THE OTHER ANARCHIST MURRAY

Rothbard, Milei And The New Right In Argentina – OpEd

 

Argentina's Javier Milei. Photo Credit: Mehr News Agency

 October 22, 2023  

By MISES

By Fernando Chiocca

Since I recognized almost twenty years ago that no person or institution has the right to initiate aggression, now is the first time I can tell a normie what my political stance is without them having no clue what I am talking about. Now I can say that I am an anarchocapitalist without causing much surprise, as a large part of the public now has some idea of what this term means.

This is thanks to the fascinating electoral success of Javier Milei, an anarchocapitalist who has a chance of becoming the next president of Argentina in tomorrow’s presidential election. Milei has five mastiff dogs that he calls “four-legged children” and named one of them Murray, in honor of the economist Murray Rothbard, a great inspiration of his. Rothbard, a dean of the Austrian school of economics, is also the father of modern libertarianism, which he called anarchocapitalism. We anarchocapitalists are aware that any form of state is criminal, and any and all services it provides can and must be provided by the free market. Rothbard provided the ethical and economic justifications for anarchocapitalism, refuting all myths used to legitimize the existence of the state.

Nevertheless, in addition to providing the framework of anarchocapitalism, Rothbard also laid out a strategydescribing how only someone like Milei could break down the barriers of respectable (social democratic) political discourse imposed on us by the Marxist Left and reemerge a libertarian Right political force. Rothbard refers to the old American Right, which in the first half of the twentieth century was opposed to the socialist programs implemented in the US and its foreign wars and was “for a restoration of the liberty of the old republic, of a government strictly limited to the defense of the rights of private property.” It was not a revolutionary Right. In fact, the revolution had already happened with the New Deal, and the revolution had been a socialist one. In the same way, Peronism was a socialist revolution that in eighty years transformed Argentina, which was a free country and one of the richest in the world, into a poor country. This means that a conservative stance serves to preserve socialism, while socialism continues to advance when socialists are in power. Therefore, as libertarian novelist Garet Garrett said, “The revolution was, and therefore nothing less than a counterrevolution is needed to take the country back. Behold then, not a ‘conservative,’ but a radical Right.” Agustín Laje, author, political scientist, and ally of Milei who has strived to understand and explain the new global Right, agrees:

This New Right has a revolutionary ethos, as opposed to a left that is beginning to embrace a conservative ethos. I know this might sound odd, but in what sense do I say it? If we take “conservative” as that which wants to preserve a status quo, the left is the one who today want to preserve a status quo in Argentina, while the right is trying to destroy this status quo.

Rothbard notes that while Marxists made it clear that their strategy would center on the proletariat as the group that would bring about social change, the Right got to decide “who are the major bad guys, the unwashed masses or the power elite?” He concluded that the fight should be against the ruling elite, because the masses, however untrustworthy they may be, are too busy trying to raise their families and living their lives and don’t have much time to devote to politics. Meanwhile “the bureaucrats, politicians, and special-interest groups dependent on political rule . . . make money out of politics, and so they are intensely interested and lobby and are active 24 hours a day.” Rothbard adds a distinction pointed out by John C. Calhoun, who observed that society is divided between two classes: those paying taxes and those receiving taxes. Milei focused his speech on this real class struggle, inciting the masses against their exploiters in the power elite, which he appropriately calls the political caste.

Given this, Rothbard raises this question: “If the ruling elite is taxing, looting, and exploiting the public, why does the public put up with this for a single moment? Why does it take them so long to withdraw their consent?” The masses are kept in this lethargic state of voluntary submission as the political caste co-opts “the intellectual and media elites, who are able to bamboozle the masses into consenting to their rule.” To resolve this dilemma, Rothbard identifies two wrong strategies and recommends the right one.

The first wrong is the so-called Hayekian strategy, which consists of converting the main philosophers to the correct ideas that would then convert academics, journalists, and politicians until the masses were converted to support freedom. Besides taking a lot of time, the crucial flaw in this strategy is that the media and academics do not place truth above their personal interests; therefore, this strategy is doomed.

The second improper strategy is the so-called Fabian strategy, used successfully by the socialists of the Fabian Society. It consists of creating think tanks to try to influence the centers of power. The fatal error is that what works to increase the state does not work to reduce it. Obviously, ruling elites will welcome socialist ideas that will increase their power and reject libertarian ideas that will diminish it. That said, Rothbard explains what the winning strategy is:

And so the proper strategy for the right wing must be what we can call “right-wing populism”: exciting, dynamic, tough, and confrontational, rousing and inspiring not only the exploited masses, but the often-shell-shocked right-wing intellectual cadre as well. And in this era where the intellectual and media elites are all establishment liberal-conservatives, all in a deep sense one variety or another of social democrat, all bitterly hostile to a genuine Right, we need a dynamic, charismatic leader who has the ability to short-circuit the media elites, and to reach and rouse the masses directly. We need a leadership that can reach the masses and cut through the crippling and distorting hermeneutical fog spread by the media elites.

That’s what Milei did. A distinctive feature of the Argentine mainstream media are TV and radio shows with long and heated debates. A loophole existed in the system, and Milei began to be invited to these shows. Being a scholar of the Austrian school of economics and a wholehearted libertarian, Milei commented with propriety on all subjects and passionately defended freedom. Unlike the followers of the Hayekian strategy who treat the pernicious and criminal leftist ideas and their proponents—which cause so much harm and poverty to the people—with respect and politeness, Milei understood that we are at war and was frequently furious, cursing and shouting, reflecting all the resentment of the explored masses. (Thousands of hours of videos of Milei’s appearances on Argentine TV can be found on YouTube.)

