[Politic in Question]

"Man is by nature a political animal." ~Aristotle

Wednesday, December 31, 2003

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/31/03 15:12 | link | comments (1)

1964 The British Medical Association, in a Memorandum of Evidence to the Standing Medical Advisory Committee's Special Sub- committee on Alcoholism, declares: "We feel that in some very bad cases, compulsory detention in hospital offer the only hope of successful treatment. . . . We believe that some alcoholics would welcome compulsory removal and detention in hospital until treatment is completed." [Quoted in Kessel and Walton, op. cit. p. 126]

1964 An editorial in *The New York Times* calls attention to the fact that "the Government continues to be the tobacco industry's biggest booster. The Department of Agriculture lost $16 million in supporting the price of tobacco in the last fiscal year, and stands to loose even more because it has just raised the subsidy that tobacco growers will get on their 1964 crop. At the same time, the Food for Peace program is getting rid of surplus stocks of tobacco abroad." [Editorial, Bigger agricultural subsidies. . .even more for tobacco, *The New York Times*, Feb. 1, 1964, p. 22]

1966 Sen. Warren G. Magnuson makes public a program, sponsored by the Agriculture Department, to subsidize "attempts to increase cigarette consumption abroad. . . . The Department is paying to stimulate cigarette smoking in a travelogue for $210,000 to subsidize cigarette commercials in Japan, Thailand, and Austria." An Agriculture Department spokesman corroborates that "the two programs were prepared under a congressional authorization to expand overseas markets for U.S. farm commodities." [Edwin B. Haakinsom, Senator shocked at U.S. try to hike cigarette use abroad, *Syracuse Herald-American*, Jan. 9, 1966, p. 2]

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/31/03 00:08 | link | comments

Tuesday, December 30, 2003

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/30/03 16:09 | link | comments

French Dressing
Lessons for America from the proposed French ban on religious garb.
By Avi Schick

When French President Jacques Chirac endorsed a recent proposal to prohibit French schoolchildren from wearing religious clothing in public schools, the United States was quick to criticize him. American Ambassador John V. Hanford indignantly claimed that "a fundamental principle of religious freedom … is that all persons should be able to practice their religion and their beliefs peacefully, without government interference." While the ambassador's statement appears unequivocal, it skirts an issue with significant implications for religious Americans: In condemning only "government interference" with religious freedom, Hanford glossed over a simmering domestic debate about employer interference with religious practices and beliefs. This is a critical issue for the many Americans of faith who are victims of employment discrimination due to such practices and beliefs. [Read More]

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/30/03 15:53 | link | comments

Friday, December 26, 2003

Events in the History of Drugs

1960 The United States report to the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs for 1960 states: "There were 44,906 addicts in the United States on December 31, 1960 . . ." [Lindesmith, *The Addict and The Law*, p. 100]

1961 The United Nations' "Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 10 March 1961" is ratified. Among the obligations of the signatory states are the following: "Art. 42. Know users of drugs and persons charges with an offense under this Law may be committed by an examining magistrate to a nursing home. . . . Rules shall be also laid down for the treatment in such nursing homes of unconvicted drug addicts and dangerous alcoholics." [Charles Vaille, A model law for the application of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961, *United Nations Bulletin on Narcotics*, 21:1-12 (April-June), 1961]

1963 Tobacco sales total $8.08 billion, of which $3.3 billion go to federal, state, and local taxes. A news release from the tobacco industry proudly states: "Tobacco products pass across sales counters more frequently than anything else--except money." [Tobacco: After publicity surge Surgeon General's Report seems to have little enduring effect, *Science*, 145:1021-1022 (Sept. 4), 1964; p. 1021]

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/26/03 19:14 | link | comments (1)

Our Man in Bangkok

Friday, December 26, 2003

THE BUSH administration has been strongly criticized for the gratuitous damage it has done to U.S. relationships with a number of foreign governments in the past year. Less attention has been paid to the friends the administration has been making -- but here, too, there is reason for concern. Though he has delivered several speeches promising to put democracy promotion at the center of U.S. foreign policy, President Bush has been building relationships with several leaders who appear to be moving their countries in the opposite direction. The best-known of these is Russia's Vladimir Putin. But another disturbing case is emerging in Thailand, where a populist prime minister's steady accumulation of power has come in tandem with steadily warming relations with Washington. [Read More]

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/26/03 13:43 | link | comments

The Incomparable Judy Steinberg Dean

By Mary Lynn Jones, AlterNet

Meet Dr. Judith Steinberg Dean, career woman. Busy balancing her own thriving medical practice and raising her two children, she keeps up with what her husband does at work, but it is not her main priority. And the fact that her husband is the frontrunner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination isn't going to change that.

