 |
All work and no play makes
jack a dull boy. All work and no play
makes jack a dull boy. All work and no
play makes jack a dull boy. All work and
no play makes jack a dull boy. All work
and no play makes gus a dull boy. All
work and no play makes jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes jack a dull
boy. All work and no play makes jack a
dull boy. All work and no play makes jack
a dull boy. All work and no play makes jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes
jack a dull boy. All work and no play
makes jack a dull boy. All work and no
play makes jack a dull boy. All work and
no play makes jean a dull boy. All work and
no play makes jack a dull boy. All work
and no play makes jack a dull boy. All
work and no play makes jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes morn a dull
girl. All work and no play makes jack a
dull boy. All work and no play makes jack
a dull boy. All work and no play makes jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes
jack a dull boy. All work and no play
makes jack a dull boy. All work and no
play makes jack a dull boy. All work and
no play makes jack a dull boy. All work
and no play makes jack a dull boy. All
work and no play makes jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes edmond a
dull boy. All work and no play makes
elmer a dull boy. All work
and no play makes jack a dull boy. All
work and no play makes jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes jack a dull
boy. All work and no play makes jack a
dull boy. All work and no play makes
elmer a dull boy. All work
and no play makes jack a dull boy. All
work and no play makes jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes jack a dull
boy. All work and no play makes jack a
dull boy. All work and no play makes jack
a dull boy. All work and no play makes jose a dull boy. All work and no play
makes gus a dull boy. All work and no
play makes jack a dull boy. All work and
no play makes jack a dull boy. All work
and no play makes pete a dull boy. All
work and no play makes jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes jack a dull
boy. All work and no play makes jack a
dull boy. All work and no play makes huck
a dull boy. All work and no play makes jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes
jack a dull boy. All work and no play
makes edmond a dull boy. All work
and no play makes jose a dull boy. All
work and no play makes jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes jack a dull
boy. All work and no play makes jack a
dull boy. All work and no play makes jack
a dull boy. All work and no play makes jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes
jean a dull boy. All work and no play makes
jack a dull boy. All work and no play
makes jack a dull boy. All work and no
play makes jack a dull boy. All work and
no play makes cook a dull boy. All
work and no play makes jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes jack a dull
boy. All work and no play makes juli a dull boy.
All work and no play makes jack a dull
boy. All work and no play makes jack a
dull boy. All work and no play makes jack
a dull boy. All work and no play makes cook a dull boy. All work and no play
makes jack a dull boy. All work and no
play makes jack a dull boy. All work and
no play makes jack a dull boy. All work
and no play makes pete a dull boy. All
work and no play makes morn a dull girl.
All work and no play makes jack a dull
boy. All work and no play makes jack a
dull boy. All work and no play makes huck
a dull boy. All work and no play makes jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes
jack a dull boy. All work and no play
makes joe a dull
boy.
"At one time - not so very long ago - it was
considered monstrous wickedness to maintain that old women ought not to be
burnt as witches. If those who held this
opinion had been forcibly suppressed, we should
still be steeped in medieval superstition." -
Bertrand Russell
"This tendency to dismiss the suffering of those
who genuinely suffer strikes me as a contemptibly low blow, because it tries in
effect to remove from the persecuted ideological deviant in question the very
thing that could help give him relief from his suffering.
Meditation on
the wrongs one has suffered can lead a person at first to mere self-pity, but
it can also eventually bring him to a greater understanding of his enemies, and
perhaps even, in the long run, to forgiveness of them.
But forgiveness
can only follow an awareness that one has been wronged.
Heaping scorn
on one's claims to having been wronged, even when one plainly has been
wronged, is thus at once the most brazen and uncharitable act, since it
represents both a sheer denial of reality (i.e., that the man persecuted for
his beliefs suffers) and an attempt to block the wronged man's only course back
from bitterness and toward reconciliation with his fellow man."
- Andy
Nowicki
Socrates is forced to drink poison.
Hypatia of Alexandria is stripped naked and dragged
through the streets by an imperial
Christian mob, flayed with ostrakois and set ablaze while still
alive.
Between the
12th and 14th centuries, punishment was given a
religious quality by associating it with
purification before a supreme being. The
individuals inflicting pain were only
instruments in the hands of the so called
supreme being, performing a
service for the targeted
individual. Authorities reasoned that if the
tortured individual suffered sufficiently on earth, he would not have to undergo the sufferings
of eternal damnation. It was
believed that the purification of each
individual helped society by exorcising the
evil from within it – the cancer could not
spread. Infliction of physical pain
was rationalized, justified, and blessed by those holding
power within a society.
Meister Eckhart is
condemned by Roman Catholic bull in agro
domini. Dies at papal court in Avignon. Bull in agro domini
withdrawn in 20th century.
William of
Ockham branded the pope John XXII a
heretic as, at the time, the office of pope
was bought and the pope declared authority over all
things, temporal as well as
spirtual. William
of Ockham was condemned and
excommunicated for his
opinions and forced to flee to
exile in Bavaria.
Pietro
d'Abano also known as Petrus De Apono or
Aponensis was an Italian philosopher,
astrologer and professor of medicine in Padua. Pietro d'Abano was accused of
heresy and atheism, and came before the
Inquistion. Pietro d'Abano died in
prison before the end of his trial in
1316.
John Hus consistently elevated the
Bible over
tradition and
viewed the Bible as the only binding principle in
life. John Hus taught that Jesus, not Peter, was the foundation of the
church, publicly denounced the selling of indulgences and called into question
papal infallibility.
