In Trump's World

In Trump's World:
Obama: Kenyan
LeBron James: dumb
Don Lemon: dumb
Maxine Waters: low IQ
black countries: shitholes
black athletes: SOBs
Black tenants: unwelcome
Black workers: lazy
Central Park 5: guilty
Mexicans: rapists
Muslims: terrorists
Indians: fake
Nazis: very fine people

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) August 4, 2018

Drugs & Politics

The Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) is the leading organization in the U.S.A promoting drug policies that are grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights. Ethan Nadelman, founder and executive director of the DPA, talks about the politics of drugs over a period of 150 years.

This gives food for thought.

Transcript

If you ask the question why are some drugs legal and others illegal. Why are cigarettes and alcohol legal and pharmaceuticals in the middle and these other drugs — marijuana and, you know, other ones illegal? You know, some people sort of inherently assume well this must be because there was a thoughtful consideration of the relative risks of drugs and, you know — but then that can't be because we know alcohol is more associated with violence than almost any illegal drugs. And cigarettes are more addictive than any of the illegal drugs. I mean, heroin addicts routinely say it's harder to quit cigarettes than it is to quit heroin.

So, it's not as if there was ever any kind of National Academy of Science that a hundred years ago decided that these drugs — these ones had to be illegal and those ones legal. And it's not as if this is in the Bible or in the Code of Hammurabi. I mean, nobody was making legal distinctions among many of these drugs back in — until the twentieth century essentially.

So if you ask how and why this distinction got made, what you realize when you look at the history is it has almost nothing to do with the relative risks of these drugs and almost everything to do with who used and who was perceived to use these drugs, right.
So there's — you know, back in the 1870's when the majority of opiate consumers were middle aged white women, you know — throughout the country using them for their aches and pains and for their, you know, the time of the month and menopause and there was no aspirin.

There was no penicillin. You know, lots of diarrhea because of bad sanitation and nothing stops you up like opiates. I mean, millions — many more — a much higher percentage of the population back then used opiates than now.

But nobody thought about criminalizing it because nobody wanted to put, you know, auntie or grandma behind bars, right. But then when the Chinese started coming to the country in large numbers in the 1870's and 80's and, you know, working on the railroads and working in the mines and working in factories and, you know — and then going back home at the end of the night to smoke up a little opium the way they did in the old country. The same way White people were having a couple of whiskeys in the evening.
And that's when you got the first opium prohibition laws. In Nevada, in California in the 1870's and 80's directed at the Chinese minorities. It was all about the fear — what would those Chinamen with their opium do to our precious women. You know, addicting them and seducing them and turning them into sex slaves and all this sort of stuff.

The first anti-cocaine laws were in the South in the early part of the twentieth century directed at black men working on the docks and the fear. You know, what would happen to those black men when they took that white powder up their black noses and forgot their proper place in society. You know, going out — the first time anybody ever said that, you know, the cops needed a 38 would not bring down a Negro crazed on cocaine. You needed a 45.

I mean, the New York Times, the paper of record, reporting this stuff as fact back in those days. That's when you got the first cocaine prohibition laws. The first marijuana prohibition laws were in the Midwest and the Southwest directed at Mexican migrants, Mexican Americans taking the good jobs from the good white people. Going back home to their communities, smoking a little of that funny smoking, you know, marijuana, reefer cigarette. And once again the fear, what would this minority do to our precious women and children.

So, I mean, it's always been about that. I mean even alcohol prohibition was to some extent a broader conflict between the white white Americans and the not so white white Americans, right. The white white Americans coming from northern and western Europe in the eighteenth, early nineteenth century with all of their stuff. And then the not so white white Americans coming from southern Europe and eastern Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century bringing with them their beer and their vino and, you know, their schlivowitz, right. I mean, it was all about that type of conflict.

And it wasn't as if the white white Americans weren't also consuming. It's just many of them knew that when you criminalize a vice that is engaged in by a huge minority of the population and you leave it inevitably to the discretion of law enforcement as to how to enforce those laws, those laws are not typically gonna be enforced against the whiter and wealthier and more affluent or middle class members of society.

Inevitably those laws will be disproportionately enforced against the poor and younger and darker skinned members of society. So to some very good extent that's really what the war on drugs has been about. When people talk about it as the new Jim Crow in this wonderful book by Michelle Alexander with that title, it's about understanding that, you know, the war on drugs is not just about race and it's not just about targeting black and brown young people because, God knows, I mean, millions of white people have been swept up in the war on drugs as well. But it is disproportionately and overwhelmingly about that from its origins to its enforcement to who gets victimized today.

The Immoral Elite

"Tintin in Congo"

The past week we had a storm among the narrow minded Swedish "cultural elite".

