America: Afraid of Shadows in the Dark While Ignoring the Elephants in the Room

What baffles the mind about the United States of America is that many of its citizens have been conditioned to fear shadows in the dark while ignoring the elephants in the room.

1. Homelessness and Bankruptcies

2. Economic Warfare and Wall Street

3. NSA and NDAA

I. Homelessness and Bankruptcies

For example, in the last few years anti-homelessness laws have been passed across the United States, some going as far as making it illegal to feed the homeless. As if that wasn’t enough, to deal with America’s homelessness problem (2), some government representatives have turned to violence:

“Remarkably, this vigilante isn’t just some random Hawaiian, but five-term State Rep. Tom Brower (D).

“Noting that he’s ‘disgusted’ with homeless people, Brower told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser about his own personal brand of ‘justice’: ‘If I see shopping carts that I can’t identify, I will destroy them so they can’t be pushed on the streets.’ Brower has waged this campaign for two weeks, estimating that he’s smashed about 30 shopping carts in the process.

“‘I want to do something practical that will really clean up the streets,’ he explained to Hawaii News Now as he showed off his property destruction skills:”

The ignorance and ruthlessness of those in office should be considered a crime since they do not seem to realize that recession-induced homelessness skyrocketed after the 2008 economic crisis. Something that they are directly responsible for considering that it was our government representatives that passed the 2005 Bankruptcy Bill - its passing coinciding with the largest economic crisis in contemporary history. The reforms that were introduced made it much harder and more costly for Americans to file for bankruptcy protection.

Report Shows Bankruptcy Reforms Raised Costs For Consumers and Creditors

“According to Professor Lupica the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA) has resulted in higher costs for consumers who wish to file for bankruptcy and, consequently, lower returns for creditors.”

After years of lobbying, the “dream bill for credit card and financial service companies” finally came into effect. The bill was “the biggest rewrite of U.S. bankruptcy law in a quarter century”. It was also conveniently or inconveniently, depending on your perspective, introduced at a time when U.S. household debt was at an all-time high.

click to enlarge - source - additional data

Further information on the 2005 Bankruptcy Bill and its implications at:

- “The 2005 Bankruptcy Bill: Knowing a Financial Crisis Was Imminent, Banks Lobbied Government to Pass Laws to Preserve Their Wealth”

II. Economic Warfare and Wall Street

“It's the economy, stupid” is a catchphrase used by politicians and those in the business of manipulation to try and garner support for their cause. Its purpose is to emphasize that the health of the economy trumps all other concerns. A strategy from the playbook of Inverted Totalitarian States:

“In Inverted Totalitarianism economics trumps politics, which is different from classical Totalitarianism where politics trumps economics.” - Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges on the 'inverted totalitarian' corporate state that is the US

For example, in the following segment from a panel discussion presented by The American Center for Democracy and its Economic Warfare Institute – an organization “dedicated to exposing and monitoring threats to the national security of the United States and other Western democracies” – the speaker states that one of the biggest threats to the economic health of the United States is terrorism through “wildland arson”.

“Perhaps the most simple form of economic warfare is wildland arson. That’s just setting fires in U.S. forests, grasslands. So, for any terrorists that are determined to inflict significant damage with very little investment or risk, fire is an extremely high leveraged weapon of mass effect….

“There is reason to believe that the U.S. is under attack. The bad guys are waging fire wars right now, but we as a people aren’t fighting back, and that’s primarily due to an ingrained out of date mindset where we still treat fires as a land management issue and we should be treating it as a national security issue….

“So America, I think, is under attack by terrorist waging economic warfare by fire….”

Economic Warfare Super Panel - William Scott

The absurdity of the above is absolutely mind boggling considering that indefinite Federal Reserve stimulus has allowed the markets to rise to historic levels during times of austerity economics. Quantitative Easing by centralized banks – “fundamentally a regressive redistribution program that has been boosting wealth for those already engaged in the financial sector or those who already own homes, but passing little along to the rest of the economy” – has caused economic disparity across the United States.

