ICE, Warlord Hegseth, murder in Venezuela

(Democracy Watch)

Dead Kennedy's "We've Got a Bigger Problem Now" (California Uber Alles reprise)

(The Jimmy Dore Show) Hegseth: We have no idea who we're killing

• Ontario, California, Congresswoman Norma Torres demanding answers after resident Carlos Jimenez was shot by ICE agents during operation - ABC7 Los Angeles
• U.S. citizen shot from behind as he warned ICE agents about children gathering at bus stop, lawyers say - Los Angeles Times

(I've Had It) IHIP News

(TYT Sports) ICE arrests much worse than thought (update)

Trump declares foreign War on Drugs

Trump doesn't care about drugs, wants oil, regime change for Nick Maduro

We run this Congress, Trump. Let's do it.

Trump's Pentagon (head of the U.S. military-industrial complex) targets and murders civilians with no due process. He alleges, according to Warlord Hegseth, that these boaters are legal targets due to his assessment and allegation that they are working for a narco[tic] drug cartel.

• (NY Post) Leavitt touts Trump-directed strikes on alleged Venezuelan cartel boats to 'end the drug epidemic'

I can have anybody killed I want

(CNN News-18) Trump directs fourth illegal strike in Caribbean Sea

(Fern) What will Donald John Trump’s second term looki like?

 

I can keep the distractions coming, Sec'y Pete!

He killed four in this instance, following previous killing sprees, which makes him eligible for the title of "mass murderer" by modern definition.

But the Supreme Court has promised to absolve and hold him blameless for any crimes performed from the White House Oval Office within the scope of his duties, which are anything Border Czar Homan's Project 2025 tells him are okay to do even if they are not.

You'll protect me, right, Bondi? You better or else

As long as Pres. Trump claims he thought he had the right do it, that's enough for the highest court in the land. Taking ownership of Gaza and changing its name to "the Riviera of the Mediterranean" while ethnically cleansing its population with the help of CIA ally and friendliest strongman in the Middle East Bibi Netanyahu? No problem.

Murder by military jargon?

(Beyond Military) There's a Coast Guard solution not using bombs

But maybe old laws can be reinterpreted

Thaddeus Crowley digs up old laws to serve Trump's lawless whims | The Daily Show

• LiveNow from Fox; Beyond Military; The Daily Show; Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Hippie Trail: Katmandu, drug paradise (video)

What were we looking for? Enlightenment. What did we find? Ganja-smoking Hindu sadhus.

Rock singer Bob Seger sang about Katmandu, whereas Led Zeppelin wrote a paean to Kashmir

(Hare Krishna Hare Ram) "Dum Maro Dum" (1971) In this Bollywood song about the detested hippies coming to India to smoke weed and worship Krishna devotionally like the Beatles, a brother searches everywhere for his hippie Indian sister who has fallen in with Western miscreants.

How the drug war destroyed a hippie paradise in Kathmandu

(ReasonTV) Sept. 13, 2019. Pres. Dick Nixon's pursuit of draft-dodgers and pot smokers fueled the communist ideology it was trying to contain.

In the 1970s, Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon tried to nip "communism" in the bud by destroying Nepal's Himalayan hippie Shangri-La.

In stopping the pot smokers, he sparked a Maoist blowback. As the last country on earth to forbid the sale, cultivation, and consumption of drugs, Nepal promised a mind-bending trip.

Hippie trail from Europe to Central and E. Asia

But in an era when few could afford round-the-world airfare, frugal flower children took a rougher route to the most far-out destination on the planet: The Hippie Trail followed the footsteps of the ancient [Buddhist] Silk Road.

Some travelers fled the U.S. War on Vietnam draft; others came to the Himalayas to find themselves. For whatever the reason, from 1965 to 1973, tens of thousands of young people hitchhiked or bused the overland route from Istanbul, Turkey, to Kathmandu, Nepal, annually.

The end of The Hippie Trail was a single bustling urban lane called Jhonche, rechristened as Freak Street by its new colorfully dressed inhabitants.