Combining ardor and wisdom with a striking media personality, soon Milei was the economist with the most television time and became a national celebrity. In addition to being aligned with the right-wing discourse of fighting crime and defending traditional values, his libertarian speech—saying things like “tax is theft,” “politicians are parasites and we don’t need them for anything,” “the central bank is one of the biggest thieves in the history of humanity,” “your welfare is taken through a gun pointed to the head of others”—managed to directly reach the masses who woke up to the truth about the extortion they suffer from political profiteers.

During the Ron Paul revolutions of 2008 and 2012, Ron Paul was able to gain some attention from the mainstream media through his participation in the GOP presidential debates. He managed to open the eyes of multitudes of Americans to libertarian truths. However, Dr. Paul did not achieve national celebrity status, and the gates of mainstream media and the bipartisan political system soon closed to him, unlike what happened with Milei.

Milei began his political career by being elected congressman in 2021 and managed to make his presidential candidacy viable in 2023, winning the preelections in August. In the presidential debates, Argentina is seeing a libertarian imploding socialist myths, giving answers that a Walter Block would give.

For example, in the debate on October 1, when asked if wage differentials between men and women were the result of patriarchal discrimination, Milei responded that salary inequality disappears if the types of profession are taken into account and that if this disparity really existed, the exploitative capitalists who seek profits at all costs would hire only women, but this does not happen. The Rothbardian strategy of libertarian populism worked, as he said it would, and Argentina is about to have the world’s first anarchocapitalist president.

About the author: Fernando Fiori Chiocca is an anti-intellectual intellectual. From São Paulo, Brazil, he is the founder and editor of Rothbard Institute.

Source: This article was published by the Mises Institute

How the Libertarian Party Became the Reactionary Arm of Trump and Trumpism

The takeover of the party by the Mises Caucus means election subversion has another friend in 2024

Writes Andy Craig · 
Jul 8,2022





Even among ideological libertarians, the Libertarian Party has long been viewed with a mix of disdain and embarrassment. To the degree anybody else is aware of the LP, it’s from the 2016 presidential campaign of former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, whose poll numbers briefly broke into the low double digits before collapsing to a desultory 3.3%. Other than that, the party has languished for five decades, usually getting 1% or less of the vote for president every four years and electing only a tiny smattering of local officials around the country.

But the LP’s lack of electoral relevance does not mean that its recent takeover by a reactionary and populist faction is a politically inconsequential event. The party’s core active membership is in the low five figures, somewhere between the Proud Boys and the Democratic Socialists of America. It has a decent organizational infrastructure with a chapter in every state and in many local precincts too. And it has a history of mobilizing resources in a targeted fashion to pass ballot initiatives and organize protests.

If it decides, for example, to aid election subversion efforts in 2024, it could turn out people in support of Jan. 6-style rallies or worse around the country. This is not a far-fetched possibility given that the new national leadership either minimizes or sympathizes with Jan. 6 rioters, and several state party chapters have made statements in support of the riot.

I was an active member of the party for nearly 10 years, until I resigned last year along with many others unwilling to stick around for a takeover by the illiberal far right. During that time, I was a party officer at the state and local level, served on national committees, including the ones responsible for writing the party’s platform and bylaws, was twice a candidate for office myself, and also worked as a senior staffer on the Johnson campaign in 2016.

From Innocuous Pranksterism to Toxic Bigotry

Aside from Johnson’s candidacy, the party had mostly drawn attention for antics ranging from the mildly amusing to utterly cringe-inducing, such as running an Elvis Presley impersonator as a perennial candidate, nominating someone who accidentally turned his skin blue by drinking colloidal silver, entertaining the presidential aspirations of the mentally unstable alleged murderer John McAfee, and treating C-SPAN viewers to a man stripping nearly naked on the national convention stage. But now, as Ken White, a criminal defense lawyer and respected commentator known by his online moniker Popehat, aptly observed on Twitter, “bigoted shitposters” have now wrested control from these “mostly harmless cranks.”

Under the direction of the so-called Mises Caucus, the LP has become home to those who don’t have qualms about declaring Holocaust-denying racists “fellow travelers” and who don’t think that bigots are necessarily disqualified from the party. They even went out of their way to delete from the party’s platform its nearly 50-year-old language stating: “We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant.” The caucus is also reversing the party’s longstanding commitment to open immigration policies in favor of border enforcement. The new chair, Angela McArdle, proclaims that the party will now be dedicated to fighting “wokeism.” People with pronouns in their Twitter bios aren’t welcome anymore, but, evidently, white nationalists and Holocaust deniers are.

But that’s not all. Various members of the new leadership have averred that: Black folks owe America for affirmative action; Pride Month is a plot by degenerates and child molesters aiming for socialism; and a country with zero taxes but more trans murders would be more morally acceptable than the reverse. Though some Mises Caucus figures insist they want to offer solutions to the culture wars, in practice, that means obsessively weighing in on the side of the far right.

After the Mises Caucus took over the New Hampshire state party, it endorsed the Big Lie, Jan. 6 rioters and Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the election. But in an in-depth report, the Southern Poverty Law Center traced the links between the various LP officeholders and Trump’s aiders and abettors. For example, it reported that Michael Heise, the Mises Caucus chairman who is the leading strategist behind the group's takeover of the national Libertarian Party, has actively courted Patrick Byrne, former Overstock.com CEO, receiving advice and donations from Byrne. Byrne spoke at Trump’s Jan. 6 rally and financed Arizona Maricopa County’s audit. Byrne also wrote a book claiming that election fraud cost Trump the election.

Heise nominated as the LP’s Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Daryl Brooks, the man whom Rudy Giuliani called as his first witness alleging election fraud at the infamous press conference outside Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia. (Brooks was later found to not meet the residency requirement for the office.)

The Paleolibertarian Takeover

How did this happen? Why would a party that found its greatest success in offering a sensible classical liberal alternative to Trump’s GOP end up being taken over by Trumpists and worse?