Economist: Record High Stock Prices Driven by Squeezing Workers' Wages

“Affluent households typically have their assets concentrated in stocks”, so indefinite stimulus is basically the transfer of wealth from Main Street to Wall Street:

“In terms of types of financial wealth, the top one percent of households have 35% of all privately held stock, 64.4% of financial securities, and 62.4% of business equity. The top ten percent have 81% to 94% of stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and almost 80% of non-home real estate. Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets, we can say that just 10% of the people own the United States of America.”

click to enlarge - source

As Chris Hedges has pointed out, they have “reduce(d) roughly two-thirds of this country to subsistence level” and turned America into a tinderbox.

Chris Hedges: "America is a Tinderbox"

Full episode list of “Reality Asserts Itself - Chris Hedges”

Further information on the economic demise of the citizens of the United States at:

- “Why Stocks Have Risen: Stimulus, Stimulus, and Indefinite-Stimulus, i.e., Transfer of Wealth from Main Street to Wall Street”, and
- “Government Shutdown and Appointment of Janet Yellen Guarantees Flow of Funds to Wall Street: They are reducing “two-thirds of this country to subsistence level”, Chris Hedges”

III. NSA and NDAA

So what are citizens of the United States doing about this disparity? The poor are getting poorer and closer to revolting while the rich are spending millions hunkering down:

“Paranoid? Perhaps. But also increasingly commonplace. Futuristic security technologies–many developed for the military but sounding as though they came straight from James Bond’s Q–have made their way into the home, available to deep-pocketed owners whose peace of mind comes from knowing that their sensors can detect and adjust for, say, a person lurking in the bushes a half-mile away.”

Private Armies for the One Percent

Citizens of the United States should not fear each other - shadows in the dark. They should be concerned with the loss of their civil liberties and their privacy, the destructive nature of their foreign policy, their emerging police state and the prison profiteers (2, 3), how their government has been using brute force to quash peaceful protests and criminalize democratic dissent, and their government’s secrecy and its unprecedented attack on whistleblowers.

Americans should not fear homeless people “lurking in the bushes a half-mile away”, but the National Security Agency (NSA) and the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) - just two of the elephants in the room.

"I'm Just a Mom!" Daphne Lee Gives Powerful Speech Against NDAA in Clark County, Nevada

People Against the NDAA (P.A.N.D.A.)

Chris Hedges: NDAA Lawsuit Update

Guardian's Alan Rusbridger Home Affairs Committee Testimony Re: Snowden/NSA Leaks

The End of Internet Privacy? Glenn Greenwald On Secret NSA Program to Crack Online Encryption

click to enlarge - original artist unknown (if you know who it is please let me know so I can source it, thank you)

Chris Hedges' Introduction to Inverted Totalitarianism from “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt”

As Chris Hedges has pointed out on numerous occasions, referring to Sheldon Wolin’s work in ‘Democracy Incorporated’ (article, book), the system that best describes the ideology that the government of the United States functions as is inverted totalitarianism. In his book “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt”, which Hedges co-authored with Joe Sacco, he describes this system as:

“The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin uses the term inverted totalitarianism in his book Democracy Incorporated to describe our political system. In inverted totalitarianism, the sophisticated technologies of corporate control, intimidation, and mass manipulation, which far surpass those employed by previous totalitarian states, are effectively masked by the glitter, noise, and abundance of a consumer society. Political participation and civil liberties are gradually surrendered. Corporations, hiding behind this smokescreen, devour us from the inside out….

“Corporations, who hire attractive and eloquent spokespeople like Barack Obama, control the uses of science, technology, education, and mass communication…. We busy ourselves buying products that promise to change our lives, make us more beautiful, confident, or successful, as we are steadily stripped of rights, money, and influence…. Civil liberties, once guaranteed under our Constitution, have been stripped away….

