Turned back

A short time ago, I wrote about Judge Anna Diggs Taylor denying a stay to her order that the administration cease wiretapping without complying with the constitution and laws.

This stay has now been reinstated by the 6th circuit, meaning the administration is free to violate any laws prohibiting their listening in on any conversation you may make, with no warrant. They will listen because they think they can find their enemies, and eliminate them. The most loyal and trusting of the Republican followers believe that Bush’s enemies are the same enemies who attacked the World Trade Center on September the 11th, 2001.

Still, it will not be Bush who is listening. It will be people who work for the administration and who have other priorities, political priorities. Priorities that may include drawing up enemies in the government, to prevent leaks, of course. Politics becomes dangerous, and everything falls to the administration’s center.

There is little stopping this, as I’ve written, but it is not cause for more alarm than anything else that has been happening lately. This is part of the process by which we learn to build a working society again, as the old one has failed. Withdraw yourself from support of torture, do not vote for anyone who voted for torture, and come away from that.

Hat-tip to Paul the Spud.

This will be updated throughout the next day as there will be things written elsewhere to link for more.

Foley

I don’t try to analyze Mark Foley. Obviously you should not trust the Republicans in congress with your children, but other than that, I have nothing to say to him or about him. Shakespeare’s Sister does, however.

Save ourselves

Hypocrisy occurs when you repeat a lesson that was meant for yourself to apply it to other people, and then judge their conduct according to the standard you did not yourself meet.

I am a hypocrite. This is my confession. I condemn it in others when I have no right to be uncondemned in myself, and so I am condemned for it. All things are lessons to be learned.

I project and I do all the things that I observe in others, and I engage in denial when I am caught out. These are human behaviors. They are not unique to conservatives, or to liberals. They are shared by everyone as psychological tricks to manage discordant information. And that was classic denial right there. I’m so vain I sometimes think the song is about me. So I know when I see it in others, and I can talk about it in ways that are very personal. That is hypocrisy and it feeds my vanity to do it.

We have a problem as a people, as a human race, that we are facing, two or more split realities. One which is conservative and represented in the United States by the administration and by its press department Fox News, disinforming the people who watch and believe. The other which is everything else, and everyone else. And this is just the most dramatic example. People who get their news exclusively from television do not have the same mental reality model as people who get their news principally from the internet.

Discordant worldviews are nothing new, but when a large enough number of them become violent and the others are being encouraged to defend in the same way, an imminent immanent destruction is at hand. Choose to fight and you destroy the world, just as it would be to the destruction of a mind to be turned against itself.

We really are all one consciousness. We really are all one being. We really should not be fighting one another. Let us have our cannabis and we will not have a war have peace.

The song is about all of us.

Stop censoring yourselves

Claire Wolfe, a writer whose considered opinions deserve to be read regardless of your political orientation, has come out of the closet as a *gasp* cannabis user.

This transcends left and right, this surpasses our disagreements about the present administration and the way to fix the government, to make it better or replace it with something that works and does not threaten our safety more than the theoretical risks it pretends to protect us from.

We need to not be ashamed of ourselves, and to stand up for what we know to be true, and have this conversation about cannabis and how it helps us to understand one another. The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

For a long time, Claire censored herself, and did not say she used cannabis.

What’s ironic, what’s really, really ironic, is that the client for whom I censored myself didn’t actually ask me to pull the two blog entries I’d written on enjoying the herb. He wanted me to change the copy to say I was drinking while writing.

Keep in mind that he was worried not just because I was publicly admitting to illegal activity. He was horrified that his opponents could tar him by saying, “Yeah, that writer he works with is a pothead. She even writes his copy when she’s stoned.” And again, I can completely understand that fear.

But it would be okay for me to write with my brain cells dying and my liver pickling from the traditional writers’ booze habit … no problem. And that’s not my client’s prejudice. That was my client reflecting “society’s” prejudice.

It’s just that sort of thing that makes me have to speak up, however belatedly.

