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“Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.”
I thought your god was the spaghetti monster?
“Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.”
Poor Tommy, the country he founded won't let his bones rest in ex-post-factor peace:
How the DEA Scrubbed Thomas Jefferson's Monticello Poppy Garden from Public Memory
By Jim Hogshire, Feral House
Posted on March 3, 2010, Printed on March 15, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145872/
The following is an excerpt from Jim Hogshire's "Opium for the Masses: Harvesting Nature's Best Pain Medication" (Feral House, 2009).
Thomas Jefferson was a drug criminal. But he managed to escape the terrible sword of justice by dying a century before the DEA was created. In 1987 agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency showed up at Monticello, Jefferson's famous estate.
Jefferson had planted opium poppies in his medicinal garden, and opium poppies are now deemed illegal. Now, the trouble was the folks at the Monticello Foundation, which preserves and maintains the historic site, were discovered flagrantly continuing Jefferson's crimes. The agents were blunt: The poppies had to be immediately uprooted and destroyed or else they were going to start making arrests, and Monticello Foundation personnel would perhaps face lengthy stretches in prison.
The story sounds stupid now, but it scared the out of the people at Monticello, who immediately started yanking the forbidden plants. A DEA man noticed the store was selling packets of "Thomas Jefferson's Monticello Poppies." The seeds had to go, too. While poppy seeds might be legal, it is never legal to plant them. Not for any reason.
Employees even gathered the store's souvenir T-shirts -- with silkscreened photos of Monticello poppies on the chest -- and burned them. Nobody told them to do this, but, under the cir stances, no one dared risk the threat.
Jefferson's poppies are gone without a trace now. Nobody said much at the time, nor are they saying much now. Visitors to Monticello don't learn how the Founding Father cultivated poppies for their opium. His personal opium use and poppy cultivation may as well never have happened.
The American War on Drugs started with opium and it continues today. Deception is key to this kind of social control, along with the usual threats of mayhem. Ever since the passage of the Harrison Act made opium America's first "illicit substance" in 1914, propaganda has proven itself most effective in the war on poppies. This has not been done so much by eradicating the poppy plant from the nation's soil as by eradicating the poppy from the nation's mind.
Prosecutions for crimes involving opium or opium poppies are rare. But that has less to do with the frequency of poppy crimes and everything to do with suppressing information about the opium poppy. A public trial might inadvertently publicize forbidden information at odds with the common spin about poppies and opium. This might pique interest in the taboo subject and, worse, undermine faith in the government.
The U.S. government strategy to create and enforce deliberate ignorance about opium, opium poppies, and everything connected with them has proven remarkably effective. The Monticello campaign exemplifies an effective tactic. The poppies were swiftly removed, and sotto voce threats ensured no one would talk about it afterward. Today, visitors to Monticello learn nothing about opium poppy cultivation or why Jefferson cultivated it in his garden.
Disinformation about poppies has been spread far and wide. Some of it is subtle, like when the New York Times talks about people growing "heroin poppies." Some misinformation is so bald-faced as to stun the listener into silence, as when a DEA agent tells a reporter that the process of getting opium from opium poppies is so complex and dangerous that "I don't even think a person with a Ph.D. could do it.
This enforced ignorance reduces the chances of anyone even accidentally discovering the truth about poppies. Poring through back issues of pharmaceutical industry news from Tasmania might yield a mother load of cutting edge poppy science -- from genetically altered poppies that ooze double-strength opium to state-of-the-art machines designed to manufacture "poppy straw concentrate." Tasmania's output meets roughly a third of the world's narcotic requirement. But how many people know that Tasmania is the home of the world's largest and most modern opium industry?
Opium and opium poppy ignorance is augmented by widespread false beliefs, chief among them that it is extremely difficult for opium poppies to grow anywhere in the United States. Opium poppies surely require exotic climates or special climatic conditions, don't they? They're found on remote mountainsides in the Golden Triangle and Afghanistan, where growing them is a secret art known only to a few indigenous people who jealously guard the seeds from hostile compe ors.
These beliefs are all widely held, but entirely untrue. Opium poppies, in fact, grow nearly everywhere but the North and South Poles. The second prong of the strategy is the copious propaganda that demonizes opium, opium poppies and opiates. At times this demonization has been brazenly racist, catering to the xenophobic American mind at the beginning of the twentieth century. Later propaganda linked opium with the despised German "Hun" who ate babies and (as was reported) had been mixing narcotics into children's candy and women's face powder in a diabolical plot to weaken the nation from the inside. Later, Germans were replaced by communists, who also shipped narcotics to America's youth to weaken and enslave us. This was the authoritative word from Harry Anslinger, the infamous first Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.
Another example of false history is the mythical "soldier's disease" or "army disease" that supposedly plagued the land after the Civil War. According to the story, opium and morphine were used so extensively during the war as a painkiller for wounded soldiers (especially amputees) that the inevitable result was opium and morphine addiction. As a result, crowds of broken-down men roamed the countryside, ramming themselves full of holes with their crude syringes, having been turned into dope slaves by the good intentions of doctors.
This perfect example of anti-drug propaganda sounds plausible enough that few ever question it. And it has endured long after researchers discovered that this mythical legend was purely invention.
There is no do entation of any mass opiate addiction after the Civil War. The term "soldier's disease" or its variants did not appear in literature until decades later. Yet the story fits the officially approved stereotype by portraying opium and morphine as so powerful and addictive that they could rob anyone's soul.
If you knew that opium poppies do not grow in the U.S., you would not recognize an opium poppy even if you were staring directly at it. So, the idea of making opium tea from a bunch of dried decorative flowers purchased at K-Mart is ridiculous -- absurd, really. If it were that easy, wouldn't everyone be doing it?
