yeah, personally, I'm not touching the cancer thing with a 10-ft pole. I can't pretend to know how I'd deal with it unless/until I'm forced to face it.
Anyhoo, backtracking a wee bit, there's alot here to catchup on without making a tedious wall of text. I honestly hate those things
Instead of doing the 'what if' things, I can comment on some big 'what did' things Fair nuff?
Suburban sprawl:
Back after the end of WWII, home ownership was uber cheap. America at the time was a world leader in manufacturing & it was possible for the man of the house to support the family while the housewife stayed home to raise the rugrats...this was a major change in culture because of large disposable incomes & low cost of living compared to the cluster eff of the great depression in the 30's
(incidentally, 'White Flight' was one of the biggest factors in the creation of suburbia because to be both blunt & historically accurate, Caucasians didn't like having to mix with the minorities moving in...so they ran off outside of the city limits)
Anyway, suburban culture gave rise to the idea of the 'american dream' of the white picket fence & 2.5 kids.
Now, with the need to commute from the burbs to the city where the jobs were, cars became more affordable and common. This raised demand for fuel not only for the suburbanites, but also for the support industries that supplied them. Gas was cheap & all was seemingly peachy. Even after hitting peak oil in the 70's America never learned to change consumption habits & still refuses to now because we allow ourselves to pass the buck to another generation. The combination of our long outdated 'convenience or death' attitude coupled with our ignorance and apathy of government means (Imho) that the only thing that will do the trick is a collapse of the system.
America is not the greatest country, it's not the smartest, but I give credit that we are slowly starting to glimpse the reality of the mess we've made worldwide.
We have long had the tech to rebuild our infrastructure, we have the workforce to do it & it wouldn't take long at all to go green. It's just gonna have to take a massive dose of pain to smack us out of the fairy tales that we are fed and love to cling to
Public protesting is good & all, but the only thing that speaks to corps is money. It's not hard to put global corporations back in their place where they belong if we simply put more effort individually to withhold our money from the corporations that hurt us more than help. Put a big enough dent in their profits and call bull**** on the infotainment industry, they will very, very quickly go back to kissing our asses & stop pretending to be Necktie Kings.
You know your history, which is admirable. I hardly paid any attention in school during history lessons, but eventually I grew my own interest in it and wanted to understand how things went down in a more clear way. Bits and pieces out of books, the internet, the elderly folk. What is easily noticeable, is that history is very repetitive and sometimes predictable.
What happened in the USA after the war is understandable. Similarly (not literally, but close enough), Bulgaria was a socialist country and adopted democracy some 20 years ago. I was born just then, in the year it got accepted. Before it people had everything they needed, but not as much freedom. Democracy is what ruined things, as privateers just overtook everything. People with power basically robbed the country shamelessly, and continue to do so today. Urbanization hit us hard, it hits everyone hard. Countryside lifestyle comes boring to many, as I personally wouldn't spend the highlight of my days growing crops. But then again - when I go visit my grandfolks and get to taste the food they grow themselves, I see where I was wrong in the past, disregarding suburban life. A country that has forsaken its own agricultural activities is a country without hope.
I am both very excited, and in fear of the era that we are living in. Perhaps it is so because of this feeling - that things are really about to fall apart, and because this might actually bring a time of prosperity for the human mind. I only wish that this time history does not repeat itself and this happens peacefully. Nuking is just not that good, is it?
Protesting has always seemed like something out of a fairytale to me, but it can actually work. Not because people will get heard so much, but because of our newborn ability to create instant flash mobs, in any given moment of time. The thing is, a bunch of people could always gather somewhere and jump around for a few hours, but now they can go home and immediately communicate with each other. They will know what effect has their protest had, if any at all. If there wasn't an effect, they will just get angrier. While in the past, they'd turn on the TV and forget about it. Now the flame can be kept burning for a very long time. Corps care about money, but this is the way that we can actually conspire against them on the go and mess around with their income with sheer force of will and the feeling that we are not alone (facebook).
For example - our national TV (bTV) had some journalist-orientated (bull****, of course) shows that reflected on the forest protests here in a very crude and negative way. In two days their website received 1,300,000 negative votes on the show that was aired. That's above a million in two days!!! bTV had to make an official apology to everyone. But now I have a bunch of friends that are convinced to never watch this television again. And they have a bunch of friends in the same position. The effect will not be seen immediately, but it's in the works. This, of course, is just as dangerous as it is beneficial. But this applies for almost anything of powerful nature (nukes, anyone?).