In 1414, the Council of Constance guaranteed Jon
Hus safe conduct to Constance and back. Jon Hus was sent to
prison and tortured in several attempts to get Jon Hus to
recant. Jon Hus refused them all.
Jon Hus was placed on a high stool in
the middle of the church and sentenced to death. The authorities placed a hood
over his head and then condemned his
soul to Satan. Jon Hus responded, "And I commit
myself to the most gracious Lord Jesus."
Hands bound behind his back, Jon Hus was chained to the stake. Wood and
hay were piled up to his chin. Rosin was sprinkled on it. Jon Hus was given one
last chance to recant and be set free. Jon Hus
refused and said, "I shall die with joy
today in the faith of the gospel which I
have preached." As they lit the flames around
him he sang out twice, "Christ thou
Son of the Living
God, have mercy upon me."
Jon Hus was immolated singing and
praying.
An
Inquisitorial tribunal convicts
Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc) of cross-dressing on May 30, 1431. Joan of Arc was
condemned to be burned alive.
They tied Joan of Arc to a tall pillar. Joan of Arc asked for a
cross and a crucifix was brought
from the nearby church. As the flames rose several eyewitnesses recalled that
she repeatedly screamed "...in a loud voice the holy name of
Jesus, and implored and invoked
without ceasing the aid of the
saints of heaven".
Jean Tressard,
secretary to the King of England, was seen
returning from the execution exclaiming in great
agitation, "We are all ruined, for a
good and holy
individual was
burned."
The worried English
authorities tried to put a stop to any further talk of this sort by punishing
those few who were willing to publicly speak out for Joan of Arc.
Joan of Arc is beatified on April 11, 1909 and canonized as a saint on
May 16, 1920.
William
Tyndale, Tindall or Tyndall was educated at
Magdalen Hall, Oxford where he was admitted to the Degree of Bachelor of Arts
in 1512, the same year he became a subdeacon.
William Tyndale was made
Master of Arts in July 1515, three months after he had been ordained into the
priesthood.
The Master of Arts degree allowed him to start studying
theology, but the official course did not include
the study of scripture. This horrified William Tyndale, and he organized
private groups for
teaching and discussing the
scriptures.
William Tyndale was a gifted linguist, a
speaker of tongues,
fluent in French, Greek, Hebrew, German, Italian, Latin, Spanish and his native
English. William Tyndale subsequently went to Cambridge (possibly studying
under Erasmus, whose 1503 Enchiridion Militis Christiani - "Handbook of the
Christian Knight" - he translated into English.)
William Tyndale was
convinced that the way to God was through
God's word and that scripture
should be available even to common people.
In 1526 a full edition of
the New Testament translated
into English by William Tyndale was produced by the printer Peter Schoeffer in
Worms. The book was smuggled into England and Scotland, and was
condemned by Cuthbert Tunstall, bishop of
London, who issued warnings to booksellers and had copies burned in public.
Cardinal Wolsey condemned William
Tyndale as a heretic and demanded his arrest.
William Tyndale was tried on a charge of heresy in 1536 and condemned to be burned at the stake.
William Tyndale was
strangled and his dead body burnt on 6 October
1536.
William Tyndale's final words
reportedly were, "Oh Lord, open the King of
England's eyes".
Most of the King James version of the Bible was
directly taken from William Tyndale's translation.
Nahuatl Oceltol was an indigenous priest of the
Aztec Empire who was put on trial during
New Spain's Inquisition. Nahuatl
Oceltol, means jaguar. In the fall of 1536 Nahuatl Oceltol was placed on trial
before the Inquistion. Several
witness' recalled how Nahuatl Oceltol used his demonic
power to predict when rain was going to occur.
Nahuatl Oceltol was banished for witchcraft (Yes! All weather forecasters
should be imprisoned!) and disappeared when a ship carrying him to Spain
disappeared.
Pomponio Algerio is boiled in oil by the
Inquistion in 1556 for saying "The
Roman Catholic Church deviates in many things from
the truth."
John Frampton, an English
merchant from the West Country, was imprisoned and
tortured by the
Spanish Inquistion. John Frampton
escaped from Cádiz in 1567. John Frampton translated The most noble
and famous travels of Marco Polois into English.
Garcia de Orta
was a Renaissance Portuguese Jewish physician, naturalist and pioneer of
tropical medicine. Garcia de Orta was a
speaker of tounges
confident in Portuguese, Spanish, Hebrew, Latin, Greek and Arabic; Garcia de
Orta's work shows that he also had some knowledge of Persian, Marathi, Sanskrit and
Kannada. Garcia de Orta died in 1568, apparently without having suffered
seriously from the Inquistion, but
his sister Catarina was arrested as a Jew in the same year and was
burned at the stake for Judaism in Goa in
1569.
Giordana Bruno is
burned at the stake in 1586 for claiming the
Earth revolved around the
sun after being found guilty of
heresy by a
Inquisitorial
tribunal.
Luis de Carabajal the younger, the first Jewish author
in America, is put on the rack in 1596 by a
Inquisitorial tribunal. Luis de
Carabajal throws himself out of a window to escape further
torture.
Francisca Nuñez de Carabajal was
burned at the stake by the
Inquistion for being a practicing
Jew in 1596. Doña Francisca and her children, Isabel, Catalina, Leonor,
and Luis, were also burned at the stake,
together with Manuel Diaz, Beatriz Enriquez, Diego Enriquez, and Manuel de
Lucena for being practicing Jews.