“They build ever more elaborate walls and security systems to protect themselves, including the vast internal security apparatus of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, with some one million employees. The elites are lashing out with such disproportionate force, fury, and viciousness againt peaceful protestors, many of whom come out of the middle class, as well as Muslims in the Middle East, that they are turning ever greater numbers of an alienated mass, at home and abroad, against them….

“George Orwell wrote that all tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but that once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force. We have now entered that era of naked force. The internal security and surveillance state, justified in the name of the war on terror, will be the instrument used against us….

“Fear is the psychological weapon of choice for totalitarian system of power. Make people afraid. Get them to surrender their rights in the name of national security. Demonize all who dissent. And then finish off the few who aren’t afraid enough.

“The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed into law on December 31, 2011, authorizes the military, for the first time in more than two hundred years, to carry out domestic policing. The military can detain, without trial, any U.S. citizen deemed to be a terrorist or an accessory to terrorism. And suspects can be shipped by the military to our offshore penal colony in Guantanamo Bay until ‘the end of hostilities.’ It is a catastrophic blow to civil liberties.”

“Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt”, p. 238-240, 263

Chris Hedges on the 'inverted totalitarian' corporate state

The Bitcoin Bubble, or Is It? Two Charts, Historical Price Movement, and the Conspiracy

1. Two Charts




2. Historical Price Movement




3. The Conspiracy

I. Two Charts

I wish I wasn’t making this post and I hope I’m wrong. I love the concept of Bitcoin and the prospect of the decentralization of power brought about by the introduction of “an open source peer-to-peer electronic money and payment network” and the inevitable collapse of fiat currencies that are controlled by central banks which are in the business of transferring wealth from main street to Wall Street.

I’ve been tracking bitcoin for almost three years, since it was trading for less than a dollar. I even mined it a little a couple of years ago and recommended friends to buy them. Now that bitcoin has breached $1,200 and counting, would I still be giving it a buy recommendation? Absolutely not. Would I be recommending friends to keep most of their bitcoins at these valuations? Absolutely not. I would be telling them to sell almost all of their holdings, letting 1% ride. This is also one of the great features of bitcoin; very few early adopters should still be holding in any type of market like this.

Will bitcoin reach ten thousand, fifty thousand, or a million dollars? Will it do it in a few weeks, a few months, a few years, or a few decades once the full impact of our bubble economy is felt and the fiat currency devaluations begin? That’s anyone’s guess.

Below you will find a bitcoin chart for the last 2 years, and Jean-Paul Rodrigue’s chart of the four phases of a bubble. The similarities are uncanny.

click image to enlarge - source

click image to enlarge - source

Does this mean that bitcoin and other secure digital currencies are not a valid form of currency? Absolutely not. Does this mean that they do not have a future? Absolutely not. I actually believe the opposite. The future of commerce is digital, global, decentralized, open source and secure. It’s everything that bitcoin offers; I just think we’re in a bubble.

II. Historical Price Movement

There is something very beautiful about watching price movements; it’s like watching a horse race and listening to the caller go mad with excitement. I just came across a post just like this for bitcoin on the bitcoin subReddit and have to repost it here to preserve some history, just in case things get deleted. Thank you voiceinthevoid for putting it together.

Why $1000 is irrelevant.

The first major bitcoin bubble started on October 3rd, 2010, when BTC was priced at $0.06. Fears of ponzi schemes and other things led the price to crash down to $0.01, and a massive selloff and buying frenzy started. In a period of two days, the psychological barrier of $0.10 was breached, and the price was pushed further up to $0.30 before hitting a plateau. In a very short period of time, many people made 5x their money.