There IS enough money and resources to refurbish our whole planet, making it a truly wonderful place to live in for EVERYONE. Will it happen soon - I don't know, but it has to happen eventually. It's good that people have been turning to the green side rapidly for a few years now. Most young people that I know agree with me, or are very ignorant and don't go as far as to think about such matters. We are now more oriented towards free media content, freeware software, open hardware. The only thing that makes me sick is the battle for intellectual rights, and intellectual content (as if such thing existed) but this is another flame started by corrupt media labels. The hollywood effect. But **** them, we will beat them. I know it, I know it because even the artists are jumping in support of the opposition to this kind of treaties. If the generations which are living and growing right now somehow overcome mass corruption - we will win.
' Wrote:Soooo much money are being made every single hour from pharmaceutical companies. Weed is actually magical, it can be used for a number of cures, it can be used as fuel as well as clothing materials. But it's illegal. That, my friends, is insane.
Don't blame the pharmaceutical companies; they just happen to profit from the circumstances. Blame the forestry and oil companies of the late 1800s/early 1900s.
Hemp (a plant similar to cannabis, but with a whole lot less thc) was used in many industries due to its many uses (clothing, sails, canvas, paper, and fuels to name a few) and low requirements (grows 4 times the amount of raw material in one year than wood does in 20, requires half the amount of water to grow as cotton and doesn't require pesticides). This was hurting the business of those who wanted cars to run on oil and paper to be made from wood, so they teamed up with a newspaper to besmirch hemp.
Seeing as it looked like cannabis, it was very easy to confuse the public by associating it with drug habit and even started calling it "dope" (a term used for narcotics such as morphine, which had a much more damaging effect on society).
Hemp was legalised during WWII in order to make rope for ships and quickly made illegal again once the war was over.
Pharmaceutical companies are unlikely to have had a hand in the downfall of hemp as it wasn't directly competing with their products at the time. They're not exactly going to go on a costly crusade to legalise a product that could now compete with their products though, it's just bad for business (they are out to make money, just like any company is, after all).
I know of everything you have said about hemp, being a firm supporter of it and all. It's very sad that things have gone down this path, but that's the way it is. Pharmaceutical companies might not have been guilty of it then, but the story you told is so obsolete that there is no excuse for it remaining so until today.
Confusing the public is not new either, it's good old simple propaganda. Just look at what Hitler did with his book (emo blog) - he wrote it in prison, then rose to power again after his deeds against the ruling heads during his time. He made the money for his military campaign through the profits from selling his Mein Kampf. Parallel to the cash he was making, he was also brainwashing his soldiers from a distance, and effectively. That was pure genius. Does not justify his brutality, but was clever nevertheless.
The downfall of hemp, the downfall of manual labor, the downfall of spirituality and cultural tradition. These will rise again in due time, only in different forms.
I still blame the pharmaceutical companies, though, because they are still overpricing medicine and ignoring the cheap methods, focusing on what makes cash. Not all companies are going after pure cash, imo. Cash is just a resource, some are putting their work into good ideas. I usually get inspired by watching TED, like that. At one point everyone will realize that open-source and openness in general is the way to go, it's profitable for all of us and it helps all of us. Transparency can actually change the world a lot.
' Wrote:I still blame the pharmaceutical companies, though, because they are still overpricing medicine and ignoring the cheap methods, focusing on what makes cash. Not all companies are going after pure cash, imo.
Unfortunately these ones are. That's why non-profit organisations need to be in charge of these sorts of things.
Alot of times, I end up just irritating people with my seeming 'knowitallness' & sometimes I deserve a smack for it, but when it comes to marijuana prohibition I knows mah schtuff because it's literally my favorite subject in the world.:cool:
The basis of recreational MJ prohibition has its roots in racism. South Africa banned it 1st in 1911, followed by Jamaica in 1913 & El Paso TX in 1914. In all three cases, the laws were created in order for the white minorities in power to control the non-white majorities. The bulk of my knowledge starts with El Paso since that is where the snowball really got rolling & draws a direct line to the present state of worldwide prohibition today.
::ahem::
Once upon a time, there was a little thing called the 'The El Paso Ordinance' in 1914.
Back then, pot was mostly unknown to Americans...however, it was pretty popular with the Mexicans who, because of the Mexican Revolution back in 1910, started coming over the border in droves. Between 1910 & 1914 alot of bad blood was created because the larger farms in the area were taking advantage of the cheap Mexican labor & squeezing out the ability for the smaller farms to compete.
Since many of the Mexican workers preferred to get high after a day of working instead of going out & drinking, the bad blood just kept getting worse because (from the Americans point of view) not only were the Mexicans taking jobs away from them but they were also not spending the money they made within the El Paso city limits, which they felt was a large secondary blow to the towns economy.
