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Thursday, July 7, 2011

Georgetown Simplistic "Thinking"



http://diplomatdc.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/ronpaul/

WAR ON DRUGS: Paul would immediately end the war on drugs. All dangerous drugs would be legal if they were approved by a state government.[29]
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This may imply that MJ, Coca and Opium are more dangerous than alcohol, caffeine (Coffee, tea, other caffeinated beverages and caffeine pills, and other forms of concentrated caffeine), and that prohibition somehow makes things safer, particularly by eliminating Coca and Opium in favor of concentrated cocaine and concentrated opiates.

It was written by Gregory Hilton, of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service National Security Studies Program, and appears within an article of his "The Case Against Ron Paul", at his blog "The DC World Affiars Blog"
http://diplomatdc.wordpress.com/2011/06/17/ronpaul/
http://diplomatdc.wordpress.com/
The blog is described as:
This Blog is focused on students in the National Security Studies Program, the DC Diplomatic Community, and anyone else who has assisted my course, "The United States in World Affairs.".
Accordingly, the National Security Studies Program:
http://diplomatdc.wordpress.com/nssp/

The term National Security Studies Program has been in use since 1965, but the official launch was in March of 1977 when Georgetown University established a program under that banner. At the same time the American Security Council’s Congressional Conference Center became an off campus center for Georgetown, and the university emblem was displayed at the entrance of the estate. The NSSP then offered a Master’s Degree in International Security Affairs which was jointly conducted by Georgetown and the Department of Defense, with ASC’s assistance.

This first Director and the founder of the program was by Dr. Stephen P. Gibert. He was then and remains to this day a professor of government at Georgetown. The NSSP was then the only advanced degree-granting program in national security studies in the United States and Europe. The faculty was composed of experts in the field, and classes were held in the Pentagon on weekdays, and at ASC’s Conference Center on weekends. ASC also provided over $1 million in financial assistance for the NSSP.

The first class of forty students was enrolled in September 1977. They were scheduled to graduate in June of 1979 with a Master of Arts degree in government and a Certificate in National Security Studies. Beginning with the first group, the classes were generally made up of equal numbers of military officers, and civilians from government agencies.

Some were sent by the services of other countries; a fair percentage already were advanced degree holders or graduates of the service War Colleges. It was hoped that the horizons opened for them by their acquaintance with national security and strategy would have in time a significant impact on policy as those individuals rose to positions of prominence. To obtain a Master’s Degree the student had to be enrolled at Georgetown, and they had to meet the universities vigorous requirements.

Today many academic institutions offer national security studies programs, but Georgetown’s remains the largest. The current faculty includes former Ambassadors Chester Crocker, Robert Galluci and Donald McHenry, as well as the former National Security Advisor to President Clinton, Anthony Lake.

National Security Studies Programs have now been established at Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Tufts, Johns Hopkins, Syracuse, George Washington, the University of Chicago, the University of Georgia; the University of Illinois, the Army War College; the Industrial College of the Armed Forces; the College of Naval Warfare; the Naval Post Graduate School; the National Security Institute and the George C. Marshall College of International and Security Studies.

In addition to assisting the Georgetown program, ASC continued to administer its own NSSP. While the NSSP’s curriculum often changed, several key courses were always maintained. These included “Counterintelligence and Covert Operations” by James J. Angleton; the “U.S./Soviet Military Balance” by Generals George Keegan and Dan Graham; “Cuba’s Foreign Policy” by Dr. Herminio Portell Vila; “The United States in World Affairs” by Greg Hilton; “The Peace Through Strength Strategy” by John M. Fisher; “The Rising Tide: Free Markets and Free Trade” by Colonel Philip S. Cox; “Latin America’s Democratic Transition” by Colonel Samuel T. Dickens USAF (Ret); “Congressional Oversight in Defense and Foreign Policy” by Dr.Lren Thompson of Georgetown University; “Russia’s Global Strategy” by Ambassador William Kintner and Col. Ray Sleeper; and “Arms Control and Verification” by Thomas B. Smith.

The 25th anniversary of Georgetown’s National Security Studies Program was held in 2001, and the University honored ASC with an impressive plaque and presentation. The 25th anniversary was also a decision time for ASC. Veteran Chairman John M. Fisher had often expressed his desire to step down from the programs many administrative burdens, and it was clear the NSSP had outgrown the Congressional Conference Center. The Center will always be an important part of the NSSP’s history, but its primary drawback was that is was located too far away from the nation’s capital (a 79 mile drive), and it was only able to accommodate 60 residential students.

THE NSSP TODAY

The Georgetown University program is today known as the Peace and Security Studies Program, and it is part of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. The new Security Studies Program is awarding doctoral degrees. When Georgetown renamed its program, ASC kept the original name. For ASC the program began with annual conferences in the 1950′s and it was expanded steadily over the years to include a Fall, Spring and Summer Semester.