The Friulian miller Menocchio,
also known as Domenico Scandella,
philosophical teachings earned him the
title of a heresiarch during the Inquistion and he was
burned at the stake in 1599 on orders of Pope
Clement VIII.
Cesare Corte was an Italian painter of the Renaissance
period, active mainly in his natal city of Genoa. In 1612, Cesare Corte was
imprisoned by the
Roman Inquistion for espousing
Lutheran beliefs and possessing
Protestant literature. Cesare
Corte confessed underwent a public abjuration of his
heretical beliefs on August 11, 1613 in the church of San
Domenico, and was condemned to
life in prison. Cesare Corte died within weeks of his
imprisonment.
Isaac de Castro
Tartas, a Jew, is burned at the stake in 1647
by the Inquistion. Isaac de Castro
Tartas last words as he was immolated by the
flames were "The Lord our God
is One!"
Benedict de Spinoza was
forced to flee his home in Spain during the
Spanish
Inquistion.
María Francisca Ana de Castrowas a Spanish
immigrant to Lima, Peru renowned for her beauty
and hauteur was arrested by the Inquistion in 1726 as a practicing
Jew. María Francisca Ana de Castrowas was burned at the stake in 1736.
On August 4, 1692, Cotton Mather, a
Premillennialist who openly proclaimed a belief
in a literal millennium similar to
Pentecostalism
delivers a sermon that
End of Days is near at
hand and portrays himself as leading the
final charge against the legions of Satan. The Salem
witchcraft trials used
water (like George W. Bush's waterboarding)
and burning to elicit confession.
On
August 17, 1692, George Burrows, a minister and graduate of Harvard, stands on
the gallows and stuns the crowd by loudly proclaiming his innocence and then
reciting the Lord's Prayer
without
hesitation or error, a feat thought
impossible for a
wizard. George Burrows is hung anyway as a
wizard on Cotton Mather's
recomendation.
"It is not likely that any
society at any time will suffer from a plethora
of heretical opinions. Least of all is this likely in a modern
civilized society, where the conditions of
life are in constant rapid change, and demand, for
successful adaptation, an equally rapid change in
intellectual outlook. There should be an attempt, therefore, to encourage,
rather than discourage, the expression of new beliefs and the dissemination of
knowledge tending to support them.
The very opposite is, in fact, the case.
From childhood upward,
everything is done to make the minds of men
and women conventional and sterile. And if, by misadventure, some spark of
imagination remains, its unfortunate
possessor is considered unsound and , worthy only of contempt.
Yet such men are known to have been in the
past the chief benefactors of mankind,
and are the very men who receive most honor as soon as they are safely dead." -
Bertrand Russell
suffering
"Only when we learn to
live from the
heart and feel the sufferings of
others as if it were our own do we
truly become compassionate." -Karen
Armstrong
There are two kinds of suffering, emotional
and physical. We are concerned here only with
suffering caused by human emotion.
Frustration,
despair,
fear, terror,
anger, hate,
lust, envy,
pride and greed are
all emotions that can and do cause
emotional pain and suffering.
All to often
in industrialized
society the
individual becomes detached from
existent reality, withdrawn into a
fantasy reality
of their own making.
Humans have
the innate ability to completely delude
their selves as to the actual
nature of their
individual
existence.
This innate ability of
humans has been very beneficial for the
continued existence of the
individual.
The mammal
brain has several traits that cross over to all
other mammals.
One such of
these is feeling of
emotion.
Emotional reaction occurs directly in response to
sensory stimulation without
conscious consideration in all mammals.
A good example of this would be fear.
Every mammal reacts with
fear to sensory stimulation that
‘frightens' the mammal.
That
mammal has a subconscious ‘bodily'
response to that stimulation which is observed as the ‘fight or flight'
response.
Any individual
that has ever observed a variety of mammals, humans naturally included, can attest to the
truth of emotional response triggering bodily reaction.
Strong emotion in
mammals is a biological response
to existing physical conditions triggered to
enhance the chances for survival of
the individual.
Individuals are
socially programmed by the
social group, the religion and the culture
from which they originate.
Emotional
responses, that are not instinctually provided, must be learned by the
individual as that
individual grows, both physically
and mentally, toward maturity within the social
group to which he or she belongs.
Emotional responses creating
behavior that does not fit
within the proscribed boundaries defined by the social group are condemned as breaches of acceptable
behavior.
An
individual that is
plagued with emotional
responses that are unacceptable to the social
group will be ejected from that social group as
that individual's
behavior will be
unacceptable.
The result of rejection is
alienation.
Alienation
leads to an increase in anti-social
behavior by the rejected
individual.
This anti-social
behavior is based on enhanced
emotional responses greater than the initial
emotional responses that had originally caused
rejection from within the social group.
This emotionally boundless cyclic
roller coaster is the base cause of emotional
suffering in the individual.
Individual's ‘lash
out' at 'others' to relieve the pressure of
this emotionally boundless cyclic roller
coaster.
The cycle starts again.
An
individual trapped in this cycle is
experiencing intense
emotional suffering.
The most simplest
and easiest way to relieve oneself of this
intense emotional suffering is to build a
fantasy within which to
live.
An
individual must convince him or her
self that ‘everything will work out for the
best'.
After all, it is in the best interest of the
individual to adapt, to stifle
unwanted and unacceptable emotions, besides the
social group demands it.