Far Out: Countercultural...in Nepal

Over time, the Western hippies created their own community in Kathmandu. In a fascinating look at Nepal's hippie history, Mark Liechty, author of Far Out: Countercultural Seekers and the Tourist Encounter in Nepal, describes Freak Street as a Haight-Ashbury or Greenwich Village on the other side of the world.

Hippies lived in a fantasy Nepal that existed in their imaginations: a land where old [morals or] traditions did not apply, where they could live freely and create themselves anew.

A youth culture that was too shocking for 1960s North America found a welcome home in a faraway religious monarchy [nominally Hindu but very Vajrayana Buddhist].

But "paradise" is not of either side of this earth. Two years after Pres. Dick Nixon declared an international "war on drugs," U.S. Vice President Spiro Agnew was dispatched to Asia.

VP Agnew toured every country on The Hippie Trail before arriving in Nepal. Pres. Nixon threatened to withhold economic aid from countries that held a permissive attitude toward the drug trade.

Maoist rebels start Nepalese Civil War

Months later, Nepal enacted the first anti-drug laws in its ancient history. Kathmandu's hashish shops were closed. American narcotics agents roamed Freak Street, surveilling drug takers and draft dodgers for arrest on their arrival back in the United States.

And in a move that would have consequences for decades to come, Nepal's natural marijuana fields (where it grows freely for anyone to pick) were torched.

The hippies weren't the only ones angered by the new prohibition.

In Western Nepal, far from the capital city of Kathmandu, hashish cultivation (made from the sticky, oozing sap of budding cannabis flowers) was the main source of income.

Musk: Why was this ever illegal? (Joe Rogan)

Sellers and growers were arrested. Private property with strains of the hemp (Cannabis sativa) plant growing on it was forfeited to the state in a land grab using the drug war as its pretext.

Tens of thousands of farmers were pushed to the brink of starvation. Promised development aid to the region never arrived from outside or materialized from the monarch.

Seeing political opportunity in economic collapse, the Communist Party exploited local grievances and persuaded residents that only a violent overthrow of the oppressive royal government would solve their problems.

"Dum Maro Dum/Dam Maro Dam" Hare Krishna Hare Raam original song

Dick Nixon's global war on drugs fueled the communist ideology it was trying to contain. By 2006, the communist Maoists controlled 80 percent of the country. The insurgency based in the agricultural heartland had grown into a national political force that paralyzed the nation with a series of national strikes and armed resistance to the bad king.

After a decade-long civil war that claimed 17,000 lives, Nepal's monarchy was abolished and the Communist Party were elected to power.

Today, the civil war is long over, but Nepal's war on drugs continues. It remains a hub for heroin (derived from the naturally growing poppy plant) and hashish (cannabis resin), with stories of drug busts, addiction, and violence, mainstays of Nepal's TV news coverage.

Freak Street or Hippie Row still exists in Nepal

Despite a small political movement to legalize hashish, cannabis is legal one day a year for religious purposes only. The rest of the time, locals and tourists take their chances in the black market.

These days, the real action has moved to Thamel. A short walk from Freak Street, Kathmandu's new nightlife hotspot offers visitors every kind of indulgence that was available during Freak Street's heyday and many more that the hippies couldn't have imagined on their wildest trip.

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Reason.com is the planet's leading source of news, politics, and culture from a Libertarian perspective. Produced by Todd Krainin. Music licensed under Creative Commons, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US. "Malashree Dhun" by Sringar Nepal. "Bass Bansuri" by Hamsadhwani. "Eastern Thought" by Kevin MacLeod. "Holiday (instrumental)" by Silence is Sexy. "Aspirato" by Kai Engel. "Long Time Gone" by Amaya Laucirica. ReasonTV

US War on Syria: new base, occupation (TJDS)

Jimmy Dore, Kurt Metzger, Stef Zamorano (jimmydore.com); Eds., Wisdom Quarterly

Max Blumenthal confronts [phony leftist] Rachel Maddow, how the UK gov’t defanged The Guardian w/ Matt Kennard

The after show, Unite, with Stef and guest Anya

(The Jimmy Dore Show) Friday, June 2, 2023, live YouTube broadcast. Max Blumenthal of The Gray Zone confronts war-promoter Rachel Maddow (MSNBC multi-millionaire) about her warmongering, propaganda news stories, and her stance on the US military in Syria, Ukraine, and elsewhere in the world.

