Crossposted from GreenState Project
Here's today's term:
Recycled Bullshit
Cannabis cash 'funds Islamist terrorism
Cannabis smokers are unwittingly funding Islamist extremists linked to terror attacks in Spain, Morocco and Algeria, according to a joint investigation by the Spanish and French secret services. The finding will be seized on both by campaigners for a harsher clampdown on cannabis and by those who argue that legalisation is the only way to end a petty dealing trend that is dragging growing numbers of teenagers into crime.
They are correct in that assumption.
How people can connect all the dots but the most important one remains something of a mystery to me.
As always it's a comparison of willful stupidity and a purposeful agenda on the part of governments.
More awaits......
The investigation by the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia and the Renseignements Generaux was launched after Spanish police found that the Islamists behind the March 2004 bombings in Madrid bought their explosives from former miners in return for blocks of hashish. The bombings claimed 191 lives.
Spain's role as a transit point for drugs was highlighted last week when Madrid hosted the US Drug Enforcement Agency's annual conference. Experts heard not only that North African hashish was funding terrorism in Europe, but also that West Africa had become a new hub for South American cocaine shipments bound for Europe.
I must digress a moment: West Africa has become a new hub for cocaine trafficking? How interesting! West Africa has demonstrated that is has significant oil reserves. Like Colombia: cocaine AND oil. And now it's becoming the focus of the US Federal Government, just like Colombia. Drug war acts as a cover to get troops on the ground.
Back to the matters at hand: a week after a visit from the DEA we get a joint report from various "secret service agencies" that the lowly pot plant is funding Islamic mayhem.
How amazing.
This was a talking point from Team Bush before the WTC had even cooled off. They were focused far more on pot than on bin Laden. And that is exactly the state of things as of this date. They haven't got bin Laden, but they did get Marc Emery famous Canadian cannabis promoter. Arrested him on Canadian soil for breaking American laws in Canada. Somehow, that's just not the same.
From Marijuana and Terrorism in America
In the wake of September 11th, the US Federal Government has worked day and night, feverishly taking advantage of the hysteria and the confusion to obtain long-sought policy changes historically decried as unconstitutional.
The impact on cannabis culture has been the creation of a setting in which the Bush Administration has elected to intensify the war on "drugs", replete with new attempts at demonizing cannabis culture as somehow funding terrorist networks with their black market spending (ie: buying pot).
Various sorts of people, from Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert to the current head of the D.A.R.E. program, have openly suggested that drug users were helping terrorists attack America by buying illegal "drugs" since investigations of the suspected terror organizations found them earning substantial money from "drug" trafficking.
This is actually not news. We saw reports all throughout the 80’s and 90’s about the billions of dollars the cartels were raking in. We saw that those cartels were in South American countries which also had large Guerrilla movements. And we saw at least 2 major cartels go down in flames, only to be replaced by smaller organizations. The profits remain for those who can take them. And, as timeless as a certain scotch, those drug profits create invisible funds to buy weapons to fight not-so-invisible wars.
And here we are, more than 5 years later and the same nonsense is being paraded to us.
There are two parts to this.
- This is just more reefer mad government bullshit. al Queda may actually be using hashish to buy weapons. That doesn't offend me per se. Money's money and terrorism needs money. The people SELLING THEM the explosives are just a tad more responsible than "cannabis smokers".
- These terrorists would be shit out of luck if cannabis was legal. It is the illegality of cannabis that supports its outrageous value.
Cannabis HAS to be relegalized and regulated such that the black market valuation dynamic is prevented.
The drug warriors will be citing all this as a nee to crack down even further on cannabis. We will be told, again, that we need to tolerate even more infringement on and curtailing of our Constitutional freedoms so that we can keep marijuana out of the hands of terrorists so they won't make money on it.
It has to be legal again. (regulated, like tobacco and alcohol. Stop whining.)
Contrary to all the ignorant, reefer mad replies I get from Democrats sometimes (people I have expected to be more on the ball) there is huge support for cannabis reform in America.
You just don't find it in the MSM. Their job is to obfuscate and take notes for the GOP.
Check THIS out: I came across a freeper thread about this and the commentary was quite surprising:
To: Hadean
Clearly, Brits who feel they must indulge themselves should get it from California or Hawaii..
2 posted on 05/12/2007 6:13:18 PM PDT by sheik yerbouty
*****
To: sheik yerbouty
They need to grow their own. It’s not hard.
3 posted on 05/12/2007 6:18:22 PM PDT by cripplecreek
*****
To: sheik yerbouty
Well it really is an easy plant to grow and grow well.
I used to smoke and almost never paid for it because it was easier to simply grow my own. I could give lessons on growing it.
I’m about as far from libertarian as I can get but I tend to think it should be decriminalized and regulated like alcohol but only for personal use.
BTW I don’t feel that way about any other drug.
10 posted on 05/12/2007 6:31:05 PM PDT by cripplecreek
Thanks, Freepers! Lots more at the link.
Here's an issue where you can see the freepers and I tend to have some agreement. A rare event indeed.
And too important to overlook.
Suffice it to say that, as I have said often before, cannabis is an umbrella issue - meaning it enjoys wide support across all demographic boundaries, unlike wedge issues which are most usually contained withing said boundaries and used to reinforce the separation of groups.
Our freeper friends bring up part of the solution - buying American weed. Or growing one's own. Either way it is relegalization that is the key here.
Cannabis is ONLY valuable because it is illegal. End of discussion.
Black market dynamics show that the more effort is put into enforcement of the prohibition the more lucrative it is to TRAFFICK. Not to grow and not to sell. It's the movement of the cannabis from one place to another that is so lucrative. Same with heroin and cocaine.
Trafficking For Profit
For the folks who have no idea what that is, hashish is to cannabis as espresso is to coffee. Just a delicious and potent concentration.
Being concentrated it is more valuable and thus far easier to transport from producer to retailer. Cocaine and heroin are even better becuase, like diamonds, a whole lot of money can be placed in a tiny size for transport. Cannabis is just too bulky to be messed with for such long hauls. It's bulky, even when bricked.
So, again, the issue of cannabis law reform is inescapable.
While I think this report is highly suspect - DEA talks with the secret services of a couple other governments a week before we see this report - I also think it is fodder for the reform movement, just as the first news item mused.
Whther this report is actually true or, as many reports about cannabis are, false or slightly true and massively amplified (the usual MO) it still supports the need to take money out of cannabis.
So, this is just another bullshit scam inserted into the media on behalf of those who find it to be of huge importance to keep the venerable cannabis plant illegal and as highly demonized as possible.
This report will be used by the GOP as evidence we need to stop and/or demonize the relegalization process in America. (despite the fact we are talking about Spain and Algiers and many places very far away).
And like most things that emanate from those scumbags, it's misleading and stupid. But it will be all through the media.
It's very simple: America grows it's own weed. There's no need to import. When I buy my next outrageously overpriced bag of herb, it will likely have been grown in the US, if not right here in Georgia. I won't be supporting al Qeda no matter what those bozos in the GOP want you to believe.
Nobody's shipping marijuana from Algiers to sell in America. If they are, they are very stupid.
But then everything about cannabis being illegal is stupid as hell.
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