How better to
achieve this goal than to build a fantasy
castle with high walls and wide moat that will keep those unacceptable,
unwanted emotions in check as they dash upon
the buttressed granite ramparts of the castle of the
ruler of the domain - which just happens to
be youself.
All of us have built some type of
fortress.
We have built these
fortress' in order to survive
socially within our social group.
If we have built our
social upon solid ground then we have an
adequate foundation to support our social, but
if we have built it upon the shifting sand of
blind faith then our
fortress is in of collapsing.
A
spirit of a mind that has built it's
fortress on a solid foundation will be
beacon of light in the deep, dark night to the
spirit of a mind that has built it's
fortress on the shifting sands of
blind faith.
The spirit
of a mind that has built it's
fortress on the shifting sands of
blind faith is suffering from
spiritual
corruption.
The reality of
life is a real and
inherent to the
spiritually corrupt
individual as new
concepts, ideas, intuitions, and
understanding
contrary to the
fantasy reality
built upon the shifting sands of blind
faith dawn upon the consciousness of the
spiritually corrupt.
Spiritually
corrupt individuals
experience real and truly
searing emotional pain when sets of
rules, precepts, and conceptual images
are destroyed by cold and hard
reality.
Temporary insanity is real and
occurs when these sets of rules, precepts, and
conceptual images
are destroyed beyond a capacity for the
mind ruled by blind faith to accept.
Thrust into a nightmare world of
the inconceivable, of an ordering of reality
alien to
reality as originally understood with
blind faith, a
reality of the 'other', these
individuals can be
expected to commit
irrational acts.
The
subconscious plays funny tricks on the
consciousness of an
individual
feeling intense
searing emotional pain.
Intense
searing emotional pain drives evil, corrupt and
irrational acts.
Intense
searing emotional pain demands a release.
The
spiritually corrupt will
be only to happy to be martyr of that searing
emotional pain or to pass that
searing emotional pain along.
To inflict
emotional suffering
upon our fellow
man in any way is an
evil unjust, unneccessary,
spiritually corrupt,
immoral and irrational act.
Those
that are spiritually
corrupt may find a jolt of pleasure, joy, happiness at their success in fulfilling a
fantasy.
Unfortunately the
spiritually corrupt have
most likely inflicted emotional
suffering onto
other members of their
social group in pursuit of fulfilling their
fantasy built on shifting sands of
blind faith.
The
spiritually corrupt are
deluded in believing that the ends justify the
means.
The spiritually
corrupt are deluded in
believing that their
fantasy must be fulfilled at all
costs.
The spiritually
corrupt are deluded in
believing that in fulfilling their
fantasy they will have
created Utopia for themselves or for their social group.
The
spiritually corrupt are
deluded in believing that after committing immoral or
unethical acts they will not have caused even more
spiritual corruption
within themselves.
Natural Law requires those seeking
spiritual redemption from
spiritual corruption to
face up to their spiritualcorruption and
through true contrition, which requires
real emotional
pain and suffering, realize their
spiritual corruption, take
concrete steps to heal their inner
selves by carefully examining their inner
selves and basing their new
reality upon a solid foundation.
A
rejection of the true
knowledge of reality and of Natural Law is the quickest path to
spiritual
corruption.
In 2007 California imprisoned residents at 4 times
the rate it did in 1980.
"We have lost our own
humanity when we allow
fear and vengeance to bring us to treat our fellow
humans without
humanity." - Carl Terwilliger
California built 30 prisons since 1980 but inmate
levels are double design capacity. A federal judge
found that a least one avoidable death occurred per week through sheer neglect
and ineptitude even though spending on health care was up 263% from 2000 to
$1.9 billion.Over the last four decades, the
political leaders of America have committed themselves to
incarcerating inmates at rates that
ultimately rival the former Soviet Union and repressive Middle Eastern regimes.
Prisons have grown overcrowded and
understaffed. This is mostly a result of the "war on
drugs" as a large percentage of the incarcerated population is
incarcerated for illegal
drug possession.
England, Italy and Germany
have incarceration rates of around 100 per
100,000 of population whereas
America had in 2002 an
incarceration rate of 436 per 100,000 and
went from spending $9 billion in 1982 to spending $49 billion by 1999 to
incarcerate
individuals. In 1985
America spent $36 billion on police, courts
and incarceration a year while in 2005 America
spent $167 billion. By the year 2004 there were 2.1 million
prisoners behind
American bars which is comparable to the rate
of incarceration in Stalin's Soviet Union
and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. While
incarceration rates skyrocket,
schools are underfunded.
"The solution to
the problem is to reduce the number of inmates in prison. All nonviolent drug offenders should be released. Any other nonviolent
convict should also be considered for
early release. Once this is done, you would be surprised at how much less
crowded the prisons would be." - Greg
Bristol commenting on the melt down of overcrowded California
prisons
"We must learn to address serious
social problems without indiscriminate recourse
to prison."