There are two reasons:

The first is the party’s unique structure, an oversimplified emulation of how the Republicans and Democrats operated over 200 years ago, which made it highly susceptible to hostile takeovers, as I explained here. For example, the party’s national delegates are selected at state conventions that are attended by a small number of highly motivated members willing to spend money out of pocket to show up for a weekend at a local Marriott. They generally don’t represent the views of the vast majority of members or libertarian donors, let alone libertarian voters. But just because they show up, their votes on key LP matters carry the day. This means that it was not at all hard for a group like the Mises Caucus to gin up resources to flood state conventions with its members and select national delegates who could then vote in LP officeholders sympathetic to its views.

Yet, it would be a mistake to suggest that the party could have done nothing to defend itself.

The Mises Caucus was incensed by the Johnson/Weld candidacy because it regarded the duo, particularly Bill Weld, as too mainstream. So it embarked on a campaign to capture state chapters. Yet, at the time, few party leaders were willing to openly, honestly and forcefully condemn what was happening (with some notable exceptions). Criticism that was offered tended to be subtle, restrained, and often combined with a myopic both-sides-ism that tried to frame itself as above the fray of “infighting.” Many state and national party officers went so far as to insist everyone should just get along. They walked on eggshells, afraid that the notoriously abusive Mises Caucus Twitter mob would come after them (even as the same caucus railed endlessly against leftist cancel culture mobs).

The motives and pattern of behavior—fear, cowardice, cynical political calculation and appeasement to chase votes in internal party elections—that caused the LP to succumb to a reactionary faction replicated in miniature the Trumpist takeover of the GOP. LP incumbents who tried to present themselves as fair and neutral and those who were openly against the Mises Caucus were all swept aside—just like anti-Trump Republicans such as Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois in the GOP. The former has been censured and primaried by the GOP, and the latter has been censured and pushed into early retirement. The current favorite for the next LP presidential candidate is stand-up comic Dave Smith, who, despite his Jewish background, is notorious for praising and defending anti-Semites and white nationalists like Nick Fuentes.

But besides the party’s structure, the second reason behind the pusillanimity of the LP in taking on the Mises Caucus is the broader “paleolibertarian” ideology that has haunted the libertarian movement for decades. This worldview has long advocated a strategic alliance with the populist right to fight their mutual enemy: The Establishment. The person who made the most ardent case for such an alliance was anarcho-capitalist polemicist Murray Rothbard, originally a more liberal thinker who took a dark turn in his later years and started inveighing against immigration, anti-discrimination laws and the welfare state. In a sense, Rothbard was the original Flight 93 strategist who believed that there was no more urgent task than to tear down The Establishment by any means necessary, even allying with far-right racists and bigots. He was a precursor of the modern right’s obsession with the leftist enemy.

Ron Paul: The Paleo Conduit

Former Republican congressman Ron Paul has been paleolibertarianism’s most visible promoter. His 2008 and 2012 bids for the Republican presidential nomination initially ignited considerable grassroots enthusiasm, even among non-libertarians, thanks to his staunch opposition to war, among other things. But eventually Paul’s candidacy went down in flames in no small part due to the emergence of racist newsletters penned under his name some 20 years prior by a Rothbard acolyte. The author, Lew Rockwell, founded the Mises Institute, from which the Mises Caucus gets its name. (It can’t be emphasized enough that Ludwig von Mises, the Austrian economist after whom the institute is named, was a liberal champion of toleration and cosmopolitanism who would have roundly condemned his namesake’s twisted agenda.)

The newsletters peddled vile steretoypes about African Americans, gay people and other minorities with the aim of courting white, grassroots support. Though the paleo strain has never been dominant in the libertarian movement, it always had its boosters. However, the core party members at the time failed to forcefully challenge and ostracize the paleo faction in the name of avoiding “infighting.” This was a missed opportunity. It meant the classical liberal old guard did not have a fully worked out moral argument when the paleos, incensed by the Johnson/Weld candidacy, decided that the party was headed in the wrong direction—that the bigger threat to libertarian principles was wokeism and the cultural left, not the populist and illiberal right. And thus the paleos took control of the steering wheel to course correct.

The GOP’s failure to stand up to Trump led to the exit of sensible, upright Republicans such as Wisconsin’s Rep. Paul Ryan, leaving the Trumpists firmly in control. The same thing happened with the LP’s mushy middle-ground approach toward the paleos. The previous national chair, Joe Bishop-Henchman, resigned in protest last year after the Libertarian National Committee refused to disaffiliate the New Hampshire party for tweeting racist statements.

He invoked the story of a bar owner to explain what the LP should have done when there was still time: One day a man wearing far-right paraphernalia walked into the bar and calmly sat down for a drink. But the bar owner threw him out because, he said, if he had looked the other way and served the man, who was doing nothing disruptive, he would have soon brought in his toxic friends and they would then draw in some more and, before you knew it, the bar would have become a neo-Nazi haunt that nobody else would want to patronize. This is exactly what has happened to the LP.

The Moral Collapse of the Libertarian Old Guard

More than a fifth of the national party’s dues-paying members have left in the past year. That proportion is probably even greater among those who were active members, participating in campaigns and party business. In short, a party that proclaimed freedom of association as one of its core principles, in the end was destroyed because it was unwilling to exercise that fundamental right.

To believe that there was a kumbaya compromise possible with those whose vision is fundamentally incompatible with liberal values speaks to a profound moral confusion. You can have an organization that welcomes bigots or one that welcomes the targets of their hate, but you can’t have both under the same tent.

The same pathology that afflicts the GOP now also afflicts the LP, namely, orienting itself not by reference to its principles but by single-mindedly focusing on its enemy: progressives and anybody else to the left of the far right. This alignment bodes ill for the future of American politics, now that the nation’s largest third party is an adjunct of Trumpism rather than an opponent of it.

Canada Goes To Pot

Canada is a nation of pot heads.

\Marijuana use in Canada is the highest in the industrialized world and more than four times the global rate, according to a report from the United Nations.