The cause of the uproar was that Behrang Miri, the artistic director of the children and youth section at Kulturhuset of Stockholm (The Culture House), decided to move the Tintin books by Remi Hergè from the children and youth section to the adult section.

Miri´s reason for doing so, was that the Tintin books reflect racist and discriminating caricatures from a colonialistic perspective. In his view the fact that the books have lately been provided with a preface explaining that they are written during a time with other values ​​is not enough. In his opinion this was not something children should be exposed to alone.

Thw news of the move made the so called "cultural elite" of Sweden explode on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and you name it. These ethnic Swedes and other Westerners cried "censorship" at the top of their lungs and took upon themselves the right to tell those who are subjected to demeaning and insulting depictions and characterisations how, when and at what they could rightfully react. They should be ashamed of their words and actions in this bruhaha and are themselves part of the problem and not of the solution. Stupid twats!

Even more shameful is the fact that the direction of the Kulturhus, instead of backing their artistic director in his decision, caved in to the outcries and pressure from their buddies and cronies and moved the books back. Ignorant racist bastards!

Henk and Organized Religion

Henk Heithuis 

The picture above shows Henk Heithuis, a young Dutch man in his early twenties. Henk was born in 1936 and was as a child - for unknown reasons - left in the care of the Roman Catholic Church in the Netherlands. While living in a boarding home run by the Church Henk was sexually abused by at least two priests. In 1956 Henk, then 20 years old, reported the molestation to the Dutch police and the priests were convicted for having abused him.

Unluckily for Henk though he would remain in the loving care of the Church until he reached the age of majority in the Netherlands, which at that time was 21. 

The Church sent him to a Catholic psychiatric hospital where he, as court documents confirm, later the same year was castrated “as a treatment for homosexuality and also as a punishment for those who accused clergy of sexual abuse,”

Henk Heithuis was later killed in a car accident in 1958 at the age of 22.

Joep Dohmen, the investigative journalist at the Dutch newspaper The NRC Handelsblad.who uncovered the case, also found evidence that at least nine more young men had been castrated. "These cases are anonymous and can no longer be traced," Dohmen said. "There will be many more. But the question is whether those boys, now old men, will want to tell their story."

Henk, second from left

When my buddy Apmel Goosson first directed my attention to this story (The Telegraph; Dutch Roman Catholic Church "castrated at least 10 boys") I was totally shocked and could not believe it was possible. I felt sick to my stomach by the brutality and the inhumane actions of something that should be - and asserts itself as being - a protection for the weak in a not always kind world. As I thought more about it I became more and more enraged about the profound stupidity, heteronormativity and systematic homophobia that these actions are a symptom of. 

However the Roman Catholic Church is not alone in the total misuse of the trust given to them, the same goes for almost any organized religion. The fault lies not with the original prophets (Jesus, Mohammed etc). but in the way their teachings have been abused by interpretation by their followers and the organizational builders.

In order to grow strong, powerful, influential and rich every religious organisation of any size has always teemed up with the civilian authority. They have become their willing mouthpieces and propaganda machines with a joint mission; To keep the people in line.

Organized religions have always lent themselves to be well organized hate groups working viciously with excluding, condemning, repressing, persecuting or keeping in check

• the heathens or non-believers (Jews, Christians/Muslims, or believers in any other faiths except "the one true faith") which could be slaughtered, slaved or used like cattle if they did not convert to "the one true faith"
• the savages or other cultures (Jews again of course, Romanies, Africans, Asians, Native people all over the world), see above
• the poor and disenfranchised, should know their place, shut up, work hard and breed many children - rewards for being good and faithful would be collected in the hereafter/heaven/paradise, "you will get pie in the sky when you die", "72 virgins in paradise"
• the women, "women are dirty when they menstruate and have given birth", "women are dumb and cannot think properly or be relied upon to take care of themselves, they must be taken care of by their fathers, husbands or brothers", "women cannot be clergy" etc. etc. see above 
• the sexual "deviants", i.e. non-heterosexual, "just don´t do it" or "you are better off dead"
• etc. etc.

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Ugh, rereading what I have written so far I feel like a poorer variation of Karl Marx with his "Religion is the opium of the people". I will leave it anyway.

Believe me, I am not a communist and have nothing against religion in itself, just the hierarchical superstructure it gets when it gets organized and misinterpreted by the followers of the original prophets.

Organized religion - of any creed, although I am mainly thinking of Christianity and Islam - are the longest lasting, most widespread, most powerful and most vicious hate groups in our world.

Most mainstream Lutheran Churches seem to have backed off a little, but the Roman Catholic Church and the growing Pentecostal movement with its subsidiaries (among other Word of Life) seem to be still going strong in excluding anyone they do not consider worthy or wholesome or complying to their heteronormative belief system.

Henk to me represents one of the untold, unseen and unknown victims of the power mongering, money-grabbing and repressive forces that are unleashed by these organisations.