When potential students contact me I always refer them to the Application Form. This should be downloaded and sent to us along with your resume, and a writing sample (preferably a paper you have already submitted for academic credit). A letter of recommendation is also useful, particularly if it is from a Member of Congress, a Foreign Service Officer, a U.S. Flag Officer or a former member of the Peace Corps.

The “Frequently Asked Questions” section will hopefully address many of your concerns...

Gregory Hilton's blog does not have a tag for anything regarding the drug war, coming only as close as a tag for "Health Policy" which nonetheless fails to address the 'drug war'. Hilton's field appears to be primarily security related matters, as can be expected from Georgetown University, founded and run by the Roman Catholic Jesuit Order in 1789 (during the period of time 1774-1814 when the Order was officially 'suppressed'), and where the U.S. 'PATRIOT Act was crafted.

Concerning his brief attention given in his anti Ron Paul piece to the 'drug war' I suggest this reading list for Professor Hilton:

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-warriors-ignore-pharmacokinetics.html

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/drug-war-promotes-drug-abuse-over-drug.html

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/03/drug-war-tobacco-pharma-agricultural.html

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/01/drug-statutes-infinitely-worse-than.html

Instead of what I have written as a blogger, starting out with my initial South Capitol Mall blog in 2006, and as a drug policy, Coca Leaf history researcher since 1987, we get this overly simplistic, overly generalized muddled slop. It comes out throughout the MSM. Its style is found in publications particularly as "Readers' Digest" examplified (concerning the 'drug war') by Yale's David Musto- that blur the reputations of Coca and highly concentrated cocaine. Alas this comes out also through the 'prestigious' & expensive educational institutions, adhering to a sacred doctrine of white is black and black is white Soviet style brainwashing, coalescing as a within the Beltway fortress that festers upon deliberately confusing/misinterpreting ill effects of what it does, as somehow justifying throwing more good money and lives down the multi-trillion dollar continuing mega boondoggle of the ‘drug war’ , particularly Jesuit Georgetown University, the virtual fist in the glove of the U.S. State Department.

All distracting from the broader picture of manipulative political control- mercantilism.

DPA Conference Coverage of Coca, Opium, & Equal Protection Under the Law?

For their 2011 conference this November, I've made a number of proposals to the Drug Policy Alliance, including a paper presentation about the drug war's agricultural and pharmaceutical mercantilist basis and its thus far under-appreciated costs of this destructive mercantilism masqueraded as being misguided 'progressivism', a panel upon agricultural-pharma mercantilism, history, Coca and Opium, and the idea of my presentation within a History or Latin America or other existing panel.

This follow 2+ decades of scholarly activism, including proposals to the DPA's pre-incarnation as the Drug Policy Foundation since 1990, with their publication that year of my paper "The Ever-changing, Ever-Confused Popular Conception of 'Cocaine'", "Cocaine Prohibition- Water or Gasoline for treating the flames of drug abuse" in 1991, and "Cocaine Conversion- Onwards to Coca!" in 1992.


http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2009/11/17-years-ago-just-say-whoa.html

About 5 weeks ago via Facebook, upon inquiring at the DPA page was told that the decision were expected to go out by the first week of June.

The latest information is that:

(3:43) Some decisions have gone out already, the rest should follow very soon. We received many proposals!

(3:44) There should be a partial list available at the start of August.

Hopefully this shall include Evo Morales, President of Bolivia (who we hear and see so little about in the media compare to say Venezuela's Hugo Chavez), particularly THIS YEAR for officially DENOUNCING the 1961 U.N. Single 'Narcotics' Convention.

Monday, July 4, 2011

Constitution Party Alas Isn’t: Subverts Liberty to the Continuing Cigarette-Pharma Mercantilism

http://www.constitutionparty.com/party_platform.php#Drug%20Abuse
Drug Abuse


The 10th Amendment states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

The 4th Amendment states: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

The Constitution Party will uphold the right of states and localities to restrict access to drugs and to enforce such restrictions. We support legislation to stop the flow of illegal drugs into these United States from foreign sources. As a matter of self-defense, retaliatory policies including embargoes, sanctions, and tariffs, should be considered.

At the same time, we will take care to prevent violations of the Constitutional and civil rights of American citizens. Searches without probable cause and seizures without due process must be prohibited, and the presumption of innocence must be preserved.

Ignores 1st amendment; 8th amendment; 9th amendment; 14th amendment.

1st amendment- freedom of religion

8th amendment- freedom from excessive punishments

9th amendment- freedom of un-enumerated rights retained by the people

14th amendment- equal protection under the law- scientific consistency, not the nonsense of altogether banning cocaine while allowing the sale of concentrated caffeine powder without poison warning labels.

