Thursday, July 10, 2014

Suffering in the Service of Official Lies: The Agony of Alexis Carey





Alexis Carey suffers from Dravet Syndrome, a form of epilepsy that has left the nine-year-old unable to speak or use the bathroom. She is subject to violent seizures that can last an hour or longer. No relief is provided by any of the FDA-approved medications available. When Alexis succumbs to a seizure – she sometimes endures sixty episodes a month – her parents, Michael and Clare, can do little more than act as witnesses to their daughter’s agony. Dravet-induced seizures can cause permanent brain damage, and many children thus afflicted don't reach adulthood.

If the Careys lived in Utah, Alexis would have access to cannabidiol (CBD), an orally administered oil (sometimes called “Charlotte's Web”) that has been very effective in treating Dravet's Syndrome and a number of other illnesses, including some forms of cancer. However, the family resides in Idaho, where CBD is illegal because it is derived from the evil communist demon weed called marijuana.


CBD has a very low THC content, which means that it has no psychoactive effects. But this matters not to the Gem State's noble defenders of public virtue: On February 20, 2013, the Idaho State Senate’s State Affairs Committee unanimously approved a measure resolving never to permit legalization of marijuana for any reason, and a second resolution petitioning the White House to carry out stern and strict enforcement of all federal anti-marijuana statutes. The first was later approved by the full Legislature, but the latter was voted down.

Alexis's parents have lobbied the state Legislature to enact an exception for CBD use in treatment of Dravet Syndrome. Although some legislators expressed sympathy, no tangible progress was made, which means that the family cannot expect relief until sometime next year, at best. In the meantime, Alexis’s condition will continue to deteriorate.

In desperation, Michael and Clare have considered moving to Colorado, where CBD is readily available. Rather than being forced into exile, they have contemplated the possibility of driving to Colorado and returning with a load of Charlotte's Web. Given the opportunistic ruthlessness with which Idaho State Police troopers enforce – and exploit -- the state's marijuana ban, this would very likely mean that they would be intercepted at the border and face both imprisonment and the loss of everything they own through the state-licensed larceny called “asset forfeiture.”


“Would a prosecutor even take a case like that, and say `I'm going to prosecute you for having hemp oil with 0.3 percent THC in it?'” mused Clare in an interview with BSU's Public Radio affiliate.

The living answer to that question is Monte Stiles, retired federal prosecutor and ideological architect of Idaho's draconian anti-marijuana campaign. He is precisely the kind of self-enraptured world-improver who would be willing to turn parents into felons and paupers because they seek to treat their incurably sick little girl with a substance that is banned by the State for no rational reason.

 Stiles combines the destructive, dictatorial sanctimony of Savonarola with the pathological implacability of Javert. He sincerely believes himself to be the divinely commissioned tutor to the public, defender of “the children,” and scourge of the “New Barons of Pot.” In his wisdom – and who are we to challenge it? – it is necessary that Alexis and others like her suffer, rather than using treatments that would undermine the state-imposed orthodoxy that “marijuana is a crude street drug” with no beneficial uses.

Stiles lectures a captive audience of schoolchildren in Twin Falls.
Left untreated, Alexis's Dravet Syndrome will leave the child's tiny body wracked with painful convulsions. For Stiles and his allies, this is simply the price that must be paid in order to hold at bay what he calls the “Trojan horse of marijuana as `medicine.'”

Stiles spent 28 years as a federal prosecutor, all but four of them focusing on drug prohibition efforts. Since retiring from that post he has tirelessly promoted prohibition both here and abroad. Despite the fact that he has no medical credentials, Stiles pontificates that there is no “acceptable” medical use for marijuana, and that the “end game” of any effort to establish medical exceptions is decriminalization of “the recreational use of everything.”



This was essentially the state of affairs in the 19th century, when Stiles’ devout Mormon forebears fortified themselves with stimulant-rich “Mormon Tea,” cannabis and heroin were prominently listed ingredients in widely used cough syrup preparations, and cocaine – which was advertised as a topical analgesic for teething pains – could be purchased at the local apothecary.  

If Stiles were still in office, he not only would prosecute Michael and Clare for bringing CBD back from Colorado, he would seize their bank accounts, their home, and their property, and use his influence to arrange for the same penalties to be imposed on their suppliers in Colorado and anybody who did business with them.

