NOVAK UNGLUED
Seems that the wantonly ugly Robert Novak came unglued on CNN. I missed it, but some girl sent over chapter and verse for those who care. I would that it was the start of a much greater unravelling.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/08/04.html#a4309

The secret word is Warthog

ANOTHER WEEK, ANOTHER WEEKLY
LA CityBeat comes round again, and this week I have two pieces. An analysis of the new terrorism that I really do think has something to say for itself...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2416&IssueNum=113

And also more whimsical observations on the local wildlife...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2414&IssueNum=113

The secret word is Corvid

PARIS HILTON IS SHOPPING FOR A CATHEDRAL
I read in The Week that Paris Hilton attempted to rent St. Paul’s in London for her wedding to Paris the Greek, but she was turned down. Doubtless she will go on looking. Nortre Dame? Chartes? Isn’t there one in Dresden? Doubtless she could lease something gothic in Roumania pretty cheap, although I personally think it more fitting for her nuptials should take place in the Astrodome as a pay-per-view special. What Paris doesn’t know is that she has helped crystalize an idea for a new novel. Essentially about wealth. All I have so far are the scant lines of dialogue below, and no idea if any gastropod publisher would ever put it out, but it is growing in my head and you are actually witnessing conception...

(Two unnamed characters, one of whom is very rich.)
"The vast majority of the very rich don’t deserve their fucking fortunes."
"They don’t?"
"They think the only purpose of wealth is to flaunt it with an obscene lack of originality." Unamed was always careful never to split infinitives. "I mean, okay, Branson has his spaceship, but..."
Other-Unnamed raised an eyebrow, sensing a revelation. "But what?"
"I believe I can now buy myself my very own nuclear weapon and still have change left over."
Other-Unnamed took a deep breath, aware that Unnamed was serious. "Wouldn’t you have to buy a small country to keep it in?"
Unnamed smiled. "I have my island."

THE CIRCLE MAY SOON BE UNBROKEN
Some girl sent over this link which would seem to indicate that even solid, old-school rightwingers are having problems with the Bush agenda.
http://www.webcommentary.com/asp/ShowArticle.asp?id=andersonm&date=050728

Meanwhile this fell from the blue; a marathon debate about white kids wearing dreadlocks. Something with which I empathize for obvious reasons. (I particularly like the Swedish kid who claims Vikings wore dreads.)
http://birdhouse.org/blog/archives/2001/07/white_boy_dreadlock.php

The secret word is Natty

YESTERDAY’S BUSTS Part 2
As I was cutting the codes out of this second piece from The Guardian sent over by Roger in Scotland, I wondered to myself why I was bothering to post this stuff. Was it an odd forensic nostalgia, or just because recent days have been so depressingly August? Or maybe there is some merit, while dope remains eternally demonized and illegal here in the USA, to remember a nervously naive time when the London authorities through they could stamp out the whole thing by rounding up the obvious celebrities. (Plus hundreds of lesser mortals.)

Sir Mick Jagger may now be a respected knight of the realm, but 35 years ago, when he claimed that detectives had tried to plant drugs on him, police were distinctly unimpressed. Secret files released yesterday to the National Archives show that an internal inquiry by Scotland Yard dismissed the allegations, saying the Rolling Stones singer was caught up in "the world of users of dangerous drugs". Jagger's main witnesses were described as "the dregs of society", while his girlfriend Marianne Faithfull - who was also caught up in the claims - was said to be "most unreliable".The allegations followed a police raid on Jagger's home in London's fashionable Cheyne Walk in Chelsea on 28 May 1969, led by the head of the local drugs squad, Detective Sergeant Robin Constable.
A quantity of cannabis resin was seized by the police. However, the allegation that Sgt Constable had tried to plant some "white powder" on Jagger and then demanded a £1,000 bribe to drop the charges surfaced some weeks later when Jagger and Faithfull were filming in Australia. In the midst of shooting the movie, Faithfull was rushed to hospital in Sydney with a drugs overdose after suffering hallucinations that she was the dead Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones. She told the Australian detectives who came to interview her that she "hated coppers" because of her recent experience at the hands of the police in Britain.The Australian police report stated: "She elaborated on this, alleging that her recent arrest in England for 'possession of cannabis' was a result of a trumped-up charge when the chief of the Chelsea drug squad called at the flat she and Jagger occupied and produced some cannabis, stating that he would arrest them if they didn't pay him money."
The claim that Sgt Constable had tried to plant drugs and then attempted to solicit a bribe was to form the basis of the singer's defence when he was charged with cannabis possession at Marlborough Street Magistrates' Court, London. Jagger also went on to allege that the cannabis seized in Cheyne Walk had "shrunk" while in police possession from a half-pound block to just a third of an ounce - the inference being that it was being sold by corrupt officers. Although he was found guilty and fined £200 and ordered to pay 50 guineas in costs, Scotland Yard had little option but to investigate the singer's claims.Jagger enjoyed some high-profile backing from the lawyer, Michael Havers, who went on to become a Conservative Attorney-General, and the Labour MP Tom Driberg.
Nevertheless, the police distaste for the case - particularly some minor drug dealers Jagger and Faithfull called as witnesses - was plain from the outset. "The private persons interviewed during the course of this investigation represent extreme ends of the scale. At one end are public figures, whilst at the other are the dregs of society," noted Commander Robert Huntley, who oversaw the inquiry.In a statement to the police, Jagger described how Sgt Constable had allegedly tried to plant the "white powder" - apparently heroin - in a piece of folded-up paper produced from a box in the house. "I think he put the box down and opened the folded paper. He said: 'Ah, ah, we won't have to look much further'," Jagger said in his statement. "As I got to him he showed me the paper and I saw it contained some white powder.
"I said, 'You bastard, you planted me with heroin'."
Jagger then went on to claim that the officer had tried to solicit a bribe in order to drop the case."He said, 'Don't worry about it, Mick, we can sort it all out'. I said, 'No, we can't'. He said, 'Come on, how much is it worth to you?'
"He seemed to want me to name a figure but I did not want to," Jagger added.
"He twice asked me how much it was worth. He then said 'a thousand', but I never replied. After this he said to me, 'You can have your money back if it doesn't work'."
However, after interviewing all those involved, the Yard's investigating officer, Detective Chief Inspector William Wilson, said that the claims came down to Jagger's word against Sgt Constable's. The Director of Public Prosecutions then ruled no action should be taken against Sgt Constable to end the matter.

The secret word is Horticulture

MARTIAN ICE AND TERRESTRIAL STUPIDITY
Some girls sends us the story of how there is ice on Mars.
http://www.wfmynews2.com/news/technology/tech_article.aspx?storyid=46199

While, in red state Wisconsin, contraceptives become illegal on campus to curb promiscuity.
http://www.mndaily.com/articles/2005/07/27/64850

THE BUSTS OF YESTERDAY
The following comes from Roger in Scotland. The London Guardian has obtained the files on the 1960s law enforcement vendetta against the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. For those of us who don’t see The Guardian, here’s Lennon, tomorrow Jagger...
The Scotland Yard drug squad detective who led a midnight raid on John Lennon's London flat privately explained to the home secretary that he needed a large number of police with him because he expected to find "an unusual party", involving large numbers of people, in full swing. Detective Sergeant Norman "Nobby" Pilcher, who built his drug squad career targeting musicians, including Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Eric Clapton and Donovan, finally turned his attention to the biggest prize of all - a Beatle in October 1968.
A confidential Scotland Yard file, which was released at the National Archives to the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act, shows that Pilcher came under strong pressure from the then home secretary, James Callaghan, after the raid on the Marylebone flat.
In his report, hand-delivered to the home secretary, Pilcher tried to explain why it had taken seven police officers and two dogs to raid Lennon's flat, and how it was that the press managed to arrive on the scene within minutes of the drug bust.
It was widely believed that Lennon had already immortalised Det Sgt Pilcher as "Semolina pilchard" in the Beatles song I Am the Walrus. The Beatle described him as a "head-hunting" cop: "He went round and bust every pop star he could get his hands on, and he got famous. Some of the pop stars had dope in their house and some of them didn't."
On this occasion Lennon was confident that he didn't. At the time he lived with Yoko Ono in the flat he rented from George Harrison at 34 Montague Square. The previous tenant had been Jimi Hendrix. Lennon had been tipped off three weeks earlier by Don Shorter, a Daily Mirror journalist, that Pilcher had him next on the list and he had the flat meticulously cleaned in the belief that Hendrix must have left some trace of drugs in the apartment.
Lennon always insisted he had been framed by Pilcher, who was subsequently jailed for corruption because of his practices in the drug squad. Lennon was fined £150 for possession but the conviction was to give him years of trouble and pain. It was enough to trigger a deportation order against him in the US in 1971, and a subsequent four-year battle against being thrown out. Ono said it also contributed to the couple losing custody of her daughter, Kyoko.
The Scotland Yard file shows that not only did the drug squad's only two sniffer dogs, named Yogi and Boo-Boo, find some cannabis, but that the police also claimed they had a battle getting into the flat.
Pilcher said the raid had been carried out after "information received" indicated there would be at least three people living on the premises and they were "in possession of a quantity of cannabis". He said the flat had been difficult to enter because it occupied the ground floor and the basement, there was no rear entrance and there was an entryphone system to the front door. Pilcher said two detective sergeants, three detective constables, one a woman, and two dog handlers - without dogs - turned up at the flat at 11.55pm on Friday, October 18 1968 armed with a search warrant, and hammered on the door.
Inside, John and Yoko were in bed. Yoko went to open the front door. "Upon being informed that we were police officers and the reason for our visit, she ran back along the passage into the flat and slammed and locked the door," Pilcher said.
The couple had been lying in bed dressed only in vests and feeling "very clean and drugless". Lennon was in no mood to cooperate and phoned his solicitors.Pilcher reported: "An attempt was made to enter the premises by way of a rear ground floor window but this was prevented by Lennon who held the window closed." The detective sergeant claimed Lennon had said: "I don't care who you are, you're not bloody coming in here."When the police started to force open the front door of the flat, Lennon decided to open it. The struggle had lasted eight minutes. Once the police had established that John and Yoko were alone they had to wait half an hour for the arrival of the dogs. In the meantime two of Lennon's lawyers had arrived and several press photographers had also made it to the scene.The flat was searched with the dogs sniffing around the four large rooms. "Cannabis resin was found secreted in a leather binocular case and a suitcase. Both of these quantities were found by the dogs," Pilcher's official report said.
He claimed that "past experience proved that it is necessary to take at least six officers to carry out the execution of the search warrant, plus the dog handlers".
They had decided to take five officers plus the dog handlers this time because of the difficulty of getting into the flat and the fact that the rooms were "in a very untidy condition".
But Pilcher then told the home secretary that such a large number was needed because "it is not unusual when executing search warrants for premises occupied by members of the entertainment world to find that there are large numbers of people present taking part in unusual parties. In this case it was found that only two persons were present, and both were in a state of undress."
Pilcher also denied tipping off the press. The official Met report concluded: "One thing is certain as far as this incident is concerned, and that is the press was informed by somebody." The document suggested a neighbouring resident might have been responsible.
"The fact that police officers were attempting to effect an entry into the residence of Lennon and Cox [Ono] is of immense news value to the press and of likewise publicity value to Lennon himself. The police officers involved have been questioned and strongly deny being responsible for any leakage of information."
Pilcher had learned his lesson. The following year when he raided George Harrison's Esher estate he timed the bust to coincide with Paul McCartney's marriage to Linda Eastman, so he could be sure the Beatle would not be at home.
As the file reveals, after getting it in the neck from the home secretary he wanted to be sure the premises were empty when he arrived "mob-handed" at Harrison's home in March 1969.