- Jonathon Simon,
professor of law
"There's no way to
rule innocent
men. The only power any government has is the
power to crack down on
criminals. Well, when there aren't
enough criminals, one makes them. One
declares so many things to be a crime
that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws." – Ayn
Rand
"Criminology has not invented a single deterrent
for any type of crime. Rather, it has
multiplied exponentially the number of behaviors classified as
crimes, continually upgraded
infractions to misdemeanors and misdemeanors to felonies, taken sentencing
discretion away from judges with
one-size-fits-all punishments and
raised the ceiling for sentences far above the
punishment fitting the
crime. " - Roger William Brown
"The
thought that the
State has lost its
mind and is punishing so many innocent people
is intolerable." – Arthur
Miller
Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, a
Ronald Reagan appointee, noted in a
speech to the American Bar Association that "our resources are misspent,
our punishments too severe,
our sentences too long" and urged the
American Bar Association to study "the inadequacies, and the injustices,
in our prison and correctional
systems". The resulting study suggested that
Congress repeal mandatory minimum sentences suggesting that the
laws tend "to be tough on the
wrong people".Why do
Americans allow
politicians to use impassioned
appeals to the prejudices and
emotions of the
populace,
demagoguery, to control common working middle class
Americans?
A perfect example of their
use of demagoguery is the demonization of
users of outlawed drugs or
controlled substances. These
individuals are
living on the periphery of
social norms and quite typically are poor,
uneducated and/or mentally impaired. So
when they are down, keep them down!
Drug users, unless they are given exceptions
like American aristocrats Betty Ford and Teddy
Kennedy or American aristocracies mouthpiece
Rush Limbaugh, are ‘other'. 'Other' men
and women must be
imprisoned because they are
evil doers and must be made to
pay societies penalty for their
spiritual corruption which
is imprisonment.
This draconian
war on drugs is not a war
on drugs.
This draconian war is a
war on people
that use drugs that have not been
approved by the federal governmnet for consumption or have not been prescribed
by a properly licensed physician.
People typically use
drugs because of
spiritual corruption
coupled with emotional or physical
suffering.
"I had my
deep secrets, and I assumed my male
friends had theirs, though none as shameful as mine - that when I was 5, I was
forced into a sexual act by a gang of kids
who laughed at me. I didn't reveal that secret until I was 60 years old and in
a 12-step program into which I'd stumbled because of the booze and
drugs I'd used to Novocain the
pain of my shame and
self doubt." - Karl Fleming
Drug abusers are
corrupt but are they so
corrupt that their
lives are considered worthless
except by
the prison guards that bring home big
fat paychecks?
Families are
destroyed. Children become wards of the
state and then follow in their parents
footsteps to
prison.
Men and women that
commit violent acts should be locked up for the
safety of society. Men and women that
do not have a doctor's prescription for their choice of
drugs should not be locked up. They should be
treated for substance abuse and treated humanely.
"Prohibition of alcohol fell
flat on its face. The prohibition of other drugs rests on an equally wobbly foundation. As a cop, I bore
witness to the multiple lunacies of the ‘war on
drugs'. In declaring ‘war on drugs',
we have declared war on our fellow
citizens.
War requires enemies we can demonize,
fear and
loathe. As a nation
we are long overdue for a
soul searching coldly analytical look at the
‘drug scene' and the
war on drugs. Such candor would reveal the
futility of our current policies, exposing the
embarrassingly meager return on our massive enforcement effort of $167 billion a year.
It is time to accept drug use as a right of adult
Americans, treat drug abuse as a public health problem and end the
madness of an unwinnable war."- Norm Stamper,
former chief of the Seattle Police Department.
A new method of rooting out the
evil doers has
surfaced. In rural East Texas, methamphetamine labs often
operate unnoticed.
Misdemeanor
drug charges in Smith County; about 100
miles southeast of Dallas, are as common as drunk driving arrests
according to district attorney Matt Bingham.
In the last six years, the
Troup police force sent just 2 drug cases
to the district attorney's office.
Major Mike Lusk, head of criminal
investigations for the Smith County Sheriff's Department, said Troup
police had sent a total of two drug
evidence samples to the Texas Department of Public Safety crime lab
since 2000. "We do that much in an hour." - Major Mike Lusk
"It appears
from the current investigation that the problem is not with the Troup Police
Department prosecuting innocent people, it is that they were not prosecuting
guilty people." - district attorney
Matt Bingham
So if you work in law
enforcement you are expected to make
numerous drug busts every year . Those
that do not make numerous drug busts will
be singled out and prosecuted for their failure to
do so. After all, we are in a war against the
non-prescription drug using
evil doers.
"America contains 4% of
the Earth's population and has
incarcerated 25% of all imprisoned people
on Earth. Twenty years ago
America spent $36 billion on police, courts
and incarceration a year while today it
spends $167 billion. The economic costs of a
criminal justice system that emphasizes
punishment and
incarceration at the expense of
rehabilitation and the potential for recovery are unsustainable." - Joe
Domanick, senior fellow in criminal justice at
USC Anneberg's Institute for Justice and Journalism.
"Since 1975
California criminal justice
policy has developed haphazardly, through
laws passed by politicians whose chief goal was to appear to be
tougher on crime than their opponents. Any attempt to have a serious discussion
about California criminal justice
policy (or the lack thereof) has been stymied
by campaign accusations designed to scare
voters and weaken reform-minded candidates. One obstacle to serious reform in
the California prisons is the California
Correctional Peace Officers Association, the correctional officers union, which
wields tremendous political
power. Even legislators who understand the issues
involved in transforming the
prison system have been unable to do what they need to
do because of the union's willingness to use dollars and scare tactics against
reform-minded politicians." - Jeanne S.
Woodford, resigned as acting CEO after 28 years in the California Department of
Corrections.