The next psychological barrier, of $1.00, was hit a month later, as people were still rallying. It hovered around $1.00 for 2 months, as people were unsure what was to happen next, and many people BTC was overpriced. By April of 2011, this uncertainty had caused an erosion in the marketplace, and bitcoin was down to $0.75. Many people who had missed out on the $1 boat saw this as an opportunity to buy in, and the prices skyrocketed. In 2 months time, the price had peaked at $30. This cause a massive sell off, mostly from people who had thousands of BTC from the pre $0.06 days, and over the course of the next 6 months BTC slowly went down to only being worth $2.25. This was the first big selloff and a many first adopters ended up cashing out in this 6 month downtrend.

In just over a year, bitcoin had gone from $0.06 to $30 and back down to $2.50. For those who bought in at $0.01 and sold at $30, they saw a 3000 fold return on their investment.

The second major bitcoin bubble was significantly less intense than the first. It started in February of 2013 when the previous all time high of $30, of the April 2011 bubble, was breached. To be fair, the value of BTC had slowly been gaining steam, but as that psychological barrier of $30 was reached, a sudden upwards trend occurred. By the end of March 2013, just a month in, the $100 barrier was breached, buying increased even further, pushing the price up to just shy of $270 by the beginning of April. People started to sell, in order to realize their gains, and a panic ensued, in which the price dropped down to a low of $50 within the span of a week.

In this bubble, many of the second wave adopters ended up cashing out. For those that bought in at or around $30 and sold at the peak, they saw a 8-9 fold return. Pretty insignificant compared to the 500x return of the previous major bubble. What is significant about this second bubble, is right after the crash down to $50 there was a surge back up to $140, which subsequently mini crashed. This is significant because that number, $140, was the telltale sign of when the next bubble was to start.

The third major bitcoin bubble is occurring right now, in November of 2013. In the time between the last bubble and now, the price of bitcoin has fluctuated, but stayed well within the extremes of the peak and trough of the April bubble. The November 2013 bubble almost started in August of 2013, when the peak of $140 was reached. It did not occur though, because there was a selloff from those who bought in at the April 20th 2013 post crash rebound. Not even two weeks later, $140 was tested again, and there was a selloff again, although not as much as just a few weeks earlier. This caused a newfound stability as people learned to trust BTC again. By the end of September 2013 $140 was tested again and there was a selloff, primarily by those who has bought in at the last two $140 tests, and those who believed that $140 was now a hard ceiling that was never going to be breached. The selloff rebounded though, and a few days of utter stability just under $140 was seen, which was enough to convince people that $140 was not a hard ceiling at all. This eased peoples minds, and they began to buy. In two weeks time, the price was in the $220 region, and many people, remembering the prior bubble, sold, temporarly driving the price down, but in less than 2 weeks the price recovered, and this also gave people a huge trust that the price was going to continue upwards.

Somewhere around $400, China got involved, and all hell broke loose. In just a weeks time, we had gone from $400 to $800, which caused a selloff panic driving the price down to $450 in just one day. This was just a minor hiccup thought, and the rally continued upwards, and in just 1 week it broke the psychological barrier of $1000.

Nobody knows what's going to happen next. No one has a crystal ball, and past performance is no indicator of future performance. Yet if we look at the previous major bubbles, what we see is that in no case is the breaking of a psychological barrier the reason for a selloff. Selloffs happen when that barrier is broken in such an intense way as to render it meaningless and abstract. Selloffs happen when multiple psychological barriers are broken in quick succession. They happen when there is a period for many people to make double, triple, or 10x their money in return in a short period of time. As time passes, the investment needed to double or triple or make 10x your money gets much steeper. This is the reason why we will never see the types of bubbles as the first two historical bubbles ever again. The first bubble had a huge volumetric selloff due to cheap coin. The second bubble had volume because the period of time between the first two bubbles had stability for long enough (3 years) plus a positive ROI on mining to create a volume.

This bubble is different though. There is a much higher dispersion of coins due to more people involved in mining, and there has also been less time for buyers to accumulate coins. The value of coins has gone up, but the number that people are playing with has dropped significantly. If we compare bubble to bubble, log style, then the current rally we are in, is only about halfway to the peak of the rally that caused the April 2013 bubble. The psychological barrier of $1000 is about as meaningful to us now as the psychological barrier, of $100, was to the April bubble - which is to say it's having no effect on stopping anything.

