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!)