“The saddest part of this story [the rapid normalization of marijuana use] is the fact that our federal government has always had the ability to shut this down,” wrote Stiles in a January 2013 op-ed column. “As a federal drug prosecutor for almost 25 years, I know that we didn't have to endure a decade or more of so-called `medicinal' marijuana before the pretense was dropped and full legalization efforts began. For the price of a postage stamp and some paper, the federal government could send a notice of forfeiture to marijuana landlords. This would be most effective in states like Arizona and New Jersey where only one dispensary exists....”

Stiles no longer has the power to dispossess people by decree, but he continues his relentless evangelism on behalf of prohibition. He was most likely the ghostwriter of a January 2013 letter to the White House on behalf of the Association of Idaho Cities demanding that the Obama administration crack down on state-level efforts to decriminalize the use of 
marijuana. The AIC condemned legalization of marijuana as “a disaster for our country and the worldwide war against drugs” and urged action “to enforce federal drug laws in all states and uphold international treaties relating to the control of illegal drugs in the world.”

That letter, which provided the template for the state legislature’s subsequent anti-marijuana resolutions, could be construed as an act of treason in the strict constitutional sense of the expression. Article III, section 3 of the U.S. Constitution defines “Treason against the united States” – note the plural – as “levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies….” The signatories of the AIC’s letter to the White House, and the legislative Quislings who called for a federal anti-marijuana crack-down, were urging Obama to take violent action against states that have exercised their reserved powers under the Tenth Amendment to opt out of the marijuana prohibition regime. This would be done, furthermore, to enforce the UN’s 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs – an anti-constitutional pact enacted by an unaccountable foreign assembly.

Only the sacred cause of drug prohibition could inspire Idaho’s Republican-dominated political establishment to beg Barack Obama to use whatever means he deems necessary to enforce UN-mandated “international law.”

While Idaho government’s anti-marijuana zealotry is globalist – in effect, if not in intent – Stiles’s vision of a “drug-free society” can be accurately described as communist. Not Marxist, mind you; he doesn’t present a theory of class struggle that conduces toward the final victory of the proletariat. What Stiles proposes is the organization of society into “planned communities” administered by visionaries like himself.

In February 2013, the same month that the incomparably righteous Idaho Legislature enacted its “Prohibition now – prohibition forever!” resolution, Stiles produced a detailed manifesto entitled “The Path: A Vision for American's [sic] Future.” Displaying the monomania of an instinctive totalitarian, Stiles outlines a planned community in which the central organizing principle is an abhorrence of all government-banned substances.

“The Path provides leaders with the opportunity to say, `This is the way. Let’s go there together,’” exhorts Stiles. He then outlines the “Seven Significant Steps” that we must follow under the diligent oversight of our inspired rulers. Of course, seeking to establish a “drug-free” community is an undertaking as senseless as trying to overtake the horizon – but for those who seek the power to “improve” other people through the threat and exercise of violence, it’s the journey that matters, not the destination.

The “planned community” limned by Stiles is a bizarre Landru-cult, minus the annual catharsis of state-licensed hedonism. Imagine Mao's Cultural Revolution filtered through Ned Flanders’s aesthetic lens, with the role of Red Guards played by a hyper-authoritarian faction of Up With People, and you’ll get a rough idea of what Stiles has in mind. 

Planned communities: Young Pioneers in Soviet Russia...
Like Barack Obama, Stiles fancies himself a revolutionary “community organizer,” calling for the creation of “Community coalitions … formed around 12 community sectors, including schools, businesses, churches, youth organizations, parents, and civic organizations.” This would allow a targeted city to qualify for subsidies through the Federal Drug Free Community Grants Program – and that’s when the fun will really begin.

“Leaders” will be identified, a community “kickoff” event will be held, “community sectors” will be enlisted to “gather data” – that is, collect intelligence on suspected deviants. Inmates of the local government schools would endure daily agitprop barrages and be expected to take part in liturgies of conformity. School hallways would teem with “law enforcement resource officers” empowered to carry out “suspicion-based drug testing” of students.

