
Yet in the course of his malevolent pursuit of the Lacrosse players, he engaged in no less a crime than to knowingly suppress vital evidence sufficient to totally vindicate the accused. Had any private citizen (with the possible exception of Sandy Berger) been involved in so extreme of an effort to distort a case through the suppression of highly pertinent evidence, that citizen would surely be on his way to the “big house.”
It is noteworthy that in the same week Michael Nifong was forced to abandon the Duke Lacrosse case, the trial of Lewis I. “Scooter” Libby has begun. Libby, who has already been convicted in the court of public opinion (at least within the ranks of the “Drive By” media), is accused of lying during testimony before a grand jury investigation of the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson “scandal.”
During two years of testimony, Libby transposed a couple of dates and events and thus, we are told, for the good of society, he must be put away. Yet recently revealed information inarguably proves that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald knew from the beginning 1) That no crime had been committed, and 2) The identity of the individual who revealed Valerie Plame’s inconsequential employment status to the media.
Nevertheless, Fitzgerald zealously pursued this non-criminal “investigation” as if some dark truth of wrongdoing awaited his expert ability to uncover it. In the end, all he could muster was a comparatively negligible accusation of perjury against Libby, with no possibility of Libby’s actions having compromised Plame’s position, or national security.
Even Nifong did not engage in such excesses. Had he wanted to, he could have endlessly questioned the Lacrosse players regarding every detail of the evening when the “rape” ostensibly took place, and finding any discrepancy in the testimony, he could have thrown the book at the “offending” player. In the aftermath, he would likewise be able to claim to have heroically protected the rights of “exotic dancers.”
Despite having full knowledge that no security breach had been committed by Libby, in the post-indictment press conference, once in front of the cameras, Fitzgerald treated the entire episode as a great and sinister effort to undermine a covert CIA agent. By any intellectually honest standard, Fitzgerald’s deceit vastly eclipsed the presumed missteps of Libby.
Ultimately, Fitzgerald perjured himself to a far greater degree than Libby ever could have, though no statute or directive, other than his oath of office, apparently holds him to accountability. Clearly, in Fitzgerald’s world such quaint concepts as oaths and honesty are completely situational.
As amazing as it might seem, Fitzgerald’s unethical conduct pales in comparison to that of Travis County Texas Prosecuting Attorney Ronnie Earl, who last spring was able to bring then House Majority Leader Tom Delay under indictment. For although it would be difficult to avoid the ugly conclusion that Fitzgerald was motivated by self-serving political concerns, Earl actually went public with an announcement, prior to gaining the Delay indictment, that such was his intended purpose.
Having been unable to convince more than one grand jury of any criminal action by Delay, even after angrily threatening the jurors, Earl engaged in an action that can only be termed “grand jury shopping” whereby he simply moved from one panel to another until he was able to find a grand jury that would uphold his accusations against Delay.
Such a reprehensible abuse of the powers of his office did not represent any departure from Earl’s past behavior. As a shameless partisan Democrat, his past track record is one of selective inquiry, based on the political alignment of his intended target. In one particularly despicable case, his hunt was suddenly followed by a complete reversal, once the organization in his “crosshairs” agreed to financially support a cause of his choosing.
Unlike Nifong, or even Fitzgerald, certain fallout from Earl’s actions has already adversely affected every American citizen. Abetting Nancy Pelosi’s campaign ploy of hanging the “culture of corruption” label on Republicans (an exercise in hypocrisy worthy of its own discussion), Earl’s deceit and misuse of his office clearly played a part in the November elections that elevated Pelosi to the position of third in line to the presidency.
The rightful purpose of prison in a just world is twofold. First, it is intended to remove from a healthy society those individuals who would render harm to decent and law-abiding citizens. Secondly, the incarceration of dangerous individuals serves as a warning to any who might be tempted to follow in their footsteps.
For the sake of the good people of this country, those who exploit the law as a weapon with which to bludgeon their fellow citizens ought not to be allowed to escape accountability. Clearly, the unscrupulous actions of such out of control prosecutors as Nifong, Fitzgerald, and Earl exceed any standard warranting removal from decent society.
Growing up during the turbulent decades of the 60's and 70's, Christopher Adamo saw, to his dismay, the nation's moral foundations being destroyed before his very eyes. But even then he was a staunch Conservative at heart, and rejected outright the tenets of America‚s counterculture revolution. After a hitch in the Air Force, where he specialized in airborne electro-optical systems, he pursued a career in the field of aerospace, working for major defense contractors in California, Florida, and Colorado. But his career plans abruptly changed during the industry-wide downsizing that followed the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Presently he is working in the field of industrial instrumentation in the state of Wyoming. Concurrently, he has become involved in that state‚s political process, attending state GOP conventions as a delegate, and serving as a member of the Wyoming Republican Central Committee. He has also aided in the candidacies of local legislators and state senators, as well as a U.S. Senator and Congresswoman. His archives can be found at www.chrisadamo.com
cadamo@wyomingwisp.com
A pattern of abuse is spreading and escalating throughout America, at the hands of out of control public prosecutors, who are clearly pursuing their “duties” with no intention towards justice, but with personal and political agendas. As such, they undermine hope for justice to result from any situation.
Since the perpetrators of this malignancy work so closely in league with those who must hold them accountable, little has been done to restrain or control them. To date, only cursory efforts are being suggested to address the problem. Clearly, those entrusted to enforce the law must be held to the highest standards of conduct, lest by exceeding the boundaries of that law they become the worst version of the threat they are sworn to avert.
No doubt the loudest and most publicized event of this nature involves Durham County North Carolina prosecutor Michael Nifong and the Lacrosse team from Duke University. Lately, details of Nifong’s malfeasance have come to light, representing a degree of injustice and malice so outrageous that Nifong has finally been forced to recuse himself from the case.
Yet in the course of his malevolent pursuit of the Lacrosse players, he engaged in no less a crime than to knowingly suppress vital evidence sufficient to totally vindicate the accused. Had any private citizen (with the possible exception of Sandy Berger) been involved in so extreme of an effort to distort a case through the suppression of highly pertinent evidence, that citizen would surely be on his way to the “big house.”
It is noteworthy that in the same week Michael Nifong was forced to abandon the Duke Lacrosse case, the trial of Lewis I. “Scooter” Libby has begun. Libby, who has already been convicted in the court of public opinion (at least within the ranks of the “Drive By” media), is accused of lying during testimony before a grand jury investigation of the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson “scandal.”
During two years of testimony, Libby transposed a couple of dates and events and thus, we are told, for the good of society, he must be put away. Yet recently revealed information inarguably proves that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald knew from the beginning 1) That no crime had been committed, and 2) The identity of the individual who revealed Valerie Plame’s inconsequential employment status to the media.
Nevertheless, Fitzgerald zealously pursued this non-criminal “investigation” as if some dark truth of wrongdoing awaited his expert ability to uncover it. In the end, all he could muster was a comparatively negligible accusation of perjury against Libby, with no possibility of Libby’s actions having compromised Plame’s position, or national security.
Even Nifong did not engage in such excesses. Had he wanted to, he could have endlessly questioned the Lacrosse players regarding every detail of the evening when the “rape” ostensibly took place, and finding any discrepancy in the testimony, he could have thrown the book at the “offending” player. In the aftermath, he would likewise be able to claim to have heroically protected the rights of “exotic dancers.”
Despite having full knowledge that no security breach had been committed by Libby, in the post-indictment press conference, once in front of the cameras, Fitzgerald treated the entire episode as a great and sinister effort to undermine a covert CIA agent. By any intellectually honest standard, Fitzgerald’s deceit vastly eclipsed the presumed missteps of Libby.
Ultimately, Fitzgerald perjured himself to a far greater degree than Libby ever could have, though no statute or directive, other than his oath of office, apparently holds him to accountability. Clearly, in Fitzgerald’s world such quaint concepts as oaths and honesty are completely situational.
As amazing as it might seem, Fitzgerald’s unethical conduct pales in comparison to that of Travis County Texas Prosecuting Attorney Ronnie Earl, who last spring was able to bring then House Majority Leader Tom Delay under indictment. For although it would be difficult to avoid the ugly conclusion that Fitzgerald was motivated by self-serving political concerns, Earl actually went public with an announcement, prior to gaining the Delay indictment, that such was his intended purpose.
Having been unable to convince more than one grand jury of any criminal action by Delay, even after angrily threatening the jurors, Earl engaged in an action that can only be termed “grand jury shopping” whereby he simply moved from one panel to another until he was able to find a grand jury that would uphold his accusations against Delay.
Such a reprehensible abuse of the powers of his office did not represent any departure from Earl’s past behavior. As a shameless partisan Democrat, his past track record is one of selective inquiry, based on the political alignment of his intended target. In one particularly despicable case, his hunt was suddenly followed by a complete reversal, once the organization in his “crosshairs” agreed to financially support a cause of his choosing.
Unlike Nifong, or even Fitzgerald, certain fallout from Earl’s actions has already adversely affected every American citizen. Abetting Nancy Pelosi’s campaign ploy of hanging the “culture of corruption” label on Republicans (an exercise in hypocrisy worthy of its own discussion), Earl’s deceit and misuse of his office clearly played a part in the November elections that elevated Pelosi to the position of third in line to the presidency.
The rightful purpose of prison in a just world is twofold. First, it is intended to remove from a healthy society those individuals who would render harm to decent and law-abiding citizens. Secondly, the incarceration of dangerous individuals serves as a warning to any who might be tempted to follow in their footsteps.
For the sake of the good people of this country, those who exploit the law as a weapon with which to bludgeon their fellow citizens ought not to be allowed to escape accountability. Clearly, the unscrupulous actions of such out of control prosecutors as Nifong, Fitzgerald, and Earl exceed any standard warranting removal from decent society.
Growing up during the turbulent decades of the 60's and 70's, Christopher Adamo saw, to his dismay, the nation's moral foundations being destroyed before his very eyes. But even then he was a staunch Conservative at heart, and rejected outright the tenets of America‚s counterculture revolution. After a hitch in the Air Force, where he specialized in airborne electro-optical systems, he pursued a career in the field of aerospace, working for major defense contractors in California, Florida, and Colorado. But his career plans abruptly changed during the industry-wide downsizing that followed the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Presently he is working in the field of industrial instrumentation in the state of Wyoming. Concurrently, he has become involved in that state‚s political process, attending state GOP conventions as a delegate, and serving as a member of the Wyoming Republican Central Committee. He has also aided in the candidacies of local legislators and state senators, as well as a U.S. Senator and Congresswoman. His archives can be found at www.chrisadamo.com
cadamo@wyomingwisp.com
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Why is marijuana illegal?
A brief history of the criminalization of cannabis
7000-8000 B.C.
First woven fabric believed to be from hemp.
1619
Jamestown Colony, Virginia passes law requiring farmers to grow hemp.
1700s
Hemp was the primary crop grown by George Washington at Mount Vernon, and a secondary crop grown by Thomas Jefferson at Monticello.
1884
Maine is the first state to outlaw alcohol.
1906
Pure Food and Drug Act is passed, forming the Food and Drug Administration. First time that drugs have any government oversight.
1914
Harrison Act passed, outlawing opiates and cocaine (taxing scheme)
1915
Utah passes first state anti-marijuana law.
1919
18th Amendment to the Constitution (alcohol prohibition) is ratified.
1930
Harry J. Anslinger given control of the new Federal Bureau of Narcotics (he remains in the position until 1962)
1933
21st Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, repealing alcohol prohibition.
1937
Marijuana Tax Act
1938
Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act
1951
Boggs Amendment to the Harrison Narcotic Act (mandatory sentences)
1956
Narcotics Control Act adds more severe penalties
1970
Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act. Replaces and updates all previous laws concerning narcotics and other dangerous drugs. Empasis on law enforcement. Includes the Controlled Substances Act, where marijuana is classified a Schedule 1 drug (reserved for the most dangerous drugs that have no recognized medical use).
1972
Drug Abuse Office and Treatment Act. Establishes federally funded programs for prevention and treatment
1973
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Changes Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs into the DEA
1974 and 1978
Drug Abuse Treatment and Control Amendments. Extends 1972 act
1988
Anti-Drug Abuse Act. Establishes oversight office: National Office of Drug Control Policy and the Drug Czar
1992
ADAMHA Reorganization. Transfers NIDA, NIMH, and NIAAA to NIH and incorporates ADAMHA's programs into the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)
Many people assume that marijuana was made illegal through some kind of process involving scientific, medical, and government hearings; that it was to protect the citizens from what was determined to be a dangerous drug.