Forty per cent of Canadian cannabis is produced in British Columbia, 25% in Ontario and 25% in Quebec, the report noted.

 Health

   -   One in 10 Canadian women uses marijuana.

Experts and activists are not concerned about the high rate of Canadian marijuana use reported in 2007 UN World Drug report —even though young people are the largest users of the drug.

The report states that 16.8 per cent of Canadians between the ages of 16 and 64 used marijuana in 2004. Canada is ranked fifth in marijuana use and the country’s usage percentage is four times the world average of 3.8 per cent. To compare, the report found that 12.6 per cent of people in the United States and 6.1 per cent in Holland have used the drug.

Richard Mathias, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s faculty of medicine, said he is pleased with the results from the report and is not worried about the high numbers of young people using the drug.

“I think that marijuana is a safer drug than some other options and I know that youth is a difficult, highly stressful time and it is to be expected that youth will explore and that’s good,” he said. “I teach these kids. They’re not criminals.”

A study conducted in 2002 by Carleton University professor Peter Fried also concluded that only heavy pot smokers are negatively affected by marijuana use. Fried’s 70-person study found that only heavy marijuana users between the ages of 10 and 20 had a decline in their IQ scores. The rest saw an increase in their scores.

The study also found that those who smoked heavily and later quit returned to their former IQ level.

Eugene Oscapella, an Ottawa-based lawyer who specializes in drug policy issues, said the UN report shows that the legal status of marijuana in a given country seems to have little bearing on consumption rates.

The report found that only 6.1 per cent of people in the Netherlands, where marijuana use has effectively been decriminalized, reported trying pot.

This shows decriminalization has no bearing on rates of use, and Canada shouldn't be so afraid to follow the Dutch lead, Oscapella said.

"The criminal law does not prevent people from using marijuana, nor does legalization force people to use it," he said.

Jean Chretien's Liberals first introduced a bill to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana in 2003, but it was never brought to a final vote. Stephen Harper's Conservatives killed the bill when they came to office in January 2006.

Oscapella added that Canada should be focusing its resources on the root causes of drug abuse, rather than persecuting people for possession.

"It is a health and a social issue," he said. "The criminal law is not the appropriate mechanism for dealing with drugs in the vast majority of cases."

Marijuana and tobacco use among young adults in Canada

The authors characterized marijuana smoking among young adult Canadians, examined the co-morbidity of tobacco and marijuana use, and identified correlates associated with different marijuana use consumption patterns. Data were collected from 20,275 individuals as part of the 2004 Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey. Logistic regression models were conducted to examine characteristics associated with marijuana use behaviors among young adults (aged 15-24). Rates of marijuana use were highest among current smokers and lowest among never smokers. Marijuana use was more prevalent among males, young adults living in rural areas, and increased with age. Young adults who were still in school were more likely to have tried marijuana, although among those who had tried, young adults outside of school were more like to be heavy users. Males and those who first tried marijuana at an earlier age also reported more frequent marijuana use. These findings illustrate remarkably high rates of marijuana use and high co-morbidity of tobacco use among young adult Canadians. These findings suggest that future research should consider whether the increasing popularity of marijuana use among young adults represents a threat to the continuing decline in tobacco use among this population.

We have a large scale industry in producing illicit and licit marijuana. The latter for medicinal purposes. We have approved marijuana and its byproducts for medicinal uses.

Since the 1970's when the LeDain Commission recommended decriminalization to today when the right wing think tank the Fraser Institute recommends decriminalization for controlling grow ops and increased tax income.

Canadians favour decriminalization. However the Harpocrites ignored their old Fraser pals as they ignore 'polls' and once elected declared war on pot. Quietly without much fanfare, what had been Liberal policy waiting for a vote was squashed.

“We will not be reintroducing the Liberal government’s marijuana decriminalization legislation,” Harper announced at a Canadian Professional Police Association meeting. “I thought we might find a receptive audience here,” he added, according to a Reuters report.

The Harpocrites would rather pander to their regressive base with a phony war on drugs, blaming as they do the rise in crime and pot smoking on the Liberals, pathetic.

In view of the former Liberal government's determination to medicalize and legalize marijuana, it is not surprising that, according to a study of young people in Canada released in 2004, our youth now hold the distinction of topping all nations (Switzerland was second) in frequent marijuana use. The lead researcher for this study, Dr. William Boyce of Queen's University, stated that the increased use of marijuana in Canada was tied to the three As - affordability, availability and acceptability. He stated, "in Canada, I think all three of those things come together so that it's actually used quite a bit by kids here. It's not so expensive, it's definitely available and with the legislation introduced in the last Parliament - and perhaps again in this one - that decriminalizes marijuana use, it certainly provides a signal to kids that this is not a highly illegal activity."

Thank heaven, the Conservative government is now providing a different message to our youth on marijuana use.

Please write to Prime Minister Harper and Minister of Justice Toews to thank them for the planned enforcement of the present marijuana laws rather than legalizing its use. Their actions will make a significant difference to our nation's youth. Please also request that marijuana use for so-called medical reasons be stopped if and until such time that it can be scientifically determined that its use has in fact, medical benefits.

The Harpocrites have adopted the oh so successful American War On Drugs Policy. And they have included marijuana as a key element of their new anti-drug campaign. Look forward to more regressive stupidity in the fall sitting of the house as the Minister of Health declares a drug panic.

Clement to MDs: Get tougher on illicit drugs

Federal Health Minister Tony Clement delivered a tough, anti-drug message to doctors yesterday, saying young people need straight talk about the dangers of illicit drugs, including marijuana.

"The messages young people have received during the past several years have been confusing and conflicting to say the least," Clement told the annual meeting of the Canadian Medical Association in Vancouver.

"We are very concerned about the damage and pain that drugs cause families and we intend to reverse the trend toward vague, ambiguous messaging that has characterized Canadian attitudes in the recent past," he said.