Judy Dean is a historical anomaly among political wives – the stand-by-your-man spouses who drop their own careers at the first whiff of a presidential run and devote themselves solely to their husband's election. She has instead opted to continue seeing patients who, as she put it in a recent fundraising letter, "want and need to see a physician who knows them when they're ill."

"She's definitely a trendsetter in choosing her role, which is exactly what the women's community has been talking about for a very long time," said Roselyn O'Connell, president of the National Women's Political Caucus.

While the Dean phenomenon may be new in presidential campaigns, it is merely the most public manifestation of the transformation of the institution of marriage that has created greater acceptance for women's careers. A majority of married women and mothers in America now work, as families increasingly need two incomes to stay afloat. This shift in demographics may in turn have created greater acceptance for the idea of a working First Lady. [Read More]

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/26/03 13:15 | link | comments

Monday, December 22, 2003

Events in the History of Drugs

1951 Twenty thousand pound of opium, three hundred pounds of heroin, and various opium-smoking devices are publicly burned in Canton China. Thirty-seven opium addicts are executed in the southwest of China. [Margulies, China has no drug problem--why? *Parade*, 0ct. 15 1972, p. 22]

1954 Four-fifths of the French people questioned about wine assert that wine is "good for one's health," and one quarter hold that it is "indispensable." It is estimated that a third of the electorate in France receives all or part of its income from the production or sale of alcoholic beverages; and that there Is one outlet for every forty- five inhabitants. [Kessel and Walton, op. cit. pp. 45, 73]

1955 The Prasidium des Deutschen Arztetages declares: "Treatment of the drug addict should be effected in the closed sector of a psychiatric institution. Ambulatory treatment is useless and in conflict, moreover, with principles of medical ethics." The view is quoted approvingly, as representative of the opinion of "most of the authors recommending commitment to an institution," by the World Health Organization in 1962. [World Health Organization, *The Treatment of Drug Addicts*, p. 5]

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/22/03 21:39 | link | comments (1)

"Dear Mike: I'm writing from the trenches of a war, not knowing why I'm here or when I'm leaving. I've toppled statues and vandalized portraits, while wearing an American flag on my sleeve, and struggling to learn how to understand... I joined the army as soon as I was eligible – turned down a writing scholarship to a state university, eager to serve my country, ready to die for the ideals I fell in love with. Two years later I found myself moments away from a landing onto a pitch black airstrip, ready to charge into a country I didn't believe I belonged in. My time in Iraq has always involved finding things to convince myself that I can be proud of my actions; that I was a part of something just. But no matter what pro-war argument I came up with, I pictured my smirking commander-in-chief, thinking he was fooling a nation..."

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/22/03 21:36 | link | comments

Friday, December 19, 2003

Change the Channel

By BOB HERBERT

Saddam is now a staple of the Leno and Letterman shows.

And Paris Hilton outgunned President Bush in a prime-time shootout between Fox and ABC.

And we're already choosing up sides on Kobe's and Jacko's guilt or innocence.

We really are amusing ourselves to death, as Neil Postman pointed out a couple of decades ago. He might as well have been speaking into the void. It's only gotten worse.

Americans are the best-informed people in the history of the world. But we are experts at distancing ourselves from any real unpleasantness. Most of us behave as though we bear no personal responsibility for the deep human suffering all around us, and no obligation to try and alleviate it. [Read More]

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/19/03 12:34 | link | comments

Telling It Right

By PAUL KRUGMAN

his is a very, very important part of history, and we've got to tell it right." So says Thomas Kean, chairman of the independent commission investigating the 9/11 attacks. Mr. Kean promises major revelations in testimony next month: "This was not something that had to happen." We'll see: maybe those of us who expected the 9/11 commission to produce yet another whitewash were wrong. Meanwhile, one can only echo his sentiment: it's important to tell our history right, not just about the events that led up to 9/11, but about the events that followed. [Read More]

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/19/03 11:51 | link | comments (2)

Is This America?

