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The Free Journal Volume 2 Issue 3
The Free Journal/ASCII Edition
Volume II, Issue 3
Copyright 1992 The Free Journal (Individual articles copyright by author)
Editor-in-Chief: Sameer Parekh
(zane@ddsw1.mcs.com)
This is the Free Journal. Submissions are welcome. Some
characters have the high bit set. Distribute at will; cite authors.
(Or editors if no author is given.)
This is not meant to be an electronic newsletter. This is
meant to be an example of on-paper underground newspapers to educate
the masses about freedom and similar issues.
_______________________________________________________________________________
HELP AND DONATIONS ACCEPTED
Note: Information is available from Sameer Parekh which is more
accurate than that which is provided from the authorities. It is not
completely accurate, but it comes fairly close. Action based on
misinformation is very dangerous. Action based on accurate
information is much safer, although not without risks. Please ask for
this information. It can prove very valuable.
In addition, if you are taking Health class, please contact
me. I would like to provide more accurate information than is given
in Health class, and thus if this information is provided to disprove
what is said in Health class, the information will reach more people.
_______________________________________________________________________________
----
Brain Waves
----
The following is taken from Paul Hager's ÒMarijuana
MythsÓ a pamphlet published by the Hoosier Cannabis Relegalization
Coalition.
7. Marijuana "flattens" human brainwaves
This is an out-and-out lie perpetrated by the Partnership for
a Drug-Free America. A few years ago, they ran a TV ad that purported
to show, first, a normal human brainwave, and second, a flat brainwave
from a 14-year-old "on marijuana". When researchers called up the TV
networks to complain about this commercial, the Partnership had to
pull it from the air. It seems that the Partnership faked the flat
"marijuana brainwave". In reality, marijuana has the effect of
slightly INCREASING alpha wave activity. Alpha waves are associated
with meditative and relaxed states which are, in turn, often
associated with human creativity.
7) For information about the Partnership ad, see Jack Herer's
book, The Emperor Wears No Clothes, 1990, p. 74. For information on
memory and the alpha brainwave enhancement effect, see "Marijuana,
Memory, and Perception", by R. L. Dornbush, M.D., M. Fink, M.D., and
A. M. Freedman, M.D., presented at the 124th annual meeting of the
American Psychiatric Association, May 3-7, 1971.
----
Nicotine and Conspiracy
----
Nicotine is addictive. Nicotine is more addictive than crack,
valium, alcohol, heroin, cocaine, caffeine, PCP, marijuana, and LSD.
(Health Magazine Nov./Dec. 1990) Tobacco kills almost four hundred
thousand people every year.
During the colonial period, Native Americans were so addicted
to nicotine that they took tobacco with them on trading voyages to
Europe. In World War II prisoner-of-war camps the prisoners traded
away their mere one thousand calories per day of food for tobacco. In
postwar Germany, people were so addicted to nicotine that they were
trading their rations of food for more than their one or two pack per
day ration of cigarettes. (One for women, two for men.) In addition,
it has been found that during and after wars, in times when cigarettes
were rationed, people took to prostitution and stealing for tobacco.
Some theories exist that the hunter-gatherers of prehistoric times
settled down because of their addiction to tobacco; they needed to
stay with their tobacco fields, could not be as nomadic as they once
were, and planted conventional crops for food along with the tobacco
to support their addiction.
In a study by Consumer's Union, they found that most young
people do not realize the addiction potential of nicotine. Although
most of the teenagers surveyed knew about the lung disease, the
majority of the smokers in the group expected to be able to quit this
drug within five years.
The societal opinion towards the drugs of and tobacco is that
they are "non-drugs." It is well represented in the term, "drugs and
alcohol." The term should be redundant, but it is not. This opinion
fosters the environment which creates nearly 400,000 deaths a year
from tobacco and the 100,000 deaths per year from alcohol. (Not
including half of all highway deaths and sixty-five percent of all
murders.)