The secret word is Nicked

NEW PLANET???
Check this out...
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/050729_new_planet.html

MACAW INDECENCY
HCB sends the following...
LONDON (AFP) - A foul-mouthed parrot previously owned by a lorry driver has been banished from public areas in a British animal sanctuary after repeatedly embarrassing his keepers, they said. Barney, a five-year-old Macaw, is now kept indoors at Warwickshire Animal Sanctuary in Nuneaton, central England, when outsiders visit after abusing dignitaries with swearword-littered insults. "He's told a lady mayoress to f..(expletive) off and he told a lady vicar: 'And you can f... off as well'," sanctuary worker Stacey Clark said. Nor did the forces of law and order escape, she added. "Two policemen came to have a look at the centre. He told them: 'And you can f... off you two wankers'." Clark said sanctuary workers believed Barney either picked up the phrases from television or was taught them by his previous owner, a lorry driver who emigrated to Spain. "He does say 'Hello, big boy' and 'Thank you' when you give him a biscuit," she added. "But it's mainly naughty words and always to the wrong people. We're trying to teach him not to swear. Macaws are very intelligent birds."

In a separate email, HCB also comments on last Friday’s post...
"THE MOST MINDLESSLY ASININE STORY OF THE WEEK
On Tuesday, the NY Post ran a screaming cover story recounting how Osama bin Laden tried to buy a massive amount of cocaine, cut it with poison and sell it in the United States." If Bob Dylan were a fresh folkie he'd be singing about looking for Osama under his bed – and Ed Sullivan wouldn't let him sing it. I loved the cocaine story – that Bin Laden is accruing all this cultural mythifying just shows how desperate we are for a little attention. I think we – the (US) nation – have assault envy this month. There's a new rumor that Bin Laden doesn't actually exist – that's a sure sign of how ethereal he's become. And I guess they're digging cells out of Ladbroke Grove. Wonder if Boss has been cooking up delicious entrees for the bad guys at Sunday brunch.

Which actually raises an interesting and overlooked cultural footnote. Our pal Boss Goodman, is the hero of a hundred adventures, but an unreconstructed Luddite with no email. Aside for DJing at London’s 100 Club, he is also the master-chef at a well know pub, The Portobello Gold, (Where he once cooked for Bill Clinton.) It’s unlikely he ever cooks for Jihadist or even wannabee Jihadists, because hard core Muslims don’t drink, word up. And are thus beyond the assimilating influence pub of culture that has absorbed so many other waves of immigrants down the centuries. (Ask the Huguenots or the Hindus.) Which inspires a joke that might start "four swarthy geezers with backpacks walk into a pub and... (Complete the joke and win a virtual prize.)

The secret word is Cracker

THE BUGGERS
Our pals in Holland have been quiet for a while, but now they have issued a new communique.
When, on several occasions, Tony Blair called the bombings and attempted bombings of the city of London the fruits of an "evil" ideology, he was not just simplifying matters for dramatic purposes. What he was trying to achieve with such an archaic word was detaching the motives behind the bombings from political reality and blowing them up to mythological proportions. Political reality can be discussed, analysed and understood. Myth, on the other hand, evades discussion and defies understanding: it is an order beyond the grasp of reason. Ranking your enemies among the mythological forces of evil is a stale but still effective piece of propaganda to frighten people and to muster them under your flag, cross, crescent, or any other symbol held up as a representation of the forces of "good". It is an appeal to fears and desires that underlie much of the ethics of religious and post-religious societies. Blair knows that. Bush knows it. And so do the leaders of Al-Queda. Much as Blair would have us believe that the London bombers have fallen prey to evil, it is all too clear what has really driven them to their horrible and desperate acts: British military interference in the Middle-East and Central Asia, which, contrary to what Blair maintains, goes back a lot further than the 9/11 attacks and pre-dates Al-Queda by more than 150 years. It's evident why Blair would want to escape political reality: a majority of his own people has been against the latest invasion and occupation of Iraq from the start, and the last thing Blair needs now is being held responsible for having brought the war home. Admitting that there is a connection between the war in Iraq and the London bombings would make his positionuntenable and would very likely lead to withdrawal of British troops and British investments from Iraq. It would mean immense loss of face for Blair and the Labour Party and loss of capital for British industries and banks with interests in war and oil. Of course, Blair is right when he says that nothing can justify cowardly suicide bombings like the ones in London. But condemnation of the attacks must not prevent us from trying to understand the motives of the bombers, who, after all, are only human. By demonizing the bombers to save his own skin Blair has endangered British society even further, and it is only thanks to the self-control and realism of the British people that Blair's remarks haven't split their multi-cultural society beyond repair. What demonization leads to became clear when policemen killed a completely innocent Brazilian in the London underground last week. 27-year-old Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead publicly for having been in the wrong place at the wrong time, having worn the wrong clothes, and having run away for plain-clothes policemen with drawn guns. De Menezes was shot in the head at pointblank range five times. Killing somebody five times is not a professional mistake but an act of rage and hatred. It is a hysterical effort to root out evil.
Read why the British deserve a better Prime Minister than Tony Blair in an article in The New Statesman by John Pilger (sent to us by Gerard Bellaart of Cold Turkey Press)...
http://www.newstatesman.com/Politics/200507250004

The Buggers can be contacted at...http://www.sea-urchin.net/buggers

BUY A BOOK, SAVE AN AUTHOR

THIS MAY, OF COURSE, BE THE ANSWER
A group of fundamentalist Christians from Texas (where the hell else?) want vast numbers of their kind to migrate en mass to South Carolina where they would first take over the state government and then secede from the Union and set up a theocratic free state – presumably with all the Christian trappings like hanging, burning, stoning, judicial torture and brutal repression of everything that makes life living for us sinners, plus huge refugee camps of displaced trailer trash outside Baltimore. I really feel this is a damned fine idea, because the ensuing civil war will be extremely interesting to watch. I’m am not an advocate of nuclear weapons, but in this instance I might just make an exception. Or maybe Federal troops could break out some of those super-psychedelics supposedly developed by Sid Gottlieb at MKULTRA in the 1960s, the ones in vapor form that act on skin contact. The Christian rebs will be convinced it’s their Rapture and give up.
For the real story rather than the scifi...
http://www.religionnewsblog.com/7556-Group_promotes_secession_from_U.S..html

The secret word is Armageddon

LINKS (GET ‘EM WHILE THEY’RE HOT)
MICK ON PIMPING
Great riff of pimpery in LA CityBeat by your humble scribe...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2410&IssueNum=112

THE OSAKA CYBERGIRL
HCB sent the story of the Osaka girl android this morning, but since the TV news got its hands on it,I'm struck that the section of the population who should be most threatened by the realistic female android is TV news persons.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4714135.stm

THE MOST MINDLESSLY ASININE STORY OF THE WEEK
On Tuesday, the NY Post ran a screaming cover story recounting how Osama bin Laden tried to buy a massive amount of cocaine, cut it with poison and sell it in the United States, hoping to kill thousands of Americans, but was thwarted when the Cali Cartel decided it would be bad for business. A subsequent Doc40 investigation revealed that this was maybe a desperate ploy by the a terror-eclipsed DEA for funds and attention that was ignored by the rest of the media as too bizarre to consider. Not the Post though. See...
http://www.nypost.com/seven/07262005/news/worldnews/50787.htm
For more rational takes on the stroy try...
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8729331/
Or...
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/july2005/270705cokecaper.htm

AND FINALLY
If hear Donald Rumsfeld correctly, the War on Terror has been renamed the Global Struggle Against Extremists. A fuck up by any other name would smell as...

CRYPTIQUE – Extremism in defense of the extreme.

The secret word is Kevlar

A WEEK FOR FABULOUS IDEAS
About six minutes ago it occurred to me that one – and maybe the only – effective way to reign in both terrorism and The War on Terror would be to legalize recreational drugs in all their multiple forms immediately. The moment that marijuana became legal, corporate jets full of executives and money would fall on terror fountainheads of Afghanistan and Pakistan like the gentle rain. Hashish could be for Kabul what single malt was for Scotland*, not to mention premium Paki black. With wealth comes consumerism, and consumerism means Starbucks, VH1, lap dancers, and Hello Kitty. No time for jihad. Look out Saudi oil. There goes the Wahhabi fundamentalist ballgame, and the Afghans will be having more fun than they ever had slaughtering Americans, Soviets, Brits, and each other, all the way back to Alexander the Great. And for those with a jones to still be cowboys, there would always be illegal boutique grade opium. No government is ever going to legalize the raw milk of paradise.
(* Many of make the mistake of thinking that legalization will mean the neighborhood entrepreneur will no longer be on the run from the DEA. Forget it. The moment legalization comes, Anheuser-Busch, RJR, and Sony will have the shit – and I use the word with extreme precision – sewn up.)