Lost Liberties

In Miami, police unleashing unprecedented fury on demonstrators, most of them seniors and union members.

posted by durani, 12/19/03 09:40 | link | comments (1)

Thursday, December 18, 2003

Events in the History of Drugs

1928 In a nationwide radio broadcast entitled "The Struggle of Mankind Against Its Deadlist Foe," celebrating the second annual Narcotic Education Week, Richmond P. Hobson, prohibition crusader and anti-narcotics propagandist, declares: "Suppose it were announced that there were more than a million lepers among our people. Think what a shock the announcement would produce! Yet drug addiction is far more incurable than leprosy, far more tragic to its victims, and is spreading like a moral and physical scourge. . . . Most of the daylight robberies, daring holdups, cruel murders and similar crimes of violence are now known to be committed chiefly by drug addicts, who constitute the primary cause of our alarming crime wave. Drug addiction is more communicable and less curable that leprosy. . . . Upon the issue hangs the perpetuation of civilization, the destiny of the world, and the future of the human race." [Quoted in Musto, *The American Disease*, p. 191]

1928 It is estimated that in Germany one out of every hundred physicians is a morphine addict, consuming 0.1 grams of the alkaloid or more per day. [Eric Hesse, *Narcotics and Drug Addiction*, p. 41]

1929 About one gallon of denatured industrial in ten is diverted into bootleg liquor. About forty Americans per million die each year from drinking illegal alcohol, mainly as a result of methyl (wood) alcohol poisoning. [Sinclare, op. cit. p. 201]

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/18/03 13:14 | link | comments

Wednesday, December 17, 2003

Events in the History of Drugs

1921 Alfred C. Prentice, M.D. a member of the Committee on Narcotic Drugs of the American Medical Association, declares "Public opinion regarding the vice of drug addiction has been deliberately and consistently corrupted through propaganda in both the medical and lay press. . . . The shallow pretense that drug addiction is a 'disease'. . . . has been asserted and urged in volumes of 'literature' by self-styled 'specialists.'" [Alfred C Prentice, The Problem of the narcotic drug addict, *Journal of the American Medical Association*, 76:1551-1556; p. 1553]

1924 The manufacture of heroin is prohibited in the United States.

1925 Robert A. Schless: "I believe that most drug addiction today is due directly to the Harrison Anti-Narcotic Act, which forbids the sale of narcotics without a physician's prescription. . . . Addicts who are broke act as *agent provocateurs* for the peddlers, being rewarded by gifts of heroin or credit for supplies. The Harrison Act made the drug peddler, and the drug peddler makes drug addicts." [Robert A. Schless, The drug addict, *American Mercury*, 4:196-199 (Feb.), 1925; p. 198]

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/17/03 15:17 | link | comments

Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God?
By Steven Waldman

When George Bush last month declared that Christians, Jews, and Muslims worship the same God, some of his evangelical supporters had a holy cow. They have been arguing for some time that Islam is a fundamentally dangerous and false religion, and then the most important Evangelical in America, George Bush, goes and pays Muslims the ultimate compliment. [Read More]

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/17/03 11:39 | link | comments (4)

Was Saddam kept prisoner?

Debkafile, an Israeli intelligence tip sheet, makes a pretty convincing argument that the condition in which Hussein was found implies he was being held prisoner in that hole, probably in an attempt to wrangle a ransom or reward out of the Americans. Pointing to his beaten, haggard and filthy condition and the fact that he had no way of getting out of the hole by himself, nor any communication equipment, Debka analysts conclude that "After his last audiotaped message was delivered and aired over al Arabiya TV on Sunday November 16, on the occasion of Ramadan, Saddam was seized, possibly with the connivance of his own men, and held in that hole in Adwar for three weeks or more . . ."

[Read More on Alternet.org]

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/17/03 10:40 | link | comments

Tuesday, December 16, 2003

HOWARD IS FAMOUS!

The below bit was noted on A DIRECTORY OF WONDERFUL THINGS

Italian/English poem-collage-photo-blog
Delightful photoblog: snapshots of poems strung together in haphazard kidnapper script; Italian and English. Beautiful visual style; odd, quirky mood. Link (Grazie, Jean-Luc). Update:Gamethyme points out the similarity between this blog and A Softer World, "simultaneously haunting and hilarious."

Congratulations!

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/16/03 17:34 | link | comments (1)

"It's not that some people have willpower and some don't. It's that some people are ready to change and others are not."

-James Gordon, M.D.