Similar policies would be imposed in the workplace, in the churches, in civic organizations, and anywhere else people might repair in search of a brief respite from the relentless attentions of their archons. Citizens would be expected to offer public ritual denunciations of “the notion that your state should surrender to the drug culture by normalizing substance abuse – in any form.”

According to Marx’s manifesto, communism is distilled into a single principle: “The abolition of private property.” Through the practice of “asset forfeiture,” American police departments have been immeasurably more effective in establishing communism than Leon Trotsky’s Red Army ever was. Not surprisingly, in Stiles’ pseudo-puritanical dystopia the police would have free rein “to effectively investigate, seize, and forfeit the drug-related assets of drug traffickers” and devote a portion of the plundered proceeds to “drug education efforts” to explain “why drug education and enforcement is important to everyone.”

Totalitarian blueprints demand ideological regimentation of family life, and “The Path” is no exception. Parents would be required to harangue their children “at least once a week” regarding the “values and expectations” of the community. 

...Idaho "Drug-Free Youth" at a rally on the Capitol steps.
Here Stiles neglected an opportunity to tout the accomplishments of an Idaho parent who exhausted himself in the prohibitionist crusade: Former state DARE coordinator Larry McGhee, a 30-year law enforcement veteran who devoted most of his career to combating drug use. 

During that time, as it happened, McGhee’s daughter and grand-daughter both became drug addicts, but somehow this didn’t impeach his credibility as a state-commissioned moral scold. His family’s tragic experience underscores the fact that it’s impossible to create a “drug-free” world– but Stiles, who worked closely with McGhee, simply will not abandon that pretense, or the conceit that children should be treated as community property.

The very existence of the “drug culture” -- which apparently includes everybody who is not a prohibitionist fanatic – means that “children are being deprived of their right to `life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” Stiles insists.


The “right” of children to live in a “drug-free community” must be the “first priority,” Stiles decrees. In his ideal “community,” the rights of parents would be contingent upon their compliance with prohibitionist priorities.  

Given the priorities expressed in “The Path,” it’s reasonable to conclude that if Stiles were still a federal prosecutor, and Alexis Carey’s parents obtained CBD to treat her Dravet Syndrome, he would not only seek their imprisonment and impoverishment, he would most likely try to terminate their parental rights and dispatch their suffering daughter into the foster care system. This would be justified by the necessity of preserving her “right” to endure a brief and pain-saturated existence as a member of a “drug-free community.”







Dum spiro, pugno!


25 comments:

Anonymous said...

And with a "drug free community" he means drugs that are deemed illegal by the government.
Pharmaceutical drugs, are still fine however, just don't loose that prescription or you'll be heading to jail! (along with your life savings, of course.)

Keith said...

Many thanks for another excellent and disturbing piece.

Assuming that critters like Stiles actually have a faith in a caring deity - rather than merely having an ambition to coerce people to satisfy their own ego or neediness.

What a strange deity it must be, that it should want those who grovel before the whip of coercion, theft and punishment?

or even more perversely, that it might want those who perpetrate the bullying, the thieving and the beating.

a deity that rejoices in adherence to opinions of monopolists expressed on scraps of paper, rather than in the peaceful free choices of billions of real individual humans.

I must admit here to having a personal problem with a certain habit forming, plant leaf derived stimulant, that Stiles and his co-religionists despise and that I just can't seem to get enough of.

Historically, the trade in that substance has been accompanied by wars, occupations and other violent disturbances, including in the area now lorded over by the united state.

The leaf?

Tea.

despite that personal weakness, or perhaps because of it. I can't imagine anyone actually choosing to live in any of the various moral busybodying prohibitionist's "new jerusalems"

whether the prohibition that's supposed to be enticing the day of judgement to occur after 1,000 years of its enforcement is a prohibition of tea, alcohol, weed, foreskins, Frank Zappa's music...
____________________________________
I've never been sure whether this was meant to discourage or to seriously encourage the drinking of alcohol;-) http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4124/4951270370_271a43f671_z.jpg

Anonymous said...