(Keep in mind that at this time, city government was 100% white, as were the vast majority of retailers)
During those years, the city vilified the Mexicans by demonizing the weed they smoked, falsely claiming that marijuana caused violent insanity. By 1914, the El Paso Ordinance was passed in order to "protect" the city's populace from the "violent crimes" committed by "insane, bloodthirsty Mexicans."
Wyoming was first to outlaw marijuana statewide a year later in 1915, followed by Texas in 1919, Iowa, Nevada, Oregon, Washington & Arkansas in 1923 & Nebraska and Montana in 1927.
In about 1929, the Geneva Convention limited the import of opiates & cocaine to "quantities necessary to meet legitimate medical and scientific needs of importing countries." Under pressure from Egypt, South Africa, Canada & the US, cannabis was also added alongside...& to be absolutely clear, the US had the largest role making sure it (pot) was added in. The Geneva Convention was not the only international agreement to get the ball rolling on pot prohibition...there were others, but in every one of them, the US was always the alpha dog throwing its weight around.
Before the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) was created by Nixon in 1973 to replace the FBN (Federal Bureau of Narcotics) the head of the FBN named Harry J. Anslinger (the guy that created the whole 'Reefer Madness' propaganda campaign) passed "The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937'
In a nutshell, in order to legally possess 'marihuana' (which is how they spelled it back then so that the white people didn't mispronounce it as 'marijooana') you had to buy a federally issued marihuana tax stamp...however, the FBN refused to issue out any stamps, which made possession nationwide illegal overnight...& that lasted until 'The Boggs Act of 1951'
I know I said I hate text walls so I'll stop here for a while as I wrote most of this already a couple of years ago in another cool thread;)
Well, there is an aspect of black racism to prohibition but afaik, not a slavery one. The racist connection between MJ & the blacks came during the 'reefer madness' era between the late 30's & 50's
During that time, (the high water mark of New Orleans Jazz) dock workers got hip to pot because they enjoyed the creative boost it provides.
Harry Anslinger went before congress at some point during those years (& I quote:) 'Negro entertainers with their jazz and swing music are declared an outgrowth of marihuana use which possesses white women to tap their feet.'
Weed is a bit of a funny subject these days. I don't feel too strongly about legalising it or keeping it illegal.
Many will argue it has few negative effects, which is probably true, provided you use it sparingly. It's the chronic users that are the problem.
My dad was the technical manager (above him the general manager, then the millionaire boss) at a tanning factory, where he was in charge of hiring/firing, creating recipes for particular styles of leather and other general supervisor duties.
He would often come home with stories of people screwing up and causing general disorder within the workplace. The most disruptive were the P heads for obvious reasons, the stoners, and foreigners (language barriers led to a fair few costly mistakes). Many of the stoners refused to turn up to work on a regular basis and when they did, they were often the cause of workplace injuries. For example, two brilliant workers were operating a press for squeezing the moisture out of the leather, pothead number one left his hand on the press and his co-worker was too blazed to press the emergency stop. Having to peel your hand apart from a piece of leather is not a good look.
In my opinion, if you decide to smoke pot, do it, but do it in your own home. When you're too high to do your job and start putting others at risk, then I've got a massive problem with it.
My father once said "Pot smokers that smoke weed on a regular basis turn into selfish, lazy, uninteresting *******s who only care/talk about the next time they're gonna get high." Now this is probably true of some of the users in the lower classes of society, where they've got little else to look forward to, but those who are better off generally have better things to do (and if you don't, I feel sorry for you).
The incredibly dangerous leather pot heads return!
My grandfather often remarks, that the only right way to live your life is by following the rules. Then again... I'd like to decide that for myself.
Potheads are mostly harmless to others and mostly harmful to themselves. People that hire them / do not fire them (potheads), are in reality more dangerous, don't you agree? Since the smokers are known to be irresponsible (more like way too lazy).
At the end of the day the vast majority of weed-smokers are harmless and non-aggressive (assuming you don't give them control of a death-star and a bag of weed to kill time with), while your occasional alcoholic would start fights, stab, even murder and so on. Alcohol is legal and it continues to destroy on a daily basis. Weed is not and it gives people a break from all the crap that alcoholics give them at the bar. I don't see what is there to feel about this, there is only logic and these facts defy logic, to say the least.
In any case, over-killing it is over-killing it. I've smoked weed for years in a row and I know what the side effects are. There is a fine line between the genius it provides and the mind it takes away from you after that. I don't think laws have much to do with the fact that people are just beings that like to cross lines. We are not talking about drug abuse here, we are talking about a very accessible, cheap and reliable industry (covering an array of spheres tightly connected to our development and pro-green ideas) that has been left behind for the worst reasons. Also poo transplants.
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