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/16/03 14:00 | link | comments

Patriots and Profits

By PAUL KRUGMAN

ast week there were major news stories about possible profiteering by Halliburton and other American contractors in Iraq. These stories have, inevitably and appropriately, been pushed temporarily into the background by the news of Saddam's capture. But the questions remain. In fact, the more you look into this issue, the more you worry that we have entered a new era of excess for the military-industrial complex. [Read More]

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/16/03 11:10 | link | comments (1)

Events in the History of Drugs

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/16/03 10:57 | link | comments

Monday, December 15, 2003

Events in the History of Drugs

1924 The manufacture of heroin is prohibited in the United States.

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/15/03 13:17 | link | comments

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a f***ing big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed- interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of f***ing fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing spirit- crushing game shows, stuffing f***ing junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that?
-Renton, Trainspotting

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/15/03 10:03 | link | comments

Friday, December 12, 2003

Bush's Iraq Policy: A Quagmire of Confusion

By Jim Lobe, AlterNet
December 11, 2003

As the Bush administration searches with increasing desperation for a viable "exit strategy," its so-called Iraq policy grows more muddled with each passing day.

The latest example – and an especially spectacular one – was when George Bush personally asked key European and other leaders on Wednesday to forgive tens of billions of dollars of Iraq's crushing debt. The very same day, the Pentagon announced on its website that companies from these countries will not be permitted to bid on 18.6 billion dollars in reconstruction contracts in Iraq.

Needless to say, the Pentagon's directive and its timing were unlikely to put the leaders of Russia, France and Germany – the most important of the excluded countries – in the mood to entertain the president's request. To add to the White House's sorrows, the deputy prime minister of Canada, also on the Pentagon's blacklist, suggested that Ottawa may reconsider its plans to add to the $190 million that it has already contributed to the reconstruction effort. [Read More]

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/12/03 02:37 | link | comments

Events in the History of Drugs

1921 Thomas S. Blair, M.D., chief of the Bureau of Drug Control of the Pennsylvania Department of Health, publishes a paper in the *Journal of the American Medical Association* in which he characterizes the Indian peyote religion a "habit indulgence in certain cactaceous plants," calls the belief system "superstition" and those who sell peyote "dope vendors," and urges the passage of a bill in Congress that would prohibit the use of peyote among the Indian tribes of the Southwest. He concludes with this revealing plea for abolition: "The great difficulty in suppressing this habit among the Indians arises from the fact that the commercial interests involved in the peyote traffic are strongly entrenched, and they exploit the Indian. . . . Added to this is the superstition of the Indian who believes in the Peyote Church. As soon as an effort is made to suppress peyote, the cry is raised that it is unconstitutional to do so and is an invasion of religious liberty. Suppose the Negros of the South had Cocaine Church!" [Thomas S. Blair, Habit indulgence in certain cactaceous plants among the Indians, *Journal of the American Medical Association*, 76:1033-1034 (April 9), 1921; p. 1034]

1921 Cigarettes are illegal in fourteen states, and ninety-two anti-cigarette bills are pending in twenty-eight states. Young women are expelled from college for smoking cigarettes. [Brecher et al., op. cit. p. 492]

1921 The Council of the American Medical Association refuses to confirm the Associations 1917 Resolution on alcohol. In the first six months after the enactment of the Volstead Act, more than 15,000 physicians and 57,000 druggests and drug manufacturers apply for licenses to prescribe and sell liquor. [Sinclair, op. cit., p. 492]

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/12/03 01:42 | link | comments

Wednesday, December 10, 2003

Events in the History of Drugs

1924 The manufacture of heroin is prohibited in the United States.

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/10/03 09:21 | link | comments

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/10/03 05:42 | link | comments

Tuesday, December 09, 2003

"Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death."