The actual story shows a much different picture. Those who voted on the legal fate of this plant never had the facts, but were dependent on information supplied by those who had a specific agenda to deceive lawmakers. You'll see below that the very first federal vote to prohibit marijuana was based entirely on a documented lie on the floor of the Senate.
You'll also see that the history of marijuana's criminalization is filled with:
Racism
Fear
Protection of Corporate Profits
Yellow Journalism
Ignorant, Incompetent, and/or Corrupt Legislators
Personal Career Advancement and Greed
These are the actual reasons marijuana is illegal.
Background
For most of human history, marijuana has been completely legal. It's not a recently discovered plant, nor is it a long-standing law. Marijuana has been illegal for less than 1% of the time that it's been in use. Its known uses go back further than 7,000 B.C. and it was legal as recently as when Ronald Reagan was a boy.
The marijuana (hemp) plant, of course, has an incredible number of uses. The earliest known woven fabric was apparently of hemp, and over the centuries the plant was used for food, incense, cloth, rope, and much more. This adds to some of the confusion over its introduction in the United States, as the plant was well known from the early 1600's, but did not reach public awareness as a recreational drug until the early 1900's.
America's first marijuana law was enacted at Jamestown Colony, Virginia in 1619. It was a law "ordering" all farmers to grow Indian hempseed. There were several other "must grow" laws over the next 200 years (you could be jailed for not growing hemp during times of shortage in Virginia between 1763 and 1767), and during most of that time, hemp was legal tender (you could even pay your taxes with hemp -- try that today!) Hemp was such a critical crop for a number of purposes (including essential war requirements - rope, etc.) that the government went out of its way to encourage growth.
The United States Census of 1850 counted 8,327 hemp "plantations" (minimum 2,000-acre farm) growing cannabis hemp for cloth, canvas and even the cordage used for baling cotton.
The Mexican Connection
In the early 1900s, the western states developed significant tensions regarding the influx of Mexican-Americans. The revolution in Mexico in 1910 spilled over the border, with General Pershing's army clashing with bandit Pancho Villa. Later in that decade, bad feelings developed between the small farmer and the large farms that used cheaper Mexican labor. Then, the depression came and increased tensions, as jobs and welfare resources became scarce.
One of the "differences" seized upon during this time was the fact that many Mexicans smoked marijuana and had brought the plant with them.
However, the first state law outlawing marijuana did so not because of Mexicans using the drug. Oddly enough, it was because of Mormons using it. Mormons who traveled to Mexico in 1910 came back to Salt Lake City with marijuana. The church was not pleased and ruled against use of the drug. Since the state of Utah automatically enshrined church doctrine into law, the first state marijuana prohibition was established in 1915. (Today, Senator Orrin Hatch serves as the prohibition arm of this heavily church-influenced state.)
Other states quickly followed suit with marijuana prohibition laws, including Wyoming (1915), Texas (1919), Iowa (1923), Nevada (1923), Oregon (1923), Washington (1923), Arkansas (1923), and Nebraska (1927). These laws tended to be specifically targeted against the Mexican-American population.
When Montana outlawed marijuana in 1927, the Butte Montana Standard reported a legislator's comment: "When some beet field peon takes a few traces of this stuff... he thinks he has just been elected president of Mexico, so he starts out to execute all his political enemies." In Texas, a senator said on the floor of the Senate: "All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff [marijuana] is what makes them crazy."
Jazz and Assassins
In the eastern states, the "problem" was attributed to a combination of Latin Americans and black jazz musicians. Marijuana and jazz traveled from New Orleans to Chicago, and then to Harlem, where marijuana became an indispensable part of the music scene, even entering the language of the black hits of the time (Louis Armstrong's "Muggles", Cab Calloway's "That Funny Reefer Man", Fats Waller's "Viper's Drag").
Again, racism was part of the charge against marijuana, as newspapers in 1934 editorialized: "Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows and look at a white woman twice."
Two other fear-tactic rumors started to spread: one, that Mexicans, Blacks and other foreigners were snaring white children with marijuana; and two, the story of the "assassins." Early stories of Marco Polo had told of "hasheesh-eaters" or hashashin, from which derived the term "assassin." In the original stories, these professional killers were given large doses of hashish and brought to the ruler's garden (to give them a glimpse of the paradise that awaited them upon successful completion of their mission). Then, after the effects of the drug disappeared, the assassin would fulfill his ruler's wishes with cool, calculating loyalty.
By the 1930s, the story had changed. Dr. A. E. Fossier wrote in the 1931 New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal: "Under the influence of hashish those fanatics would madly rush at their enemies, and ruthlessly massacre every one within their grasp." Within a very short time, marijuana started being linked to violent behavior.
Alcohol Prohibition and Federal Approaches to Drug Prohibition
During this time, the United States was also dealing with alcohol prohibition, which lasted from 1919 to 1933. Alcohol prohibition was extremely visible and debated at all levels, while drug laws were passed without the general public's knowledge. National alcohol prohibition happened through the mechanism of an amendment to the constitution.
Earlier (1914), the Harrison Act was passed, which provided federal tax penalties for opiates and cocaine.
The federal approach is important. It was considered at the time that the federal government did not have the constitutional power to outlaw alcohol or drugs. It is because of this that alcohol prohibition required a constitutional amendment.
At that time in our country's history, the judiciary regularly placed the tenth amendment in the path of congressional regulation of "local" affairs, and direct regulation of medical practice was considered beyond congressional power under the commerce clause (since then, both provisions have been weakened so far as to have almost no meaning).
Since drugs could not be outlawed at the federal level, the decision was made to use federal taxes as a way around the restriction. In the Harrison Act, legal uses of opiates and cocaine were taxed (supposedly as a revenue need by the federal government, which is the only way it would hold up in the courts), and those who didn't follow the law found themselves in trouble with the treasury department.
In 1930, a new division in the Treasury Department was established -- the Federal Bureau of Narcotics -- and Harry J. Anslinger was named director. This, if anything, marked the beginning of the all-out war against marijuana.
Harry J. Anslinger
Anslinger was an extremely ambitious man, and he recognized the Bureau of Narcotics as an amazing career opportunity -- a new government agency with the opportunity to define both the problem and the solution. He immediately realized that opiates and cocaine wouldn't be enough to help build his agency, so he latched on to marijuana and started to work on making it illegal at the federal level.
Anslinger immediately drew upon the themes of racism and violence to draw national attention to the problem he wanted to create. Some of his quotes regarding marijuana...
"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others."
"...the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races."
"Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death."
"Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men."
"Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing"
"You smoke a joint and you're likely to kill your brother."
"Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind."
And he loved to pull out his own version of the "assassin" definition:
"In the year 1090, there was founded in Persia the religious and military order of the Assassins, whose history is one of cruelty, barbarity, and murder, and for good reason: the members were confirmed users of hashish, or marihuana, and it is from the Arabs' 'hashashin' that we have the English word 'assassin.'"
Yellow Journalism
Harry Anslinger got some additional help from William Randolf Hearst, owner of a huge chain of newspapers. Hearst had lots of reasons to help. First, he hated Mexicans. Second, he had invested heavily in the timber industry to support his newspaper chain and didn't want to see the development of hemp paper in competition. Third, he had lost 800,000 acres of timberland to Pancho Villa, so he hated Mexicans. Fourth, telling lurid lies about Mexicans (and the devil marijuana weed causing violence) sold newspapers, making him rich.
Some samples from the San Francisco Examiner:
"Marihuana makes fiends of boys in thirty days -- Hashish goads users to bloodlust."
"By the tons it is coming into this country -- the deadly, dreadful poison that racks and tears not only the body, but the very heart and soul of every human being who once becomes a slave to it in any of its cruel and devastating forms.... Marihuana is a short cut to the insane asylum. Smoke marihuana cigarettes for a month and what was once your brain will be nothing but a storehouse of horrid specters. Hasheesh makes a murderer who kills for the love of killing out of the mildest mannered man who ever laughed at the idea that any habit could ever get him...."
And other nationwide columns...
"Users of marijuana become STIMULATED as they inhale the drug and are LIKELY TO DO ANYTHING. Most crimes of violence in this section, especially in country districts are laid to users of that drug."
"Was it marijuana, the new Mexican drug, that nerved the murderous arm of Clara Phillips when she hammered out her victim's life in Los Angeles?... THREE-FOURTHS OF THE CRIMES of violence in this country today are committed by DOPE SLAVES -- that is a matter of cold record."
Hearst and Anslinger were then supported by Dupont chemical company and various pharmaceutical companies in the effort to outlaw cannabis. Dupont had patented nylon, and wanted hemp removed as competition. The pharmaceutical companies could neither identify nor standardize cannabis dosages, and besides, with cannabis, folks could grow their own medicine and not have to purchase it from large companies.
This all set the stage for...
The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937.
After two years of secret planning, Anslinger brought his plan to Congress -- complete with a scrapbook full of sensational Hearst editorials, stories of ax murderers who had supposedly smoked marijuana, and racial slurs.
It was a remarkably short set of hearings.
The one fly in Anslinger's ointment was the appearance by Dr. William C. Woodward, Legislative Council of the American Medical Association.
Woodward started by slamming Harry Anslinger and the Bureau of Narcotics for distorting earlier AMA statements that had nothing to do with marijuana and making them appear to be AMA endorsement for Anslinger's view.
He also reproached the legislature and the Bureau for using the term marijuana in the legislation and not publicizing it as a bill about cannabis or hemp. At this point, marijuana (or marihuana) was a sensationalist word used to refer to Mexicans smoking a drug and had not been connected in most people's minds to the existing cannabis/hemp plant. Thus, many who had legitimate reasons to oppose the bill weren't even aware of it.
Woodward went on to state that the AMA was opposed to the legislation and further questioned the approach of the hearings, coming close to outright accusation of misconduct by Anslinger and the committee:
"That there is a certain amount of narcotic addiction of an objectionable character no one will deny. The newspapers have called attention to it so prominently that there must be some grounds for [their] statements [even Woodward was partially taken in by Hearst's propaganda]. It has surprised me, however, that the facts on which these statements have been based have not been brought before this committee by competent primary evidence. We are referred to newspaper publications concerning the prevalence of marihuana addiction. We are told that the use of marihuana causes crime.
But yet no one has been produced from the Bureau of Prisons to show the number of prisoners who have been found addicted to the marihuana habit. An informed inquiry shows that the Bureau of Prisons has no evidence on that point.
You have been told that school children are great users of marihuana cigarettes. No one has been summoned from the Children's Bureau to show the nature and extent of the habit, among children.
Inquiry of the Children's Bureau shows that they have had no occasion to investigate it and know nothing particularly of it.
Inquiry of the Office of Education--- and they certainly should know something of the prevalence of the habit among the school children of the country, if there is a prevalent habit--- indicates that they have had no occasion to investigate and know nothing of it.
Moreover, there is in the Treasury Department itself, the Public Health Service, with its Division of Mental Hygiene. The Division of Mental Hygiene was, in the first place, the Division of Narcotics. It was converted into the Division of Mental Hygiene, I think, about 1930. That particular Bureau has control at the present time of the narcotics farms that were created about 1929 or 1930 and came into operation a few years later. No one has been summoned from that Bureau to give evidence on that point.
Informal inquiry by me indicates that they have had no record of any marihuana of Cannabis addicts who have ever been committed to those farms.
The bureau of Public Health Service has also a division of pharmacology. If you desire evidence as to the pharmacology of Cannabis, that obviously is the place where you can get direct and primary evidence, rather than the indirect hearsay evidence."
Committee members then proceeded to attack Dr. Woodward, questioning his motives in opposing the legislation. Even the Chairman joined in:
The Chairman: If you want to advise us on legislation, you ought to come here with some constructive proposals, rather than criticism, rather than trying to throw obstacles in the way of something that the Federal Government is trying to do. It has not only an unselfish motive in this, but they have a serious responsibility.
Dr. Woodward: We cannot understand yet, Mr. Chairman, why this bill should have been prepared in secret for 2 years without any intimation, even, to the profession, that it was being prepared.
After some further bantering...
The Chairman: I would like to read a quotation from a recent editorial in the Washington Times:
The marihuana cigarette is one of the most insidious of all forms of dope, largely because of the failure of the public to understand its fatal qualities.
The Nation is almost defenseless against it, having no Federal laws to cope with it and virtually no organized campaign for combating it.
The result is tragic.
School children are the prey of peddlers who infest school neighborhoods.
High school boys and girls buy the destructive weed without knowledge of its capacity of harm, and conscienceless dealers sell it with impunity.