Thank you for speaking up, Claire. I encourage more people to speak about this subject because it needs to become socially understood and accepted that we use cannabis and it helps us, it is not the demon that we are told and far safer even as recreation than almost any other substance that might otherwise be used, legal or otherwise.

Those who have no personal experience of cannabis cannot understand that it makes a positive difference to our ability to speak and write, they imagine it is like alcohol only stronger and more disorienting. It is nothing like that.

I cannot stress strongly enough that the survival of our species depends upon recognizing the difference between a medicine and a poison. Cannabis is medicine.

Oh look, she posted that at 4:20pm too. When that happens accidentally, it’s always nice to notice.

Update: She noticed it too, the next day.

Nonsense posing as logic

Andrew J. Coulson writes in faulty justification of the war on Iraq:

The U.S. was not safer in 1942–1945 than it had been in early 1941. We entered World War II because winning it would make America safer. In trying to win it, we suffered over a million casualties.

He is suggesting that it is valuable to fight and win wars if you pretend you will eventually be made safe, regardless of morality.

Germany was a country that did more than threaten its neighbors with the possibility of war, and Iraq didn’t even have weapons of mass destruction that were alleged to be a threat, so the comparison is faulty from the inception.

But Andrew doesn’t care what the original deceptive justification for the war was, only that it must be won, regardless of its merits.

Anyhow, I could dissect and take seriously what he says, but it isn’t meant to be taken seriously at all. There is no greater peace on the horizon by virtue of more war, whether it is in Iraq or a broadening of the conflict to include Iran. The ultimate peace he is offering us is only the peace of the grave.

As Matt Bargainer said:

That is, what has actually happened since the war began doesn’t matter, because what war supporters said would happen could theoretically still happen – kind of; we may have to accept defeat in the scavenger hunt and cakewalk events – as long as we keep trying to make it happen. Plus watch Saving Private Ryan.

War does not make you safe. You will soon find you have more enemies than friends, and when you become more afraid you then ask your enemies themselves to protect you from worse ones, and soon you are purely a victim yourself, beset on all sides by people who despise you.

It’s easy to fix, with a little head adjustment, but that’s the thing most people resist more than anything else. We are so committed to our own delusions that we will sacrifice reality to perpetuate them if we don’t wake up and realize what we’re doing. Peace comes from being peaceful.

It was all for the union of the woman and the man

Peter Gabriel & Sinead O’Connor – Blood of Eden

Be good to one another.

Say hello

to Bad Attitudes.

None are so old that they are no longer young

Robert Anton Wilson has always been a very silly man, but a good man. He does things that seem clownish and absurd, like send an e-mail to George Bush, and conduct a correspondence with the automated reply. But he makes an excellent point.

Dear President Bush,

I’ve been looking at TV news a lot lately, and have noted that the drug commercials seem full of ‘liberal’ [Jeffersonian/Kerryan] progaganda. They all tell me to consult my DOCTOR before choosing a medicine — NONE OF THEM TELL ME TO CONSULT THE TSAR!!!

My doctor disagrees with the Tsar about which pain killer will best treat my postpolio symptoms. The commmercials are trying to lure me into following research-based ideas rather than faith-based ideas!

Are you going to allow this heresy to continue?

Worriedly,

Robert Wilson

Thank you for e-mailing President Bush. Your ideas and comments are very important to him.

Because of the large volume of e-mail received, the President cannot personally respond to each message. However, the White House staff considers and reports citizen ideas and concerns.

In addition to President@WhiteHouse.gov, we have developed White House Web Mail, an automated e-mail response system. Please access http://www.whitehouse.gov/webmail to submit comments on a specific issue.

Additionally, we welcome you to visit our website for the most up-to-date information on current events and topics of interest to you.

Dear President Bush,

Forgive my mental slowness,but I don’t understand your answer.

Should I follow the research-based opinions of my doctor or the faith-based opinions of the Tsar?

And: if we should follow faith instead of research, why don’t you stop those ads that tell us to consult our doctors and make them tell us to consult the Tsar?