Ottawa plans a campaign emphasizing the dangers of all illicit drugs in any quantity, Clement said. "We will discourage young people from thinking there are safe amounts or safe drugs."

Meanwhile the Police and Senate disagree with the Harpocrites new War On Drugs.

Victoria's No. 2 cop testified in B.C. Supreme Court yesterday that neither the Vancouver Island Compassion Society nor its distribution of medical marijuana has ever been the subject of a criminal investigation.

Deputy Chief Bill Naughton said the society's Cormorant Street office of the Vancouver Island Compassion Society has not generated any complaints, adding marijuana ranks behind drugs like cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin in terms of Victoria police priorities.

"The enforcement of federal laws against marijuana takes a back seat," said Naughton, who was subpoenaed by the defence in the trial of Michael Swallow, 41, and Mat Beren, 33.

Also testifying yesterday in Victoria was Senator Pierre Claude Nolin, who chaired the Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs, which called in 2002 for the legalization of marijuana in Canada.

Nolin told the court the regulations, as they currently exist, are an obstacle to Canadians who want access to medical marijuana.

He said the rules ask doctors to be "gatekeepers" for access to legal marijuana. It's a role doctors don't want, and so Canadians are being denied access to a medical product.

"[The] medical profession is reluctant, generally reluctant," he said. "They don't want to be the gatekeepers, they don't want that responsibility."

Heck even the da Judge disagrees with the Government.

Rolling a joint might require the removal of stems and seeds, but the legal limbo in which pot smokers in Canada find themselves is far from clear-cut.
On July 13, an Ontario Court judge in Toronto acquitted Clifford Long, who was charged with possession of 3.5 grams of marijuana.
The court held that Canada's marijuana possession laws are unconstitutional. Justice Howard Borenstein cited a seven-year-old Ontario Court of Appeal case, which also described the possession law as unconstitutional, due to its ambiguity on medical marijuana.
Long argued in court that since the government of Canada allowed for medicinal use, but did not change the law on marijuana to accommodate this policy change, then all possession laws should cease to exist.

While the Harpocrites declare a War On Drugs, including marijuana, at the same time they approve big pharma profiting off Medical Marijuana.

GW Pharmaceuticals plc (AIM: GWP) and Bayer Inc., a subsidiary of Bayer AG, announce that Health Canada has approved Sativex®, a cannabis derived pharmaceutical treatment, as adjunctive analgesic treatment in adult patients with advanced cancer who experience moderate to severe pain during the highest tolerated dose of strong opioid therapy for persistent background pain.

While local marijuana growers are limited in providing medical marijuana to one or two Canadians. Clearly the Harpocrites missed the point of the Fraser Institute Report. Local grow ops legally functioning can produce medical as well as recreational marijuana that then could be taxed. Quality and consumer protection, would be assured.

A Vancouver Island grower of organic marijuana is being inundated with pleas for pot from disease sufferers, but Health Canada says he can supply only one person, a provincial court trial has been told.

Eric Nash said he wrote to Canadian Health Minister Tony Clement with a list of 121 people, all approved by Health Canada to use marijuana as medicine and asking him to grow it for them. One of them was a former RCMP officer diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

But Nash said regulations forbid him from growing for more than one person at a time. So his company, Island Harvest, can supply only two people, one each for him and his partner, although it could easily supply more.

And Tony's announcement of a new PR campaign in the War On Drugs looks suspicious in light of the governments failure to extend the license for the Vancouver Safe Injection Site.

The Canadian government is ramping up a massive anti-drug campaign, the first in 20 years, amid calls to keep open a Vancouver clinic that monitors heroin addicts as they inject themselves with the drug.

"Canada has not run a serious or significant anti-drug campaign for almost 20 years. The messages young people have received during the past several years have been confusing and conflicting to say the least," federal Health Minister Tony Clement said yesterday in a speech to the Canadian Medical Association in Vancouver.

Meanwhile, the Health Minister was vague about whether the Insite injection clinic in Vancouver would stay open. "There has been more research done, and some of it has been questioning of the research that has already taken place and questioning of the methodology of those associated with Insite," he said.

Isra Levy, president of the National Specialty Society for Community Medicine called for Insite to remain open in an interview with The Globe and Mail, stating that "illicit drug use is indeed a scourge, it's the cause of untold misery for those ill with addiction and their loved ones."

Is Harpers War in Afghanistan an excuse to expand his War On Drugs.....not only against opium but against the powerful Cannabis Indica and Afghani Hash....remember Afghani hash? It ain't been around in North America since the late Sixties and early Seventies when Hippies made their holy pilgrimage to Marrakesh and on to Afghanistan and back. It remains however a staple in Europe.

Hashish is produced practically everywhere in and around Afghanistan. The best kinds of Hash originate from the Northern provinces between Hindu Kush and the Russian border (Balkh, Mazar-i-Sharif). As tourist in Afghanistan it will be very difficult to be allowed to see Cannabis-Fields or Hash Production. The plants which are used for Hash production are very small and bushy Indicas. In Afghanistan Hashish is pressed by hand under addition of a small quantity of tea or water. The Hashish is worked on until it becomes highly elastic and has a strong aromatic smell. In Afghanistan the product is stored in the form of Hash-Balls (because a round ball has the less contact with air), however, before being shipped, the Hash is pressed in 100g slabs. Good qualities of Afghani are signed with the stem of the producing family. Sometimes Hash of this kind is sold as Royal Afghani. Color: Black on the outside, dark greenish or brown inside. Can sometimes look kind of grayish on the outside when left in contact with the air. Smell: Spicy to very spicy. Taste: Very spicy, somewhat harsh on the throat. Afghani can induce lots of coughing in inexperienced users.

Afghani
aka Afghanistan
Marijuana

Afghani Marijuana Strains - The origins of this seed strain come from Afghanistan and travel to Holland. Afghani has big round fat leaves and the same beautiful big fat buds. It usually has a rich smooth hash like heavy smoke taste. The Afghani marijuana plant tends to be very bushy and will yield large amounts of very sticky buds. Well known for excellent growth because it originated in mountainous conditions and over thousands of years a very stocky, sturdy and disease resistant plant was produced.