This is a national problem, and it must have national attention.
The fatal marihuana cigarette must be recognized as a deadly drug, and American children must be protected against it.
That is a pretty severe indictment. They say it is a national question and that it requires effective legislation. Of course, in a general way, you have responded to all of these statements; but that indicates very clearly that it is an evil of such magnitude that it is recognized by the press of the country as such.
And that was basically it. Yellow journalism won over medical science.
The committee passed the legislation on. And on the floor of the house, the entire discussion was:
Member from upstate New York: "Mr. Speaker, what is this bill about?"
Speaker Rayburn: "I don't know. It has something to do with a thing called marihuana. I think it's a narcotic of some kind."
"Mr. Speaker, does the American Medical Association support this bill?"
Member on the committee jumps up and says: "Their Doctor Wentworth[sic] came down here. They support this bill 100 percent."
And on the basis of that lie, on August 2, 1937, marijuana became illegal at the federal level.
The entire coverage in the New York Times: "President Roosevelt signed today a bill to curb traffic in the narcotic, marihuana, through heavy taxes on transactions."
Anslinger as precursor to the Drug Czars
Anslinger was essentially the first Drug Czar. Even though the term didn't exist until William Bennett's position as director of the White House Office of National Drug Policy, Anslinger acted in a similar fashion. In fact, there are some amazing parallels between Anslinger and the current Drug Czar John Walters. Both had kind of a carte blanche to go around demonizing drugs and drug users. Both had resources and a large public podium for their voice to be heard and to promote their personal agenda. Both lied constantly, often when it was unnecessary. Both were racists. Both had the ear of lawmakers, and both realized that they could persuade legislators and others based on lies, particularly if they could co-opt the media into squelching or downplaying any opposition views.
Anslinger even had the ability to circumvent the First Amendment. He banned the Canadian movie "Drug Addict," a 1946 documentary that realistically depicted the drug addicts and law enforcement efforts. He even tried to get Canada to ban the movie in their own country, or failing that, to prevent U.S. citizens from seeing the movie in Canada. Canada refused. (Today, Drug Czar John Walters is trying to bully Canada into keeping harsh marijuana laws.)
Anslinger had 37 years to solidify the propaganda and stifle opposition. The lies continued the entire time (although the stories would adjust -- the 21 year old Florida boy who killed his family of five got younger each time he told it). In 1961, he looked back at his efforts:
"Much of the most irrational juvenile violence and that has written a new chapter of shame and tragedy is traceable directly to this hemp intoxication. A gang of boys tear the clothes from two school girls and rape the screaming girls, one boy after the other. A sixteen-year-old kills his entire family of five in Florida, a man in Minnesota puts a bullet through the head of a stranger on the road; in Colorado husband tries to shoot his wife, kills her grandmother instead and then kills himself. Every one of these crimes had been proceeded [sic] by the smoking of one or more marijuana "reefers." As the marijuana situation grew worse, I knew action had to be taken to get the proper legislation passed. By 1937 under my direction, the Bureau launched two important steps First, a legislative plan to seek from Congress a new law that would place marijuana and its distribution directly under federal control. Second, on radio and at major forums, such that presented annually by the New York Herald Tribune, I told the story of this evil weed of the fields and river beds and roadsides. I wrote articles for magazines; our agents gave hundreds of lectures to parents, educators, social and civic leaders. In network broadcasts I reported on the growing list of crimes, including murder and rape. I described the nature of marijuana and its close kinship to hashish. I continued to hammer at the facts.
I believe we did a thorough job, for the public was alerted and the laws to protect them were passed, both nationally and at the state level. We also brought under control the wild growing marijuana in this country. Working with local authorities, we cleaned up hundreds of acres of marijuana and we uprooted plants sprouting along the roadsides."
After Anslinger
On a break from college in the 70s, I was visiting a church in rural Illinois. There in the literature racks in the back of the church was a lurid pamphlet about the evils of marijuana -- all the old reefer madness propaganda about how it caused insanity and murder. I approached the minister and said "You can't have this in your church. It's all lies, and the church shouldn't be about promoting lies." Fortunately, my dad believed me, and he had the material removed. He didn't even know how it got there. But without me speaking up, neither he nor the other members of the church had any reason NOT to believe what the pamphlet said. The propaganda machine had been that effective.
The story since then has been a continual litany of:
Politicians wanting to appear tough on crime and passing tougher penalties
Constant increases in spending on law enforcement and prisons
Racist application of drug laws
Taxpayer funded propaganda
Stifling of opposition speech
Political contributions from corporations that profit from marijuana being illegal (pharmaceuticals, alcohol, etc.)
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This account only scratches the surface of the story. If you want to know more about the history of marijuana, Harry Anslinger, and the saga of criminalization in the United States and elsewhere, visit some of the excellent links below. (All data and quotes for this piece came from these sources as well).
The History of the Non-Medical Use of Drugs in the United States by Charles Whitebread, Professor of Law, USC Law School. A Speech to the California Judges Association 1995 annual conference.
THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT AND THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE: AN INQUIRY INTO THE LEGAL HISTORY OF AMERICAN MARIJUANA PROHIBITION by Richard J. Bonnie & Charles H. Whitebread, II. VIRGINIA LAW REVIEW. VOLUME 56 OCTOBER 1970 NUMBER 6
The Consumers Union Report - Licit and Illicit Drugs by Edward M. Brecher and the Editors of Consumer Reports Magazine
The History of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 By David F. Musto, M.D., New Haven, Conn. Originally published in Arch. Gen. Psychiat. Volume 26, February, 1972
The Report of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse I. Control of Marihuana, Alcohol and Tobacco. History of Marihuana Legislation
The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. The history of how the Marihuana Tax Act came to be the law of the land.
Marijuana - The First Twelve Thousand Years by Ernest L. Abel, 1980
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Drug WarRant
© Copyright 2006 Pete Guither.
Last update: 6/20/06; 10:23:26 PM.
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7000-8000 B.C.
First woven fabric believed to be from hemp.
1619
Jamestown Colony, Virginia passes law requiring farmers to grow hemp.
1700s
Hemp was the primary crop grown by George Washington at Mount Vernon, and a secondary crop grown by Thomas Jefferson at Monticello.
1884
Maine is the first state to outlaw alcohol.
1906
Pure Food and Drug Act is passed, forming the Food and Drug Administration. First time that drugs have any government oversight.
1914
Harrison Act passed, outlawing opiates and cocaine (taxing scheme)
1915
Utah passes first state anti-marijuana law.
1919
18th Amendment to the Constitution (alcohol prohibition) is ratified.
1930
Harry J. Anslinger given control of the new Federal Bureau of Narcotics (he remains in the position until 1962)
1933
21st Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, repealing alcohol prohibition.
1937
Marijuana Tax Act
1938
Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act
1951
Boggs Amendment to the Harrison Narcotic Act (mandatory sentences)
1956
Narcotics Control Act adds more severe penalties
1970
Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act. Replaces and updates all previous laws concerning narcotics and other dangerous drugs. Empasis on law enforcement. Includes the Controlled Substances Act, where marijuana is classified a Schedule 1 drug (reserved for the most dangerous drugs that have no recognized medical use).
1972
Drug Abuse Office and Treatment Act. Establishes federally funded programs for prevention and treatment
1973
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Changes Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs into the DEA
1974 and 1978
Drug Abuse Treatment and Control Amendments. Extends 1972 act
1988
Anti-Drug Abuse Act. Establishes oversight office: National Office of Drug Control Policy and the Drug Czar
1992
ADAMHA Reorganization. Transfers NIDA, NIMH, and NIAAA to NIH and incorporates ADAMHA's programs into the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)
Many people assume that marijuana was made illegal through some kind of process involving scientific, medical, and government hearings; that it was to protect the citizens from what was determined to be a dangerous drug.
The actual story shows a much different picture. Those who voted on the legal fate of this plant never had the facts, but were dependent on information supplied by those who had a specific agenda to deceive lawmakers. You'll see below that the very first federal vote to prohibit marijuana was based entirely on a documented lie on the floor of the Senate.
You'll also see that the history of marijuana's criminalization is filled with:
Racism
Fear
Protection of Corporate Profits
Yellow Journalism
Ignorant, Incompetent, and/or Corrupt Legislators
Personal Career Advancement and Greed
These are the actual reasons marijuana is illegal.
Background
For most of human history, marijuana has been completely legal. It's not a recently discovered plant, nor is it a long-standing law. Marijuana has been illegal for less than 1% of the time that it's been in use. Its known uses go back further than 7,000 B.C. and it was legal as recently as when Ronald Reagan was a boy.
The marijuana (hemp) plant, of course, has an incredible number of uses. The earliest known woven fabric was apparently of hemp, and over the centuries the plant was used for food, incense, cloth, rope, and much more. This adds to some of the confusion over its introduction in the United States, as the plant was well known from the early 1600's, but did not reach public awareness as a recreational drug until the early 1900's.
America's first marijuana law was enacted at Jamestown Colony, Virginia in 1619. It was a law "ordering" all farmers to grow Indian hempseed. There were several other "must grow" laws over the next 200 years (you could be jailed for not growing hemp during times of shortage in Virginia between 1763 and 1767), and during most of that time, hemp was legal tender (you could even pay your taxes with hemp -- try that today!) Hemp was such a critical crop for a number of purposes (including essential war requirements - rope, etc.) that the government went out of its way to encourage growth.
The United States Census of 1850 counted 8,327 hemp "plantations" (minimum 2,000-acre farm) growing cannabis hemp for cloth, canvas and even the cordage used for baling cotton.
The Mexican Connection
In the early 1900s, the western states developed significant tensions regarding the influx of Mexican-Americans. The revolution in Mexico in 1910 spilled over the border, with General Pershing's army clashing with bandit Pancho Villa. Later in that decade, bad feelings developed between the small farmer and the large farms that used cheaper Mexican labor. Then, the depression came and increased tensions, as jobs and welfare resources became scarce.
One of the "differences" seized upon during this time was the fact that many Mexicans smoked marijuana and had brought the plant with them.
However, the first state law outlawing marijuana did so not because of Mexicans using the drug. Oddly enough, it was because of Mormons using it. Mormons who traveled to Mexico in 1910 came back to Salt Lake City with marijuana. The church was not pleased and ruled against use of the drug. Since the state of Utah automatically enshrined church doctrine into law, the first state marijuana prohibition was established in 1915. (Today, Senator Orrin Hatch serves as the prohibition arm of this heavily church-influenced state.)
Other states quickly followed suit with marijuana prohibition laws, including Wyoming (1915), Texas (1919), Iowa (1923), Nevada (1923), Oregon (1923), Washington (1923), Arkansas (1923), and Nebraska (1927). These laws tended to be specifically targeted against the Mexican-American population.
When Montana outlawed marijuana in 1927, the Butte Montana Standard reported a legislator's comment: "When some beet field peon takes a few traces of this stuff... he thinks he has just been elected president of Mexico, so he starts out to execute all his political enemies." In Texas, a senator said on the floor of the Senate: "All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff [marijuana] is what makes them crazy."
Jazz and Assassins
In the eastern states, the "problem" was attributed to a combination of Latin Americans and black jazz musicians. Marijuana and jazz traveled from New Orleans to Chicago, and then to Harlem, where marijuana became an indispensable part of the music scene, even entering the language of the black hits of the time (Louis Armstrong's "Muggles", Cab Calloway's "That Funny Reefer Man", Fats Waller's "Viper's Drag").
Again, racism was part of the charge against marijuana, as newspapers in 1934 editorialized: "Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows and look at a white woman twice."
Two other fear-tactic rumors started to spread: one, that Mexicans, Blacks and other foreigners were snaring white children with marijuana; and two, the story of the "assassins." Early stories of Marco Polo had told of "hasheesh-eaters" or hashashin, from which derived the term "assassin." In the original stories, these professional killers were given large doses of hashish and brought to the ruler's garden (to give them a glimpse of the paradise that awaited them upon successful completion of their mission). Then, after the effects of the drug disappeared, the assassin would fulfill his ruler's wishes with cool, calculating loyalty.
By the 1930s, the story had changed. Dr. A. E. Fossier wrote in the 1931 New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal: "Under the influence of hashish those fanatics would madly rush at their enemies, and ruthlessly massacre every one within their grasp." Within a very short time, marijuana started being linked to violent behavior.
Alcohol Prohibition and Federal Approaches to Drug Prohibition
During this time, the United States was also dealing with alcohol prohibition, which lasted from 1919 to 1933. Alcohol prohibition was extremely visible and debated at all levels, while drug laws were passed without the general public's knowledge. National alcohol prohibition happened through the mechanism of an amendment to the constitution.