Good work Will.
Follow this, firemen/woman many times die from cancer. The cause is the chemicals in furniture that are put into the material as a fire retardant. Its widely known that the chemicals don't work as a fire retardant and the folks that fight fires have been trying to get the laws to stop demanding the chemicals from being put into the material in furniture. Many time firefighters get bills going in CA which started this nonsense to stop the process of adding the cancer causing chemicals to the material in furniture. The chemical companies fight tooth and nail and run TV and radio ads to stop the bills before they get out of committee or never get a vote on the floor. So firefighters keep dying in large numbers from cancer because this stuff is in the smoke from fires.
Bottom line: I smell a rat in all of the pot laws believing these laws come from the drug companies to keep out any drugs that can not be patented. So whom are our lawmakers really serving? Another case in proof showing the people have lost their representative government to big money spending corporations.

Keith said...

Anon at 5:32AM

I'm with you and agree up to: showing the people have lost their representative government

you never had such a thing - it cannot exist.

Gerard Casey explains that impossibility very well:

as an audio
http://mises.org/media/3122/Which-is-to-be-MasterThe-Indefensibility-of-Political-Representation

and in writing http://mises.org/daily/3383

kirk said...

another 'savior of the world' type, which means he is an ignorant, arrogant, aggressive, omniscient megalomaniac. his thoughts and actions verify that these listed 'attributes' lead to his holier than thou, smarter than thou attitude and go even further with 'i will save you despite yourself' position.

this faux savior, this pious patrician, this arrogant aggressor is the sine qua non of life in amerika today. the truly damnable thing is that he has his place because we, the chumps, tolerate what he and his ilk do.

have we become so pathetic that we tolerate such people in any position, much less a position of power? are we so empty that we allow such people to completely dominate our lives?

it is beyond time to divide this nation into at least two parts: one part as was intended, the other as is today with such types as that featured in charge.

i cannot stand abominations that pose as people.

Anonymous said...

It may be time for Mr. Stiles to suffer an unfortunate accident.

William N. Grigg said...

I would much prefer that he would grow a conscience and stop tormenting innocent, helpless people.

Anonymous said...

I have met the Carey's before, back when both our daughters with special needs where in the same therapy program. They are the best sort of people, both highly intelligent medical professionals. The kind of people that should be able to have access to CBD. Of course none of this matters to the majority of state law makers whose primary motives are winning the next election and how to serve themselves. My own personal experience and connections to the Idaho legislature confirms this and furthermore it will never change in a state where the corruption runs so deep. My best advice to anyone like the Carey's is to get the hell out of Idaho like I did. Blessings to them and their beautiful daughter Alexis.

Lemuel Gulliver said...

Interestingly, the main ingredient in the original Coca-Cola recipe, when it was first invented, was a stimulative extract of South American coca leaves, today known as cocaine. The other main ingredient was an extract of the Kola nut, native to West Africa, I believe. This recipe did not seem to do our grandparents any harm, and in fact made Coca-Cola one of the favorite beverages of the last century. I do not know when the Nanny State made Coca-Cola change its recipe to eliminate coca extract, but the name remains.

Keith said...

Hi LG
The Coca Cola story is a wonderful teaching resource, regardless of whether the present day organization is viewed as good, bad or indifferent.

all of the current statist bleeting about drugs being cut and adulterated with goodness knows what, or when a particularly pure batch appears a bunch of users overdose...

The analogy with alcohol prohibition is exact.

pre prohibition, you could get a mild sweet, carbonated coca leaf tea, and todays most recognized brand world wide, with its fancy bottle designs. That was invented so that customers could easily recognize a consistent product that they knew they liked.

Just as with the start of alcohol prohibition, all of the varieties of beers and wines, each with a recognizable brand name label, disappeared, and as the market went into stealth mode, anonymous gut rot whisky and gin, packing maximum punch for minimum bulk was all that was available.

oh, and repulsive grape juice for use at the alter, in place of the "sinful" wine that Jesus used.

Years ago, I used to date a Methodist. At one of the chapel wedding receptions, we were sat opposite a pair of staunch Methodists. Someone came around filling glasses with grape juice for a toast. The wife put her hand over her husband's glass - he wasn't getting any of that!

There really is no end to the obsessive compulsive disorder of a fanatic, they can always find new levels to apply oppression, prohibition and misery.

I know I can do that too, with "more libertarian than thou..."