Well Cannabis in Afghanistan is back in a big way. As Canadian forces found last fall. Hey guys don't put that to the torch or ya' all will fall down.

Maj. Patrick Robichaud, commander of the operating base, this week characterized the security situation around Ma'sum Ghar as "fragile." He said Taliban insurgents appear to have taken advantage of a change in command among the Canadians and the Afghan National Army to slip back into the region. The insurgents are looking to strong-arm local farmers for a piece of the action in the impending marijuana harvest, said Maj. Robichaud.

Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy — almost impenetrable forests of 10-foot-tall marijuana plants.

Gen. Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defense staff, said Thursday that Taliban fighters were using the forests as cover. In response, the crew of at least one armored car had camouflaged their vehicle with marijuana.

"The challenge is that marijuana plants absorb energy, heat very readily. It's very difficult to penetrate with thermal devices ... and as a result you really have to be careful that the Taliban don't dodge in and out of those marijuana forests," he said in a speech in Ottawa.

Weed Fields in Afghanistan Video

The United Nations has conducted surveys of poppy crops, but has not done so for marijuana plants. The focus on poppies possibly reflects the view of international donors that highly addictive heroin is the more urgent problem.

Marijuana plants are widely grown in at least three of the 16 districts in Balkh province, which is home to Mazar-e-Sharif. Local authorities have sent letters to villages urging farmers to stop growing the illegal crop, but they have yet to decide how and when they will crack down.

"The farmers have planted this stuff like smugglers," said Saheed Azizullah Hashmi, head of the province's agriculture department. "We don't know how much there is out there."

He said many people associated with the hashish trade were linked to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. But marijuana plants thrived well before they held sway over much of Afghanistan, and local commanders with large land holdings reportedly benefit from its cultivation.

Rouzudin and his fellow farmers made no effort to hide their plants, which loom over nearby cotton bushes. The two crops are interspersed along the road leading to Shibergan, the headquarters of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek commander and powerful political figure in the north.

Farmer Majid Gul said he can get 5 million Afghanis, or about $100, for 2.2 pounds of hashish, 200 times more than he could earn for the same amount of cotton.

"When we're ready to sell, people in big cars will come from the bazaar in town," he said. "We don't know who they are, we just want the money."

. For the decade before the Soviet army invaded in 1979, the teahouses of Afghanistan were the toking tourist's hangout of choice. And even during 23 years of war, when the Afghans fought the Soviets and then one another, the hash trade thrived. "Afghan black" remained a staple sale for cannabis dealers across the world. Mazar-i-Sharif gave its name to a particularly potent variety. And last year, in the final weeks of the Taliban, Amsterdam's coffee-shop owners even boasted they were doing their bit for the war on terror by buying blocks stamped with a golden Northern Alliance stencil reading "Freedom for Afghanistan."

Now, as Afghanistan emerges from war, dope farming has never been so good�and the drought never so bad. The Taliban banned hash production, but in the postwar chaos of lawless fiefdoms that dot the land, growers and traders across the country are finding themselves free once again to cultivate and export hashish without fear, and often with warlord protection. Moreover, the international perception that cannabis is a relatively benign drug�prompting some authorities across Europe and Australia to decriminalize its use�has persuaded drug-policing agencies to largely ignore it. So, while opium cultivation is monitored to the acre, neither Interpol, the U.N. Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention nor the U.S.'s Drug Enforcement Agency can offer even rough estimates for how much hashish Afghanistan produces or what the trade is worth. But around Mazar it's almost impossible to find a field where hemp is not being grown, either openly or poorly hidden behind watermelons or knee-high cotton plants. "Everybody's farming chaars now," says former Taliban fighter Faizullah, 27, watering a verdant six-hectare oasis of hemp surrounded by desert. Cannabis used to be outlawed by the Taliban. "But now," says Faizullah, "it's a free-for-all."

Harpers War On Drugs is doomed to fail, as has the American campaign. But this proves once again that he and his pals have abandoned any pretense to libertarianism, while embracing the traditional right wing screed of Law and Order Republicanism. Heck Canadians even support the medical use of opiates despite this governments opposition.

While in the U.S. Republican Presidential Candidate and Libertarian Ron Paul embraces his inner Canadian and calls for decriminalization, and an end to Americas war on drugs. Why Is This Canadian Pot Dealer Campaigning for Ron Paul?

Also, a little known fact is that if Ron Paul got his way, there would be no federal war on drugs. He has called the war on drugs “as stupid as the war in Iraq”. He is uncompromisingly against federal laws banning medical marijuana, and completely opposed to the federal government coming in, when a state has legalized medical marijuana, and using force to nullify this legalization (such as has happened in California, where medical marijuana is legal, but the federal government uses force to effectively keep it criminalized. This would NOT happen under a Paul administration.)

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medicare, healthcare, Canada, Afghanistan, Ron Paul, war on drugs,marijuana,cannabis,pot,Stephen Harper,Tony Clement,drug war, medical marijauana,

US military researchers call for use of privateers against China

Magazine published by US Naval Institute features articles titled ‘Unleash the Privateers!’ and ‘US Privateering Is Legal’

But any such move would provoke a retaliation from China, military watchers say


Liu Zhen in Beijing and Kristin Huang Published: 10 Apr, 2020

The authors of the reports attack said an attack on China’s global trade would undermine its economy and threaten its stability. 

The  United States should encourage the use of privateers to fight Chinese aggression at sea, according to a pair of articles in magazine produced by the US Naval Institute.

The reports – titled “Unleash the Privateers!” and “US Privateering Is Legal”, and published in the April issue of Proceedings – suggest the US government issue letters of marque – a commission authorising privately owned ships (privateers) to capture enemy merchant ships.