ABOUT: TJDS tells it like it is rather than how the mainstream media tries to make us believe it is. Become a premium member to rewind and rewatch: jimmydore.com/premium-member... Attend a live show: jimmydore.com/tour. Subscribe to newsletter: mailchi.mp/jimmydorecomedy/yt... #TheJimmyDoreShow. Stef (Jimmy's wife) is The Miserable Liberal and a schoolteacher in Los Angeles. Anya is a reporter for thegrayzone.com.

Democrats vote for endless WAR (video)

Jimmy Dore, Mike MacRae; Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells, Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Trump dropped more bombs on Afghanistan last year than any year since our war started.

• City of Los Angeles rent relief ends tonight at 11:59 PM
• UC picks Black successor to corrupt* Chief Janet Napolitano
• UC names first Black president: Michael Drake, former Ohio State leader, picked to replace Janet Napolitano
• A University of California regent, a sex harassment accusation, and what an investigator found

*University of California Board of Regents: A joint legislative hearing on an investigative report from retired California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno looked into whether UC President Janet Napolitano's office interfered with a state audit, and found that it did!

Who's starting a war with Iran? (video)

Lee Camp, Redacted Tonight; Seth Meyers; Seth Auberon, Crystal Q. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Iran War Games, No More Common Good, Russiagate Falls Apart

(Lee Camp, Redacted Tonight 248, June 21, 2019) The first 10 mins of Lee Camp’s new comedy special available FREE at LeeCampComedySpecial.com, just click play. Redacted Tonight is being suppressed by major social media platforms. So the best way to keep track of content is to join email list by texting “REDACTED” to 444-999. Come be in the live audience every Thursday at 8:45 pm in Washington, DC. Details at leecamp.com/RSVP. LIVE: Radical political comedy that cannot be found anywhere else, cool Redacted Tonight swag that cannot be bought anywhere else, and hang out with them afterwards.

Trump Almost Started a War with Iran: A Closer Look
(Late Night with Seth Meyers, June 24, 2019) Seth takes a closer look at Pres. Trump creating a bunch of problems then turning around and pretending to “solve” those problems. Late Night with Seth Meyers on YouTube features A-list celebrity guests, memorable comedy, and topical monologue jokes. Get more at http://www.nbc.com/late-night-with-se...watch weeknights 12:35/11:35c on NBC.

• Twitter.com/LateNightSeth
• Facebook.com/LateNightSeth
• LateNightSeth.tumblr.com

Nat'l Vietnam War Veterans Day (video)

AM; Raw Uncut Vietnam (video); Pfc. Sandoval, Seth Auberon, Crystal Q., Wisdom Quarterly

• VeteransForPeace.org

National Vietnam War Veterans Day in 2019

Towards the end of the 19th century, colonial French imperial forces gradually took more control of the Buddhist country of Vietnam. Colonial Europeans originally controlled it as a "protectorate" from 1883 through 1939. Then they controlled it as a "possession" from 1939 through 1945. This changed on September 2, 1945, when Vietnam's nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the country’s independence. In December of 1946, the First Indochina War began in French Indochina. A conflict between French forces and their opponents... [became one taken over by American imperial forces as we went in on France's official departure. That is how we entered the American War, in spite of all the lies politicians and disinformation specialists at the CIA, FBI, and NSA reported. We call it the "Vietnam War," an illegal and undeclared kinetic conflict that nearly tore the USA apart and ushered in the peace movement, the civil rights movement, the women's movement, and the general awakening of youths in its wake. North Americans began to realize that we live under the control of a military-industrial complex going on at least since the time of U.S. Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower. As General Smedley Butler revealed long ago, WAR IS A RACKET, a farce that gets many people killed to make a few people rich. Truth is the first casualty, replaced by propaganda and a national fairytale of our valor, because we have been lied into every war and invasion from the founding of the USA, beginning with the Genocide of the Native Americans to the first U.S. imperial adventures in the Philippines and Hawaii. It used to shock people of good conscience, but now it seems anything goes.]