I never visited the Silkroad and haven't yet visited any of its multiple successors. I'm told that the substances available for those who want to pay for them, are of excellent quality and price, and that the traders are very keen to build their good reputations with customer feedback. I'm also told that the silkroad forums had some great discussions of free market economics.

The peaceful emergent order, innovations and choices of market anarchy, versus a statist jackboot on your face.

Keith said...

LG, The date of removal of cocaine may have been as late as the late 1960s or early 1970s. I've certainly seen bottles and bottle caps with cocaine on the ingredient list.

also, Coke and aspirin was reckoned to be a teenage high in the 1960s and before, it didn't do anything for my contemporaries in the mid 70s, They killed brain cells with glue sniffing instead.

Lemuel Gulliver said...

Hi Keith,
Interesting history - thanks.

Mr. Grigg,

Does anyone here seriously think the psychopaths who rule our world care a rat’s ass about one suffering child or her heartbroken parents?

Hey man, there’s Big Money to be made from this War on Drugs, just like the War on Terror, or the War on Communism, or the War on Fascism, or the War on Poverty, or the War on Tax Evasion, or the War on Sexual Perversion, or the War on Illegal Immigration, or the War on Urinary Incontinence, or the War on Public Flatulence, or any of the other “wars” our rulers keep us riled up about, so we won’t notice their hands in our pockets and their teeth sunk into our jugulars.

They have casually and cheerfully murdered 100 to 250 million human beings in the last 100 years in their accumulation of Big Money, including tens of millions of children. It’s still not enough. They want to own everything in the world, including you and me – 7 billion human slaves. They don’t give a shit about the suffering of one stupid child, however pretty she may be, or a million children, or ten million. They would gladly murder 3 billion children, drive every species on the planet to extinction, and blow up the entire planet itself, just so long as they get to own ALL the money in the world.

Insane? Sure.

You think I exaggerate? No. They are stupid enough to do all that and more. A parasite does not care that it is killing its host and thus causing its own demise. Life is good for the parasite as long as the party lasts, and its instant gratification is all it cares about. You cannot reason with a parasitic worm, an intestinal fluke, or the psychopaths ruling our country and our world.

What we need is an antibiotic that would eliminate the psychopaths and spare the rest of us psychologically healthy human beings. I hear there is an Italian company called Beretta that makes such an antibiotic.

- LG

Keith said...

Hi LG,

If I can jump in ahead of Mr Grigg.

I agree with what you say about the destructiveness of the psychopaths who almost without exception fill the positions in that parasite writ large, the state.

The parasitism analogy is a very insightful one.

I can't remember whether I've shown you this yet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3x3TMdkGdQ , Robert Sapolsky discussing toxoplasma, a parasitic protozoan, reprogramming mammal's brains (there are some worrying aspects that the u.s. military is interested in it).

The end of the video is also directly applicable to Mr Grigg's current piece, with mothers caring for seriously disabled children suffering such severe stress that their genetic material ages approximately 7 times the rate of their less stressed peers.

Back to parasites.

The statist parasites carry out significant reprogramming and behaviour modification of their hosts.

Their means of doing this include state funded education and state licensed media, allong with state supported intellectuals.

Clearly there are individuals who one way or another manage to free themselves from the re-programming, and Mr Grigg provides a forum here where we can help each other in that process.

There are individuals, I can think of several members of my direct family, who really are beyond help, they're too badly affected or too old now, the "red pill" would just upset them.

People like Mr Grigg, you, me, and others who come here, even if we're not immune to that behaviour modification, we're certainly very resistant to it.

We can also practice "hygiene" such as throwing the tv out, not listening to the radio news which it is part of the license conditions that the stations broadcast. and if we are exposed to sources of manipulation, ask a few simple questions;
Cui bono? (who gains from this?)
if the conjurer says "look this way", what's he doing elsewhere, while people are distracted?
What are the basic axioms of policies and institutions? - that one is a very powerful tool; eg cops as monopolists and thieves, operating on special privilege cannot possibly have good outcomes.

We need to spread this vaccination. It's slow, you need to be selective too, but it is slowly denying the parasites a host population.

There are other approaches too.

I think that Konkin's Agorist Manifesto provides some good ideas.