Earlier (1914), the Harrison Act was passed, which provided federal tax penalties for opiates and cocaine.
The federal approach is important. It was considered at the time that the federal government did not have the constitutional power to outlaw alcohol or drugs. It is because of this that alcohol prohibition required a constitutional amendment.
At that time in our country's history, the judiciary regularly placed the tenth amendment in the path of congressional regulation of "local" affairs, and direct regulation of medical practice was considered beyond congressional power under the commerce clause (since then, both provisions have been weakened so far as to have almost no meaning).
Since drugs could not be outlawed at the federal level, the decision was made to use federal taxes as a way around the restriction. In the Harrison Act, legal uses of opiates and cocaine were taxed (supposedly as a revenue need by the federal government, which is the only way it would hold up in the courts), and those who didn't follow the law found themselves in trouble with the treasury department.
In 1930, a new division in the Treasury Department was established -- the Federal Bureau of Narcotics -- and Harry J. Anslinger was named director. This, if anything, marked the beginning of the all-out war against marijuana.
Harry J. Anslinger
Anslinger was an extremely ambitious man, and he recognized the Bureau of Narcotics as an amazing career opportunity -- a new government agency with the opportunity to define both the problem and the solution. He immediately realized that opiates and cocaine wouldn't be enough to help build his agency, so he latched on to marijuana and started to work on making it illegal at the federal level.
Anslinger immediately drew upon the themes of racism and violence to draw national attention to the problem he wanted to create. Some of his quotes regarding marijuana...
"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others."
"...the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races."
"Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death."
"Reefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men."
"Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing"
"You smoke a joint and you're likely to kill your brother."
"Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind."
And he loved to pull out his own version of the "assassin" definition:
"In the year 1090, there was founded in Persia the religious and military order of the Assassins, whose history is one of cruelty, barbarity, and murder, and for good reason: the members were confirmed users of hashish, or marihuana, and it is from the Arabs' 'hashashin' that we have the English word 'assassin.'"
Yellow Journalism
Harry Anslinger got some additional help from William Randolf Hearst, owner of a huge chain of newspapers. Hearst had lots of reasons to help. First, he hated Mexicans. Second, he had invested heavily in the timber industry to support his newspaper chain and didn't want to see the development of hemp paper in competition. Third, he had lost 800,000 acres of timberland to Pancho Villa, so he hated Mexicans. Fourth, telling lurid lies about Mexicans (and the devil marijuana weed causing violence) sold newspapers, making him rich.
Some samples from the San Francisco Examiner:
"Marihuana makes fiends of boys in thirty days -- Hashish goads users to bloodlust."
"By the tons it is coming into this country -- the deadly, dreadful poison that racks and tears not only the body, but the very heart and soul of every human being who once becomes a slave to it in any of its cruel and devastating forms.... Marihuana is a short cut to the insane asylum. Smoke marihuana cigarettes for a month and what was once your brain will be nothing but a storehouse of horrid specters. Hasheesh makes a murderer who kills for the love of killing out of the mildest mannered man who ever laughed at the idea that any habit could ever get him...."
And other nationwide columns...
"Users of marijuana become STIMULATED as they inhale the drug and are LIKELY TO DO ANYTHING. Most crimes of violence in this section, especially in country districts are laid to users of that drug."
"Was it marijuana, the new Mexican drug, that nerved the murderous arm of Clara Phillips when she hammered out her victim's life in Los Angeles?... THREE-FOURTHS OF THE CRIMES of violence in this country today are committed by DOPE SLAVES -- that is a matter of cold record."
Hearst and Anslinger were then supported by Dupont chemical company and various pharmaceutical companies in the effort to outlaw cannabis. Dupont had patented nylon, and wanted hemp removed as competition. The pharmaceutical companies could neither identify nor standardize cannabis dosages, and besides, with cannabis, folks could grow their own medicine and not have to purchase it from large companies.
This all set the stage for...
The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937.
After two years of secret planning, Anslinger brought his plan to Congress -- complete with a scrapbook full of sensational Hearst editorials, stories of ax murderers who had supposedly smoked marijuana, and racial slurs.
It was a remarkably short set of hearings.
The one fly in Anslinger's ointment was the appearance by Dr. William C. Woodward, Legislative Council of the American Medical Association.
Woodward started by slamming Harry Anslinger and the Bureau of Narcotics for distorting earlier AMA statements that had nothing to do with marijuana and making them appear to be AMA endorsement for Anslinger's view.
He also reproached the legislature and the Bureau for using the term marijuana in the legislation and not publicizing it as a bill about cannabis or hemp. At this point, marijuana (or marihuana) was a sensationalist word used to refer to Mexicans smoking a drug and had not been connected in most people's minds to the existing cannabis/hemp plant. Thus, many who had legitimate reasons to oppose the bill weren't even aware of it.
Woodward went on to state that the AMA was opposed to the legislation and further questioned the approach of the hearings, coming close to outright accusation of misconduct by Anslinger and the committee:
"That there is a certain amount of narcotic addiction of an objectionable character no one will deny. The newspapers have called attention to it so prominently that there must be some grounds for [their] statements [even Woodward was partially taken in by Hearst's propaganda]. It has surprised me, however, that the facts on which these statements have been based have not been brought before this committee by competent primary evidence. We are referred to newspaper publications concerning the prevalence of marihuana addiction. We are told that the use of marihuana causes crime.
But yet no one has been produced from the Bureau of Prisons to show the number of prisoners who have been found addicted to the marihuana habit. An informed inquiry shows that the Bureau of Prisons has no evidence on that point.
You have been told that school children are great users of marihuana cigarettes. No one has been summoned from the Children's Bureau to show the nature and extent of the habit, among children.
Inquiry of the Children's Bureau shows that they have had no occasion to investigate it and know nothing particularly of it.
Inquiry of the Office of Education--- and they certainly should know something of the prevalence of the habit among the school children of the country, if there is a prevalent habit--- indicates that they have had no occasion to investigate and know nothing of it.
Moreover, there is in the Treasury Department itself, the Public Health Service, with its Division of Mental Hygiene. The Division of Mental Hygiene was, in the first place, the Division of Narcotics. It was converted into the Division of Mental Hygiene, I think, about 1930. That particular Bureau has control at the present time of the narcotics farms that were created about 1929 or 1930 and came into operation a few years later. No one has been summoned from that Bureau to give evidence on that point.
Informal inquiry by me indicates that they have had no record of any marihuana of Cannabis addicts who have ever been committed to those farms.
The bureau of Public Health Service has also a division of pharmacology. If you desire evidence as to the pharmacology of Cannabis, that obviously is the place where you can get direct and primary evidence, rather than the indirect hearsay evidence."
Committee members then proceeded to attack Dr. Woodward, questioning his motives in opposing the legislation. Even the Chairman joined in:
The Chairman: If you want to advise us on legislation, you ought to come here with some constructive proposals, rather than criticism, rather than trying to throw obstacles in the way of something that the Federal Government is trying to do. It has not only an unselfish motive in this, but they have a serious responsibility.
Dr. Woodward: We cannot understand yet, Mr. Chairman, why this bill should have been prepared in secret for 2 years without any intimation, even, to the profession, that it was being prepared.
After some further bantering...
The Chairman: I would like to read a quotation from a recent editorial in the Washington Times:
The marihuana cigarette is one of the most insidious of all forms of dope, largely because of the failure of the public to understand its fatal qualities.
The Nation is almost defenseless against it, having no Federal laws to cope with it and virtually no organized campaign for combating it.
The result is tragic.
School children are the prey of peddlers who infest school neighborhoods.
High school boys and girls buy the destructive weed without knowledge of its capacity of harm, and conscienceless dealers sell it with impunity.
This is a national problem, and it must have national attention.
The fatal marihuana cigarette must be recognized as a deadly drug, and American children must be protected against it.
That is a pretty severe indictment. They say it is a national question and that it requires effective legislation. Of course, in a general way, you have responded to all of these statements; but that indicates very clearly that it is an evil of such magnitude that it is recognized by the press of the country as such.
And that was basically it. Yellow journalism won over medical science.
The committee passed the legislation on. And on the floor of the house, the entire discussion was:
Member from upstate New York: "Mr. Speaker, what is this bill about?"
Speaker Rayburn: "I don't know. It has something to do with a thing called marihuana. I think it's a narcotic of some kind."
"Mr. Speaker, does the American Medical Association support this bill?"
Member on the committee jumps up and says: "Their Doctor Wentworth[sic] came down here. They support this bill 100 percent."
And on the basis of that lie, on August 2, 1937, marijuana became illegal at the federal level.
The entire coverage in the New York Times: "President Roosevelt signed today a bill to curb traffic in the narcotic, marihuana, through heavy taxes on transactions."
Anslinger as precursor to the Drug Czars
Anslinger was essentially the first Drug Czar. Even though the term didn't exist until William Bennett's position as director of the White House Office of National Drug Policy, Anslinger acted in a similar fashion. In fact, there are some amazing parallels between Anslinger and the current Drug Czar John Walters. Both had kind of a carte blanche to go around demonizing drugs and drug users. Both had resources and a large public podium for their voice to be heard and to promote their personal agenda. Both lied constantly, often when it was unnecessary. Both were racists. Both had the ear of lawmakers, and both realized that they could persuade legislators and others based on lies, particularly if they could co-opt the media into squelching or downplaying any opposition views.
Anslinger even had the ability to circumvent the First Amendment. He banned the Canadian movie "Drug Addict," a 1946 documentary that realistically depicted the drug addicts and law enforcement efforts. He even tried to get Canada to ban the movie in their own country, or failing that, to prevent U.S. citizens from seeing the movie in Canada. Canada refused. (Today, Drug Czar John Walters is trying to bully Canada into keeping harsh marijuana laws.)
Anslinger had 37 years to solidify the propaganda and stifle opposition. The lies continued the entire time (although the stories would adjust -- the 21 year old Florida boy who killed his family of five got younger each time he told it). In 1961, he looked back at his efforts:
"Much of the most irrational juvenile violence and that has written a new chapter of shame and tragedy is traceable directly to this hemp intoxication. A gang of boys tear the clothes from two school girls and rape the screaming girls, one boy after the other. A sixteen-year-old kills his entire family of five in Florida, a man in Minnesota puts a bullet through the head of a stranger on the road; in Colorado husband tries to shoot his wife, kills her grandmother instead and then kills himself. Every one of these crimes had been proceeded [sic] by the smoking of one or more marijuana "reefers." As the marijuana situation grew worse, I knew action had to be taken to get the proper legislation passed. By 1937 under my direction, the Bureau launched two important steps First, a legislative plan to seek from Congress a new law that would place marijuana and its distribution directly under federal control. Second, on radio and at major forums, such that presented annually by the New York Herald Tribune, I told the story of this evil weed of the fields and river beds and roadsides. I wrote articles for magazines; our agents gave hundreds of lectures to parents, educators, social and civic leaders. In network broadcasts I reported on the growing list of crimes, including murder and rape. I described the nature of marijuana and its close kinship to hashish. I continued to hammer at the facts.
I believe we did a thorough job, for the public was alerted and the laws to protect them were passed, both nationally and at the state level. We also brought under control the wild growing marijuana in this country. Working with local authorities, we cleaned up hundreds of acres of marijuana and we uprooted plants sprouting along the roadsides."
After Anslinger
On a break from college in the 70s, I was visiting a church in rural Illinois. There in the literature racks in the back of the church was a lurid pamphlet about the evils of marijuana -- all the old reefer madness propaganda about how it caused insanity and murder. I approached the minister and said "You can't have this in your church. It's all lies, and the church shouldn't be about promoting lies." Fortunately, my dad believed me, and he had the material removed. He didn't even know how it got there. But without me speaking up, neither he nor the other members of the church had any reason NOT to believe what the pamphlet said. The propaganda machine had been that effective.
The story since then has been a continual litany of:
Politicians wanting to appear tough on crime and passing tougher penalties
Constant increases in spending on law enforcement and prisons
Racist application of drug laws
Taxpayer funded propaganda
Stifling of opposition speech
Political contributions from corporations that profit from marijuana being illegal (pharmaceuticals, alcohol, etc.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This account only scratches the surface of the story. If you want to know more about the history of marijuana, Harry Anslinger, and the saga of criminalization in the United States and elsewhere, visit some of the excellent links below. (All data and quotes for this piece came from these sources as well).