The secret word is Lateral

Check this out. It’s weird and disgustingly amusing.
http://www.director-file.com/cunningham/rubber.html

FROM THE FAR LEFT OF THE BRAIN
Preferring my torture to be delivered by more intimate means that either gravity or centrifugal force, I have never ridden any amusement park ride more physically invasive that Space Mountain at Disneyland, and, mercifully, I am now at an age where no peer pressure could lure me onto one of those new generation of monster roller coasters that have names like The Mangler or The Vomit-Ripper. I did wonder, however, while watching a Six Flags commercial, why parks didn’t give/sell badges or medals to those who have undergone such an ordeal and completed the ride. They could then be collected and worn like campaign ribbons, demonstrating to the world what a desperate and hardened sensation-seeker one really is. I consider this a really good idea and will be home if any amusement park operating corp wants to stop by and hand me a million in small bills for the idea. But, then again, why should they? In my needy pursuit of self-expression I have already given it away for free. Which may be a telling summation of both my condition and character.

The secret word is Irrelevant

NOT ENOUGH EVIDENCE?
After feeling disconnected and lousy from the heat all weekend, I turned on Sunday night’s ABC News and discovered that it wasn’t just LA, Chicago, and New York sweltering in meteorological hell, but all of North America was experiencing 100F heat, the North Pole is, as we speak, melting like a gin and tonic at a picnic, and – if that wasn’t bad enough – a huge freak sandstorm (that’s right, sandstorm) was blowing across the Atlantic towards Florida in defiance of most normal wind patterns. It will, we were told, create some lovely sunsets. Okay, so I’ve said it too many times before, but it applies more than ever. This is a none-too original opening for any number of science fiction global-disaster movies, except Hillary Swank won’t bore to the center of the Earth and miraculously save us all with the help of whales. If the bloody superpower in which I find myself residing had anything approaching a genuine leader, he or she would be on TV explaining to his or her fellow Americans just how bad a global weather disconnect we were really facing, and not taking his geo-thermal advice from oilmen, General Motors, and Jerry Falwell. But, hey, this is democracy.

And what is the White House doing as a nation liquefies? Why, neighbors, Georgie is squirming like a toad to get his pal Karl Rove of the hook*, while his media machine defends his asinine war. This time by attempting to prove that suicide bombers are not pissed about US troops in Iraq. Count the number of times you hear the mantra "the attacks predate the invasion" recited by some talking coif, Tony Blair, or even the PM of Australia. Iraq is good, see? For any number of reasons we will continue to invent.

* for the whole story, over to the ever-on-the money Frank Rich
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/opinion/24rich.html?th&emc=th

The secret word is Heatstroke

CRYPTIQUE SPECIAL – I’M THINKING ABOUT IT

The significance has still not fully sunk in.

Suicide bombers have attacked a major international city and completely fucked up.

"Of course I know how to attach the fucking detonator!"

For a suicide bomber, survival has to be the ultimate in defeat and dishonor.

The idea of a feared terrorist legging it out of Kennington Oval tube station, and being chased down by irate passengers, is not only shameful but absurd in the extreme

I worry that the Ali G wigger in the Bob Marley jacket and Fidel Castro fatigue cap who was shown repeatedly on CNN may not live to see Sunday.

When the bomb fails to detonate, isn’t the only course of action is to fall to one’s knees and disembowel oneself with an ornamental Saracen dagger?

Samurai are made from sterner stuff than Wahhabi.

A terrible pun involving Wahhabi and wasabi presents itself but I resist.

Rep. Tom Tancredo wants to bomb Mecca.

Lend him a B52 and let him.

In the words of the great Ellen Ripley, "Nuke the entire site from orbit."

In the McLuhan speedup, not all cultures accelerate at the same rate.

The yuan is now am opaque currency.

Could you sit in a movie theatre full of grown men dressed as Dakota Fanning?

The secret word is Conjecture

AND THEN, ON THE WAY TO BED, I FLIP ON CNN TO SEE IF THERE'S ANY WORD ABOUT THE BREAKING STORY OUT OF CHINA THAT THE DOLLAR IS BEING ALLOWED TO FLOAT AND WHAT THE HELL THAT MIGHT MEAN, ONLY TO DISCOVER THAT THERE HAS BEEN ANOTHER ATTACK ON THE LONDON TUBE. AS MY MIND BOGGLES, I LIGHT A CIGARETTE. THE ATTACK SEEMS NOT SO SERIOUS OR MAYBE BUNGLED, BUT FAMILIAR STREETS ARE AGAIN ON TV. AND EVEN MORE THAN BEFORE I FIND MYSELF DEALING WITH GULF BETWEEN PERSONAL DAILY NORMALITY AND THE UNREAL NOISE AND UNBELIEVABLE VOICES THAT ECHO ACROSS THE WORLD.

AIR CONDITIONERS HUM AS L.A. SWEATS AND POISONOUSLY SWELTERS UNDER THE THREAT OF A FULL YELLOW MOON. I SHOULD PROBABLY WRITE REALLY DEPRESSING POETRY.

TUCK YOU, TUCKER
Tucker Carlson is an annoying neo-yuppie TV-boy and professional right-winger who believes that wearing a red polka-dot bow-tie is cool. He used to be irritating in CNN’s Crossfire, but now he’s irritating on his own show on MSNBC, The Situation. He is, however, even more irritating in a promo for The Situation in which he pretends to pretend that he’s some 1970's-style private eye on some imaginary Quinn Martin detective show like Cannon. And – as if this wasn’t incongruous enough for someone who is essentially a male Ann Coulter – during the course of the spot he slams a bad guy with a white boy ‘fro and Zapata mustache into the hood of a car. My problem is that this character looks a lot like me circa 1970. I mean he’s not quite a dead ringer, being kinda skanky, and without my artist’s smouldering passion, but the resemblance is enough to annoy. I’m not so narcissistic to believe that Carlson had ever heard of me – even though I have previously abused him both on net and newsprint – but the vision on my screen was enough to give me pause. (And The Situation is so damned lame that it’s always possible that I may have more total readers that Tuck has viewers.)

And while we’re on the subject of white boy afros, I also find that "dorkwad" commercial for movietickets.com quite offensive. So be warned, mocking we of the long and curly can be ill advised. We tend to mutate into Bob Dylan and write poisonously venomous and vitriolic songs about you that cut to the bone.

JAMES DOOHAN – RIP

I DIDN’T HEAR ABOUT IT, BUT I SURE WOULD HAVE LIKED TO HAVE SEEN IT
http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,68242,00.html

PLUG
Ellen, a good friend of Doc40, had her own crafts store on ebay. Check it out...
http://stores.ebay.com/MooCat-Arts_W0QQssPageNameZviQ3asibQ3astoreviewQQtZkm

The secret word is Coiffure

CALIENTE FUCKING LOCO
We might as well give up arguing about global warming. The way it feels tonight, we’re in the terminal stage. It’s 2.15AM and it’s 175F in the LA Basin, (I swear) and I hear the rest of the continent is in much the same condition. Too hot to think, too hot to breathe, and my laptop may soon become malleable. Too hot even to complain although, by tomorrow, I’ll probably be pissing and moaning. Too hot, in fact, to go into the hideous ramifications of how Bush’s nomination of John Roberts for the Supreme Court is the sanctioned dawning of an era of intensified ignorance and brutality unseen since Custer blundered across the Little Big Horn.

The secret word can only be Inferno

CRYPTIQUE – Whose right is it anyway?

GERRY THOMAS -- RIP (The inventor of the TV dinner)

AS THE WORLD TURNS
And the day rushes by a dizzying speed (and I seem to be achieving nothing) I pluck this item from this morning’s NY Times as a reminder that the criminal War on Drugs still rages and people still rot away their lives because of minimum mandatory sentencing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/19/opinion/19tierney.html?th&emc=th

And talking of wars without end, Sunday was the 69th anniversary of the start of the Spanish Civil War.

Ted Heath RIP (if only because he was only Prime Minister mentioned in a Beatles song.)

The secret word is Later

MAKING QUITE HORRIBLE SENSE
The link below was sent by kaymo and I would humbly recommend taking a look at it and becoming very, very paranoid. Although grandiose in the extreme, and even though one (and one’s mental health) does not want to spend a whole lot of time contemplating scenarios that end either in enslavement, nuclear annihilation, or both, some of the parts do have very sound and supported pedigrees in the world of conspiracy theorizing. Remember, though, that Whitley Strieber scripted Wolfen and The Hunger and has made a further name for himself -- and a few bucks -- after claiming he was abducted by aliens. (But then again, my own resume is a little odd, and I expect to be taken seriously.)

http://www.unknowncountry.com/journal/?id=188

The secret word is Junta

ANYHOW...
It also occurs to me, before I retire to TV and bed, that even if this doesn't, in the end, bring down the whole wretched pack of them, it may at least give Red State Middle American a whiff of the stench the rest of us have been enduring for the last five years.

LATE NIGHT TOAD WATCH
Glancing through the first of the online morning news it seems that Rove is now dumping the problem on the equally reptilian Robert Novak. It Novak doesn't sit still for this it could be the best bout since King Kong v Godzilla.

The secret word is rroooaaaaaragggh!

(Did anyone see Johnny Depps' Gonzo t-shirt on Leno last night? I want one! I want one!)