The bitcoiners, music sharers and other cypherphreaks are providing us with tools that do not require a central hub - they cannot be taken down.

the next phase is mesh nets- a completely de-centralized internet, no service providers to be pressured into censorship, snooping or snitching.

you don't need to shoot the tyrant - you just remove his foundation.

at some stage, maybe surprisingly soon, or maybe long after we're dead and gone. There will be sufficeint who are not susceptible to the parasites, that we/they can safely say "no"

no taxes, no military service, no aggression.

even the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland has a wonderful scene of nullification; the red queen's playing card soldiers tell her "we serve you no longer" drop their weapons and walk off.

Five hundred years ago, Father Juan de Mariana (SJ) explored the concept of tyranicide and its just use. It's there if we need it, but I don't believe that we can advance the non aggression principle with aggression.

Lemuel Gulliver said...

Keith,

You say: "I don't believe that we can advance the non aggression principle with aggression."

Excellent advice for dealing with a normal person. Normal people are often forced into actions that they would rather avoid, and that they later regret, by the force of circumstances. There is an imperative of self-preservation in every living creature, which leads us to act self-interestedly from time to time. We should try to understand what prompted those actions, and to forgive.

However, psychopaths are completely different. They have luxury and power in more abundance than they can use, and yet they take no satisfaction in that. Their only satisfaction comes in subjecting other living creatures to the overpowering force of their will, even if it causes infinite pain and suffering. They do not understand what that pain and suffering is, apart from the behavioral manifestations that indicate to them that another is suffering. Rather than upset them, this gives satisfaction, as it indicates that their control technique is working. They dispassionately and coldly observe their victims, as one would observe the death struggles of a cockroach after stomping on it.

How do you deal with that? If there is a runaway bulldozer roaring down the street, crushing people under its tracks, do you try to reason with the bulldozer, and try to show the machine that it is causing suffering to its victims? Of course not. You stop the machine by whatever means necessary, including an anti-tank missile. You do not then say, "Poor machine, it's dead. How it must have suffered." The machine was never alive to begin with. Same with psychopaths. They were never emotionally alive to begin with, and their own death is as meaningless to them as the death of another. They do not understand what you are talking about when you talk suffering and morality to them.

Remember, the ONLY thing that upsets them is loss of control over others. That's the ONLY reason they would fear death. It means their ability to manipulate others is over.

Nobody who has not been a victim of a psychopath has the slightest idea what I'm talking about. They will think this is all a vile slander of some good people who went astray. That's what Bernie Madoff's clients thought, until they tried to get their life savings back. That's what people think about the police, until they have to deal with them in person.

I must however admit that there is a continuum of this illness. Not all psychopaths are extreme cases. Some have only a touch of this tendency, or a moderate amount, or a lot. Perhaps those types can be reformed, but in general, all of them, however bad they are, get worse, the more their evil activities are tolerated.

They have to be stopped, before they destroy the entire planet.

- LG

rkshanny said...

I agree with Lem and Anon 1:13 in that psychopaths and sociopaths, by their very existence, comprise a threat of grievous bodily harm or death to us all that enables us to use the libertarian/natural right principle of self defense. The odds that these beings will "grow a conscience and stop tormenting innocent, helpless people" before they wreak havoc in our lives is, I suspect, virtually nil. The non-aggression/zero-aggression principle enables us to defend ourselves from initiated aggression. These whackos are more than ready to use State or personal violence against us all, and do so continually. Do I owe the Gestapo the opportunity to make me their next victim simply because their guns aren't pointed at me this particular second? Their behavior and very existence are a potential mortal threat, and therefore initiated aggression, to me and mine. I could be their next victim in an instant. It seems self defense against this class of psycho is appropriate use of force. It reminds me of the "Tueller Drill" wherein it was shown that a knife-wielder at 21 feet away who could be considered too far away to satisfy the use of deadly force rules by a defender, actually could cover that 21 feet in 1.5 seconds, and was therefore considered to be an imminent threat warranting the valid use of deadly force against him.

Keith said...

LG & RKS

a preliminary reply, I'll try to put more flesh on it when I've got some other jobs completed.