The History of the Non-Medical Use of Drugs in the United States by Charles Whitebread, Professor of Law, USC Law School. A Speech to the California Judges Association 1995 annual conference.
THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT AND THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE: AN INQUIRY INTO THE LEGAL HISTORY OF AMERICAN MARIJUANA PROHIBITION by Richard J. Bonnie & Charles H. Whitebread, II. VIRGINIA LAW REVIEW. VOLUME 56 OCTOBER 1970 NUMBER 6
The Consumers Union Report - Licit and Illicit Drugs by Edward M. Brecher and the Editors of Consumer Reports Magazine
The History of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 By David F. Musto, M.D., New Haven, Conn. Originally published in Arch. Gen. Psychiat. Volume 26, February, 1972
The Report of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse I. Control of Marihuana, Alcohol and Tobacco. History of Marihuana Legislation
The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. The history of how the Marihuana Tax Act came to be the law of the land.
Marijuana - The First Twelve Thousand Years by Ernest L. Abel, 1980
comment [94]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Drug WarRant
© Copyright 2006 Pete Guither.
Last update: 6/20/06; 10:23:26 PM.
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Sunday, January 14, 2007
A Young Marine Speaks Out
by Philip Martin
I'm sick and tired of this patriotic, nationalistic and fascist crap. I stood through a memorial service today for a young Marine that was killed in Iraq back in April. During this memorial a number of people spoke about the guy and about his sacrifice for the country. How do you justify 'sacrificing' your life for a war which is not only illegal, but is being prosecuted to the extent where the only thing keeping us there is one man's power, and his ego. A recent Marine Corps intelligence report that was leaked said that the war in the al-Anbar province is unwinnable. It said that there was nothing we could do to win the hearts and minds, or the military operations in that area. So I wonder, why are we still there? Democracy is not forced upon people at gunpoint. It's the result of forward thinking individuals who take the initiative and risks to give their fellow countrymen a better way of life.
When I joined I took an oath. In that oath I swore to protect the Constitution of the United States. I didn't swear to build democracies in countries on the other side of the world under the guise of "national security." I didn't join the military to be part of an Orwellian ("1984") war machine that is in an obligatory war against whoever the state deems the enemy to be so that the populace can be controlled and riled up in a pro-nationalistic frenzy to support any new and oppressive law that will be the key to destroying the enemy. Example given – the Patriot Act. So aptly named, and totally against all that the constitution stands for.
President Bush used the reactionary nature of our society to bring our country together and to infuse into the national psyche a need to give up their little-used rights in the hope to make our nation a little safer. The same scare tactics he used to win elections. He drones on and on about how America and the world would be a less safe place if we weren't killing Iraqis, and that we'd have to fight the terrorists at home if we weren't abroad. In our modern day emotive society this strategy (or strategery?) works, or had worked, up until last month's elections.
My point in this; to show that America was never nationalistic. If anything they were Statalistic (giving their allegiance to the state of their residence). This is shown in the fact that the founders created states with fully capable and independent governments and not provinces that were just a division of the federal government. These men believed that America was a place where imperialistic values would be non-existent. Where the people trying to make their lives better by working hard, thinking, inventing and using the free market would tie up so much of normal life that imperialistic colonization and the fighting of wars thousands of miles away for interests that are not our own would be avoided. They believed this expansion of power could be left to the European nations, the England, France and Spain of their time.
However this recent, and current influx of nationalistic feeling has created an environment where giving up your rights, going to a foreign country to fight a people who did not ask for us to be there, nor did their leader do anything to warrant us being there, and dying would be considered honorable and heroic. I don't believe it anymore. I don't believe it's right for any American to go along with it anymore. Yes I know that we in the military are bound by the UCMJ and somehow don't fall under the Constitution (the very thing we're suppose to be defending) but sooner or later there is a decision that every American soldier, marine, airmen and seamen makes to allow themselves to be sent to a war that is against every fiber this country was founded on. I know that when April rolls around I will be thinking long and hard on that decision. Even though we in the military are just doing as we're told we still have the moral and ethical obligation to choose to do as we're told, or to say, "No, that isn't right." I believe that if more troopers like me and the professional military, the officers and commanders, start standing up and saying that they won't let themselves or their troops go to this illegal war people will start standing up and realizing what the heck is going on over there.
The sad fact of the matter is that we are not fighting terrorists in Iraq. We are fighting the Iraqi people who feel like a conquered and occupied people. Personally I have a hard time believing that if I was an Iraqi that I wouldn't be doing everything in my power to kill and maim as many Americans as possible. I know that the vast majority of Americans would not be happy with the Canadian government, or any other foreign government, liberating us from the clutches of George W. Bush, even though a large number of us would like that, and forcing us to accept their system of government. Would not millions of Americans rise up and fight back? Would you not rise up to protect and defend your house and your neighborhood if someone invaded your country? But we send thousands of troops to a foreign country to do just that. How is it moral to fight a people who are just trying to defend their homes and families? I think next time I go to Iraq perhaps I should wear a bright red coat and carry a Brown Bess instead of my digitalized utilities and M16.
Notice I never once used the word homeland in any of this. I have a secondary point I want to bring up now. Never once was the term homeland ever used to describe the country of America until Mr. Bush began the department of homeland security after the 9/11 attacks. Taking a 20th century history class will teach us that the most notable countries in the last century that referred to their country in this way were Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Hitler used the term fatherland to drum up support, nationalistic support, for his growing war machine. He used the nationalism he created in the minds of the Germans to justify the sacrifice of their livelihood to build the war machine to get back their power from the oppressive restrictions the English and French had put on them at Versailles. This is the same feeling that has been virulently infecting the American psyche in the last hundred years. This is the same feeling that consoles a mother after her son is killed in an attempt to prosecute an aggressor's war 10,000 miles away. It's also known as Patriotism these days, but I say, "No more." No more nationalistic inanity, no more passing it off as patriotism. Patriotism is learning, and educating oneself to understand what their country really stands for.
I heard a lot during the memorial service about how the dead Marine did so much good for others and how his helping others was like a little microcosm of America helping because we have the power to do so. Well if we have the power to help people why aren't we helping in Darfur where hundreds of thousands of people have died in the last 10 years. Saddam was convicted and sentenced to death for killing 143 Shiites who conspired to assassinate him. (I know all you "patriotic" Americans would be calling for the heads of anyone who conspired to assassinate supreme leader Bush). And yet we spend upwards of 1 trillion dollars and nearing 3,000 lives to help these Iraqis when they don't even want us there. Not to mention we don't have the legal justification to be there. I guess we should wait around for the omnipotent W Bush to decide who we should use our superpowerdom to help next. It's about time to throw him and the rest of the fascists out. Moreover it's about time to start educating Americans about their past and history, and letting them know that imperialistic leaders are not what the founders of this great country wanted.
December 8, 2006
Philip Martin has been a Marine for 2 years. He is in the infantry (a "grunt"), and spent 7 months in the al-Anbar province of Iraq. He went on more than 180 combat patrols in and outside of the city of Fallujah, where he was hit with 2 IEDs (luckily never injured) and was involved in a number of firefights. He is currently stationed in Twentynine Palms, CA, and due to return to Iraq for a second deployment in April 2007. He is 21-years-old.
Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com
I'm sick and tired of this patriotic, nationalistic and fascist crap. I stood through a memorial service today for a young Marine that was killed in Iraq back in April. During this memorial a number of people spoke about the guy and about his sacrifice for the country. How do you justify 'sacrificing' your life for a war which is not only illegal, but is being prosecuted to the extent where the only thing keeping us there is one man's power, and his ego. A recent Marine Corps intelligence report that was leaked said that the war in the al-Anbar province is unwinnable. It said that there was nothing we could do to win the hearts and minds, or the military operations in that area. So I wonder, why are we still there? Democracy is not forced upon people at gunpoint. It's the result of forward thinking individuals who take the initiative and risks to give their fellow countrymen a better way of life.
When I joined I took an oath. In that oath I swore to protect the Constitution of the United States. I didn't swear to build democracies in countries on the other side of the world under the guise of "national security." I didn't join the military to be part of an Orwellian ("1984") war machine that is in an obligatory war against whoever the state deems the enemy to be so that the populace can be controlled and riled up in a pro-nationalistic frenzy to support any new and oppressive law that will be the key to destroying the enemy. Example given – the Patriot Act. So aptly named, and totally against all that the constitution stands for.
President Bush used the reactionary nature of our society to bring our country together and to infuse into the national psyche a need to give up their little-used rights in the hope to make our nation a little safer. The same scare tactics he used to win elections. He drones on and on about how America and the world would be a less safe place if we weren't killing Iraqis, and that we'd have to fight the terrorists at home if we weren't abroad. In our modern day emotive society this strategy (or strategery?) works, or had worked, up until last month's elections.
My point in this; to show that America was never nationalistic. If anything they were Statalistic (giving their allegiance to the state of their residence). This is shown in the fact that the founders created states with fully capable and independent governments and not provinces that were just a division of the federal government. These men believed that America was a place where imperialistic values would be non-existent. Where the people trying to make their lives better by working hard, thinking, inventing and using the free market would tie up so much of normal life that imperialistic colonization and the fighting of wars thousands of miles away for interests that are not our own would be avoided. They believed this expansion of power could be left to the European nations, the England, France and Spain of their time.
However this recent, and current influx of nationalistic feeling has created an environment where giving up your rights, going to a foreign country to fight a people who did not ask for us to be there, nor did their leader do anything to warrant us being there, and dying would be considered honorable and heroic. I don't believe it anymore. I don't believe it's right for any American to go along with it anymore. Yes I know that we in the military are bound by the UCMJ and somehow don't fall under the Constitution (the very thing we're suppose to be defending) but sooner or later there is a decision that every American soldier, marine, airmen and seamen makes to allow themselves to be sent to a war that is against every fiber this country was founded on. I know that when April rolls around I will be thinking long and hard on that decision. Even though we in the military are just doing as we're told we still have the moral and ethical obligation to choose to do as we're told, or to say, "No, that isn't right." I believe that if more troopers like me and the professional military, the officers and commanders, start standing up and saying that they won't let themselves or their troops go to this illegal war people will start standing up and realizing what the heck is going on over there.
The sad fact of the matter is that we are not fighting terrorists in Iraq. We are fighting the Iraqi people who feel like a conquered and occupied people. Personally I have a hard time believing that if I was an Iraqi that I wouldn't be doing everything in my power to kill and maim as many Americans as possible. I know that the vast majority of Americans would not be happy with the Canadian government, or any other foreign government, liberating us from the clutches of George W. Bush, even though a large number of us would like that, and forcing us to accept their system of government. Would not millions of Americans rise up and fight back? Would you not rise up to protect and defend your house and your neighborhood if someone invaded your country? But we send thousands of troops to a foreign country to do just that. How is it moral to fight a people who are just trying to defend their homes and families? I think next time I go to Iraq perhaps I should wear a bright red coat and carry a Brown Bess instead of my digitalized utilities and M16.
Notice I never once used the word homeland in any of this. I have a secondary point I want to bring up now. Never once was the term homeland ever used to describe the country of America until Mr. Bush began the department of homeland security after the 9/11 attacks. Taking a 20th century history class will teach us that the most notable countries in the last century that referred to their country in this way were Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Hitler used the term fatherland to drum up support, nationalistic support, for his growing war machine. He used the nationalism he created in the minds of the Germans to justify the sacrifice of their livelihood to build the war machine to get back their power from the oppressive restrictions the English and French had put on them at Versailles. This is the same feeling that has been virulently infecting the American psyche in the last hundred years. This is the same feeling that consoles a mother after her son is killed in an attempt to prosecute an aggressor's war 10,000 miles away. It's also known as Patriotism these days, but I say, "No more." No more nationalistic inanity, no more passing it off as patriotism. Patriotism is learning, and educating oneself to understand what their country really stands for.
I heard a lot during the memorial service about how the dead Marine did so much good for others and how his helping others was like a little microcosm of America helping because we have the power to do so. Well if we have the power to help people why aren't we helping in Darfur where hundreds of thousands of people have died in the last 10 years. Saddam was convicted and sentenced to death for killing 143 Shiites who conspired to assassinate him. (I know all you "patriotic" Americans would be calling for the heads of anyone who conspired to assassinate supreme leader Bush). And yet we spend upwards of 1 trillion dollars and nearing 3,000 lives to help these Iraqis when they don't even want us there. Not to mention we don't have the legal justification to be there. I guess we should wait around for the omnipotent W Bush to decide who we should use our superpowerdom to help next. It's about time to throw him and the rest of the fascists out. Moreover it's about time to start educating Americans about their past and history, and letting them know that imperialistic leaders are not what the founders of this great country wanted.
