Drugs, Sex and Politicians...

Sometimes it pains me when I read the output of people who are struggling to come to terms with the screamingly obvious; the struggle is noble, but the entire paradigm within which the struggle occurs is nobly misplaced.

There were two pieces on Strike the Root (an excellent site) today, both of which miss the mark. There's absolutely no sin in missing the mark, but the mark was missed, in my opinion.

The first piece rejoices in the removal of the ban on Ephedra (or Ma Huang as it has been known in Chinese traditional medicine for centuries). The ban was illogical from its inception, and was based on the notion that there had been 155 deaths "linked" to Ephedra.

Those of you who have read my previous stuff, know that I consistently rage about the ban in Ephedrine (which is the active ingredient in Ephedra anyway), so I am not in any way saying that the removal of the ban is wrong of unjustified.

The 155 deaths, as the writer properly points out, is the total of the deaths of all time where Ephedra was a possible contributor. In many cases, the people who died had pre-existing cardiac conditions which were exacerbated (perhaps) by taking Ephedra.

The writer then compares that, to the number of deaths caused each year by things like peanuts (death toll: plenty) and cannabis (death toll: zero). That's well and good on the face of it - there's certainly good logic behind it.

After all, if Ephedra was as "risky" as peanuts - which kill between 100 and 200 people per year - then why should peanuts get off scot-free when Ephedra was put in the regulatory doghouse?

Sounds logical - and I hasten that the writer was not advocating a ban on peanuts; he was asking why the ban on Ephedra got through in the first place.

To this chap - and people who similarly scratch their heads in teh face of informaiton like that - I yell WAKE UP.

The reason peanuts were never at risk is because nobody has a patent medicine for which peanuts are a competitor. Ehpedra (and Ephedrine) are both "generic" - meaning that no pharmaceutical company has a patent over them (and therefore, the prospect of reaping monopoly profits during the patent period).

And that is why it got banned - note also that the ban was imposed just as Big Pharma released its first-generation of sympathomimetics that do not suffer from beta-2 receptor desensitivity. Beta-2 sensitivity is why Ephedrine give a user a "headspin" and mild hypertension for the first couple of days; it is thought - erroneously, in my view - that the diminution of sensitivity in beta-2 receptors leads to a lack of efficacy of Ephedrine with prolonged use.

Of course those new drugs are under patent, and are therefore a monopolistc revenue stream. You might remember all the "talk to your pharmacist" ads on the TV where the fat woggy looking woman loses weight for her wedding, but isn't allowed to tell you what she used.

So don't look for logic - look for corruption. Big Pharma funds a lobby group (usually with some catchy name - "Americans Against Killing Children" or some heartstring-tugging crap like that), then gets someone to tell a sob story abut how Jimmy would be alive but for the nasty Ephedra he was given by that gook doctor down the road. (Never mind that "gook" is slang for Vietnamese... they all look the same in Redneck Wonderland).

The same goes for Cannabis - it was made illegal under persistent, well-funded pressure by du Pont, whose (patented) Nylon was facing competition from "Indian Hemp" in the market for ropes and textiles. Since "Indian Hemp" wasn't a scary enough name for the propaganda machine , the echo chamber was encouraged to call it "Marijuana", because that's a mexican word, and US householders have been suspicious of "wetbacks" for generations.

The rest, as they say, is history. Don't ever ask yourself why tobacco is not banned when marijuana is; tobacco is a big campaign donor, and marijuana can be grown at home (and thereby is a competitor for tobacco, as well as for 'basic' analgesics like Aspirin, Paracetamol, Codeine and Ibuprofen).

Think of the "natural" analgesics that any Afghan goat-herd or Colombian banana-grower can generate by the tonne - Cocaine, Opium, Heroin. They're not illegal because of the harm they cause - they are illegal because of the fact that in a genuinely free market, Big Pharma would have to compete against them, and a vast amount of the profit on their anagesics would disappear. Why would you pay $5 for a packet of Panadol when you could grow your own Coca leaves?

So Bayer, du Pont, Schering, Glaxo - all of these crowds are still big contributors to various organisations that lobby to keep consumers "safe" from natural anagesics. And they in turn sell (at massively inflated prices)... Xanax, Vioxx, Celebrex, Bextra, Oxycontin... and Ritalin and the other child-depressors.

What is the annual death toll from those fuckers? Tens of thousands.

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The second story on STR was about the fact that government (particularly the Bush administration) seems not to be subject to the same criminal sanctions as us normal shitheads. Excuse my Saxon, but isn't that stating the fucking obvious?

The writer in this case talks about Reagan's "wit and charm" as being the primary reason why he was called "The Teflon President".

How about the fact that his media handlers invented a system whereby no journalist got to ask a question? The entire "sweep down the corridor to the set-piece lectern" was invented by Reagan's men, and it meant that if any difficult question made its way past the velvet rope, the President turned and waved and smiled... and fucked off back inside.

Control the images on the news, and you control public perception. Control public perception and you will never get a big enough "push" to call politicians to account. Over time, the major media learned that to continue to get access to these things, you had to have a compliant journalist (the sole exception being Helen Thomas, who is jewel).

Apart from that, the reason Bush is not being impeached (while Clinton was for nothing apart from perverting the course of justice... at least the death toll there was only 2 o 3)... that he and his family have at least as much dirt on senior Democrats, as they have on him. It's Mutually Assured Destruction - the Cold War in microcosm.

Everybody - on both sides of the aisle - knows that the photos taken during the Reagan years, of senior politicians engaged in sex with young boys - some under the age of consent - are in somebody's possession. And they know for a fact, that the "somebody" in question has therefore got the entire Congress by the short hairs. Why do you think that nobody cares about the Palestinians? Because there's a risk that Mossad has managed to acquire copies.

There are some politicians around the place who are prepared to talk about this - mostly in "Axis of Evil" countries. The unofficial spokesman for North Korea refers constantly to the "Transatlantic Homosexual Clique" by which he means Bush. Blair and their coterie.

So why would I believe someone who is hand-in-glove with a dictator? Simple - because dicatorships are freer than most democracies... under Pharoah (probably the most oppressive dictator of all time if you got on his wrong side), tax rates were 20%. (It's in the Bible). I would much rather pay 20c in the dollar and know thatthe bloke in charge would shoot me traight in the head if I said anything bad about him, than pay 50c in the dollar and have the bloke in charge smile sweetly and organise for me to be grabbed up and sent to Gitmo.

With dictators, you know where you stand, and only agitators face oppression. it's the bastards who pretend to give a fuck about you, that you ought to be really worried about.