LA CITYBEAT
Two quite lengthy gems o’mine in this week's issue...
...on celebrity...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2340&IssueNum=110
...and the bombings...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2338&IssueNum=110

TOADWATCH
(Maybe best to read yesterday first.)
Today Karl Rove – described last night by Jon Stewart as "the only man in Washington with flesh-colored hair" – mounted his counterattack....

As told by MSNBC...
The GOP continues to believe that the best defense is offense, and true to form, Republican talkers are starting to try to change the subject and/or once again question Joe Wilson's veracity. Among those who have come to Rove's offense: President Bush, via Scott McClellan, who said yesterday that Rove has Bush's confidence; Laura Bush, who called Rove a very good friend; Newt Gingrich, via TODAY; Tom DeLay, via The Hill newspaper; and RNC chair Ken Mehlman, who has offered the staunchest backing of Rove by far. But Mehlman leaves Washington for Iowa today, which may cut into his media availability. Add to the list the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which today praises Rove for "turning out to be the real 'whistleblower' in this whole sorry pseudo-scandal," and notes that "there's no evidence that [he] broke any laws."

Before Mehlman lammed it out of town he left the following Rove-style "talkingpoint" that will be repeated by all the TV shrieking heads...

WASHINGTON, July 12 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Following is a statement by Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Ken Mehlman on the partisan attack on Karl Rove:
"It's disappointing that once again, so many Democrat leaders are taking their political cues from the far-left, Moveon wing of the party. The bottom line is Karl Rove was discouraging a reporter from writing a false story based on a false premise and the Democrats are engaging in blatant partisan political attacks."

Meanwhile in other news...
"President Bush called Tuesday for the release of an Iranian journalist jailed for writing articles linking government officials to murder."

Meanwhile Wonkette has a suggestion...
Okay, we admit it, we were overthinking the whole Rove-Plame thing. In speculating that this wouldn't destroy him or the White House, we had been hung up on how he didn't break the law. What we realize now is that liberals finally have an issue where the headline hurts Republicans more than it hurts them: "White House Aide Identified Undercover CIA Agent." Now, shut up. Shhh. Zip it. ZZZip. No, really, quiet. Repress natural urge to pedantry. For once, allow Americans' short attention span work for you. And whatever happens, do not let Michael Moore make a movie about it. Let the Republicans shoulder the responsibility of having to explain how Karl didn't do anything illegal, or how when he identified the agent it was in a context that wasn't so bad, or that it's Matt Cooper's fault, or why this is all just a massive smear campaign. Soon, they'll be debating the definition of "is" and you can start rumors about Laura being a lesbian. Fun! http://www.wonkette.com/

MEANWHILE (again)...
Over at the NY Times, you can find a fascinating story on audio hallucination.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/12/health/psychology/12musi.html?incamp=article_popular

AND FINALLY SOMETHING WEIRD...
Two nights ago when the insomnia was bad, I scoured the cable grid for something to watch. By default, I clicked on one of the Encore Channels for Meryl Streep in Postcards From The Edge, but found to by surprise that John Walters' Pink Flamingos was being aired. Okay, so errors do happen on the cable schedule, but Pink Flamingos is pretty sturdy stuff even for premium cable what with its cock-sucking, shit-eating, talking-asshole, cop-eating cannibalism, and general overall theme of a drag-queen Manson Family, not to mention the dead chicken and all those eggs. I have heard nothing since, but, then again, it was the time of day when only Travis Bickel and I are watching TV. I do wonder, however, if some subversive out there is deliberate slipping in such raunch in very wee hours.

BUT LET’S LEAVE THE LAST WORD TO TRAVIS...
You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Then who the hell else are you talkin' to? You talkin' to me? Well, I'm the only one here. Who do the fuck do you think you're talking to? Oh, yeah? Ok.

THE FALL OF THE DARK TOWER – SHALL WE GET THE PARTY STARTED?
Gather round friends and neighbors, this might just be the best vertical fun we have all year. Just the possibility that we might be at the start of the Karl Rove Deathwatch Of Toad fills me with a highly Machiavellian glee, and I just hope that this Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald turns out to be a relentless pitbull, similar to Ken Starr. Okay, Pat J. is probably Bush’s boy right now, busy throwing Judith Miller in jail, but you never know with Special Prosecutors. They come in like lackey’s, but once they realize that they’re driving the plane, megalomania sets in and they start wanting blood and fame. And wouldn’t it be such big fun to see the Bush gang all turning on each other at once.

Already Mr MR has sent over a conjecture about how the first fall back of the White House would be to try have their Karl and eat him too. How they move him from the too-visible Dark Tower to the Cave of Shelob, where the evil brain can still function but the porcine face would be hidden.
"It is impossible to know whether any closed-door conversations have begun in the White House about whether to find a graceful way for Mr. Rove to exit partially, or as one former official said, to "get the benefit of the brain without the proximity of the body."

Hoo-wee, I’m certain this is just the start of the swamp fest. All observations are welcome. The email is byron4d@msn.com

And if anyone has any doubts after last week just how urgent the departure of Bush is becoming, check this NY Times op ed on North Korea...
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/12/opinion/12kristof.html?th&emc=th

The secret word is Comeuppance.

CRYPTIQUE – The chickens are flying business class, and the destination is spelled "roost."

MORE ACID DISCOVERIES
Spent the weekend writing about last week’s Jihadist nastiness and also the horrors of contemporary celebrity. The products will be ready for perusal in LA CityBeat on Thursday, but, in the meantime, after all that fury, I feel a little beat, although I’m gleefully anticipating the possible downfall of Karl Rove, and how the smug fat fuck may soon be toast, evicted from his Dark Tower, and perhaps even wind up doing time. (You think Georgie will stand by him if it’s a case of Rove’s ass or his?) While we wait, though, the following came through from kaymo...

Saw the thing on Crick and acid... have you seen "What the Dormouse Said" by John Markoff? Turns out the early pioneers of the personal computer revolution were mostly acid heads in the period 1955-75. Combination of trips and experiments that produced the breakthroughs that lead to the revolution in computer usage in the late 70s, and thus to the pcs and Macs on our desks today.

With all this good stuff being discovered on acid, I have to wonder what would have happened if someone had dosed Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project. We might have had a very different bomb.

The secret word is Microgram

An overwhelming concern for personal safety is, at best, pragmatism and has never been deemed a high virtue in any culture worth a damn.

"WE WERE PACKED IN LIKE SARDINES WAITING TO DIE..."
Right now I find myself at a loss to think, let alone analyze, and simply watch, sad and mindless, all the TV images of familiar places packed with emergency vehicles and the walking wounded. The odds are that no personal friends or loved ones were hurt or killed, but one never knows. And then disgust creeps in with the appearance of the smug, moronic face of the loathsome Bush, with the hint of a "told you so" smirk, and the indecent speed at which the fucking news commentators turn to self interest with no decent interval to grieve for London. Oh gosh, is America safe? Of course America isn’t safe, you schmucks. A pointless and disgustingly irrelevant war cannot be waged from a position of total safety. And finally there are the intelligence and Homeland Security officials and consultants, most of whom seemingly couldn’t find their own ass with a map, with their color-coded stable-door mentality, and the failure to realize that, while they’re expanding the police state and blathering about rapid transit, the next attack could just as easily by on a movie house, a sporting event, a rock show, a container port, or a nuclear power station.

IN THE MATTER OF NY TIMES REPORTER JUDITH MILLER GOING TO THE SLAM
This would be my impression, open of course to comment.

Bush’s Dark Lord Karl Rove – out of pure WMD spite – outs CIA Agent Valerie Plame via TV pundit and columnist Robert Novak

Judith Miller is tipped off, but doesn’t publish.

Miller is jailed for refusing to name her unpublished source to a Grand Jury.

Judge gratuitously mentions anarchy and abortion while committing Miller to jail.

The right-wing toad-greasy, three-lunch-eating Novak is hardly talked about.

Fear eats the already mendaciously spineless MSM, and Karl Rove plainly demonstrates that he is the Lizard King and he can do anything.

Fascism marches on.

(And you don’t know what I’m talking about, read a newspaper.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/07/politics/07leak.html?th&emc=th )

But on a more amusing note...

IT’S AMAZING WHAT YOU CAN FIND...
As I wandered the web researching something about The Deviants, I stumbled into a site devoted to the late-model, Jack-Kirby, Marvel Universe of The Immortals, and I found the following crucial data, which reads so nicely and also reminds me that I have to write the final episode of Slide On The Run for Funtopia. (I especially like the Shroud Gun, the Slicer, Belts of Bemusement, Brain-Mines, the Coagulation Chamber, and the ever-popular Electric Whip.)