Perhaps. But the establishment prefers to not test it. The idea of an individual having control over one's own life, especially regarding pain relief, is far too democratic to be embraced by tyrants.
The government and its allies in the narco-military complex have gone to great lengths to set things up as they are, and not allow a shift in control would affect licit or illicit sales of narcotics, poppy seeds, and any products derived from Papaver somniferum. In a market the size of America, nothing is too insignificant to generate huge sums of money. And the opium poppy is hardly insignificant.
Jim Hogshire is the author of many books, including most recently, "Opium for the Masses: Harvesting Nature's Best Pain Medication"; (Feral House, 2009).
© 2010 Feral House All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/145872/
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The War on Drugs is a multi-billion dollar business, creating make work, salaries, careers, and pensions for 1000s of govt and contractors' employees.
Wal-mart just fired a 5-year-employee with brain cancer for testing positive for legally obtained medical weed.
"there are national standards in place for teaching all the core subjects in schoosl."
There are new standards proposed which look excellent to me (reading and composition in 5th grade? holy !), but they will be opposed and ridiculed by the no-nothing, ignorant Repugs intent of dumbing down America to be fodder for corporate predations.
Pssst. Those standards already exist....for Texas 3rd graders.
"§110.14. English Language Arts and Reading, Grade 3, Beginning with School Year 2009-2010.
(a) Introduction.
(1) The English Language Arts and Reading Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) are organized into the following strands: Reading, where students read and understand a wide variety of literary and informational texts; Writing, where students compose a variety of written texts with a clear controlling idea, coherent organization, and sufficient detail; Research, where students are expected to know how to locate a range of relevant sources and evaluate, synthesize, and present ideas and information; Listening and Speaking, where students listen and respond to the ideas of others while contributing their own ideas in conversations and in groups; and Oral and Written Conventions, where students learn how to use the oral and written conventions of the English language in speaking and writing. The standards are ulative--students will continue to address earlier standards as needed while they attend to standards for their grade. In third grade, students will engage in activities that build on their prior knowledge and skills in order to strengthen their reading, writing, and oral language skills. Students should read and write on a daily basis."
amen to that brother (no pun intended)
benavidez deserved it. the man saved several lives, took out several VC and obtained important information all while holding in his own intestines. who cares if some biggots think it is too much too mention a genuine texas war hero. they sure as had no problem with audie murphy.
and weren't "conservatives" opposed to post-modernism? when did they join the parade?
TX "Christian " and conservative extremists want to indoctrinate, not educate. every one them to .
These people are some real whack jobs who are attempting to do exactly this, and have stated it rather openly, but not always directly in public.
One of them actually got herself in a bit of trouble by directly accusing Obama of consulting "with the terrorists" or "with AlQaeda" before the election. She genuinely seems to believe in the "muslim secret agent" myth about Obama.
http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=108711
by the by
(thread in which one of these ass-hats essentially accused Obama of being a terrorist)
It figures it would've been Dunbar. She's the ing Fred Phelps of education.
Touche!
I can't blame the Founding Fathers for believing in Xenu though... they didn't have all the evidence back then that we have today which points overwhelmingly to the existence of the one true Flying Spaghetti Monster.
May his noodly appendages bless you!
LOL, didn't even have to open the link to know it was Dunbar's re ed revisionist bumpkin ass.
Three pages long already...
I didn't read much of this, but I saw some things I know are wrong.
First of all, anyone see the transcript saying she wants to ban Jefferson?
I didn't think so. I'll bet it's a misconstrued account of events.
There have been stories about the Texas Text Book ordeal for about a week now. What I see is that liberals are no longer controlling the agenda alone, and now their safe haven for indoctrination of students is threatened. If someone wants to change my opinion of this, then how about some transcripts of discussion on a topic, instead of cherry picked phrases and words.
Wow, WC bending over backwards to give the benefit of the doubt to a ing re ed "Obama is a muslim" wingnut conspiracy theorist while screaming conspiracy against everyone else. Who would have ever guessed?
Here you go, friend! http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=108711
We don't need transcripts from meetings to know this is crazy. It's like The Onion but RL.
He won't read much of that either, but will still tell us what he sees.
That's not the point. Giving him special credit because he is hispanic makes those people bigots. Benavidez was a hero and has a great story, however his great sacrifice shouldn't be marginalized as a hispanic MOH. He was an American soldier. you for molesting the race card when someone doesn't agree with you.
as a history major this makes me sad to read. how pathetic. lmao texas
Touche!
I can't blame the Founding Fathers for believing in Xenu though... they didn't have all the evidence back then that we have today which points overwhelmingly to the existence of the one true Flying Spaghetti Monster.
May his noodly appendages bless you!that's right, he was flying. didn't mean to be blasphemous.
But SnC, you're the one who marginalized Benavides as a *hispanic MOH recipient* in the first place.
Who's been *molesting* the race card just because he disagreed?
If you're honest, you pretty much have to admit you did it too, before the poster you criticized for it.
Last edited by Winehole23; 03-15-2010 at 10:19 PM.
I wasn't apart of the board for deciding what gets in, or doesn't get in the text books.But SnC, you're the one who marginalized Benavides as a *hispanic MOH recipient* in the first place.
Who's been *molesting* the race card just because he disagreed?
If you're honest, you pretty much have to admit you did it too, before the poster you criticized for it.
Are MOH winners so common we have to restrict who rates a mention in the state textbooks?
When the board voted not to highlight the two hispanic MOH recipients because they were hispanic, she quit. I personally think there should be a summary of every MOH person.
I didn't read much of this thread. That doesn't mean I didn't hear other aspects of the story itself.
Are we clear now?
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