China being involved puts a whole new spin on things. No longer is $1000 any sort of psychological barrier, as they are looking at the price in their own currency. Certainly 8888 is the big psychological barrier for them, but they are also buying BTC not for speculative reasons, but as a store of wealth that is outside the influence of their own government.

I think this rally will continue for a long time, relatively speaking. I think we will see $2000 and $3000 broken before the madness sets in, which will cause the selloff. But even then, post selloff, I doubt we will be under $2000.

III. The Conspiracy

As for the Conspiracy; there has been some talk that the government is behind Bitcoin (2), so I thought I’d preserve a little thread that was posted on the Conspiracy subReddit. The comments are well worth reading. Thank you nicolaosq for bringing up the topic.

Bitcoin Was Created By DARPA

There is no way to stop what is going to happen to bitcoin. It's an issue of sociology. It's an issue of human greed. It's an issue as to WHO created bitcoin and WHY.

Who is the single largest holder of BTC right now? "Satoshi". Who is he? I will say it again. NSA/DARPA created bitcoin under the guidance of the IMF. The IMF has been openly calling for a digital, one-world, deflationary currency for 2 decades. OPENLY. It has been discussed and promoted OPENLY at G8 and G20 summits.

from the early 90s-96 the NSA was OPENLY investigating cryptographic money networks.

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/money/nsamint/nsamint.htm

One of their researchers and investigators is a man named Tatsuaki Okamoto. When they actively started writing the code they chose the pseudonym "Satoshi Nakamura" to ultimately promote the idea that Tatsuaki Okamoto to any and all who investigated the source of bitcoin long enough. But Tatsuaki Okamoto is just a cog. He's not some rogue savoir out to topple centralized banks. Not at all. He is a crypto scientist who was paid by government and intelligence agencies to do research.

Bitcoin is an NSA/DARPA lab set into the wild. Scientific technology grants issued by government and intelligence agencies are how these labs are funded and promoted. The regulation and control of bitcoin has been actively developed alongside the development of the network. In fact, the controls, policy and regulation are WAY WAY more mature than the bitcoin protocol itself. That's why we see things like Greenlist written into law without a mention of bitcoin until recently.

This is not tinfoil hattish. This is just reality. No one forced ANYONE to believe the Satoshi fairytale.. The libertarian Satoshi myth has been promoted in stealth to specifically promote ADOPTION and DEVELOPMENT. It's no different than the internet and WWW itself. EXACTLY the same. That is why you see many www early adopters saying bitcoin "feels" the same as the early internet. I am one of those people.

In 94-96 the public internet was ALL about freedom of information. FREE COMMUNICATION. It was ALL about liberty and freedom. I wish i could transport some of you back in time so you could see for yourselves. The promise of free phonecalls with the freeworlddialup, free media with IUMA and the MBONE. All this freedom and liberty had people pouring their heart and soul into developing it. Now look at it. Facebook, google.. it is a GIANT SURVEILLANCE grid. And if you look for and read DARPA/NSA docs from the 80s and early 90s that was what it was always meant to be. I am not discounting all the socially great things that happen online.. But from the perspective of DARPA/NSA and control freaks.. it was created for the express purpose of control. A military purpose. A strategic purpose.

What is bitcoin? Bitcoin IS the one world digital currency. We all have a deterministic UUID that has been generated from our biometric data. This UUID will be related to all your datastores. This UUID is your mark. This UUID is what is used to buy and sell online and in the real world. This UUID is the primary key in your Greenlist identity.