Weak corrupted
individuals are
condemned to a bleak life. When it comes to
criminal justice, safety and peace
of mind are precious commodities, and the assumption is that any expenditure to
incarcerate these 'evil doers', as all 'evil doers' are just a step away
from committing a heinous violent
crime, is a just expenditure.
"Reserve costly prison
beds for people we are afraid of, not for
people we're mad at. Too many
prisoners pose no physical threat to us.
We're not afraid of them; we're
mad at them. There are ways to punish
them in the community, holding them accountable to do
honest work and pay restitution."
-Pat Nolan, member of California State Assembly from 1974 to 1994, GOP
leader from 1984 to 1988, spent two years in
federal prison for taking
bribes.
Murderers,
robbers, rapists
and pedophiles should be locked away at any
cost. But should we really do the same in cases involving nonviolent
crimes such as
drug possession and
petty theft or are that are based on
extenuating circumstances of mental
illness?
During the Dark Ages the
mentally ill were often manacled and
beaten.
When it is
understood that mental illness has
contributed to relatively minor crimes that mental illness is taken into consideration -
as an increased threat to society.
People with severe mental illness are medicated, sometimes with
neuroleptics which are very strong
tranquilizers, so that they have a basic understanding of court proceedings,
they are then considered to be sane and convicted as violent deviant criminal offenders.
Stephan
Lilly, 42, was convicted of assaulting his wife in 1997.
In 2005, a
verbal threat against his wife went down as second violent felony and strike
two.
Upon release Stephan Lilly was paroled to a group home for those
with mental illness but denied the
medication that made him sane enough to go to trial.
After hearing
voices that told him to run around, due to his withdrawal from the
neuroleptics he had previously
received in jail, Stephan Lilly got into an altercation with a guard. The legal
system made Stephan Lilly addicted to
extremely potent neuroleptics, then
aburptly withdrew them and expected him to
remain calm.
At Stephan Lilly's trial the prosecutor noted Stephan Lilly
had a criminal record going back to 1981 having been convicted of DUI,
controlled substance possession and misdemeanor assault.
The prosecutor noted Stephan Lilly had been medically diagnosed as
schizophrenic.
The prosecutor labeled Stephan Lilly a
violent deviant criminal offender.
For a
verbal threat and physically detaining the guard, who remained uninjured yet
shocked with fear, Stephan Lilly, received
25 to life for his third strike.
Two of
the these three strikes were based on what was considered criminally
violent verbal
threats. Felony
speech!
"The conditions of Los Angeles County jails that were
reported recently shock the conscience and haunt the soul. The lack of medical care and unsafe conditions
for inmates reflect our
society's lack of concern for the less
fortunate. Los Angeles is a city of Dickensian extremes, and nowhere is this
more visible than visiting an inmate at
county jails. They have a sickening pall
of gloom. They devitalize the inmate for
life, and the detrimental effect to a man's
spirit is just as deadly as the physical
germs that filled English prisons of the
18th century. As a society, we must make every
effort to make our jails a humane and safe
place for those who are incarcerated." -
Jeffery A. Lowe
California prisons
now hold around 34,000 mental ill
prisoners.
"Our prisons are crowded
for one reason: We have too many people behind bars. Many of these
inmates are violent, but many more are not. The only way to
resolve this penal crisis is to take a hard look at who is in
prison and why, and ask ourselves whether
everyone behind bars really needs to be there. We could start by finding a more
appropriate way to deal with those prisoners who are more
mentally ill than criminal, who were
re-incarcerated for technical parole
violations that pose no public safety threat, whose
offense is mere drug possession, or
who are serving 25-year mandatory minimum sentences for non-serious, nonviolent
third strikes." -Sharon Dolovich, professor at UCLA School of
Law.
Isn't it appropriate to give thought to introducing both
economic and social
costs into the sentencing equation?
"'Tough on Crime'
sentencing laws have to be judged by outcomes and
matched with fiscal responsibility. Despite ample evidence and recommendations,
policy-makers
have been unwilling to take on the problem in a purposeful, constructive
way.
Between 2003 and 2007 the
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation budget surged 79 percent.
California taxpayers
legitimately can ask what return they are getting in increased public safety
and question the trade-offs the State
implicitly makes in spending an increasing portion of its general fund dollars
on incarceration.
The status quo
is not acceptable.
Despite the rhetoric, thirty years of 'tough on crime'
politics has not made the state safer." -
Michael E. Alpert, chairman Little Hoover Commission, January 25,
2007
When an individual is
punished in California for simple possession of a controlled substance, a substance the doctor has not prescribed, the
standard incarceration of two years costs taxpayers $62,000. For a three striker, 25
years, the cost goes to $750,000 and many
convict's returning to street, with no rehabilitation, will one
day be three strikers. In 2005 13,000
incarcerated
individuals, 9% of California
prison
population fit into this
category.
"Locking someone in a crowded cage for
days or weeks does not merely give them an
incentive to beat their addiction. It also can be quite harmful, instilling a
sense of despair, possibly exposing a person to
drugs, diseases and
frequently violence behind bars, and interrupting work,
family and medical care. There is no
scientific evidence that jail
improves drug abuse treatment outcomes." - Dave
FratelloA individual
convicted of petty theft in
California - a theft of less than
$400 - who is sentenced to serve any time in
jail may be charged with a felony if caught stealing
again and punished with up to three years in
state prison. In 2004 roughly 5,500
individuals are serving
prison sentences in California for this
crime, including more than 100 serving a
minimum of 25 years for
petty theft as a third strike.