Deviants – Sub-race of humanity which on earth, dwell in the city of Lemuria. Deviants on other worlds include the Skrulls, who killed their original race. The Deviants of earth have been ruled by a monarchy, with the House of Toads ruling them for several centuries. Since the death of Brother Tode, Brother Kro, Brother Brutus and Brother Visara have all ruled them, but it is Priestlord Ghaur who currently rules the Deviants, though Kro is kept in power as a figurehead leader. The Deviants' religious system places the Dreaming Celestial as their creator. For centuries, the Deviants believed that the most grotesque of their kind must submit to the Fire Pits of "Purity Time", not knowing that victims of Purity Time ("Rejects") were actually put into suspended animation to one day serve as the "Fifth Host". Purity Time has since been dis-continued. Deviants have little love for one another, and little hope for their future. One of the few pleasures they enjoy is the domination over humanity. At one time, Lemuria existed above the waves, and was capital of the earth. But after an unwise attack on the Celestials, Lemuria was sunk, and the Deviants have never reclaimed their full power. Modern plots have included the use of Mutates to spread disorder among humans. They were also responsible for the many subterranean races, including Gortokians, Moloids, Tyrannoids, and the Lava Men, all originally bred as slaves. For a brief time, the Deviants were mutated further by Apocalypse, and were nearly mindless creatures which rampaged indiscriminately, but they have since been restored to normalcy.Prominent Deviants include: Ahqlau, Argos the Hunter, Bandrhude, Blackwulf, Blackwulf II, Blackwulf III, Bristle, Broop, Brutus, Cataphrax, Chudar, Coal, Darg, General Dasrax, Dragona, Ulysses Dragonblood, Dromedan, Dulpus, Enigmo II, Erishkigel, Fascit, Finn, Frathag, Ghaur, Giganto, Gigantus, Glomm, Gort, Gorgilla, Grottu, Haag, Hept-Supht, Id, Ignatz, Odysseus Indigo, Jorro, Karkas, Karygmax, Khult, Nuncio Klarheit, Kro, Kulkulk, Lady Trident, Lugner, Mammoth, Marcelus, Medula, Megataur, Metabo, Minotaur, Molten Man-Thing, Morga, Nirvana, Pandara, Plokohrel, Phraug, Pyre, Ragar, Brother Ranar, Ransak, Schizo, Shelmar, Sledge, Sluice, Spike, Spore, Stranglehold, String, Talon, Tantalus, Taras Vol, Thunder, Tobias, El Toro Rojo, Touchstone, Toxin, Tricephalous, Tutinax, Brother Tode, Veeg, Queen Vira, Brother Visara, Randy Lee Watson, Weller, World-Devouring Worm, Wraath, Yrdisis, Zakka, and Zona. -Other Deviants appear in Eternals (v.1)#1-6, 8-10, 13, Thor Annual#7, Thor#285-286, What If (v.1)#23, Iron Man Annual#6, Eternals (v.2)#1-12, Avengers Annual#17, Amazing Spider-Man Annual#23, Avengers West Coast Annual#4, Fantastic Four Annual#22, Alpha Flight (v.1)#83, Fantastic Four#339-340, Quasar#12, Eternals: The Herod Factor, Warlock and the Infinity Watch#7, Avengers#370-371, Thunderstrike#6, Blackwulf#2, 6, 8-10, Heroes For Hire#5-7, Marvel Universe#4-7, New Eternals#1, X-Force#94, Marvel: The Lost Generation#10, Black Panther (v.3)#26-29, Avengers (v.3)#42-44, Cable#96, Avengers (v.3)#49, 52

Deviant Technology – The Deviants have developed technology in all areas save artificial intelligence. Among the many weapons and vehicles the have designed are: Air Shuttle, Atom-Displacer, Belts of Bemusement, Bloodhound Missile, Brain-Mines, Coagulation Chamber, Death-Wagons, Diggers, Dimension-Transit, Dispersatron, Disruptor, Dreadnoughts, Electric Whip, Energy Bomb, Energy Screen, Flame of Life, Flamers, Flotillas, Gouger, Gracelet, Ice-Gun, Implosion Device, Infra-Sonic Cannon, Kro's Flagship, Molecular Decoder, Molecular Disruptor, Molecular Disunifier, Packet Rocket, Power-Rod, Raiding Craft, Rail-Jet, Rat, Shadowlance, Shock Howitzer, Shock-Pistol, Shroud Gun, Slicer, Time Projector, Torment Machine, Transjector, Transponder Portal, Wall Screen and Z-Ray.
Deviatron Device Zuras gave to Thena which can locate Deviants within its vicinity. -Eternals Annual#1, Thor#285

The secret word is Kro

MORE NARCO-TRIVIA
Munz just sent me the following and I couldn’t resist simply posting it. I hesitate to say more than, back in the day, that was where the London counter culture got it’s acid. I wonder, though, about the "LSD in tiny amounts as a thinking tool", since back in the the 1960s the calibration of doses was real hit and miss, and never really came together until the 1970s. It only took a little for the full fear, loathing, and Yellow Submarine. Also I must add an odd footnote in that, since the Welsh acid factory survived until 1977, the Operation Julie bust, coming as it did when the Sex Pistols were peaking, became a very bizarre big deal with cops discovered this James Bond acid plant in rural Wales (as they told it). At the height of punk, boring old hippies were suddenly the SPECTOR of psychedelic warfare, which confused Joe Strummer no end until Lemmy explained it to him.

But I digress...

NOBEL PRIZE GENIUS CRICK WAS HIGH ON LSD WHEN HE DISCOVERED THE SECRET OF LIFE
Copyright 2004 Associated Newspapers Ltd. Mail on Sunday (London)August 8, 2004by Alun Rees
Francis Crick, the Nobel Prize-winning father of modern genetics, was under the influence of LSD when he first deduced the double-helix structure of DNA nearly 50 years ago. The abrasive and unorthodox Crick and his brilliant American co-researcher James Watson famously celebrated their eureka moment in March 1953 by running from the now legendary Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge to the nearby Eagle pub, where they announced over pints of bitter that they had discovered the secret of life. Crick, who died ten days ago, aged 88, later told a fellow scientist that he often used small doses of LSD then an experimental drug used in psychotherapy to boost his powers of thought. He said it was LSD, not the Eagle's warm beer, that helped him to unravel the structure of DNA, the discovery that won him the Nobel Prize.

Despite his Establishment image, Crick was a devotee of novelist Aldous Huxley, whose accounts of his experiments with LSD and another hallucinogen, mescaline, in the short stories The Doors Of Perception and Heaven And Hell became cult texts for the hippies of the Sixties and Seventies. In the late Sixties, Crick was a founder member of Soma, a legalise-cannabis group named after the drug in Huxley's novel Brave New World. He even put his name to a famous letter to The Times in 1967 calling for a reform in the drugs laws. It was through his membership of Soma that Crick inadvertently became the inspiration for the biggest LSD manufacturing conspiracy-the world has ever seen the multimillion-pound drug factory in a remote farmhouse in Wales that was smashed by the Operation Julie raids of the late Seventies.
Crick's involvement with the gang was fleeting but crucial. The revered scientist had been invited to the Cambridge home of freewheeling American writer David Solomon a friend of hippie LSD guru Timothy Leary who had come to Britain in 1967 on a quest to discover a method for manufacturing pure THC, the active ingredient of cannabis.

It was Crick's presence in Solomon's social circle that attracted a brilliant young biochemist, Richard Kemp, who soon became a convert to the attractions of both cannabis and LSD. Kemp was recruited to the THC project in 1968, but soon afterwards devised the world's first foolproof method of producing cheap, pure LSD. Solomon and Kemp went into business, manufacturing acid in a succession of rented houses before setting up their laboratory in a cottage on a hillside near Tregaron, Carmarthenshire, in 1973. It is estimated that Kemp manufactured drugs worth Pounds 2.5 million an astonishing amount in the Seventies before police stormed the building in 1977 and seized enough pure LSD and its constituent chemicals to make two million LSD 'tabs'.

The arrest and conviction of Solomon, Kemp and a string of co-conspirators dominated the headlines for months. I was covering the case as a reporter at the time and it was then that I met Kemp's close friend, Garrod Harker, whose home had been raided by police but who had not been arrest ed. Harker told me that Kemp and his girlfriend Christine Bott by then in jail were hippie idealists who were completely uninterested in the money they were making.
They gave away thousands to pet causes such as the Glastonbury pop festival and the drugs charity Release.'

They have a philosophy,' Harker told me at the time. 'They believe industrial society will collapse when the oil runs out and that the answer is to change people's mindsets using acid. They believe LSD can help people to see that a return to a natural society based on self-sufficiency is the only way to save themselves.

'Dick Kemp told me he met Francis Crick at Cambridge. Crick had told him that some Cambridge academics used LSD in tiny amounts as a thinking tool, to liberate them from preconceptions and let their genius wander freely to new ideas. Crick told him he had perceived the double-helix shape while on LSD. 'It was clear that Dick Kemp was highly impressed and probably bowled over by what Crick had told him. He told me that if a man like Crick, who had gone to the heart of human existence, had used LSD, then it was worth using. Crick was certainly Dick Kemp's inspiration.' Shortly afterwards I visited Crick at his home, Golden Helix, in Cambridge.He listened with rapt, amused attention to what I told him about the role of LSD in his Nobel Prize-winning discovery. He gave no intimation of surprise. When I had finished, he said: 'Print a word of it and I'll sue.'

The secret word is What?

CRYPTIQUE – Lucy in the Sky with Dramamine.

INDEPENDENCE DAY
As an Englishman, it’s a little hard to get worked up over July 4th. As a pyromaniac, I’m inordinately fond of fireworks, burnt meat is always good, and I kinda like the Constitution, but it’s hard to jump up and down and wave the flag about the British being run out of the lower forty-eight, even when my American friends explain how, if the Founding Fathers hadn’t done what they did, we’d not only all be speaking English, but living in some post-facto colony with all that Canadian-style oppression like social stability, low crime, and evil commie healthcare.

But talking about freedom and healthcare, it’s kinda ironic that this should be the weekend when JD forwards me the following, that would seem to kick away any possible rationale for keeping marijuana outlawed. If herb not only doesn’t give me cancer, and may actually protect me from it, why the fuck should I be jailed for smoking the stuff? The answer becomes increasing clear that – beyond some Alice-In-Wonderland logic that dope is bad because it’s illegal, and thus it’s illegal because it’s bad – the only possible reasons are that prohibition supports the drug enforcement industry, maintains some bizarre notions of social control, and panders to the fucked-up who just can’t stand seeing anyone having a good time.
I’m kinda in a good mood because I’m high, but, really, I've had enough of this shit. For almost a century, happy-go-lucky vipers have been hunted, jailed, killed, brutalized, denied public office, and deprived of their civil rights, and it's high fucking time it simply stopped!