Uses 10th amendment as vehicle to continue the status quo via the States. with its nanny state interpretation and twisting of powers to rights from the people to the State governments, while offering the 4th amendment as a mere fig leaf.

Employs other word tricks in pursuit of the status quo agenda that seem more moderate than they really are, restrict rather than prohibit, yet with no real limit of the scope of this police power.

For instance don’t think about requiring scientific consistency equal protection under the law, rather maintain ‘beliefs’ lacking truth.

It even asserts the idea of the U.S. with its criminal mercantilism for Virginia Bright Leaf Tobacco cigarettes having “As a matter of self-defense, retaliatory policies including embargoes, sanctions, and tariffs, should be considered” a blatant scam as it’s the U.S’s favored Tobacco that kills some 6 million people worldwide annually, and an estimated by the UN WHO 100 million plus during the last century.

That’s some legacy.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Obama Proving Himself to Be A Dick

Obama High School Graduation Handshake: 1979

Think about it, the first U.S. President born during the term of John F. Kennedy,who ends up cancelling a proposed new Moon Project as too expensive and we've already been there done that,insists upon continuing the $1/5th+ trillion a year continuing mega boondoggle of agricultural cigarette pharma mercantilism known as the 'drug war', shunning Bolivia's Morales Coca initiative, and betraying his 2008 campaign pledge to respect State and local statutes regarding regulated medicinal Marijuana.
http://reason.com/blog/2011/06/30/white-house-overrides-2009-mem
The Department of Justice sent out a memo Wednesday instructing the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration and leading officials in the U.S. Attorneys Office to treat medical marijuana shops as top priorities for prosecutors and drug investigators.
"Persons who are in the business of cultivating, selling or distributing marijuana, and those who knowingly facilitate such activities, are in violation of the Controlled Substances Act, regardless of state law," the memo reads. "Consistent with resource constraints and the discretion you may exercise in your district, such persons are subject to federal enforcement action, including potential prosecution. State laws or local ordinances are not a defense to civil or criminal enforcement of federal law with respect to such conduct, including enforcement of the CSA."
The memo, authored by Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole, "clarifies" a memo released in 2009 that declared medical marijuana sales in states that have legalized it to be a low priority for law enforcement and prosecutors. The so-called "Ogden memo" first appeared to drug law reformers as evidence that President Obama was dialing back the war on drugs. The DEA and U.S. Attorneys office continued to raid and prosecute state-legal grow operations and marijuana shops after the memo was first circulated, leading reformers to conclude that Obama was lying when he said that his administration would not be doing those things.

The memo written by Cole and addressed to DEA Administrator Michele M. Leonhart and several members of the U.S. Attorney's office is a severe amendment to the Ogden memo. "The Department of Justice is committed to the enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act in all States. Congress has determined that marijuana is a dangerous drug and that the illegal distribution and sale of marijuana is a serious crime that provides a significant source of revenue to large scale criminal enterprises, gangs, and cartels," the memo reads.
The Department of Justice enables legislative crime starting with that of perjury with charges against Marijuana "is a dangerous drug", and continuing via racketeering and extortion via the prohibition statutes of the U.S. Controlled Substances Act, that rests upon a highly stretched definition of the U.S. Congress's Constitutionally assigned power to regulate interstate commerce running roughshod over 1st, 8th, 9th, 10th and 14th Amendment concerns, indeed with this ever being so challenged in totality.

Marijuana is what a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency judge in 1989 declared one of the world's safest theraupeutic agents not known to have caused any deaths (and note that the DEA is headquarted in northern Virginia, the state where 'Virginia' Bright leaf tobacco was created and developed into the last century's cigarettes- adulterated and misbranded by the standard applied to any other human consumable (except alcoholic beverages).

By so banning Marijuana, and indeed Coca leaf and Opium, the government is committing perjury in a conspiracy to maintain a criminal mercantilism scheme for the market protection of other commodities, notably 'Virginia Bright Leaf Tobacco', various phramaceuticals (prescription 'patent medicines' or 'medications'), plus alcoholic beverages.

This is particularly so, regarding pharma, as that same government approves the manufacture and sale as a prescription pharma medication, of Marijuana's very essence in pill form- Sativex.

By banning a natural substance while permitting its synthesis into a pill, the government is going to end up increasing health care costs for the sake of what essentially a market protection racket.

Meanwhile, the ban on Coca and Opium shifts their ultimate use infinitely for the worse into concentrated forms and dosing increasing dangerous of snorted and especially smoked toxi-mania tending forms of 'drug use/abuse'- creating and maintaining the problem for maintaining yet more bloat of a 'drug treatment' industry.

If Obama or any other governing official so insists upon so radically driving up our health care costs (to say nothing about the enormous police-court-incarceration bloat), how the hell can anyone trust such an entity to provide a health care insurance program that's not ruinously expensive?