The authors – Mark Cancian, a retired US Marine Corps colonel and senior adviser at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and Brandon Schwartz, a former CSIS media relations manager – said that China’s larger merchant fleet represented an asymmetric vulnerability with the US, and an attack on China’s global trade would undermine its entire economy and threaten its stability.

Such a campaign would be a legal and low-cost way to contain China’s power rise on the sea, they said, adding that it could prevent, rather than provoke, a war.

The reports said privateering was legal under the US Constitution. Photo: DPA

Collin Koh, a research fellow from the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, said the idea was “politically unsound”.

“That would be regarded as an outright provocation which would invite retaliation from China,” he said.

“And going by the UN Charter, it might even be construed as a use of force, and would invite international condemnation too.”

Privateering with a letter of marque dates back to a period from the mid-16th to the 18th century known as the Age of Sail, but was outlawed with the introduction of various treaties in the 19th and 20th centuries.

However, the authors of the Proceedings reports said that the US government never formally signed any agreements, and argued that the US Constitution gave Congress the power to “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal”.

Although no such letters had been issued since 1907, that was due to “strategic and policy considerations rather than legal ones”, they said.
The authors did not say if China’s trillions of dollars worth of trade with the US should be exempted from attacks by pirates, but that probably was because it would no longer exist in a hypothetical scenario of the two nations already having decoupled.

Privateering with a letter of marque dates back to a period from the mid-16th to the 18th century known as the Age of Sail. Photo: EPA-EFE

Hong Kong-based military commentator Song Zhongping said that such decoupling, as advocated by American conservatives and far-rights, was a dangerous sign that it would place two nuclear powers in confrontation and even conflict.

“When the Americans decide to act tough against a so-called adversary or enemy, they will spare no effort and limit no means,” he said.
“Privateering on Chinese merchant ships may also be possible.”

Republican congressman Ron Paul raised the issue of using letters of marque against Osama bin Laden and Somalian pirates in 2007 and 2009, but did not succeed.

Julia Xue, chair professor of International Law at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, said the researchers argument was not valid.

“It has been customary international law, and the US is also bonded by it,” she said. “It was an incorrect interpretation of international law.”

Koh said the current policy elites were unlikely to seriously consider such a recommendation, but such articles represented the think tankers who advocated a much harder policy stance against China.

“If anything, it does reflect the growing schism between China and the US, as both countries see their ties sliding downhill under the cloud of strategic lack of trust,” Koh said.

‘Nowhere to be found’: Everything we know about missing Scientology leader David Miscavige

The mysterious leader behind the Church of Scientology is being sought by lawyers for three former members who are suing the religious sect alleging decades of abuse. Bevan Hurley reports


David Miscavige, the head of the Church of Scientology
(Rex Features)

Scientology leader David Miscavige is “nowhere to be found”.

Named as a defendant in a federal child trafficking lawsuit, Mr Miscavige has repeatedly dodged prosecutors who have tried to serve the 62-year-old 27 times in four months at Scientology properties in Clearwater, Florida, and California, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

Every time, security guards refused to accept the lawsuit and claimed not to know where Mr Miscavige lived or worked, court filings obtained by The Tampa Bay Times alleged.

Lawyers have resorted to sending Instagram messages to the church’s official account as they try to locate Mr Miscavige, attorney Neil Glazer said in a court filing, per the Bay Times.

According to journalist Tony Ortega, who has written about Scientology since 1995, Mr Miscavige has frequently tried to dodge lawsuits by altering his address between California and Florida.

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Despite being in charge of the controversial church since the death of church founder L Ron Hubbard in 1986, Mr Miscavige remains a mysterious figure who has largely stayed out of the public eye.

Who is David Miscavige?

According to an official church profile, Mr Miscavige’s official title is ecclesiastical leader of the Scientology religion.

The 62-year-old is also chairman of the Board Religious Technology Center (RTC), a corporation that controls the church’s trademarks and copyrights.

While the church claims to be a force for good through its charitable outreach and practice of dianetics, which is said to help treat mental illness, critics and former members have described it as an alleged “cult” that separates families, forces members into slavery, and extorts money from its followers.

The church flatly denies these allegations.

Mr Miscavige was introduced to Scientology by his father Ronald Miscavige in the 1960s, and quickly rose through the ranks of the Sea Org, a group of the most dedicated members that essentially serves as the church’s managerial arm.

He was mentored by church founder L Ron Hubbard, a former science fiction author, and assumed leadership of the church in 1987.

Mr Miscavige has overseen the rapid expansion of Scientology from its roots in southern California to now claim tens of millions of adherents worldwide.

In his first interview with ABC News in 1992, Mr Miscavige sought to dispel claims that former members were fearful of speaking out about the church.

“Every single detractor on there is part of a religious hate group called Cult Awareness Network and their sister group called American Family Foundation,” Mr Miscavige said according to a transcript of the interview.

“Now, I don’t know if you’ve heard of these people, but it’s the same as the KKK would be with the Blacks. I think if you interviewed a neo-Nazi and asked them to talk about the Jews, you would get a similar result to what you have here.”

Miscavige has overseen the rapid expansion of Scientology
(Getty Images)

After a decades long battle with the Internal Revenue Service, the church was granted tax-exempt status in the US in 1993.

“The war is over,” Mr Miscavige told a group of thousands of cheering Scientologists in a Los Angeles arena in 1993 after the IRS abandoned its investigations into the church and granted it tax exemption.

The ruling saved the church millions in taxes and confirmed its status as a religious entity in the US.

It has subsequently gained notoriety as former members who left the church began to detail the alleged abusive and coercive practices that the church supposedly subjected its followers to.

Mr Miscavige also faced long-running complaints from the medical and scientific communities over claims that Scientology could cure mental illness.