Soldiers are young and naïve but soon become cynical, addicted, or dead.

Color COMBAT footage from Saigon: U.S. War on Vietnam
Argunners Magazine, April 6, 2018

This first video is mostly footage showing the Army of the Republic of Vietnam filmed on May 6, 1968 in the city of Saigon, Vietnam, a few days after the start of the "May Offensive," in which the Vietcong allegedly, according to U.S. sources, attacked multiple targets in and around Saigon with much success from May 5-30, 1968.

The War on Consciousness (video)

Graham Hancock via After Skool; Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

What is "consciousness"? The Buddha explains in extreme detail in the Abhidharma.

Slutever: "Mormon War on PORN" (video)

VICE, Slutever (S1, E5); Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells, Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Jewish actress Natalie Portman promotes lesbianism for Hollywood (KickassFacts.com).

Mormons are clean-cut all-American ETs.

Utah has started a war against pornography. In 2016, Utah became the first state to officially declare porn a public health crisis.

The claims are that porn has a  "detrimental" effect on brain function, contributes to "emotional and medical illnesses," and gives rise to "deviant sexual arousal."

But with the mainstream science being murky at best, is this just Mormon morality infiltrating Utah legislation?

Think Catholics and Fundamentalists are uptight? Feel the shame of the patriarch's polygamy

South Park: "Which side are you on?" #WeinersOut (comedycentral.com)

Porn is obviously a polarizing topic. [Which side are you on?" asks the Mormon maker of South Park.]

The LDS Church (Church of Latter Day Saints or "Mormons") perpetuate the belief that porn addiction is a "plague like we have never seen."

However, the psychiatric community does not even recognize "porn addiction" as a clinical diagnosis. So is porn actually contaminating our brains, or is this symbolic porn ban just a way of shaming Utah residents for their sexual desires?

Having sprung out of this patriarchal repression, the pornography site MormonGirlz.com, founded by a lapsed Mormon (lesbian pornographer "Brooke" in this documentary), directly plays on LDS-inspired sexual oppression for the sake of titillation -- illustrating the ultimate backlash against suppressed sexual desires.

Utah used to be great until aliens invaded.

In this episode of Slutever, Host Karley travels to Utah to investigate the complicated, illicit, and shamefully sexy world of porn in Utah.

Karley speaks to members of Mormon Church and other porn-haters at Utah's annual anti-porn convention.

She also spends some quality time with the erotically "liberated" resistance.

• Inside Milktoberfest: Mormon alternative to Oktoberfest
• Buddhism and SEX (Maurice O'Connell Walshe) 

How will Kabul bomb victims' families survive?

The World (PRI.org); Wisdom Quarterly

Kabul bomb blast victims' families could be left "begging" to survive

• New "Wonder Woman" movie (regmovies.com)

What we did to the Vietnamese (video)

Eds., Wisdom Quarterly; Eugene Taylor, Abraham Krikorian (video); Vietnam Online

Vietnam was paradise before the invaders began dropping bombs, spraying defoliant chemicals like Agent Orange. Waterfalls at Bangioc Park (phombo.com/mandalapa.com).

(Nov. 2013) The Cu Chi Tunnel complex was hand dug by the Viet Minh and later the Viet Cong using crude tools. The incredible ingenuity and determination on their part fighting for freedom, independence, and unification against American invaders is amazing.

Crawling through the Cu Chi Tunnel into the past

There's so much to see in Vietnam today!

If we want to know what the imperial U.S. war on Buddhist Vietnam was like, this can be the starting point.

Located about 2 hours from Ho Chi Minh City, Cu Chi Tunnel is a complex of tunnels and a miniature underground city with many war relics.