Your obedient serf,

Robert Anton Wilson

Thank you for e-mailing President Bush. Your ideas and comments are very important to him.

Because of the large volume of e-mail received, the President cannot personally respond to each message. However, the White House staff considers and reports citizen ideas and concerns.

In addition to President@WhiteHouse.gov, we have developed White House Web Mail, an automated e-mail response system. Please access http://www.whitehouse.gov/webmail to submit comments on a specific issue.

Additionally, we welcome you to visit our website for the most up-to-date information on current events and topics of interest to you.

Robert Anton Wilson has written many books and articles about his philosophy, and was a stepping stone for my own thinking, lo many years ago. He is needing some help now, I gather, and I pass along the word. If you can’t do much, like me, give him your lunch money for today.

Update: Skippy points to Michael Hawkins who points to American Samizdat also alerting their readers to this request for assistance.

Welcome to all who come here

I really want to highlight the ongoing conversation here with a prohibitionist doctor: Prescription drugs kill, cannabis has never killed anyone.

I would welcome all prohibitionists who want to dispute anything I say to have a go at it. Or jump in on any of the articles here, and let’s talk. If your Michael Tam is incapable of scoring a valid point, perhaps you have someone better.

The fact is that the medical evidence is overwhelming by now. The government has not permitted the research to be done in the formal settings that they recognize, so they pretend it doesn’t exist.

So many people, including a small number of those in my own family, are believers in the myth of cannabis the drug of abuse. All use is medical, even when it is recreational or religious. All use of cannabis helps your body to cure itself of disease and reverse damage that has been done to it. Nothing is certain to be harmless but some things are more helpful than any possible risk could justify their avoidance. Consider water, which can drown you or if you merely drink too much in too short a time, can cause your body to go into a coma and die, a condition called hyponatremia.

Cannabis could be dangerous, I guess. I could imagine scenarios, but they don’t bear repeating because they are flights of fancy for the most part. What if, and all. Proven harm though, that’s a lot harder to come up with. So I invite those who disagree or think there is a case to be made that I am wrong, to go ahead and make your case.

Thought of the morning

I write in anger, sometimes, and the results may embarrass me, tempting me to censor myself after the fact. I would rather not do this, but trust that those who read can forgive me my mistakes. I am not your infallible first person omniscient narrator of the truth. Nobody is.

Some people do a better job of pretending they know everything, and sometimes people buy in to that and follow a leader without using their individual discretion. Don’t do that with me or with anyone else.

Disagree with me sometimes, because sometimes I am wrong. In this I am no different from anyone else, but I am not deliberately wrong. Don’t be deceptive because that will not help you, and I will tell you the truth as I see it.

Morning will come

It feels dark and oppressive in America right now, like right after the planes hit the buildings. This is the bigger terror, the fear of our own government. But it is fear that we can refuse to be ruled by, and remember that their fear is greater than ours. The reason for the abruptness of the changes, the reason for the shocking behavior in plain view, the sheer outrageousness of it all, is their loss of credibility. They feel their influence slipping away and are fighting like wounded animals for their political lives; in the case of the war criminals, perhaps for their actual lives. I want there to be no violence against any of them. I want there to be a peaceful accounting, a full confession and apology. I wish I thought the chances were better, and that reminds me again of the time after the towers fell, and I hoped there would not be a war then.

If there will be a war, I won’t be a combatant, in any case. I will write my thoughts as I do now, and advocate more communication to end conflict and provide a peaceful government that we can all eventually subscribe to willingly. Only by pursuing change peacefully can there be a society of peace achieved, and we require real peace at long last before some maniac destroys the whole world. There would be not very much good accomplished if you only succeeded in replacing the current administration with an equally vicious one.

So there is no need for fear, for we who will not fight a war. It has often been the case that those who sit out a conflict from the sidelines are called cowards, but we are not. It is moral courage which we exercise by not doing the easy thing of going along with the crowd. Nor is it courageous to abandon your family to risk your life in the streets. If there will be an uprising, I will be “downsitting” right here, and talking about peace, and saying no war for peace.