The conspiracy is obvious. Tobacco and alcohol companies
(e.g. Phillip Morris) pour thousands of dollars into advertising under
the Partnership for a Drug-Free America (PDFA). The PDFA merely
propagates lies about safer drugs which, if made legal, would be a
large competitor for the alcohol and tobacco markets. (Some of the
PDFA statements are true, but it is hard to find the truth through all
the lies.) Phillip-Morris also spends money celebrating the 200th
anniversary of the Bill of Rights, which was written on hemp (i.e.
marijuana plant fiber) paper, but they don't say that.
-- Sameer Parekh
ÒThese are the brainwaves of a normal 14 year old/These are the
brainwaves of a 14 year old after drinking a Bud Dry.Ó
-- Metallica ÒFight Fire with FireÓ
Further Reading: Brecher, Edward M. and the Editors of Consumers
Reports, Licit & Illicit Drugs. (Little, Brown, and Company: Boston
1972).
----
Bush Chips Away at Constitution
----
George Bush, perhaps more than any other individual in U.S.
history, has expanded the emergency powers of presidency. In 1976, as
Director of Central Intelligence, he convened Team B, a group of
rabidly anti-communist intellectuals and former government officials
to reevaluate CIA inhouse intelligence estimates on Soviet military
strength. The resulting report recommended draconian civil defense
measures which led to President Ford's Executive Order 11921
authorizing plans to establish government control of the means of
production, distribution, energy sources, wages and salaries, credit
and the flow of money in U.S. financial institutions in a national
emergency.1
As Vice President, Bush headed the Task Force on Combatting
Terrorism, that recommended: extended and flexible emergency
presidential powers to combat terrorism; restrictions on congressional
oversight in counter-terrorist planning; and curbing press coverage of
terrorist incidents.2 The report gave rise to the Anti-Terrorism Act
of 1986, that granted the President clear-cut authority to respond to
terrorism with all appropriate means including deadly force. It
authorized the Immigration and Naturalization Service to control and
remove not only alien terrorists but potential terrorist aliens and
those "who are likely to be supportive of terrorist activity within
the U.S."3 The bill superseded the War Powers Act by imposing no time
limit on the President's use of force in a terrorist situation, and
lifted the requirement that the President consult Congress before
sanctioning deadly force.
From 1982 to 1988, Bush led the Defense Mobilization Planning
Systems Agency (DMPSA), a secret government organization, and spent
more than $3 billion upgrading command, control, and communications in
FEMA's continuity of government infrastructures. Continuity of
Government (COG) was ostensibly created to assure government
functioning during war, especially nuclear war. The Agency was so
secret that even many members of the Pentagon were unaware of its
existence and most of its work was done without congressional
oversight.
Project 908, as the DMPSA was sometimes called, was similar to
its parent agency FEMA in that it came under investigation for
mismanagement and contract irregularities.4 During this same period,
FEMA had been fraught with scandals including emergency planning with
a distinctly anti-constitutional flavor. The agency would have
sidestepped Congress and other federal agencies and put the President
and FEMA directly in charge of the U.S. planning for martial rule.
Under this state, the executive would take upon itself powers far
beyond those necessary to address national emergency contingencies.5
Bush's "anything goes" anti-drug strategy, announced on
September 6, 1989, suggested that executive emergency powers be used:
to oust those suspected of associating with drug users or sellers from
public and private housing; to mobilize the National Guard and U.S.
military to fight drugs in the continental U.S.; to confiscate private
property belonging to drug users, and to incarcerate first time
offenders in work camps.6
The record of Bush's fast and loose approach to
constitutionally guaranteed civil rights is a history of the erosion
of liberty and the consolidation of an imperial executive.
--Diana Reynolds
1. Executive Order 11921, "Emergency preparedness Functions, June
11, 1976. Federal Register, vol. 41, no. 116. The report was
attacked by such notables as Ray Cline, the CIA's former Deputy
Director, retired CIA intelligence analyst Arthur Macy Cox, and the
former head of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Paul
Warnke for blatantly manipulating CIA intelligence to achieve the
political ends of Team B's rightwing members. See Cline, quoted in
"Carter to Inherit Intense Dispute on Soviet Intentions," Mary Marder,
Washington Post, January 2, 1977; Arthur Macy Cox, "Why the U.S. Since
1977 Has Been Mis-perceiving Soviet Military Strength," New York
Times, October 20, 1980; Paul Warnke, "George Bush and Team B," New
York Times, September 24, 1988.