Coinbase, blockchain.info and it would appear Coinsetter are inline to be the first to roll out the incoming policy and regulation. This policy and regulation is WORLD WIDE. It is CORPORATE. It is not about governments. Governments ADOPT corporate organized policies. If you think this is new than you need to investigate ACH and NACHA. https://www.nacha.org/aboutus

http://www.slideshare.net/Earthport/nacha-payments-2013-complementary-paths-to-global-ach-earthport-federal-reserve-financial-services-hsbc

Bitcoin is THEIR network. And for the minority early adopters that is going to be a hard pill to swallow.. But for those in the know.. Like Gavin, it's PAYDAY. Realization and monetization of their massive bitcoin holdings is being guaranteed by regulators. That is why they are all literally RUSHING to regulate.

Legitimization of bitcoin is all about hosted wallets. The centralization of bitcoin. Hosted wallet providers approve/dissaprove transactions before they are actually issued on the network. Greenlist enabled wallets will be the fastest. (offline transactions). Greenlist enabled wallets will be hooked directly to your bank account, ease of buying and selling. Greenlist enabled exchanges will have the largest market with the best prices. Greenlist enabled wallets will completely eliminate risk of stolen coins. No more security worries AT ALL. And this is what the masses have come to expect. And this is why it's going to happen. And Greenlisted wallets will be accepted everywhere. And in the physical world you will identify yourself and your wallet with your biometrics.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=173715.0

TL;DR bitcoin is a global digital currency, regulation was created in tandem with development and adoption, bitcoin is not and never was meant to be a liberty promoting value exchange. There is no "satoshi". The central banks are already the largest holders of bitcoin. Bitcoin IS going to the moon because of this.

Hope I don’t get burnt for this post, but it needed to be said and I needed to archive it. Happy investing, trading, subverting, or whatever your gig is.

Canadians Can Grow Tobacco for Personal Use; We Should Be Able to Do the Same with Cannabis

1. Harper’s Agenda




2. Tobacco vs. Cannabis

I. Harper’s Agenda

Knowing full well the devastating consequences of America’s War on Drugs, the very same day that Washington State and Colorado legalized the recreational use of Cannabis, the Harper Government introduced “tough new mandatory minimum sentences for marijuana” - a change in the law that even the judiciary is resisting.

The government followed-up this prohibitionist agenda by “changing medical marijuana rules in Canada” so that patients would no longer be able to grow their own medicine, attacking the most vulnerable in our society by turning a health policy into a crime policy.

We won’t go into the details of how Canadians feel about this government, suffice it to say that even before the senate scandal blew up in Harper’s face, a poll from the summer of 2013 showed that 70% of Canadians surveyed wanted the Conservatives gone.

Stephen Harper promised that we would not recognize Canada when he got through with it, and he meant it. Some of the policies that have been implemented will take decades to unfold and will cost Canadians dearly:

“From the environment, to health care, to foreign policy, this is a different Canada than it was May 2, 2011, and many of the Harper initiatives may not be easily undone by future governments, or even future leaders of a Conservative government.”

All one has to do to fully appreciate Harper’s agenda is to read the text from a speech he made at a “June 1997 Montreal meeting of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing U.S. think tank.” Below are some highlights from the first few opening paragraphs of the speech as well as his closing statement. Every Canadian should read the full text, especially those who support Harper and his Conservatives:

“First, facts about Canada. Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term, and very proud of it. Canadians make no connection between the fact that they are a Northern European welfare state and the fact that we have very low economic growth, a standard of living substantially lower than yours…

“In terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don't feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don't feel bad about it themselves, as long as they're receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance…

“I'll end there and take any of your questions. But let me conclude by saying, good luck in your own battles. Let me just remind you of something that's been talked about here. As long as there are exams, there will always be prayer in schools.”

II. Tobacco vs. Cannabis

The question we should be asking ourselves as Harper hands out licenses to corporations to grow medical marijuana while prohibiting individual Canadians from growing their own supply, is that; Canadians 18 years of age or older can grow up to 15 kg of tobacco for personal use, so why shouldn’t we be able to do the same with cannabis?