The secret words for the holiday are Rockets, Red, and Glare

Now read on...
Smoking Marijuana Does Not Cause Lung Cancer By Fred Gardner
Marijuana smoking -"even heavy longterm use"- does not cause cancer of the lung, upper airwaves, or esophagus, Donald Tashkin reported at this year's meeting of the International Cannabinoid Research Society. Coming from Tashkin, this conclusion had extra significance for the assembled drug-company and university-based scientists (most of whom get funding from the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse). Over the years, Tashkin's lab at UCLA has produced irrefutable evidence of the damage that marijuana smoke wreaks on bronchial tissue. With NIDA's support, Tashkin and colleagues have identified the potent carcinogens in marijuana smoke, biopsied and made photomicrographs of pre-malignant cells, and studied the molecular changes occurring within them. It is Tashkin's research that the Drug Czar's office cites in ads linking marijuana to lung cancer. Tashkin himself has long believed in a causal relationship, despite a study in which Stephen Sidney examined the files of 64,000 Kaiser patients and found that marijuana users didn't develop lung cancer at a higher rate or die earlier than non-users. Of five smaller studies on the question, only two -involving a total of about 300 patients- concluded that marijuana smoking causes lung cancer. Tashkin decided to settle the question by conducting a large, prospectively designed, population-based, case-controlled study. "Our major hypothesis," he told the ICRS, "was that heavy, longterm use of marijuana will increase the risk of lung and upper-airwaves cancers."
The Los Angeles County Cancer Surveillance program provided Tashkin's team with the names of 1,209 L.A. residents aged 59 or younger with cancer (611 lung, 403 oral/pharyngeal, 90 laryngeal, 108 esophageal). Interviewers collected extensive lifetime histories of marijuana, tobacco, alcohol and other drug use, and data on diet, occupational exposures, family history of cancer, and various "socio-demographic factors." Exposure to marijuana was measured in joint years (joints per day x 365). Controls were found based on age, gender and neighborhood. Among them, 46% had never used marijuana, 31% had used less than one joint year, 12% had used 10-30 j-yrs, 2% had used 30-60 j-yrs, and 3% had used for more than 60 j-yrs. Tashkin controlled for tobacco use and calculated the relative risk of marijuana use resulting in lung and upper airwaves cancers. All the odds ratios turned out to be less than one (one being equal to the control group's chances)! Compared with subjects who had used less than one joint year, the estimated odds ratios for lung cancer were .78; for 1-10 j-yrs, .74; for 10-30 j-yrs, .85 for 30-60 j-yrs; and 0.81 for more than 60 j-yrs. The estimated odds ratios for oral/pharyngeal cancers were 0.92 for 1-10 j-yrs; 0.89 for 10-30 j-yrs; 0.81 for 30-60 j-yrs; and 1.0 for more than 60 j-yrs. "Similar, though less precise results were obtained for the other cancer sites," Tashkin reported. "We found absolutely no suggestion of a dose response." The data on tobacco use, as expected, revealed "a very potent effect and a clear dose-response relationship -a 21-fold greater risk of developing lung cancer if you smoke more than two packs a day." Similarly high odds obtained for oral/pharyngeal cancer, laryngeal cancer and esophageal cancer. "So, in summary" Tashkin concluded, "we failed to observe a positive association of marijuana use and other potential confounders."
There was time for only one question, said the moderator, and San Francisco oncologist Donald Abrams, M.D., was already at the microphone: "You don't see any positive correlation, but in at least one category [marijuana-only smokers and lung cancer], it almost looked like there was a negative correlation, i.e., a protective effect. Could you comment on that?"
"Yes," said Tashkin. "The odds ratios are less than one almost consistently, and in one category that relationship was significant, but I think that it would be difficult to extract from these data the conclusion that marijuana is protective against lung cancer. But that is not an unreasonable hypothesis."
Abrams had results of his own to report at the ICRS meeting. He and his colleagues at San Francisco General Hospital had conducted a randomized, placebo-controlled study involving 50 patients with HIV-related peripheral neuropathy. Over the course of five days, patients recorded their pain levels in a diary after smoking either NIDA-supplied marijuana cigarettes or cigarettes from which the THC had been extracted. About 25% didn't know or guessed wrong as to whether they were smoking the placebos, which suggests that the blinding worked. Abrams requested that his results not be described in detail prior to publication in a peer-reviewed medical journal, but we can generalize: they exceeded expectations, and show marijuana providing pain relief comparable to Gabapentin, the most widely used treatment for a condition that afflicts some 30% of patients with HIV.
To a questioner who bemoaned the difficulty of "separating the high from the clinical benefits," Abrams replied: "I'm an oncologist as well as an AIDS doctor and I don't think that a drug that creates euphoria in patients with terminal diseases is having an adverse effect." His study was funded by the University of California's Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research.

AND OH YEAH
Check this week’s LA CityBeat column...
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2282&IssueNum=108

HAVE THIS SHOW CANCELLED!
I returned from some external local wanderings around the pharmacy and the hardware store and found George Bush monopolizing my fucking TV, trying re-sell me that bloody war of his that I never wanted in the first place. And there was that dumb belligerence as he tried to reconcile the statements of Dick Cheney on one hand that it’s all over in Iraq bar the shouting with Rumsfeld’s equally dumb insistence that whole thing is going to drag on for decades so we better get used to it. Meanwhile, the mainstream media still find it impossible to join the dots, conclude how the Downing Street memos essentially identify the whole pack of them as lying toe-rags, or, more recently, how the somewhat amazing statement by Director of Central Intelligence Porter Goss that the CIA totally know where Osama is but can’t grab him because it would infringe another nation’s sovereignty, is kinda confounded by the Langley spooks who’ve been running all over Italy kidnaping Moslem clerics and shipping them off to Egypt in private jets to be tortured. Indeed, this whole bullshit administration has reached levels of absurdity that I find myself no longer raging, but simply dazed and amazed that it is, on any level, able to continue, and that’s when I’m not wondering, with the shock of hard-won deja vu, if Bush is in fact simply recycling old Vietnam speeches of Lyndon Johnson’s from 1967, when The Doors were playing "The End" and revolution actually seemed quite possible.

OCTOBER 14TH 1978
(See comments 719 over there >>>>)
I do remember MF and the Good Guys playing Camden Palace, so vividly, in fact, that I know we all went to the cinema between sound-check and show-time to see Sam Peckinpah’s Convoy, (big 10-4 good buddy) instead of sitting in a pub so Larry and I wouldn’t get shamelessly drunk and total live-on-stage spectacles of ourselves, a ruse that was doomed when we took a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black with us to the film. But I still don’t recall seeing Chas and Dave.

(How’s the punctuation, Fiona?)

The secret word is Sufficient

CRYPTIQUE -- Did Tom just screw the pooch on a major Scientology power play?

IF YOU GO DOWN IN THE WOODS TODAY*...
Although I’m well aware that there are many more crucial things going on around the planet, I've more than once caught myself thinking about that 11-year-old who was lost for four days last week in the Utah mountains, and couldn’t be found because his parents had taught him too damn well that he should never talk to strangers, and he kept hiding from the search parties of potential rescuers. The timorous brat really doesn’t have a prayer if he’s ever shipped off to higher education in a major city. The kind of victim body language that alerts every urban predator for blocks around must be totally ingrained. Okay, maybe times have changed since I was raised in the woods so I knew every tree, but this strikes me as the same dangerous psychological overkill that has idiots in suburban Idaho so coweringly convinced that Al Qeada are going to attack the local mall by next Tuesday that they’ll reelect George bloody Bush as many times as Fox News tells them and the voting machine will let them. What the fuck happened to Home of the Brave, Land of the Free, or the realization that we’re born, we die and, between the two, we play odds to survive just like the gazelles in the TV nature show? There are no other guarantees, and not to accept this reality is another version of living on one’s knees, and (to paraphrase Big Nose Katie Elder in the movie Doc) when I get on my knees it ain’t in fear (although maybe trembling.)

BUT ON A BRIGHTER NOTE...
Here’s a piece of truly inspired biblical craziness sent over by some girl...
www.hoax-buster.org

The secret word is Reckless

(* How many of you, dear readers, recall "The Teddy Bears Picnic"?)

IN RESPONSE TO THE COMMENTS (712) BOARD (just over there>>>)...
I really don’t recall ever being on a bill with Chas and Dave, but, then again there’s a lot late of the seventies/early eighties I don’t remember. The other day I accidently came across the following quote by poet and old lag Pete Brown in some book about Pink Floyd. "All Saints Hall was also routinely rocked by incredible mad jam sessions - one of which ended up with Alexis Korner, Arthur Brown, Mick Farren, Nick Mason, and me all singing `Lucille.' Which was really frightening to a lot of people – including us!" This is something of which I have absolutely no memory even though it sounds like fun.

IT’S 2008, OKAY? (ALL ACROSS THE USA)
Seems like the 2008 Presidential Election is underway already. I’m no great Hillary Clinton admirer, but I figure that she may well be the card we’re dealt, and right now I’d support Cal Worthington and his dog Spot if I thought there was a chance of halting a Bush dynasty. (I mean, I’d have Old Bill back in an NY minute, but Hill is getting kinda charmless of late.) What really fascinates me, however, is how the artillery is already being positioned to rain down forty kinds of like-never-before hell on the poor woman. She needs dig in because the Rove Ratfuckers are already busy. Check the following bit of anonymous disinformation making the rounds of fax and internet...

Gold Star Mothers is an organization made up of women whose sons were killed in military combat during service in the United States Armed Forces. Recently a delegation of New York State Gold Star Mothers made a trip to Washington, DC to discuss various concerns with their elected representatives. According to NewsMax.com there was only one politician in DC who refused to meet with these ladies. Can you guess which politician that might be? Was it New York Senator Charles Schumer? Nope, he met with them. Try again. Do you know anyone serving in the Senate who has never showed anything but contempt for our military? Do you happen to know the name of any politician in Washington whose husband once wrote of his loathing of the military? Now you're getting warm! None other than the Queen herself - the Hildebeast, Hillary Clinton. She refused repeated requests to meet with the Gold Star Mothers. Now - please don't tell me you're surprised. This woman wants to be president of the United States - and there is a huge percentage of the voters who are anxious to help her achieve that.
Gold Star Mothers have refuted the story, but once its out it become instant legend.