"A society is
judged by how it treats its most
disenfranchised populations, and that should include California's 172,000
inmates, their children and families." - Julia Negron
And California is
on the 'liberal' end of the
spectrum. In North Carolina Junior Allen, 65, was released in 2005 after 35
years of incarceration for stealing a black and white
television set worth $140 in 1970. Junior
Allen said, "I am glad to be out. I have done too much time for what I did!"
This is
Les Miserables by
Victor Hugo revisited.
Economic costs just to
incarcerate the Californians convicted of
drug possession or
petty theft was
$573 million in 2005.
Those sentenced to
25 years to life will effectively be wards of the State for as long as they
live.
These costs are direct
economic expenditures but what about
social costs and indirect
economic expenditures?
Divorce, loss of
property, alienation
from children all are costs that should be
factored in as well. Three years in
prison effectively eliminates any
social connections that are not made in
prison or
criminal enterprises.
Does anyone truly
expect someone that has been
incarcerated for 25 years to become a productive
law abiding citizen?
"One of our most infamous
contemporary laws is the 100 -1 difference in
sentencing between crack cocaine and powder
cocaine.Under federal
drug laws,
prison sentences are usually tied to the
quantity of drugs the defendant trafficked. For
example, selling 5,000 grams of powder cocaine
(about a briefcase full) gets a mandatory 10-year
prison sentences, but so does selling only
50 grams of crack cocaine (the weight of a
candy bar).
Working for the
House Judiciary Committee in 1986, I wrote
the House bill that was the basis for that
law.
We made some terrible
mistakes.
If
logic prevails, in the next Congress we may
finally see an end to one of the most unjust laws
passed in recent memory.
And that might
correct the biggest mistake of my
professional life.
Because crack is no
longer a big news
story, people
mistakenly believe our anti-cocaine policy has worked.
Not so.
There is no scarcity of cocaine.
Since
1986, the price of cocaine has fallen and the
quality is better.
Research from the U.S. Sentencing Commission
shows that three-quarters of the federal cocaine defendants - powder and crack - are just
neighborhood dealers or couriers.
For a generation, anti-drug
policy has been built on factual
mistakes and tough-sounding
rhetoric."
- Eric E. Sterling,
president of the nonprofit Criminal Justice Policy Foundation in Silver Spring,
Maryland, was counsel to the House Judiciary
Committee, principally responsible for anti-drug legislation, from 1979 to
1989.
"I started in the
war on drugs at the very beginning.
I went undercover in 1970. I worked the first 14
years undercover. I have followed the war
on drugs ever since. When I retired I felt bad about my role in
implementing what today I consider an unjust war on
drugs.
The war on drugs was coined and
created by Richard Milhous Nixon in 1968. As the federal funding started
pouring in, we went from a seven-man unit to a 76-person bureau of narcotics.
When you increase any organization by 11 times overnight, you set up a great
deal of expectations, and since cops are
judged mainly on the number of arrests they
make, the expectation was that in the coming
year we'd arrest at least 11 times as many people for non-violent
drug offense as we did the year before.
We were supposed to arrest drug
users: Not an easy job in 1970 for several reasons.
First, we didn't
really have much of a drug problem in
1970. Those of us old enough to look back to those times, we know the main
problem was soft drugs: marijuana,
hashish, psilocybin mushrooms,
LSD - the
mind-altering
drugs. We targeted young folks, folks in
high school or college or in between, little friendship groups, because there
were no drug dealers. And our bosses
didn't know how to fight a
war on drugs, which was a problem. But they knew
one thing: They knew how to work that
federal cash cow. So they had to make
the war on drugs look like it was an absolute
necessity.
We started arresting everybody we could put our fingers on.
I infiltrated a group of maybe 15 young people. Friday night, school's out,
work's out, somebody'd say "You wanna get high?" And a few people would take
them up on that, and of course I was always there to take them up on that. One
of the friends who happened to have access to the family car could go and get
drugs — because I was working the
suburbs and there just were no drugs in
the suburbs; you had to go to New York City to get them — and he'd ask
what do you want? One person says get me a couple joints, one says get me some
acid, and when they came to me I'd put my order in too, for this tiny bit of
substance.
An hour later they'd come
back and hand this stuff out to their friends.
And when they handed it
to me they became a big-time drug dealer.
And I would stay in that group
until I got everybody in the group.
Which was easy because whoever made
the run before didn't want to do it again; they weren't even getting gas money.
These were just young people accommodating each other.
In 2002 I
sat down with four other police officers and we decided we were going to try
and do something.
We decided first - what should
law enforcement people be trying to
do?
We boiled it down to the very essence - we were interested in reducing the
incidence of death, disease, crime and addiction.
And sadly, folks, all
four of those categories are just made infinitely worse by the
war on drugs itself.
We decided we wanted
to end drug prohibition, just like we
ended alcohol prohibition in 1933. As
law enforcers we knew that the very day
after we ended that terrible law, Al Capone and all
his smuggling buddies were out of business. They were no longer out on the
streets, killing each other to try and control
that lucrative business. They were no longer killing us cops trying to fight
that useless war. They were no longer killing our
children caught in crossfire and drive-by shootings: all the things we have
today.
We knew that if we came up with a system of legalized regulation
of drugs today we could take all the
violence out of this equation.
All of it.
And if we treated drug abuse we
could actually start helping these people instead of destroying their lives.