December 8, 2006
Philip Martin has been a Marine for 2 years. He is in the infantry (a "grunt"), and spent 7 months in the al-Anbar province of Iraq. He went on more than 180 combat patrols in and outside of the city of Fallujah, where he was hit with 2 IEDs (luckily never injured) and was involved in a number of firefights. He is currently stationed in Twentynine Palms, CA, and due to return to Iraq for a second deployment in April 2007. He is 21-years-old.
Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com
Saturday, January 13, 2007
When the Devil Creates a Devil
When the Devil Creates a Devil
by Becky Akers
A US district judge sentenced notorious terrorist, Shahawar Matin Siraj, to 30 years in prison this past Monday for agreeing to blow up the 34th Street subway station in Manhattan. The next day, by amazing coincidence, his family was arrested on immigration charges.
No doubt you’re scratching your head, trying to recall who Shahawar Matin Siraj is. If he’s dangerous enough to merit 30 years in the slammer and a deported family, why haven’t you heard of him? Likely because his case doesn’t pass the laugh test. The usual suspects are bragging that their jihad against him has saved civilization, but it’s shamefaced bragging of the kind you hear when a 10th-grader beats up a kindergartner. They dare not ballyhoo their triumph lest the serfs finally rouse themselves and yell, "Are you serious? You’re reading our mail and tapping our phones and groping us at airports because of guys like him?"
Siraj was a 22-year-old Pakistani working in Brooklyn, NY at an Islamic bookstore – located, ominously enough, next to a mosque. Both Siraj’s family and his attorneys have described him as "witless and impressionable." His uncle admitted, "He’s my nephew, but he’s not too bright.... He’s not dangerous, he just talks."
Siraj’s hours in the bookstore and the mosque, where he prayed, as well as his lack of sophistication recommended him to 50-year-old Osama Eldawoody. An Egyptian immigrant who became a US citizen, Eldawoody is also a "paid police informant." For several years after 9/11, he and an undercover cop prowled both bookstore and mosque. Eldawoody collected $100,000 of our taxes for chatting up "radical young Moslem men," a.k.a. customers at the bookstore, and for reporting the license-plate numbers of cars parked at the mosque. Wouldn’t it be easier if we simply required Moslems to wear yellow crescents on their sleeves?
The snitch and his undercover sidekick honed in on Siraj, "not the brightest bulb in the chandelier," and another dim wit as well. James Elshafay is just 21; his short life has been nasty and brutish. His Irish mother and Egyptian father separated when he was a toddler. He suffers from schizophrenia and depression, as do other members of his family, and takes drugs of which Leviathan approves to counter these ills. He took drugs Leviathan doesn’t approve as a teen, perhaps because a "male relative" molested him. He drank to excess, sniffed glue, and dropped out of the ninth grade in his school on Staten Island. He volunteered for the Army, but he was so damaged even those body-snatchers wouldn’t have him.
In short, Elshafay and his friend Siraj sound more like threats to themselves than to the American Way of Life. We’ve all known folks like them: there’s a glazed look in their eyes as they work to decipher such sentences as "You want fries with that?" and "The red light means STOP." Often they’re eager to please and readily agree to just about anything; you could suggest a blind date with Hillary Clinton, and you’d get a goofy grin and a "Sure!" Some of us, to our shame, may have mocked or even bullied children like them when we were kids. Then we grew up. We learned that wounded souls and minds are still worthy of respect, that their slow wits don’t exempt us from the Golden Rule, and that only the truly vicious take advantage of them.
Enter Eldawoody, the NYPD, the FBI, and the whole apparatus of prosecutors, judges, and other criminals fighting a largely invented but highly useful "War on Terror."
Eldawoody showed Siraj and Elshafay pictures of their fellow Moslems’ torture at Abu Ghraib and told them US soldiers were raping Iraqi girls. He claimed he belonged to a terrorist organization – well, OK, he does collaborate with the Feds – and could supply explosives. According to Siraj, Eldawoody suggested "blowing up the buildings and blowing up the Wall Street places." Unfortunately for Siraj and Elshafay, the man pretending to be their friend and Moslem mentor, the one who told them his imam had declared a fatwa for killing Americans, was wearing a wire. When Siraj exclaimed, "That [US soldiers’ raping Iraqi girls] was enough for me. I'm ready to do anything. I don't care about my life," Eldawoody’s tape caught it. Trying to impress the older man, Siraj also mentioned blowing up the 34th Street subway stop, which links to New York’s Penn Station. He and Elshafay allegedly possessed crude drawings of the station when they were arrested.
Siraj was tried and convicted in May. The chief witnesses against him were the drugged Elshafay, the corrupt Eldawoody, and his own words, taped without his knowledge. Siraj has no criminal record. He was a member of no terrorist organization. He possessed no explosives or other means of carrying out the scenarios Eldawoody concocted. Nevertheless, Judge Nina Gershon sentenced him to 30 years. Ray Kelly, New York’s police commissioner, called this travesty "an important milestone in safeguarding New York against terrorist plotters whether home-grown or foreign." But Siraj’s attorney described it truthfully: "In essence, what we have is the New York City Police Department creating a crime so they can solve the crime and claim a victory in the war on terror. ...What the government has done by painting this young man...as the mastermind behind the plot to bomb the 34th Street subway is really creating a devil so that they can lock up the devil."
You might think Leviathan would rest content after entrapping and railroading "the devil." But no. Now the beast is rampaging after Siraj’s parents and sister. Like torture, punishing a "criminal’s" family is an ancient horror that modern, supposedly enlightened societies shun. And like torture, Bush’s Amerika has revived it. This is especially infuriating since the Bible Bush claims to follow specifically condemns such injustice: "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin." (Deut. 24:16; see also Jer. 31:30 and Ezek. 18:1–13.)
A dubious immigration battle cloaks the State’s vindictiveness against the Siraj family. These folks follow a form of Islam so secular their neighbors in Pakistan beat and burned Mr. Siraj. He sought asylum here. Our merciful bureaucrats rejected the application, so the family appealed. That apparently makes them "fair" game for Leviathan. But will the State bother with such an excuse the next time? When the rest of us are arrested for smoking pot, or for refusing to show ID, or for protesting the war, will our families be locked up, too?
The passage in Deuteronomy continues almost eerily, "Do not deprive the alien or the fatherless of justice..." Let us tremble with Jefferson when we reflect that God is indeed just and that His justice cannot sleep forever.
January 13, 2007
Becky Akers [send her mail] writes primarily about the American Revolution.
Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com
Becky Akers Archives
by Becky Akers
A US district judge sentenced notorious terrorist, Shahawar Matin Siraj, to 30 years in prison this past Monday for agreeing to blow up the 34th Street subway station in Manhattan. The next day, by amazing coincidence, his family was arrested on immigration charges.
No doubt you’re scratching your head, trying to recall who Shahawar Matin Siraj is. If he’s dangerous enough to merit 30 years in the slammer and a deported family, why haven’t you heard of him? Likely because his case doesn’t pass the laugh test. The usual suspects are bragging that their jihad against him has saved civilization, but it’s shamefaced bragging of the kind you hear when a 10th-grader beats up a kindergartner. They dare not ballyhoo their triumph lest the serfs finally rouse themselves and yell, "Are you serious? You’re reading our mail and tapping our phones and groping us at airports because of guys like him?"
Siraj was a 22-year-old Pakistani working in Brooklyn, NY at an Islamic bookstore – located, ominously enough, next to a mosque. Both Siraj’s family and his attorneys have described him as "witless and impressionable." His uncle admitted, "He’s my nephew, but he’s not too bright.... He’s not dangerous, he just talks."
Siraj’s hours in the bookstore and the mosque, where he prayed, as well as his lack of sophistication recommended him to 50-year-old Osama Eldawoody. An Egyptian immigrant who became a US citizen, Eldawoody is also a "paid police informant." For several years after 9/11, he and an undercover cop prowled both bookstore and mosque. Eldawoody collected $100,000 of our taxes for chatting up "radical young Moslem men," a.k.a. customers at the bookstore, and for reporting the license-plate numbers of cars parked at the mosque. Wouldn’t it be easier if we simply required Moslems to wear yellow crescents on their sleeves?
The snitch and his undercover sidekick honed in on Siraj, "not the brightest bulb in the chandelier," and another dim wit as well. James Elshafay is just 21; his short life has been nasty and brutish. His Irish mother and Egyptian father separated when he was a toddler. He suffers from schizophrenia and depression, as do other members of his family, and takes drugs of which Leviathan approves to counter these ills. He took drugs Leviathan doesn’t approve as a teen, perhaps because a "male relative" molested him. He drank to excess, sniffed glue, and dropped out of the ninth grade in his school on Staten Island. He volunteered for the Army, but he was so damaged even those body-snatchers wouldn’t have him.
In short, Elshafay and his friend Siraj sound more like threats to themselves than to the American Way of Life. We’ve all known folks like them: there’s a glazed look in their eyes as they work to decipher such sentences as "You want fries with that?" and "The red light means STOP." Often they’re eager to please and readily agree to just about anything; you could suggest a blind date with Hillary Clinton, and you’d get a goofy grin and a "Sure!" Some of us, to our shame, may have mocked or even bullied children like them when we were kids. Then we grew up. We learned that wounded souls and minds are still worthy of respect, that their slow wits don’t exempt us from the Golden Rule, and that only the truly vicious take advantage of them.
Enter Eldawoody, the NYPD, the FBI, and the whole apparatus of prosecutors, judges, and other criminals fighting a largely invented but highly useful "War on Terror."
Eldawoody showed Siraj and Elshafay pictures of their fellow Moslems’ torture at Abu Ghraib and told them US soldiers were raping Iraqi girls. He claimed he belonged to a terrorist organization – well, OK, he does collaborate with the Feds – and could supply explosives. According to Siraj, Eldawoody suggested "blowing up the buildings and blowing up the Wall Street places." Unfortunately for Siraj and Elshafay, the man pretending to be their friend and Moslem mentor, the one who told them his imam had declared a fatwa for killing Americans, was wearing a wire. When Siraj exclaimed, "That [US soldiers’ raping Iraqi girls] was enough for me. I'm ready to do anything. I don't care about my life," Eldawoody’s tape caught it. Trying to impress the older man, Siraj also mentioned blowing up the 34th Street subway stop, which links to New York’s Penn Station. He and Elshafay allegedly possessed crude drawings of the station when they were arrested.
Siraj was tried and convicted in May. The chief witnesses against him were the drugged Elshafay, the corrupt Eldawoody, and his own words, taped without his knowledge. Siraj has no criminal record. He was a member of no terrorist organization. He possessed no explosives or other means of carrying out the scenarios Eldawoody concocted. Nevertheless, Judge Nina Gershon sentenced him to 30 years. Ray Kelly, New York’s police commissioner, called this travesty "an important milestone in safeguarding New York against terrorist plotters whether home-grown or foreign." But Siraj’s attorney described it truthfully: "In essence, what we have is the New York City Police Department creating a crime so they can solve the crime and claim a victory in the war on terror. ...What the government has done by painting this young man...as the mastermind behind the plot to bomb the 34th Street subway is really creating a devil so that they can lock up the devil."
You might think Leviathan would rest content after entrapping and railroading "the devil." But no. Now the beast is rampaging after Siraj’s parents and sister. Like torture, punishing a "criminal’s" family is an ancient horror that modern, supposedly enlightened societies shun. And like torture, Bush’s Amerika has revived it. This is especially infuriating since the Bible Bush claims to follow specifically condemns such injustice: "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin." (Deut. 24:16; see also Jer. 31:30 and Ezek. 18:1–13.)
A dubious immigration battle cloaks the State’s vindictiveness against the Siraj family. These folks follow a form of Islam so secular their neighbors in Pakistan beat and burned Mr. Siraj. He sought asylum here. Our merciful bureaucrats rejected the application, so the family appealed. That apparently makes them "fair" game for Leviathan. But will the State bother with such an excuse the next time? When the rest of us are arrested for smoking pot, or for refusing to show ID, or for protesting the war, will our families be locked up, too?
The passage in Deuteronomy continues almost eerily, "Do not deprive the alien or the fatherless of justice..." Let us tremble with Jefferson when we reflect that God is indeed just and that His justice cannot sleep forever.
January 13, 2007
Becky Akers [send her mail] writes primarily about the American Revolution.
Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com
Becky Akers Archives
Less Than Zero
Less Than Zero
by William S. Lind
On the surface, President Bush's Wednesday night speech adds up to precisely nothing. The President said, "It is clear that we need to change our strategy in Iraq," but the heart of his proposal, adding more than 20,000 U.S. troops, represents no change in strategy. It is merely another "big push," of the sort we have seen too often in the past from mindless national and military leadership. Instead of Dave Petraeus, why didn't Bush ask Sir Douglas Haig to take command?
Relying on more promises from Iraq's nominal government and requiring more performance from the Iraqi army and police are equally empty policies. Both that government and its armed forces are mere fronts for Shiite networks and their militias. If the new troops we send to Baghdad work with Iraqi forces against the Sunni insurgents, we will be helping the Shiites ethnically cleanse Baghdad of Sunnis. If, as Bush suggested, our troops go after the Shiite militias in Baghdad and elsewhere, we will find ourselves in a two-front war, fighting Sunnis and Shiites both. We faced that situation briefly in 2004, and we did not enjoy it.
All this, again, adds up to nothing. But if we look at the President's proposal more carefully, we find it actually amounts to less than zero. It hints at actions that may turn a mere debacle into disaster on a truly historic scale.
First, Mr. Bush said that previous efforts to secure Baghdad failed for two reasons, the second of which is that "there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have." This suggests the new "big push" will be even more kinetic that what we have done in the past, calling in more firepower – airstrikes, tanks, artillery, etc. – in Baghdad itself. Chuck Spinney has already warned that we may soon begin to reduce Baghdad to rubble. If we do, and the President's words suggest we will, we will hasten our defeat. In this kind of war, unless you are going to take the "Hama model" and kill everyone, success comes from de-escalation, not from escalation.
Second, the President not only upped the ante with Syria and Iran, he announced two actions that only make sense if we plan to attack Iran, Syria or both. He said he has ordered Patriot missile batteries and another U.S. Navy aircraft carrier be sent to the region. Neither has any conceivable role in the fighting in Iraq. However, a carrier would provide additional aircraft for airstrikes on Iran, and Patriot batteries would in theory provide some defense against Iranian air and missile attacks launched at Gulf State oil facilities in retaliation.
To top it off, in questioning yesterday on Capitol Hill, the Tea Lady, aka Secretary of State Rice, refused to promise the administration would consult with Congress before attacking Iran or Syria.
As I have said before and will say again, the price of an attack on Iran could easily be the loss of the army we have in Iraq. No conceivable action would be more foolish than adding war with Iran to the war we have already lost in Iraq. Regrettably, it is impossible to read Mr. Bush's dispatch of a carrier and Patriot batteries any other way than as harbingers of just such an action.
The final hidden message in Mr. Bush's speech confirms that the American ship of state remains headed for the rocks. His peroration, devoted once more to promises of "freedom" and democracy in the Middle East and throughout the world, could have been written by the most rabid of the neo-cons. For that matter, perhaps it was. So long as our grand strategy remains that which the neo-cons represent and demand, namely remaking the whole world in our own image, by force where necessary, we will continue to fail. Not even the greatest military in all of history, which ours claims to be but isn't, could bring success to a strategy so divorced from reality. Meanwhile, Mr. Bush's words give the lie to those who have hoped the neo-cons' influence over the White House had ebbed. From Hell, or the World Bank which is much the same place, Wolfi had to be smiling.
No, Incurious George has offered no new strategy, nor new course, nor even a plateau on the downward course of our two lost wars and failed grand strategy. He has chosen instead to escalate failure, speed our decline and expand the scope of our defeat. Headed toward the cliff, his course correction is to stomp on the gas.
January 13, 2007
William Lind [send him mail] is an analyst based in Washington, DC.
Copyright © 2007 William S. Lind
William Lind Archives
by William S. Lind
On the surface, President Bush's Wednesday night speech adds up to precisely nothing. The President said, "It is clear that we need to change our strategy in Iraq," but the heart of his proposal, adding more than 20,000 U.S. troops, represents no change in strategy. It is merely another "big push," of the sort we have seen too often in the past from mindless national and military leadership. Instead of Dave Petraeus, why didn't Bush ask Sir Douglas Haig to take command?
Relying on more promises from Iraq's nominal government and requiring more performance from the Iraqi army and police are equally empty policies. Both that government and its armed forces are mere fronts for Shiite networks and their militias. If the new troops we send to Baghdad work with Iraqi forces against the Sunni insurgents, we will be helping the Shiites ethnically cleanse Baghdad of Sunnis. If, as Bush suggested, our troops go after the Shiite militias in Baghdad and elsewhere, we will find ourselves in a two-front war, fighting Sunnis and Shiites both. We faced that situation briefly in 2004, and we did not enjoy it.
All this, again, adds up to nothing. But if we look at the President's proposal more carefully, we find it actually amounts to less than zero. It hints at actions that may turn a mere debacle into disaster on a truly historic scale.
First, Mr. Bush said that previous efforts to secure Baghdad failed for two reasons, the second of which is that "there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have." This suggests the new "big push" will be even more kinetic that what we have done in the past, calling in more firepower – airstrikes, tanks, artillery, etc. – in Baghdad itself. Chuck Spinney has already warned that we may soon begin to reduce Baghdad to rubble. If we do, and the President's words suggest we will, we will hasten our defeat. In this kind of war, unless you are going to take the "Hama model" and kill everyone, success comes from de-escalation, not from escalation.
Second, the President not only upped the ante with Syria and Iran, he announced two actions that only make sense if we plan to attack Iran, Syria or both. He said he has ordered Patriot missile batteries and another U.S. Navy aircraft carrier be sent to the region. Neither has any conceivable role in the fighting in Iraq. However, a carrier would provide additional aircraft for airstrikes on Iran, and Patriot batteries would in theory provide some defense against Iranian air and missile attacks launched at Gulf State oil facilities in retaliation.
To top it off, in questioning yesterday on Capitol Hill, the Tea Lady, aka Secretary of State Rice, refused to promise the administration would consult with Congress before attacking Iran or Syria.
As I have said before and will say again, the price of an attack on Iran could easily be the loss of the army we have in Iraq. No conceivable action would be more foolish than adding war with Iran to the war we have already lost in Iraq. Regrettably, it is impossible to read Mr. Bush's dispatch of a carrier and Patriot batteries any other way than as harbingers of just such an action.
The final hidden message in Mr. Bush's speech confirms that the American ship of state remains headed for the rocks. His peroration, devoted once more to promises of "freedom" and democracy in the Middle East and throughout the world, could have been written by the most rabid of the neo-cons. For that matter, perhaps it was. So long as our grand strategy remains that which the neo-cons represent and demand, namely remaking the whole world in our own image, by force where necessary, we will continue to fail. Not even the greatest military in all of history, which ours claims to be but isn't, could bring success to a strategy so divorced from reality. Meanwhile, Mr. Bush's words give the lie to those who have hoped the neo-cons' influence over the White House had ebbed. From Hell, or the World Bank which is much the same place, Wolfi had to be smiling.
No, Incurious George has offered no new strategy, nor new course, nor even a plateau on the downward course of our two lost wars and failed grand strategy. He has chosen instead to escalate failure, speed our decline and expand the scope of our defeat. Headed toward the cliff, his course correction is to stomp on the gas.
January 13, 2007
William Lind [send him mail] is an analyst based in Washington, DC.
Copyright © 2007 William S. Lind
William Lind Archives
1913
1913
by Michael C. Tuggle
In one remarkable burst at the beginning of the 20th century, Washington, DC, enacted revolutionary legislation and broke ground on breathtaking monuments that would make it the political, economic, and mythic center of a new American realm.
1913 stands out as the busiest year in a short, intense period of centralization and consolidation. In the space of a few years, the leaders in the nation’s capital successfully squared America’s historic, republican institutions with a blueprint for imperial grandeur formerly undreamed of. To accomplish this seemingly impossible feat, these leaders had to fuse together two clashing regions into a united imperium. Despite the smoldering distrust left over from one of history’s bloodiest wars, North and South would meld at this time into a united force greater than anything the world had ever seen. This unification process would transform Washington, DC, from the administrative center of a constitutionally limited government into a ruling world capital, a city brimming with powerful, white marble images that not only gave physical form to mystical notions of divine purpose, but also symbolized a newfound oneness of resolve to carry out that purpose. E pluribus unum would no longer describe a Federal government voluntarily created by various State governments; it now invoked a new nation and a new people forged in the furnace of war.
1913 was the fiftieth anniversary of that war’s greatest battle, Gettysburg, and the approach of that momentous date must have intensified ongoing efforts to realize this new blueprint, as well as inevitably reminding its architects of the great difficulty facing them in making this vision a reality. Chief among these architects was Woodrow Wilson, who served as president from 1913 to 1921. Despite the utter confidence he publicly expressed for realizing this new conception of the United States, even going so far as describing it as determined by the hand of God, Wilson privately confessed nervousness about his mission. While penning his speech commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, Wilson wrote a letter to his wife:
"It is no ordinary celebration....It is to celebrate the end of all feeling as well as the end of all strife between the sections.... If the President should refuse to go this time ... it would be hotly resented by a very large part of the public. It would be suggested that he is a Southerner and out of sympathy with the occasion."
Wilson’s Southern birth – of Ohio parents – worked to his advantage, allowing him to address Southerners as one of their own, though he disdained Southern distinctiveness to the point that he urged his wife, Edith, to "rectify" her Southern accent. Wilson’s mission was always nationalistic, aimed at redirecting Southern martial spirit toward supporting an aggressive foreign policy. At the national convention of the United Confederate Veterans he told the old warriors that the war they’d fought was a crucible that transformed the nation into an instrument of God’s will:
"God was working out in His own way the method by which we should best serve human freedom – by making this nation a great united, indivisible, indestructible instrument in His hands for the accomplishment of these great things."
At the July 4, 1913, commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg, Wilson proclaimed:
"We have found one another again as brothers and comrades in arms, enemies no longer, generous friends rather... How complete the union has become and how dear to all of us, how unquestioned, how benign and majestic."
And at Wilson’s 1913 address at the dedication of the monument to Southerners at Arlington National Cemetery, he again referred to his vision for the new America:
"Let us first heal our own divisions. Let us first see that we are a united and irresistible nation, and then let us put all that force at the service of humanity."
Wilson correctly recognized the simmering resentment Arlington symbolized. Union general Montgomery Meigs had seized Robert E. Lee’s family home and turned it into an estate for the dead in 1864 – certainly as a deliberate insult to the South’s most cherished hero. Like Woodrow Wilson, Meigs was born in the South of Northern parents, but unlike Wilson, did not attempt to conceal his contempt for the Southern cause. Even after the war, Southern women were refused permission to place flowers on the graves of their loved ones buried at the national cemetery Meigs founded. No wonder so many Southern families removed their loved ones from Arlington in the 1890s and 1900s – they couldn’t stomach the idea of having their men buried in a Northern shrine.
In order to forge Wilson’s "united and irresistible nation" from a loose federation of States, political and economic power had to be centralized in Washington, DC. 1913 saw the passage of the 17th amendment, which stripped the State legislatures of the right to appoint Senators to represent them in the nation’s capital, and instead authorized direct election of Senators. This made the Senate subject to the influence of Washington special interests.
The 16th amendment, passed in February, 1913, gave the Federal government tremendous economic power by allowing it to directly tax personal income. Not only did this provide Washington, DC, with nearly unlimited treasure, it also yielded vast amounts of information about its citizens, as well as new tools to control them (witness Al Capone’s prosecution, not for bootlegging, but for Federal income tax evasion). And the 1913 creation of the Federal Reserve System resurrected an institution that States’ Rights defenders had long opposed, a central bank. Senator Nelson Aldrich, who had been instrumental in passing the 16th amendment, boasted that before the Federal Reserve was passed, New York bankers could only dominate the reserves of New York, but now could dominate the bank reserves of the entire country.
When Europe erupted in war in 1914, New York bankers pounced on it as an investment opportunity of historic proportions. J. P. Morgan provided Britain and France with more than 2 billion dollars in loans. The inevitable coming together of the aims of centralized banking and centralized government steered Wilson toward breaking his campaign promise of American neutrality, and siding with the Allies. In Wilson’s mind, he now helmed a united and irresistible nation whose force he could now place "at the service of humanity" to carry out the "great things" he had vowed. With the political and economic power that Wilson and others had strived to centralize in Washington DC, the Federal government now commanded the means to assert itself as a benevolent empire out to re-make the world. Sadly, as Jim Powell documents in Wilson's War: How Woodrow Wilson's Great Blunder Led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and World War II, America’s intervention may have protected Morgan’s investment, but also afflicted Western civilization with demons that still torment us.