ON THE OTHER HAND...
Click below for plausibly paranoid chapter and verse on how Homeland Security is putting the fix in on your new laptop. The story and pics have been declared a hoax, but there’s no reason not to pass it along as the absolute gospel truth. You just didn’t hear it from me, okay?
http://c0x2.de/lol/lol.html

The secret word is Attrition

BEFORE EVEN THERE WAS EDDIE COCHRAN...
Mercifully the English are obsessive about preserving cultural minutiae otherwise we would have missed this little delight from 1955 that has to be a prototype for a whole lot that came later.
http://www.teddygirl.co.uk/

CRYPTIQUE – "When I take the medication my evil uncle stays in Yonkers."

I MEANT TO POST THIS ON SUNDAY
But the weekend grew hectic and the world again turned into one giant movie promotion with live ammunition, and the Martians land next week, and so the most important thing on my TV is Tom fucking Cruise being squirted with water. (Although this constant real-world exposure of Cruise is starting to reveal him as a three foot demented munchkin, just not tall enough for the blazing-eyed Scientologist Messiah to which he seems to aspire. Which brings us neatly around to religion, and the following from The Independent Online sent over by Mr MR, which kinda shows very clearly why humanity really has to get over this whole God thing, and quickly...

PRIEST UNREPENTENT AFTER CRUCIFYING OF NUN
By Laura Chiriac
Tanacu, Romania - A Romanian Orthodox priest who ordered the crucifixion of a young nun because she was "possessed by the devil" and now faces murder charges was unrepentant on Saturday as he celebrated a funeral mass for his alleged victim. "God has performed a miracle for her, finally Irina is delivered from evil," Father Daniel, 29, the superior of the Holy Trinity monastery in north-eastern Romania, said before celebrating a short mass "for the soul of the deceased", in the presence of 13 nuns who showed no visible emotion. He insisted that from the religious point of view, the crucifixion of Maricica Irina Cornici, 23, was "entirely justified", but admitted that he faced excommunication as well as prosecution, and was seeking a "good lawyer". Cornici was found dead on Wednesday, gagged and chained to a cross, after fellow nuns called an ambulance, according to police. Mihaela Straub, spokesperson for the police in the province of Vaslui, said Daniel and four other nuns had claimed Cornici was possessed and should be exorcised. Before being crucified she had been kept shut up for several days, her hands and feet tied and without food or drink, he said. Cornici had entered the monastery just three months before, after visiting a friend who was a nun there, police said. As her coffin entered the church of the monastery Saturday no church bells were sounded while nuns cast distrustful glances at the strangers, including two AFP reporters, present at the ceremony. Claps of thunder from an approaching storm were sometimes the only sounds to break the silence. "This storm is proof that the will of God has been done," Daniel said.
"You see it?" said the priest, gesturing at the body, lying in an annexe and still showing the marks of the gag. One of the nuns, Sister Martha, added, "She can't be laid in the church because she was possesed."
Daniel has lived for the past four years in the isolated monastery located in the hills of one of the poorest regions of Romania, without running water or electricity. "Over there, in your world, the people must know that the devil exists. Personally I can find his work in the gestures and speech of possessed people, because man is often weak and lets himself be easily manipulated by the forces of evil," said the bearded young priest. "I don't understand why journalists are making such a fuss about this. Exorcism is a common practise in the heart of the Romanian Orthodox church and my methods are not at all unknown to other priests," he said.
A 34-year-old parishioner who had come to defend Daniel and gave her name as Dora, said Sister Irina " had to be punished, she had an argument with the Father during a Sunday mass and insulted him in front of the congregation."
Sociologist Alred Bulai said that corporal punishment was still commonly used in certain Romanian monasteries. "It's happening particularly in the isolated monasteries, where the superiors have difficulty understanding the current realities and adapting themselves to modern life," Bulai said. Since the fall of the communist regime in December 1989, the Orthodox Church, which represents 85 percent of Romania's 22 million inhabitants, is rated in many opinion polls as the most trusted institution in the country. Vitalie Danciu, the superior of a nearby monastery at Golia, called the crucifixion "inexcusable", but a spokesperson for the Orthodox patriarchate in Bucharest refused to condemn it. "I don't know what this young woman did," Bogdan Teleanu said. - Sapa-AFP

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER
The new Mick’s Media column from LA CityBeat has been around since last Thursday, but, like I said, it’s been hectic.
http://lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2221&IssueNum=106

The secret word is Gluegun

KEITH MORRIS -- RIP

WARNING, MICK FARREN, WARNING!
So there I am, it’s 8.40 and I’m watching back-to-back reruns of Law & Order, scratching my feet and reflecting what a thrill-packed 36 hours it’s been, what with MJ not guilty; Katie Holmes turning out to be a total idiot, 4-year-old Daudi Bamuwamye dying on the Mission: Space ride at Walt Disney World after pulling 2G, and Gov Arnold’s sneaky special election, (and how come the cops figure they have the right to confiscate protester’s banners?) and then – Pow! – the Emergency Broadcast System cuts in with a tsunami warning!

"Say what?" I cry. But the EBS warning is so fucked up, and the audio so garbled, it offers no information except that the warning is timed from 8.30 to 8.45, and it then cuts back to that cheese commercial with the black and white talking bovines before it’s even complete. I look at the cat and we both sit there. I know that a hundred foot wall of water bearing down on one is nothing to fuck with, but I’m at something of a loss. I had been wondering about a possible shake after hearing about the big weekend jolt in Chile. I believe these thing are all highly interconnected, but (like the Spanish Inquisition) no one expects a tsunani. Do I call a cab and drive the pair of us to Mulholland? The cat suggests I switch channels. Channel 9 is running news, but the weather woman with the large breasts seems to know nothing about any imminent inundation.

By 9.05, I’m starting to wonder if I imagined the whole thing, and it isn’t until the 11.00 news that I learn the tsunami warning was indeed issued, as a safety measure after a seven point something off the coast up by the CA/OR stateline. Full marks for the seismic alert, but the EBS really doesn’t fucking work, despite all those irritating tests. Americans have this fetish for being kept safe from everything known to man, but the warning was nothing short of a cluster fuck tailored to create either panic or disbelief, and if the wall of water had materialized through the French windows the cat and I would have been fucked to Bakersfield. Being drowned and turned to flotsam is not what I call homeland security.

CRYPTIQUE – Failure is no success at all.

The secret word is Tectonic

WHAT ME WORRY?
Michael Jackson walks, and do I worry? Actually I’m kinda glad. I spent too much of my youth listening for the ominous bellow "get the weirdo", so I could take to my heels to avoid a beating from the more conventional youth of my village. (Although much of my time, I had a dog with me large enough to deter the neighborhood Nazis.) Certainly the joy of persecuting the freak seemed to ooze from prosecutor Tom Sneddon each time he showed up on my TV, so, all in all, I’m kinda relieved that such sentiments didn’t apparently factor into the verdict.

Over the weekend I read the NY Times and once again realized it’s a tad scarey that, in all the mainstream media, one has to wait for Frank Rich to write what ought to be fundamentally obvious, viz, viz and viz... (on Deep Throat)

"The fundamental right of Americans, through our free press, to penetrate and criticize the workings of our government is under attack as never before" was how the former Nixon speech writer William Safire put it on this page almost nine months ago. The current administration, a second-term imperial presidency that outstrips Nixon's in hubris by the day, leads the attack, trying to intimidate and snuff out any Woodwards or Bernsteins that might challenge it, any media proprietor like Katharine Graham or editor like Ben Bradlee who might support them and any anonymous source like Deep Throat who might enable them to find what Carl Bernstein calls "the best obtainable version of the truth."

"The attacks continue to be so successful that even now, long after many news organizations, including The Times, have been found guilty of failing to puncture the administration's prewar W.M.D. hype, new details on that same story are still being ignored or left uninvestigated. The July 2002 "Downing Street memo," the minutes of a meeting in which Tony Blair and his advisers learned of a White House effort to fix "the intelligence and facts" to justify the war in Iraq, was published by The London Sunday Times on May 1. Yet in the 19 daily Scott McClellan briefings that followed, the memo was the subject of only 2 out of the approximately 940 questions asked by the White House press corps, according to Eric Boehlert of Salon.

"Though Nixon aspired to punish public broadcasting by cutting its funding, he never imagined that his apparatchiks could seize the top executive positions at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Nor did he come up with the brilliant ideas of putting journalists covertly on the administration payroll and of hiring an outside P.R. firm (Ketchum) to codify an enemies list by ranking news organizations and individual reporters on the basis of how favorably they cover a specific administration policy (No Child Left Behind). President Bush has even succeeded in emasculating the post-Watergate reform that was supposed to help curb Nixonian secrecy, the Presidential Records Act of 1978."

For the whole story...
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/12/opinion/12rich.html?th&emc=th

My eye was also drawn to the following...
"And in Tennessee, Dr. Daniel D. Roberts gave up his ordinary practice not long ago to handle a growing workload at 10 jails across the state, nearly a third of whose prisoners, he estimates, have ravaged teeth owing to methamphetamine."
Which kinda means that one in three people doing time in Tennessee are speedfreaks. A sobering thought and a noisy jailhouse.

The secret word is Lemmy

ONE CANNOT HELP BUT THINKING
Smoking marijuana rather than ranting about it, one I cannot help thinking. I just watched Kevin Spacey in Beyond The Sea, the Bobby Darin story, and enjoyed it immensely, especially as Spacey was having since a good time wearing the tuxedos and doing his own singing, but there were moments when, in his Bobby Darin makeup, Spacey’s face morphed into that of an older Lee Harvey Oswald, which was cause for pause – especially as I may have the only one seeing it.. It does, however, give me a fine segue into some thoughts about what exactly our President is up to.