– Anais Nin

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/09/03 07:48 | link | comments

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/09/03 05:19 | link | comments

Sunday, December 07, 2003

she moved2

posted by howard, 12/07/03 11:15 | link | comments

Saturday, December 06, 2003

removed

posted by howard, 12/06/03 16:45 | link | comments (1)

Events in the History of Drugs

1920 The U.S. Department of Agriculture publishes a pamphlet urging Americans to grow cannabis (marijuana) as a profitable undertaking. [David F. Musto, An historical perspective on legal and medical responses to substance abuse, *Villanova Law Review*, 18:808-817 (May), 1973; p. 816]

1920-1933 The use of alcohol is prohibited in the United States. In 1932 alone, approximately 45,000 persons receive jail sentences for alcohol offenses. During the first eleven years of the Volstead Act, 17,971 persons are appointed to the Prohibition Bureau. 11,982 are terminated "without prejudice," and 1,604 are dismissed for bribery, extortion, theft, falsification of records, conspiracy, forgery, and perjury. [Fort, op. cit. p. 69]

1921 The U.S. Treasury Department issues regulations outlining the treatment of addiction permitted under the Harrison Act. In Syracuse, New York, the narcotics clinic doctors report curing 90 per cent of their addicts. [Lindesmith, *The Addict and the Law*, p. 141]

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/06/03 07:39 | link | comments

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/06/03 04:59 | link | comments

Out of the Club, Onto the Couch

One researcher says the drug known as Ecstasy might be an effective tool for psychotherapy

By Jonathan Darman

In September, Dr. George A. Ricaurte, one of Ecstasy’s most vocal opponents in the scientific community, admitted in the journal Science that a major study he’d conducted proving the drug was dangerous when used on primates was in fact severely flawed. Its problem? The drug Ricaurte’s researchers used on the primates wasn’t MDMA at all. Compelling evidence MDMA could permanently hurt the human brain could no longer be trusted as true. {Read More}

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/06/03 03:15 | link | comments

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/06/03 01:42 | link | comments

Friday, December 05, 2003

Events in the History of Drugs

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/05/03 04:03 | link | comments

Looting the Future

By PAUL KRUGMAN

One thing you have to say about George W. Bush: he's got a great sense of humor. At a recent fund-raiser, according to The Associated Press, he described eliminating weapons of mass destruction from Iraq and ensuring the solvency of Medicare as some of his administration's accomplishments.

Then came the punch line: "I came to this office to solve problems and not pass them on to future presidents and future generations." He must have had them rolling in the aisles.

In the early months of the Bush administration, one often heard that "the grown-ups are back in charge." But if being a grown-up means planning for the future — in fact, if it means anything beyond marital fidelity — then this is the least grown-up administration in American history. It governs like there's no tomorrow. {Read More}

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/05/03 02:26 | link | comments

Thursday, December 04, 2003

Bechtel Fails Reconstruction of Iraq's Schools

By Karim El-Gawhary

In Iraq, school administrators are struggling to keep their classroom doors open and their students educated, in the face of many obstacles unleashed by the occupation of the country.

Looting has become commonplace, while lack of supplies and the decay of basic infrastructure make teaching a challenge. Into this situation steps Bechtel Corporation, the San Francisco-based engineering and construction giant.

In April Bechtel was awarded a contract by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for the reconstruction of Iraq's primary and secondary schools, as part of a deal worth up to $1.03 billion to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure.

The question remains whether Bechtel, like the US army, is part of the solution or part of the problem.

Read Article

posted by durani, 12/04/03 05:09 | link | comments (2)

Events in the History of Drugs

1917 The American Medical Association passes a resolution declaring that "sexual continence is compatible with health and is the best prevention of venereal infections," and one of the methods for controlling syphilis is by controlling alcohol. Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels prohibits the practice of distributing contraceptives to sailors bound on shore leave, and Congress passes laws setting up "dry and decent zones" around military camps. "Many barkeepers are fined for selling liquor to men in uniform. Only at Coney Island could soldiers and sailors change into the grateful anonymity of bathing suits and drink without molestation from patriotic passers-by." [Ibid. pp. 117-118]

1918 The Anti-Saloon League calls the "liquor traffic" "un-American," pro-German, crime-producing, food-wasting, youth-corrupting, home-wrecking, [and] treasonable." [Quoted in ibid. p. 121]

1919 The Eighteenth (Prohibition) Amendment is added to the U.S. Constitution. It is repealed in 1933. In the same year, violent crime drops two-thirds and does not reach the same levels again until after World War II.

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/04/03 02:03 | link | comments

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."

–Albert Einstein

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/03/03 07:15 | link | comments

Lovers Under the Skin

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Recently I wrote a column arguing that there is growing evidence that homosexuality has a biological basis, and that this is one more reason not to discriminate against people on the basis of whom they love.