We've already spent more than a
trillion dollars on the
war on drugs, since 1970. And what do we have to
show for that money? And by the way, it's $69 billion more every year that
we'll throw down the same rathole.
After 37 years we've made over 38 million arrests
for non-violent drug offenses.
We've quadrupled the number of people in our
prisons in a twenty-year period.
We've made building prisons the fastest-growing
industry in the United States. Despite all this money spent, and
all these lives destroyed, today drugs
are cheaper, they're more potent and they're easier for our children to access
than they were in 1970 when I started buying them as an undercover agent.
In 1969 you could count the number of arrests for non-violent
drug offenses in the tens of thousands.
That first year when we started this campaign that number went up to 415,000.
If we were doing anything to interdict
drugs, the price would go up, not down,
right?
The supply would go down, not up.
Instead, when I was a
young trooper in 1970, kicking down doors and executing search warrants a good
seizure for a local cop might be an ounce of cocaine or a quarter-ounce of heroin. Look at
what we're seizing today. In 2002, in a single seizure we seized
ten tons of heroin and in another single
seizure 20 tons of cocaine. (see
winning the war on drugs)
So that's a
failed policy,
with unintended consequences any way you
look at it." - Jack Cole, 26 year veteran New Jersey State Police, executive
director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
"Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the
prospect of turning the United States into an armed
camp, by the vision of
jails filled with casual
drug users and of an
army of enforcers empowered to
invade the
liberty of citizens on slight evidence.
Most of the harm that comes from drugs is
because they are illegal." - Milton Friedman, economist and recipient
Presidential Medal of Freedom
At the end of 2005 seven million
Americans, about 3% of the total
American population, was incarcerated or on
parole or probation. The total number of inmates rose 35% from 1995 to 2005.
Drug crimes - up 64.8 % from 1996 to 2003 - accounted
for the largest increase.
"Drugs are a
tragedy for addicts. But criminalizing
their use converts that tragedy into a
disaster for society, for users and nonusers
alike. Our experience with the prohibition
of drugs is a replay of our
experience with the
prohibition of alcoholic beverages.
Illegality creates obscene profits that finance
the murderous tactics of the drug lords;
illegality leads to the corruption of
law enforcement officials; illegality
monopolizes the efforts of honest
law forces so that they are starved for resources
to fight the simpler crimes." - William J. Bennett
"Corruption is
endemic in the enforcement of drug
laws. Many people who have cash and property seized
are never charged with a crime. Many police departments are dependent on
drug related seizures for basic budget
items." - Clifford A. Schaffer
In California in April 2007 Govenor
Arnold Schwarzenegger annonuced
his new plan to borrow $7.4 billion to ease prison overcrowding by building new
prisons. At that time 172,000 inmates were
packed into space intended for 100,000 inmates.
"More prisons
being built throughout the state is not an indication of
success, it is an indication of a
failed society." -
Armando CepedaWhile common citizens are incarcerated for prolonged periods for minor
infractions if you are a member of American
aristocracy you are likely to be given a minimum sentence or no sentence
because of your ‘service to
the country'.
Patrick Kennedy takes after his uncle, Teddy, by driving
under the influence - DUI. Patrick
Kennedy crashes after nearly side swiping a police officer. The police quietly drive Patrick Kennedy home.
Common lower and middle class working
Americans,
evil doers, would have been
incarcerated. After all is said and done
Patrick Kennedy gets a slap on the wrist, 50 hours community
service, fines as ‘donations'
of $350 and probation for a year.
Justice for American
aristocracy reigns in America!
How
long will common lower and middle class working Americans allow the American aristocracy, the 'owners' of the
corporate-industrial-mass
media-military complex, to continue to
manipulate us?
"The drug war has
failed because it defines any use of an illegal
drug as abuse in need of treatment,
forced if necessary. The
drug war has been building for almost 100 years.
It began with the well-intentioned, albeit flawed, logic of prohibitionists such as Richmond Pearson
Hobson and Harry J. Anslinger to punish anyone who used or sold
drugs they didn't like. As the situation
deteriorated, Nelson Rockefeller, Richard Nixon and then
Ronald Reagan escalated the
war. Academics predicted failure but were ignored." - John Chase
The truth is this -
drugs are not illegal in
America because of an overriding concern among
politicians for the health and safety of the
American people.
Drugs are illegal in
America for only one reason and one reason
alone - to protect the profits of
pharmaceutical manufactures. |
|
back to stacks
contents
 |
This web site is not a commercial web site and
is presented for educational purposes only.
Disclaimer: All views and opinions
presented on this web site are the views and opinions of
individual human men and women
that, through their writings, showed the capacity for intelligent, reasonable,
rational, insightful and unpopular thought. All factual information presented
on this web site is believed to be true and
accurate and is presented as originally presented in print media which may or
may not have originally presented the facts truthfully. Opinion and thoughts
have been adapted, edited, corrected, redacted, combined, added to, re-edited
and re-corrected as nearly all opinion and thought has been throughout time but
has been done so in the spirit of the original writer with the intent of making
his or her thoughts and opinions clearer and relevant to the reader in the
present time.
Fair Use Notice
This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has
not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making
such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of criminal
justice, human rights, political, economic, democratic, scientific, and
social justice issues, etc. We believe this
constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in
section 107 of the United States Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed
without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research
and educational purposes. For more information see:
www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted
material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you
must obtain permission from the copyright owner. |
 Copyright
© Lawrence Turner
All Rights Reserved
|