 

With a total length of over 200 kms, it allowed space for living and meeting of many defensive Viet Cong soldiers during the invasion by the West, first France then the United States.

Vietnam, Southeast Asia, below China

As one crawls through the tiny hallway and gets a taste of yucca with salted sesame seeds, one will figure out why Vietnam won battles against a much bigger force.

The tunnel system is touted as being "beyond human imagination," with brilliant architectural design that was suited for survival and defensive military activities. More

.

Entrance to an subterranean world when Vietnamese were driven underground: Cu Chi.

Run, children, run. The Americans are coming! U.S. atrocities in Vietnam: napalm (viola.bz)

Afghanistan exhibit (UCLA's Hammer Museum)

The Afghan Carpet Project, Hammer.UCLA.edu; editorial by Amber Larson, Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven, and CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly

Preserve Buddhist Mes Aynak, Afghanistan (ARCHinternational.org)

The Caucasian Central Asian children of rural Afghanistan before being terrorized, raped, droned, or murdered by hand by U.S. soldiers prodded by their angry father figures in (AP).

.

Please stop killing us, USA.

The Afghan Carpet Project features six carpets designed by LA-based contemporary artists—Lisa Anne Auerbach, Liz Craft, Meg Cranston, Francesca Gabbiani, Jennifer Guidi, and Toba Khedoori—which were handmade by weavers in Afghanistan. The exhibition is the culmination of a project that began with a trip to Afghanistan to visit weavers in the capital Kabul and [Buddhist] Bamiyan in March 2014. The trip provided the artists with insight into the craft and the production process, as well as the living and working conditions for the weavers. Following the trip, each artist came up with an original design for her carpet—some reflecting upon the experience, and others derived out of the artists’ respective practices.
 

Central Asian culture: The Afghan Carpet Project at the Hammer Museum, UCLA

 

The project was initiated by the not for profit organization AfghanMade, along with carpet producer Christopher Farr, Inc. with the goal of collaborating with women weavers in Afghanistan. All profits from carpet sales (after fabrication costs are recovered) will benefit Arzu Studio Hope, an organization that established weaving studios in Afghanistan, which provide fair wages, education, and healthcare to Afghan women. The show will also include photo documentation of the trip, shot by Auerbach. This exhibition is on view until September 27 and was organized by curator Ali Subotnick with Emily Gonzalez-Jarrett, curatorial associate. More

• 2015 Exhibition: Afghan Carpet Project
• CODEPINK: Afghanistan: Ground the Drones

CODEPINK's Medea Benjamin confronts Bush-era war criminal C. Rice with bloody hands.

Lady Liberty is wearing slave shackles in New York Harbor almost hidden by gown.

Li'l Adolf/Manson wanted a race war

World shocked by our enduring racism, neo-Nazism, gun violence? Really? We thought the world knew all about it. The USA is full of racism, class inequality, killer police to enforce societal prejudices, and hypocrisy. Good, there, now the world knows.

Racist, megalomaniac cop Eric Casebolt points deadly service revolver at unarmed black teens at a swimming pool party. Why? These n-words weren't obeying me fast enough, he said. They were actually coming to the aid of a 14 y.o. he was physically and almost sexually assaulting, and he was the cop in charge of the scene with a dozen cops backing him with guns ready. He resigned to be able to work at another department rather than be fired.

CODEPINK: Women for Peace (codepink.org)

Drugs do NOT cause drug addiction (video)

Ashley Wells, Seth Auberon, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; Johann Hari, Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez, Nermeen Shaikh (democracynow.org, Feb. 4, 2015)

Talking about liberation and enlightenment, the Buddha said an amazing thing: "Three things cannot remain hidden: the Moon, the Sun, and the Truth" (DigitalTurkey-graph/flickr.com).

My mongoose at my acid.

As Pres. Obama seeks $27.6 billion for federal police state sponsored "drug control" programs in Washington D.C.'s new budget, British journalist Johann Hari talks about amazing research and evidence.