2. George Bush, "Public Report of the Vice President's Task Force
On Combatting Terrorism" (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing
Office), February 1986.
3. Robert J. Walsh, Assistant Commissioner, Investigations
Division, Immigration and Naturalization Service, "Alien Border
Control Committee" (Washington, DC), October 1, 1988.
4. Steven Emerson, "America's Doomsday Project," U.S. News &
World Report, August 7, 1989.
5. See: Diana Reynolds, "FEMA and the NSC: The Rise of the
National Security State," CAIB, Number 33 (Winter 1990); Keenan Peck,
"The Take-Charge Gang," The Progressive, May 1985; Jack Anderson,
"FEMA Wants to Lead Economic War," Washington Post, January 10, 1985.
6. These Presidential powers were authorized by the Anti-Drug
Abuse Act of 1988, Public Law 100-690: 100th Congress. See also:
Diana Reynolds, "The Golden Lie," The Humanist, September/October
1990; Michael Isikoff, "Is This Determination or Using a Howitzer to
Kill a Fly?" Washington Post National Weekly, August 27-September 2,
1990; Bernard Weintraub, "Bush Considers Calling Guard To Fight Drug
Violence in Capital," New York Times, March 21, 1989.
----
The EFF
----
A new world is arising in the vast web of digital, electronic
media which connect us. Computer-based communication media like
electronic mail and computer conferencing are becoming the basis of
new forms of community. These communities without a single, fixed
geographical location comprise the first settlements on an electronic
frontier.
While well-established legal principles and cultural norms
give structure and coherence to uses of conventional media like
newspapers, books, and telephones, the new digital media do not so
easily fit into existing frameworks. Conflicts come about as the law
struggles to define its application in a context where fundamental
notions of speech, property, and place take profoundly new forms.
People sense both the promise and the threat inherent in new computer
and communications technologies, even as they struggle to master or
simply cope with them in the workplace and the home.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been established to
help civilize the electronic frontier; to make it truly useful and
beneficial not just to a technical elite, but to everyone; and to do
this in a way which is in keeping with our society's highest
traditions of the free and open flow of information and communication.
To that end, the Electronic Frontier Foundation will:
1. Engage in and support educational activities which increase
popular understanding of the opportunities and challenges posed by
developments in computing and telecommunications.
2. Develop among policy-makers a better understanding of the
issues underlying free and open telecommunications, and support the
creation of legal and structural approaches which will ease the
assimilation of these new technologies by society.
3. Raise public awareness about civil liberties issues arising
from the rapid advancement in the area of new computer-based
communications media. Support litigation in the public interest to
preserve, protect, and extend First Amendment rights within the realm
of computing and telecommunications technology.
4. Encourage and support the development of new tools which will
endow non-technical users with full and easy access to computer-based
telecommunications. The Electronic Frontier Foundation 155 Second
Street Cambridge, MA 02141 +1 617 864 0665
----
The Eighth Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines
imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
In Tallahatchie County, Florida, people in jail are charged
ten dollars a day if they can not come up with bail, regardless of the
length of stay or the outcome of their trial. Thus, someone who can
not afford the exorbitant bails now required of drug violations must
stay in jail until the trial, and after that, even if he is acquitted,
he must pay the rent to the jail, and if he can not pay he is found in
contempt and must go to jail, suffering additional rent.
Ricky Isom in Cobb Country, Georgia was sentenced to a life in
prison for selling $20 worth of cocaine. Due to mandatory sentence
laws, he must be given a life sentence. Even the judge thought
sentencing him to this degree was wrong, but it was necessitated by
law. These sentencing laws overcrowd the jails, and rapists and
murders are paroled in order to free up the jail for more perpetrators
of these victimless crimes.
(Another Right Violated...The Ninth and Tenth Coming soon!)