But before any of this transpired, before Washington could launch its ill-conceived crusade to spread democracy by force of arms, it had to have its people unified, eager to realize their divine mission. The nation’s capital had to recast itself as the binding force that held its far-flung lands together. To symbolize its new role in the benevolent American empire, Washington, DC, constructed the Arlington Bridge. As authorized by a bill passed in 1913, the Arlington Bridge literally and figuratively connected North and South. Robert E. Lee’s former home was now connected to the nation’s capital by a bridge constructed of North Carolina marble.
The Arlington Bridge changed the view from Arlington estate, a vista made famous by the Marquis de Lafayette’s pronouncement that it was "the finest view in the world." As seen from the heights of Arlington, Memorial Drive creates a straight line to Arlington Memorial Bridge, which stretches across the Potomac and ends at the Lincoln Memorial.
This scene is reminiscent of Trajan’s Column, which celebrated the Emperor’s triumph over the rebellious Dacians and their forced reunification with Rome. That Trajan’s Column served as an inspiration for Arlington’s panoramic view of Washington, DC, would fit with the capital’s grand vision of itself, and with the column’s reputation as both a funerary and victory memorial. Both the 1806 Colonne Vendome in Paris, and the 1808 Nelson Column in Dublin were modeled after it. The base of Trajan’s Column is a square foundation, an actual mortuary. The main column rises above it. At the top of the original column stood Trajan, triumphant. Similarly, the virtual column in "New Rome" proclaims the forced reunification of the South with the United States. It can be visualized as beginning at Arlington House and the Cemetery – the home of Robert E. Lee taken by the Union army and turned into a burial ground. On top of that base is Memorial Drive and Arlington Bridge, which one can imagine as a column. And perched on top – in triumph – is Abraham Lincoln, the conqueror of the rebellious South.
The presence of Abraham Lincoln appears regal and overpowering within the cavernous, dusky memorial, which was authorized in 1911. Lincoln's statue is composed of Georgia marble, symbolically incorporating a formerly rebellious province into a tribute to its conqueror. The etched inscription over Lincoln specifically identifies the structure as a temple rather than a memorial, and the chair he occupies was designed not for a president, but a ruler. To emphasize that impression, Lincoln's hands rest on two Roman-style fasces, the ancient symbol of imperial unity. On the north wall of the Lincoln Memorial is a mural entitled The Unity of North and South."
By making Lincoln godlike, even honoring him with his own temple, Washington, DC, conferred a kind of divine status on all future presidents (even Gerald Ford). And to back up the symbolic connection to Roman emperors, future US presidents would have the muscle to back up their new status. Thanks to the measures passed in 1913, future presidents would indeed wield the power of the Caesars. Those who doubt this should note the current uproar caused by the President’s unilateral decision to expand a war the nation wants ended.
For those who can stomach it, viewing the heavy-handed symbolism of Washington, DC’s monuments is very instructive. As you study them, remember that monuments serve a political purpose by defining – or re-defining – citizens’ relationship with their government. That’s why governments spend so much on the monuments they want, and destroy the ones they don’t. Do Washington DC’s monuments proclaim the government’s power to hold a sprawling country together by force, or do they honor a republic based on constitutionally limited government? To answer that question, drive to Washington, DC, some day and see for yourself. If you live in New York or San Francisco, you can start your trip by taking the Lincoln Highway, the first to link both coasts. It was originally proposed in 1913.
January 13, 2007
Michael C. Tuggle [send him mail] is a project manager and writer in Charlotte, NC. His first book, Confederates in the Boardroom, explores the implications of organizational science on political systems, and is published by Traveller Press.
Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com
by Michael C. Tuggle
In one remarkable burst at the beginning of the 20th century, Washington, DC, enacted revolutionary legislation and broke ground on breathtaking monuments that would make it the political, economic, and mythic center of a new American realm.
1913 stands out as the busiest year in a short, intense period of centralization and consolidation. In the space of a few years, the leaders in the nation’s capital successfully squared America’s historic, republican institutions with a blueprint for imperial grandeur formerly undreamed of. To accomplish this seemingly impossible feat, these leaders had to fuse together two clashing regions into a united imperium. Despite the smoldering distrust left over from one of history’s bloodiest wars, North and South would meld at this time into a united force greater than anything the world had ever seen. This unification process would transform Washington, DC, from the administrative center of a constitutionally limited government into a ruling world capital, a city brimming with powerful, white marble images that not only gave physical form to mystical notions of divine purpose, but also symbolized a newfound oneness of resolve to carry out that purpose. E pluribus unum would no longer describe a Federal government voluntarily created by various State governments; it now invoked a new nation and a new people forged in the furnace of war.
1913 was the fiftieth anniversary of that war’s greatest battle, Gettysburg, and the approach of that momentous date must have intensified ongoing efforts to realize this new blueprint, as well as inevitably reminding its architects of the great difficulty facing them in making this vision a reality. Chief among these architects was Woodrow Wilson, who served as president from 1913 to 1921. Despite the utter confidence he publicly expressed for realizing this new conception of the United States, even going so far as describing it as determined by the hand of God, Wilson privately confessed nervousness about his mission. While penning his speech commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, Wilson wrote a letter to his wife:
"It is no ordinary celebration....It is to celebrate the end of all feeling as well as the end of all strife between the sections.... If the President should refuse to go this time ... it would be hotly resented by a very large part of the public. It would be suggested that he is a Southerner and out of sympathy with the occasion."
Wilson’s Southern birth – of Ohio parents – worked to his advantage, allowing him to address Southerners as one of their own, though he disdained Southern distinctiveness to the point that he urged his wife, Edith, to "rectify" her Southern accent. Wilson’s mission was always nationalistic, aimed at redirecting Southern martial spirit toward supporting an aggressive foreign policy. At the national convention of the United Confederate Veterans he told the old warriors that the war they’d fought was a crucible that transformed the nation into an instrument of God’s will:
"God was working out in His own way the method by which we should best serve human freedom – by making this nation a great united, indivisible, indestructible instrument in His hands for the accomplishment of these great things."
At the July 4, 1913, commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg, Wilson proclaimed:
"We have found one another again as brothers and comrades in arms, enemies no longer, generous friends rather... How complete the union has become and how dear to all of us, how unquestioned, how benign and majestic."
And at Wilson’s 1913 address at the dedication of the monument to Southerners at Arlington National Cemetery, he again referred to his vision for the new America:
"Let us first heal our own divisions. Let us first see that we are a united and irresistible nation, and then let us put all that force at the service of humanity."
Wilson correctly recognized the simmering resentment Arlington symbolized. Union general Montgomery Meigs had seized Robert E. Lee’s family home and turned it into an estate for the dead in 1864 – certainly as a deliberate insult to the South’s most cherished hero. Like Woodrow Wilson, Meigs was born in the South of Northern parents, but unlike Wilson, did not attempt to conceal his contempt for the Southern cause. Even after the war, Southern women were refused permission to place flowers on the graves of their loved ones buried at the national cemetery Meigs founded. No wonder so many Southern families removed their loved ones from Arlington in the 1890s and 1900s – they couldn’t stomach the idea of having their men buried in a Northern shrine.
In order to forge Wilson’s "united and irresistible nation" from a loose federation of States, political and economic power had to be centralized in Washington, DC. 1913 saw the passage of the 17th amendment, which stripped the State legislatures of the right to appoint Senators to represent them in the nation’s capital, and instead authorized direct election of Senators. This made the Senate subject to the influence of Washington special interests.
The 16th amendment, passed in February, 1913, gave the Federal government tremendous economic power by allowing it to directly tax personal income. Not only did this provide Washington, DC, with nearly unlimited treasure, it also yielded vast amounts of information about its citizens, as well as new tools to control them (witness Al Capone’s prosecution, not for bootlegging, but for Federal income tax evasion). And the 1913 creation of the Federal Reserve System resurrected an institution that States’ Rights defenders had long opposed, a central bank. Senator Nelson Aldrich, who had been instrumental in passing the 16th amendment, boasted that before the Federal Reserve was passed, New York bankers could only dominate the reserves of New York, but now could dominate the bank reserves of the entire country.
When Europe erupted in war in 1914, New York bankers pounced on it as an investment opportunity of historic proportions. J. P. Morgan provided Britain and France with more than 2 billion dollars in loans. The inevitable coming together of the aims of centralized banking and centralized government steered Wilson toward breaking his campaign promise of American neutrality, and siding with the Allies. In Wilson’s mind, he now helmed a united and irresistible nation whose force he could now place "at the service of humanity" to carry out the "great things" he had vowed. With the political and economic power that Wilson and others had strived to centralize in Washington DC, the Federal government now commanded the means to assert itself as a benevolent empire out to re-make the world. Sadly, as Jim Powell documents in Wilson's War: How Woodrow Wilson's Great Blunder Led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and World War II, America’s intervention may have protected Morgan’s investment, but also afflicted Western civilization with demons that still torment us.
But before any of this transpired, before Washington could launch its ill-conceived crusade to spread democracy by force of arms, it had to have its people unified, eager to realize their divine mission. The nation’s capital had to recast itself as the binding force that held its far-flung lands together. To symbolize its new role in the benevolent American empire, Washington, DC, constructed the Arlington Bridge. As authorized by a bill passed in 1913, the Arlington Bridge literally and figuratively connected North and South. Robert E. Lee’s former home was now connected to the nation’s capital by a bridge constructed of North Carolina marble.
The Arlington Bridge changed the view from Arlington estate, a vista made famous by the Marquis de Lafayette’s pronouncement that it was "the finest view in the world." As seen from the heights of Arlington, Memorial Drive creates a straight line to Arlington Memorial Bridge, which stretches across the Potomac and ends at the Lincoln Memorial.
This scene is reminiscent of Trajan’s Column, which celebrated the Emperor’s triumph over the rebellious Dacians and their forced reunification with Rome. That Trajan’s Column served as an inspiration for Arlington’s panoramic view of Washington, DC, would fit with the capital’s grand vision of itself, and with the column’s reputation as both a funerary and victory memorial. Both the 1806 Colonne Vendome in Paris, and the 1808 Nelson Column in Dublin were modeled after it. The base of Trajan’s Column is a square foundation, an actual mortuary. The main column rises above it. At the top of the original column stood Trajan, triumphant. Similarly, the virtual column in "New Rome" proclaims the forced reunification of the South with the United States. It can be visualized as beginning at Arlington House and the Cemetery – the home of Robert E. Lee taken by the Union army and turned into a burial ground. On top of that base is Memorial Drive and Arlington Bridge, which one can imagine as a column. And perched on top – in triumph – is Abraham Lincoln, the conqueror of the rebellious South.
The presence of Abraham Lincoln appears regal and overpowering within the cavernous, dusky memorial, which was authorized in 1911. Lincoln's statue is composed of Georgia marble, symbolically incorporating a formerly rebellious province into a tribute to its conqueror. The etched inscription over Lincoln specifically identifies the structure as a temple rather than a memorial, and the chair he occupies was designed not for a president, but a ruler. To emphasize that impression, Lincoln's hands rest on two Roman-style fasces, the ancient symbol of imperial unity. On the north wall of the Lincoln Memorial is a mural entitled The Unity of North and South."
By making Lincoln godlike, even honoring him with his own temple, Washington, DC, conferred a kind of divine status on all future presidents (even Gerald Ford). And to back up the symbolic connection to Roman emperors, future US presidents would have the muscle to back up their new status. Thanks to the measures passed in 1913, future presidents would indeed wield the power of the Caesars. Those who doubt this should note the current uproar caused by the President’s unilateral decision to expand a war the nation wants ended.
For those who can stomach it, viewing the heavy-handed symbolism of Washington, DC’s monuments is very instructive. As you study them, remember that monuments serve a political purpose by defining – or re-defining – citizens’ relationship with their government. That’s why governments spend so much on the monuments they want, and destroy the ones they don’t. Do Washington DC’s monuments proclaim the government’s power to hold a sprawling country together by force, or do they honor a republic based on constitutionally limited government? To answer that question, drive to Washington, DC, some day and see for yourself. If you live in New York or San Francisco, you can start your trip by taking the Lincoln Highway, the first to link both coasts. It was originally proposed in 1913.
January 13, 2007
Michael C. Tuggle [send him mail] is a project manager and writer in Charlotte, NC. His first book, Confederates in the Boardroom, explores the implications of organizational science on political systems, and is published by Traveller Press.
Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com
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