I'm not in any way suggesting that psychopaths will respond to kindness or become reformed characters. quite the contrary,

In the past I've explored the argument that the extreme examples are perhaps exempt from the golden rule / categorical imperative. If they're incapable the mutual understanding and respect which is the basis of the NAP, then,

if they are aggressing, it is perhaps like an elephant and a garden of sweet peas. Keeping the elephant out is not a matter of reasoning with it, but a purely technical matter.

One of the main points that I'm trying to make, and I think that Mr Grigg is too (please correct me if I'm wrong on that). Is the underlying factor in the failings and abuses which Mr Grigg documents so well - is institutional.

The psychopaths are the flies which always arrive to crawl over and feed on that institutional turd.

That institution consists of legalized aggression.

It manifests itself in various forms;
states, governments, their monopoly police forces, the monopolies and cartels which states enforce for the benefit of their cronies, and the legal forms of theft/ enslavement which they use to fund their violent abuses; most notably tax and fiat money printing.

If we can educate enough intelligent people to understand the nature of the non aggression principal, then aggression / special privilege loses all pretence of legitimacy.

St Augustine explains from that loss of pretence of legitimacy point on:

"Justice [or in this case pretence] being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, “What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.”

Once that pretense of legitmacy is taken away, fiat laws and fiat currency are likely to be treated with the contempt and derision they are due.

Tax demands are likely to be seen for the insolent extortionists notes that they are.

and monopoly cops are likely to be seen for the sadistic thugs that they are - and once their mystique is gone, they'd better learn some manners and get honest jobs, because people (and the competing private defenders whom they hire) will defend themselves and their property against them.

Without the funds to pay monopoly wages, the whole institution of the state will topple.

I don't expect the psychopaths within that system to become good people, but instead of "with a great fleet [thou] art styled emperor.”

they are more likely to be reduced to do[ing] it with a petty ship, ...[and being] called robber[s]"

and shot at by employees of honest merchants whenever they try to ply their violent abuses.(cont)

Keith said...

(cont)
That's the strategy, the tactics for getting there and surviving allong the way, need some modification from those described in various cautionary tales such as Ross; "unintended consequences" (is anyone up to date on whether Mr Vanderboegh's "Absolved" is in print yet?).

Psychopaths love to dance in blood - they need to be denied that blood.

Psychopaths love grandiosity, Their attention seeking stunts are likely to be grandiose. Mr Grigg has stuck it to the statists by documenting instances of coerced street theatre and staged security theatre. We all need to be alert for some really big examples, and stick it to the statists when they occur.

I know that there's always a huge amount of reading involved - this whole area is deliberately neglected and hidden by the lamestream. We've all wasted into the teens of years of our lives stuck in class rooms with meaningless, time wasting, busy work, and now we have to spend even more time actually educating ourselves.

Davi Barker has some very good insights into privilege and psychopathy here: http://dailyanarchist.com/2013/08/23/authoritarian-sociopathy/

He's following on from the Milgram electric shock and Stanford prison experiments in the late 1960s, and how far the illusion of entitlement or "right" will corrupt ordinary people in a very short time.

One of the points he seems to be making is that around 2/3 normal people will behave in a very abusive manner, if they believe that is required of them.

Psychopaths certainly exist, and in a role which requires no conscience and no empathy, then they will excell,

however, it isn't a question of reforming the system to put "the right people" in control of aggression.

Aggression itself must be considered totally unacceptable.

Robert Fowler said...

Being the realist, I look for the people to be voting from the rooftops in the not to distant future. I hope I am wrong. When the time comes, these stateists are going to be on the top of a lot of lists.

Anonymous said...

Ya'll understand this has all been planed out, every detail that is being described within these posted replies.
Fact of the matter is, the only time Jesus got violent was, with the money changers at the temple.
Jesus said, "if you see me, you have seen my father". Jesus is God.
God knows the future and the devil does not. If the devil even had a hint of the future he would never have allowed Judas to rat Jesus out. A huge mistake for the devil.
The devil works with evil and the international bankers are that evil that evolved from the money changers. Jesus knew this only too well, knowing the future.
The first thing to get in order is to be saved and get loved ones and friends saved as well as yourself. This is a war for souls on this three demential battle ground of a world.
What the folks that visit this site have over many others is, critical thinking skills. The ability to question and see wrong and the parasite's parasitic scams that harm all of us.
Don't lose sight of the big picture, and don't fear getting in the face of evil as a warrior of truth. Others see and will follow because even the sheep have a keen smell for the truth. People know something is very, very wrong with our world. And many are now starting to hear truth and reason.
May God bless and help all of us as evil runs wild over mankind.