Excise Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. E-14) and Excise Act, 2001 (S.C. 2002, c. 22), both of which are current to November 13, 2013, state that:

Excise Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. E-14) - Tobacco grown for private use

“220. A person who grows tobacco on his own land or property and manufactures the tobacco into common Canada twist or cut tobacco solely for the use of himself and such members of his family as are resident with him on the farm or premises on which the tobacco was grown, and not for sale, does not require a licence for so doing, nor is the tobacco so manufactured subject to excise duty, but the quantity so manufactured in any one year shall not exceed fifteen kilograms (15 kg) for each adult member of the family resident on the farm or premises.”

Excise Act, 2001 (S.C. 2002, c. 22) - Exception — manufacturing for personal use

25. (3) An individual who is not a tobacco licensee may manufacture manufactured tobacco or cigars

(a) from packaged raw leaf tobacco or manufactured tobacco on which the duty has been paid, if the tobacco or cigars are for their personal use; or

(b) from raw leaf tobacco grown on land on which the individual resides, if

(i) the tobacco or cigars are for their personal use or that of the members of their family who reside with the individual and who are 18 years of age or older, and

(ii) the quantity of tobacco or cigars manufactured in any year does not exceed 15 kg for the individual and each member of the individual’s family who resides with the individual and who is 18 years of age or older.

The best way to understand Stephen Harper’s agenda is to really listen to him. The above speech in conjunction with the following short interview where he gets lost in his own circular argument trying to answer a question regarding the legalization of marijuana should send shivers down the spine of even his most hardened supporters.

“There’s lots of crimes a lot worse than the casual use of marijuana, but, when people are buying from the drug trade they’re not buying from their neighbour, they are buying from international cartels that are involved in unimaginable violence and intimidation and social disaster and catastrophe all across the world, all across the world….

“Now you know I know some people say if you legalize it you know you get the money and all would be well, but I think that rests on the assumption that somehow drugs are bad because they’re illegal. The reasons drugs – it’s not that – the reason drugs are illegal is because they are bad, and even if these things were legalized I can predict with a lot of confidence that these would never be respectable businesses run by respectable people because of the very nature of the dependency they create, the damage they create, the social upheaval and catastrophe they create particularly in third world countries….

“Well I know people have different views, I must admit myself sometimes I’m frustrated by how little impact government have been able to have on the drug trade internationally, but we should not fool ourselves into thinking that if we somehow stop trying to deal with it it would suddenly turn into a nice wholesome industry. It will never be that. “

Stephen Harper Talks About Marijuana

So why has this war on cannabis, drugs in general, continued for so long? Noam Chomsky in a 2011 interview with ‘High Times’ provides some answers:

“Now take a look at the way the Drug War is conducted over the past 40 years. It goes back farther, but start from 40 years ago: There's very little spent on prevention and treatment. There's a lot on policing, a ton of stuff on border control and a lot on out-of-country operations. And the effect on the availability of drugs is almost undetectable; drug prices don't change on measures of availability. So there are two possibilities: Either those conducting the Drug War are lunatics, or they have another purpose….

“Furthermore, it's known, just from experience, that prevention works. Here we get to the question of what's the drug problem. Well, in fact, by far the worst problem is tobacco: Tobacco kills way more people than hard drugs, 20 times as many or some huge number. So that's a really dangerous substance. The second most dangerous is alcohol, because of its direct consequence to the user, but also because it harms others. Marijuana doesn't make you violent; alcohol does. So it contributes to abuse, violence -- drunk driving kills people. It's a killer….

“Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, made a pertinent comment a couple years ago. He said, ‘If you want to destroy coca here, then let us destroy the tobacco in North Carolina and Kentucky. It's a far more dangerous substance. It kills way more people than coca does.’ That's a joke, obviously -- the United States isn't going to let him do that. Then again, it just shows up the cynicism of the whole program….”…continue reading for some of the answers.

Canadians can grow tobacco for personal use; we should be able to do the same with cannabis.