The result was a torrent of fire and brimstone from readers who are aghast at gay marriage, and who accuse me of blasphemy for defending vile behavior that they say God is on record as denouncing. Never mind that the Bible also advises that people who work on the Sabbath should be stoned to death (Numbers 15:35) and condones the beating of slaves "since the slave is the owner's property" (Exodus 21:21). Somehow it's only the anti-gay bits that seem engraved in stone. [Read More]

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/03/03 03:43 | link | comments (1)

Events in the History of Drugs

1914 The Harrison Narcotic Act is enacted, controlling the sale of opium and opium derivatives, and cocaine.

1914 Congressman Richard P. Hobson of Alabama, urging a prohibition amendment to the Constitution, asserts: "Liquor will actually make a brute out of a Negro, causing him to commit unnatural crimes. The effect is the same on the white man, though the white man being further evolved it takes longer time to reduce him to the same level." Negro leaders join the crusade against alcohol. [Ibid., p. 29]

1916 The *Pharmacopoeia of the United States* drops whiskey and brandy from its list of drugs. Four years later, American physicians begin prescribing these "drugs" in quantities never before prescribed by doctors.

1917 The president of the American Medical Association endorses national prohibition. The House of Delegates of the Association passes a resolution stating: "Resolved, The American Medical Association opposes the use of alcohol as a beverage; and be it further Resolved, That the use of alcohol as a therapeutic agent should be discourages." By 1928, physicians make an estimated $40,000,000 annually by writing prescriptions for whiskey." [Ibid. p. 61]

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/03/03 01:40 | link | comments (1)

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

“We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.”

-George Bernard Shaw

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/02/03 06:08 | link | comments

Hack the Vote

By PAUL KRUGMAN

nviting Bush supporters to a fund-raiser, the host wrote, "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." No surprise there. But Walden O'Dell — who says that he wasn't talking about his business operations — happens to be the chief executive of Diebold Inc., whose touch-screen voting machines are in increasingly widespread use across the United States.

An analysis of Diebold software by researchers at Johns Hopkins and Rice Universities found it both unreliable and subject to abuse. A later report commissioned by the state of Maryland apparently reached similar conclusions. (It's hard to be sure because the state released only a heavily redacted version.) [Read More]

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/02/03 01:54 | link | comments

Events in the History of Drugs

1912 The first international Opium Convention meets at the Hague, and recommends various measures for the international control of the trade in opium. Supsequent Opium Conventions are held in 1913 and 1914.

1912 Phenobarbital is introduced into therapeutics under the trade name of Luminal.

1913 The Sixteenth Amendment, creating the legal authority for federal income tax, is enacted. Between 1870 and 1915, the tax on liquor provides from one-half to two-thirds of the whole of the internal revenue of the United States, amounting, after the turn of the century, to about $200 million annually. The Sixteenth Amendment thus makes possible, just seven years later, the Eighteenth Amendment.

1914 Dr. Edward H Williams cites Dr. Christopher Kochs "Most of the attack upon white women of the South are the direct result of the cocaine crazed Negro brain." Dr. Williams concluded that " . . Negro cocaine fiends are now a known Southern menace." [New York Times, Feb. 8, 1914]

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/02/03 01:45 | link | comments

Monday, December 01, 2003

When intellectual property rights go too far…

The color “Canary Yellow” is a trademark of 3M

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/01/03 06:45 | link | comments

World AIDS Day 2003

"The world is losing the war against AIDS", warns UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan

In a BBC interview, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan criticised political leadership in the developed as well as the developing world: "I feel angry, I feel distressed, I feel helpless... to live in a world where we have the means, we have the resources, to be able to help all these patients - what is lacking is the political will."

[For more on World AIDS Day]

posted by NAKEDandALIVE, 12/01/03 06:18 | link | comments (1)

Getting Stoned with the OSS

Harry Anslinger

In the spring of 1942 General William "Wild Bill" Donovan, chief of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA's wartime predecessor, assembled a half-dozen prestigious American scientists and asked them to undertake a top-secret research program.

Their mission, Donovan explained, was to develop a speech-inducing drug for use in intelligence interrogations. He insisted that the need for such a weapon was so acute as to warrant any and every attempt to find it.

The OSS chief pressed his associates to come up with a substance that could break down the psychological defenses of enemy spies and POWs, thereby causing an uninhibited disclosure of classified information.

Harry J. Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, was a member of this committee, which surveyed and rejected numerous drugs, including alcohol, barbiturates, and caffeine. Peyote and scopolamine were also tested, but the visions produced by these substances interfered with the interrogation process.