That's right. The pot growers are out to kill us all. I think they just declared war on common sense.It's no wonder then that federal officials are now revisiting their previously failed effort to link terrorism to cannabis, the only real cash cow in the government's so-called War on Drugs. Only difference is, this time, they don't have Tommy Chong as a scapegoat.
Unable or unwilling to solve the nation's crippling meth addiction or its hypocritical dependency on prescribed narcotics like oxycontin, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) recently rang the terrorism alarm to nail pot growers in Redding's Shasta-Trinity National Forest in California. Along the way, ONDCP "czar" John Walters showed off not only the Bush administration's love of twisted terminology but also its subcultural savvy by coining a memorable phrase of his own.
"We have kind of a reefer blindness," Walters explained during a Redding press conference on the ONDCP's Operation Alesia, a cannabis-eradication program coordinated by the California National Guard's Counterdrug Taskforce and the Shasta County Sheriff's Office. Walters followed that clever turn of phrase with the reliable terrorist designation to describe the armed growers cultivating cannabis in Shasta County. "These people are armed; they're dangerous. [They're] violent criminal terrorists." He even went so far to argue that the "terrorists" growing weed in Shasta County, as the Redding Record Searchlight reported, "wouldn't hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties."
Except there seem to be a couple major problems with Walters' characterizations. For one, Walters declined to explain during the press conference what Operation Alesia's specific goals were. More importantly, he didn't offer up any concrete names of the terrorists or their ideological objectives. What legalization advocates and law enforcement authorities alike were left with was yet another hazy strategy based on loose terminology whose only purpose it seems is to confiscate as much pot as possible from Shasta County's public lands.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Another Terrorist Group
Guess who is the latest group to be designated as "terrorists"?http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/60854
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5 comments:
Now, I'd be willing to fight a war against the potheads.
You'd stand on the battlefield for about ten minutes staring off into space, and then you'd end up sitting in front of the tv eating pizza, and potato chips for the rest of the war.
After a couple of days, everyone would forget that there ever was a war.
Where do I sign up?
Sorry, Fairlane, but I'm on the side of the growers. Of course, you might not notice, as I'm munching chips and leftover chinese food while the naked chick in my room is adjusting my chakra's, so I'll be a while before terroristing.
I meant "We'd" instead of "you'd."
OMG, what else are they going to call "terrorists"? If every criminal is now a "terrorist" then there is no end to how many "enemy combatants" they can designate and how many people they can squirrel away in Gitmo or in some foreign country exempt from our laws.
And to reiterate the points above, pot is hardly the substance of terrorism or even criminality. Peace, love, rock and roll and munchies. Works for me.
i think it's a simple communication breakdown. Somebody said "the world needs more bongs", and someone heard "bombs".
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