Chasing the Scream (Johann Hari)

The century-old failed “drug war” could never have been successful -- while sucking up so much money and feeding a prison-industrial complex to no good effect -- because it was founded on a faulty assumption, lies, and motives other than drugs. 

So much of what we "know" about addiction is wrong. Over the past four years Hari has traveled from England to the United States, Mexico, Canada, Uruguay, and Portugal to research his new book, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War of Drugs.

His findings will surprise many -- with the exception of Dr. Gabor Mate, MD (“Zeitgeist”) who has been saying this for years after experience with tens of thousands of addicts in Canada -- from the U.S. government’s persecution of Billie Holiday, to Vancouver’s success in addressing its heroin epidemic, to Portugal’s experiment with full decriminalization of all drugs. More

Chasing the Scream

It is now 100 years since drugs were first banned in the United States. On the eve of this centenary, journalist Johann Hari set off on an epic three-year, 30,000-mile journey into our bogus War on Drugs.

What he found is that more and more people all over the world are beginning to recognize three startling truths:

1. Drugs are not what we think they are.
2. Addiction is not what we think it is.
3. And the Drug War has very different motives than the ones we have been by on our TV screens for so long.

Money and rap music lure "enemies" for police to track, attack, and imprison in this "war."

 
In his new book Chasing the Scream, Hari reveals his discoveries entirely through the life stories of people across the world whose lives have been transformed by this bogus war.

They range from a transsexual crack dealer in Brooklyn, New York, searching for her mother, to a teenage hit-man in Mexico searching for a way out.

It begins with Hari’s discovery that at the birth of the War on Drugs, jazz legend Billie Holiday was stalked and killed by the man who launched this American police state crusade. It ends with the story of a brave medical doctor who has led his country to decriminalize every drug, from cannabis to crack, with remarkable results.
 
Chasing the Scream lays bare what we really have been chasing in our century of drug war – in our hunger for drugs, and in our attempt to destroy them. This book will challenge and change how you think about one of the most controversial – and consequential – questions of our time.

We're launching a war on your plastic baggies, and all of you are terrorists! Back up!

 
What's being said about Chasing the Scream

“Johann Hari’s book is the perfect antidote to the war on drugs, one of the most under-discussed moral injustices of our time. It combines rigorous research and deeply human story-telling. It will prompt an urgently-needed debate’
– Glenn Greenwald (The Intercept), Pulitzer Prize winner

“An absolutely stunning book. It will blow people away.”
– Elton John, iconic musician

“Superb journalism and thrilling story-telling.”
– Naomi Klein, author

“Wonderful… I couldn’t put it down.”
– Noam Chomsky

“This book is, forgive the obvious phrase, screamingly addictive. The story it tells, jaw-droppingly horrific, hilarious and incredible, is one everyone should know: that it is all true boggles the mind, fascinates and infuriates in equal measure. Johann Hari, in brilliant prose, exposes one of the greatest and most harmful scandals of the past hundred years.”
– Stephen Fry

“This book is as intoxicatingly thrilling as crack, without destroying your teeth. It will change the drug debate forever.”
– Russell Brand, comedian, truth teller
 

Police make money from the War on Drugs

“Johann Hari has written a drug policy reform book like no other. Many have studied, or conducted, the science surrounding the manifold ills of drug prohibition. But Hari puts it all into riveting story form, and humanizes it… Part Gonzo journalism, part Louis CK standup, part Mark Twain storytelling, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs is beautifully wrought: lively, humorous, and poignant. And it’s a compelling case for why the drug war must end, yesterday.”
– Norman Stamper, former police chief of Seattle

“In this energetic and thought-proving book, Hari harnesses the power of the personal narrative to reveal the true causes and consequences of the War on Drugs.”
– David Nutt, former chief scientific advisor on drugs to the British government
 
“This book is an entertainment, a great character study and page-turning storytelling all rolled into one very sophisticated and compelling cry for social justice.”
– Stephen Downing, formerly in charge of the Narcotics Division of the Los Angeles Police Department