Church doctrine, written by its founder, proclaims that psychiatry is not only bogus, but evil, and promotes a “mind over matter” philosophy that claims attaining a “clear” state will eliminate any ills.

So-called auditors are assigned to each church member to go through past events with them to help “clear” any negativity.

Despite the many controversies, high-profile members including celebrities such as Tom Cruise and John Travolta continued to praise Scientology for having changed their lives.

Scientology now claims to have 11,000 churches in 180 nations, and millions of global followers.

The Miscavige family and Scientology

Mr Miscavige’s father Ron Miscavige left the church in 2012 after falling out with his son and complaining he had been forced to work in slave-like conditions for the church..

According to his 2016 book Ruthless: Scientology, My Son David Miscavige, and Me, the elder Miscavige claimed that Church members were “subjected to deprivation and violence” while detained at a punishment centre called “the Hole” - an accusation the Church has always denied.

According to a 2015 report in the Los Angeles Times, Ron Miscavige’s car was tracked, his emails read and he was followed.

David Miscavige with Tom Cruise, at the opening of a Scientology church in 2004.
(AP)

Florida-based investigator Dwayne Powell was arrested in 2013 near Milwaukee and allegedly told police he had been paid $10,000 through an intermediary, on behalf of the Church of Scientology, to follow Ron Miscavige “full-time”.

David Miscavige denied hiring the PI to follow his father. The church threatened to sue him over over his tell-all memoir.

In an interview with ABC News in 2016, Ron Miscavige said his estranged son “wasn’t always that way… He was a loveable kid, he had a great sense of humour. We got along great.”

Ron Miscavige died in 2021.

David Miscavige married wife Shelly in 1982. She has not been seen in public since 2007, leading to speculation about her wellbeing.

Former member Leah Remini, who has become an outspoken critic of the church and wrote a 2015 memoir Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology, filed a missing persons report for Shelly Miscavige with the LAPD in 2013.

The LAPD later said it had resolved the case and found her to be alive and well.

Mr Miscavige’s niece Jenna Miscavige Hill published a memoir Beyond Belief in 2013, which detailed her life in the highest ranks of the sect, her "disconnection" from family who were outside of the organisation, and her ultimate escape in 2005.

Miscavige and Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise was introduced to Scientology through his first wife Mimi Rogers.

While filming the 1990 film Days of Thunder, he reportedly fell in love with co-star Nicole Kidman, according to former Scientology senior member Mike Rinder, who writes about the period in his 2022 memoir A Billion Years: My Escape From a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology.

According to Mr Rinder, the church helped to engineer Cruise’s split from Rogers in order for him to be free to marry Kidman.

Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise
(Getty Images)

Mr Miscavige was invited to the set of Days of Thunder, Mr Rinder writes, and assigned a trusted lieutenant, Greg Wilhere, to convince Rogers to go through with the divorce.

“Miscavige no doubt saw this as an opportunity to demonstrate his ability to make Tom’s wishes come true,” Mr Rinder writes.

The Top Gun star divorced Rogers in February 1990, and married Kidman later that year, with Miscavige acting as his best man.

A church spokesman has previously said Mr Rinder’s claims were “utterly ludicrous”, and said he was an “inveterate liar”.

The church requires members of its Sea Org to sign a one-billion year pledge, which former members have claimed is used to make children as young as 10 work for little or no money in virtual slavery.

Mr Rinder further writes that Sea Org members were assigned to carry out work on Cruise’s homes in Aspen, Colorado, install high-end audio/visual equipment at a property in Pacific Palisades, Beverly Hills, and his Santa Monica air hangar.

Cruise appeared at openings of new Scientology churches around the world, including in Madrid in 2004.

In a Scientology recruitment video the same year, Mr Cruise said it’s a “privilege to call yourself a Scientologist”.

“That’s what drives me: is that I know we have an opportunity to really help, for the first time, effectively change people’s lives. And I am dedicated to that. I am absolutely, uncompromisingly dedicated to that.”

Cruise has reportedly played down his Scientology links in recent years.

Scientology in popular culture

In the 2015 documentary Going Clear, filmmaker Alex Gibney profiled eight former Scientologists who were critical of the church’s practices.

Among the former members featured in the film is Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis, who had been a Scientology member since the 1970s until his departure in 2009.

In November, Mr Haggis was ordered to pay at least $7.5m to a woman who accused him of rape at a movie premier in 2013.

During the trial, jurors heard extensive testimony about the Church of Scientology, with Mr Haggis claiming members of the church had tried to discredit him.

Louis Theroux’s 2016 documentary My Scientology Movie shed further light on the church’s alleged indonctrination and disciplinary practices.

The lawsuits

Three former Scientologists filed a lawsuit in April alleging they were forced to work for the organisation from the age of 10 until adulthood for little or no pay, while suffering verbal and physical abuse.

Gawain Baxter, who is suing the church with wife Laura Baxter and a third plaintiff Valeska Paris, said in a statement released through his attorney that he was forced to sign a document at the age of six pledging to work for the Church of Scientology for one billion years.

He said he began working in low or unpaid labour for the Scientology’s Cadet Org from the age of 10 while being forced to attend “expensive indoctrination sessions”.

The Baxters later worked for the church’s military-style Sea Org before leaving in 2012.

“Growing up in Scientology, being separated from my family and subjected to severe verbal and physical abuse has scarred me in ways that I am still working through and uncovering,” Mr Baxter said in a statement released in April.

“All the while, Scientology continues to abuse and exploit its members, including young children, and does so with virtually unchecked power.”

Neil Glazer, an attorney for the plaintiffs, has asked the court to consider Mr Miscavige has been served and is in default at a court hearing scheduled in a Tampa federal court for 20 January.

“Miscavige cannot be permitted to continue his gamesmanship,” Mr Glazer wrote in a 13 December court filing, The Tampa Bay Times reports.

The Independent did not immediately hear back after making two requests for comment in relation to the allegations against Mr Miscavige in the lawsuit.