Gil said...

Oh puh-lease. Coca-Cola never had any more than trace elements of cocaine. I thought that was common knowledge.

Keith said...

Mr Grigg,

Just listened to your latest podcast. Superb.

Anonymous said...

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/36814

In the 1890s, however, public sentiment began to turn against cocaine, which among other things was believed to be a cause of racial violence by drug-crazed blacks. In 1903 the New York Tribune published an article linking cocaine with black crime and calling for legal action against Coca-Cola.
(The Lame Stream Media put themselves in the middle of it, making the new, even back in 1903. Not much has changed with that dishonesty issue Americans still deal with today.

Chris Mallory said...

Personally, I hope Mr. Stiles lives a long, long life. But only after developing an incurable illness which causes great pain and disabling nervous system problems. Let him live as he wishes this little girl is forced to. I would bet he would eat his pistol before a month was out.

Anonymous said...

Keith,

I love that quote from St. Augustine. Superb. How many centuries ago did he live? It appears the psychopaths and leeches have been crapping on the faces of the public since time immemorial. According to Augustine, at least since the time of Alexander in 330 BC, and probably for millennia before that. Today's thugs are following a long tradition among their kind.

I respect your principles. I myself talk a good line, but would not be able to live with myself after killing another human being. I'm the type that catches spiders in my house and puts them outside. However, cruelty and blatant injustice to any sentient creature lights my ass on fire.

So, for those readers who may someday have the cojones to actually do something about it, here is what you do:

(1) Buy a prepaid cellphone for cash, in the name of Donald Duck, which you will throw in the river afterwards.

(2) Make a 911 call at midnight to say you heard shots along a road running through a deserted stretch of woods and you think a cop has been shot. Make sure there are several roads out of those woods.

(3) When the inevitable 10-15 cop cruisers show up and they all get out of their cars to rescue their fellow psychopath, you and a bunch of fellow folks-pushed-beyond-endurance, armed with hunting rifles and concealed in the woods, greet the cops cordially, explain that they are not welcome, and send them on their way home.

You do that a few times, and your courtesy in greeting the minions of the law will cause them to regret their past abuses, and to be reluctant to continue their insufferably rude behavior towards members of the public.

End of problem.

- Son of Jonathan Swift

Lemuel Gulliver said...

Gil,

Who knows? The Coca-Cola recipe has always been secret, so it seems difficult to make that statement authoritatively. Moreover, all it takes is a microgram of cocaine in your car, real or planted there, and the tax feeders will steal it from you. The point is, what is illegal today may not have been illegal yesterday, and may not be illegal tomorrow. Prohibition is the classic example.

Personally, during Prohibition, I think the Government realized how much revenue it was losing to the likes of Al Capone and Joe Kennedy, (the story of their business partnership is interesting, as it was part of the reason later for the JFK assassination,) and decided they could not go on without a piece of the action. My father-in-law drove a truck for Joe Kennedy from Boston to New York with Canadian liquor. (Someone once said: Behind every great fortune is a crime!) All the cops were paid off along the way. He met and married my mother-in-law in Boston. They received a set of antique Rosenthal china, service for 12, as a wedding present from Lucky Luciano.

Today, vile, filthy elements within the CIA, who have far worse morals and far less integrity than the Mob, fly the opium out of Afghanistan that is refined in Colombia into heroin, and then it is shipped north through Mexico. That's the real reason we are still in Afghanistan. Nothing at all to do with 9-11 or the Taliban.

And this insufferable prick Stiles apparently thinks his shit smells like Easter lilies. The hypocrisy would make St. Francis kick puppies, and is all one with Obama's and Kerry's hypocrisy and lies in Ukraine, and every time they open their filthy mouths.

Don't ever believe anything any Government parasite says, or anything you hear, see or read in the media.

Chris Mallory,

As my Sicilian ex-wife would say: From your lips to God's ears.

- LG