I’m a reasonably well known paranoid in paranoid circles, – see previous paragraph – and all my antennae are up and quivering. I seriously don’t like all the promotion of Patriot Act II, that’s going on, and how little is being said about how it one dangerous movie to play. This is the sucker with all the Gestapo clauses, and everyone should be very afraid of it because, once the Feds get these powers, it’s a hell of thing to pry them back again, and everyone, from Act Up to the Aryan Nation needs to be nervous of zealous overloaded, armed-for-bear law enforcement. Have the fundamentalists forgotten Waco so quickly? While Bush is out selling the deal on TV, we get all of these weird-ass news reports about rounding up Al Qeada "sleeper cells"and "sympathizers", plus "what-if" horror scenarios about terrorists poisoning school dinners (although I thought McDonalds had that well in hand), and a whole bunch of other demented War On Terror shit, that sounds a fuck of lot like round-up-the-usual Ay-rabs, and maybe we’ll have ourselves a lot of little Reichstags and a lot of little Rosenbergs while Bush attempts to once again ride his approval ratings from the depth of the crapper on amorphous fear.

And, on the subject of the antics of the current administration, kaymo sends us the following...
"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believe you can do these things. Among them are... a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid." – President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954

He includes a provenance for when Ann Coulter calls it a phoney...

Citation for those who believe that this quote is too perfect to be true: Eisenhower, Dwight D. Personal and confidential To Edgar Newton Eisenhower, 8 November 1954. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 1147. World Wide Web facsimile by The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission of the print edition; Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press,1996
http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/first-term/documents/1

He also sends an H.P. Lovecraft link for those who like that sort of thing.
http://www.hplovecraft.com/

The secret word is Arkham

SOME OPTIMISM FROM MUNZ (HA-HA)
I received the following from Munz regarding yesterday’s post...

Mick: Obviously I share your half-century frustration with the flat-earth war on (some) drugs. I once wrote of the drug warriors that they are "wind-up monkeys who continue to slap the cymbals of stupidity." But yesterday’s decision is not as definitive as it seems. Dig below from Dale Gieringer of California NORML. The Supremes, while denying Raich/Monson's commerce clause argument (which was a shaky legal argument to begin with), also validated medical marijuana. Justice Stevens, who wrote the majority opinion, says a medical necessity defense is 'strong'. People need to read this. It's not the end of the world. In fact, it gives all legit patients who use med-mar a considerable legal leg-up. Unfortunately, in the interim, the 6-3 naysay may embolden those in local and state law enforcement who abhor med-mar laws. Expect more raids and arrests. Raich/Monson should have pursued a medical necessity defense which is based on English common law. The example often given is "you can steal a boat to save a drowning man." Best, Munz (One of your hard-drinking, cab-riding LA friends)

In its majority opinion against Raich and Monson (p. 6), the Supreme Court issued a significant word of warning about the wisdom of current federal laws: The case is made difficult by respondents' strong arguments that hey will suffer irreparable harm because, despite a congressional finding to the contrary, marijuana does have valid therapeutic purposes. The question before us, however, is not whether it is wise to enforce the statute in these circumstances; rather, it is whether Congress' power to regulate interstate markets for medicinal substances encompasses the portions of those markets that are supplied with drugs produced and consumed locally." The DEA and federal law enforcement officials would be well advised to heed this caution before rushing to enforce their bankrupt federal law.

For full text of the Supreme Court decision, see
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/04slipopinion.html

ALSO More on another medmar case from Wired... http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,67780,00.html

And an NY Times editorial
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/opinion/08wed2.html?th&emc=th

CRYPTIQUE – Baby got barcode

The secret word is Myoclonic

ANNE BANCROFT -- RIP

I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, BUT I’VE HAD MORE THAN ENOUGH OF THIS CRAP
Yesterday the Supreme Court handed the Federal Government and the DEA overlord powers to nationally control and continue to criminalize all use of marijuana in the USA, despite the fact that ten states have voted in legislation legalizing to some extent the medicinal use of the drug.
An AP report follows that comes courtesy of Mr MR.

Federal authorities may prosecute sick people who smoke pot on doctors' orders, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, concluding that state medical marijuana laws don't protect users from a federal ban on the drug. The decision is a stinging defeat for marijuana advocates who had successfully pushed 10 states to allow the drug's use to treat various illnesses. Justice John Paul Stevens, writing the 6-3 decision, said that Congress could change the law to allow medical use of marijuana. The closely watched case was an appeal by the Bush administration in a case that it lost in late 2003. At issue was whether the prosecution of medical marijuana users under the federal Controlled Substances Act was constitutional. Under the Constitution, Congress may pass laws regulating a state's economic activity so long as it involves "interstate commerce" that crosses state borders. The California marijuana in question was homegrown, distributed to patients without charge and without crossing state lines. Stevens said there are other legal options for patients, "but perhaps even more important than these legal avenues is the democratic process, in which the voices of voters allied with these respondents may one day be heard in the halls of Congress." California's medical marijuana law, passed by voters in 1996, allows people to grow, smoke or obtain marijuana for medical needs with a doctor's recommendation. Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state have laws similar to California. In those states, doctors generally can give written or oral recommendations on marijuana to patients with cancer, HIV and other serious illnesses. In a dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said that states should be allowed to set their own rules. "The states' core police powers have always included authority to define criminal law and to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens," said O'Connor, who was joined by other states' rights advocates. The legal question presented a dilemma for the court's conservatives, who have pushed to broaden states' rights in recent years, invalidating federal laws dealing with gun possession near schools and violence against women on the grounds the activity was too local to justify federal intrusion. O'Connor said she would have opposed California's medical marijuana law if she was a voter or a legislator. But she said the court was overreaching to endorse "making it a federal crime to grow small amounts of marijuana in one's own home for one's own medicinal use." The case concerned two seriously ill California women, Angel Raich and Diane Monson. The two had sued then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, asking for a court order letting them smoke, grow or obtain marijuana without fear of arrest, home raids or other intrusion by federal authorities.

The War on Drugs has been raging for all my quite extended lifetime, and, in a nutshell, I am heartily fucking sick of the whole feeble-minded fiasco. Billions have spent, and billions upon billions more channeled into global crime syndicates and cartels; hundreds of thousands (if not millions) have been incarcerated, lives have been ruined, a massively corrupt drug enforcement industry has been created, and absolutely nothing positive has been achieved in seventy-some years. Recreational drugs are readily available just about any place, and the current system does nothing to provide regulation or protection where it is needed – as in protecting the young. I personally feel that kids should probably not be getting fucked up on anything until they can read, write, handle basic arithmetic, and have a nodding acquaintance with art, science, history, geography, and literature. The current regulation of alcohol seems to work reasonably well. I don’t want to see any nine year-olds sprawled on my doorstep sucking on a gin bottle, but that’s no reason why I should be prevented from having a martini or a shot of Jack after a hard day. I even advise my hard drinking LA friends to take a cab to the bar. I could go disgustedly on about this for pages, but I won’t. I satisfy myself with just a couple of points.

1) This latest Supreme Court idiocy pushes deep into the vexed question of states rights. For the overseas readers, the question of Fed v local control is a core issue in the USA. The Civil War was fought as much over states right as its over freeing the slaves. (That’s what they tell you in the South, at least.) In this instance, it imposes a uniform legal conformity on an increasing plural culture.

2) The reasons for marijuana being illegal at all are becoming more and more shakily Dadaist with the passage of time. We have gone from Harry Anslinger’s poisonous 1930's disinformation that dope was The Weed of Satan and led to rape, murder, madness, and jazz, to the "gateway drug" theory of the 1960s that reefer was fairly benign in itself but led directly to the horrors of heroin. When it was statistically proved that real gateway drug was actually beer, the story switched to "this ain’t your mom’s pot" – the 1990's contention that modern dope was genetically tailored to be so much more powerful that it had to remain outlawed. Now it seems that those in authority don’t even bother. After the Supreme Court decision, Drug Czar John Walters appeared on TV welcoming the ruling and claiming that it would stop the insidious movement for full legalization, and "save lives." No part of the media questioned what lives might be saved when we still await a single authenticated marijuana death, and it would seem that Waters requires dope to remain illegal simply because he says so. I guess I could get violently angry, but I think I’ll just fire up a blunt.
Here’s a bit more background...
http://www.drugpolicy.org/news/pressroom/pressrelease/pr050405.cfm
http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/21922/

LINK
Our pal hipspinster blogs about treason.
http://hipspinster.blogspot.com/

The secret word is High

A SUITABLE CASE FOR TREATMENT
After a plate of Chinese hors d’oeuvres, and inhaling too many paint fumes (don’t ask), I found myself in the grip of a nightmare in which all the humans had vanished, and I was desperately freeing all of the incarcerated, and, in some cases, mutilated animals from confinement in cages, and boxes, and a lot of railroad cars. They were mainly horses and elephants, and the first part of the first phase of the dream was very unpleasant, frantic, and bloody, but later, up on the roof, I was surrounded by a mighty population of the inevitable cats who all wanted to be fed, but I was able to handle that because I had an almost unlimited supply of cat food, brands that my own cat Newton refuses to eat, and all the cats liked and thanked me. Then I woke up, and had to get up and smoke a cigarette, drink a glass of Alker Seltzer, and ask myself what the fuck that was all about.
Later I watched a segment on 60 Minutes about these assholes in Wyoming who want to kill the grizzly bears because they believe they threaten their rural real-estate, neglecting to realize that they built their ranch-style retreats in the middle of bear country, and they’re whining that the bears will eat their wretched children, although it’s a matter of record that grizzlies have not killed a single human in Wyoming in the last hundred years.

I am very tired of belonging to this species.

The secret word is Disgusted

QUOTES
"Between the sensory and intellectual world, sages always have experienced an intermediate realm, one akin to what we call the imaginings of poets. If you are a religious believer, whether normative or heterodox, this middle world is experienced as the presence of the divine in our everyday world. If you are more skeptical, such presence is primarily aesthetic or perhaps a kind of perspectivism." - Harold Bloom, Omens of the Millennium

"There may be some kind of phenomenon - maybe something as materialistic as fluctuations in the earth's gravitational and magnetic fields, as was suggested by Persinger, a behavioral scientist from Canada, who suggested that energy fluctuations cause wave changes which cause hallucinatory or psychedelic states."-Robert Anton Wilson

CRYPTIQUE – I may be planning something.