UK: Brett Watch - Mary Brett, Skunk Nonsense

[perigee]

Shit, this is a dumb idea but perhaps someone should even write to Ben Goldacre to see what he thinks about the current nonsense from Mary Brett et al - he seems like a pretty sensible bloke, with a media profile, it couldn't hurt.

That really is not a half bad idea. If there's one thing that gets Goldacre's goat it's people mangling science, and he's spoken out against misreporting on cannabis before. That Brett and co. have an agenda makes it all the more important to tear apart their argument.

[namkha]

WFAD, in which Mary Brett is a player (as well as EURAD) is trying to blame the Norway massacre on drugs

http://www.wfad.se/latest-news/1-articles/718-mass-murderer-anders-behring-breivik-on-drugs

Mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik on drugs

In his so called “manifesto”, a cut-and-paste piece of insanity, the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik states, I can’t possibly imagine how my state of mind will be during the time of the operation, though. It will be during a steroid cycle and on top of that; during an ephedrine rush, which will increase my aggressiveness, physical performance and mental focus with at least 50-60 per cent but possibly up to 100 per cent. In addition, I will put my iPod on max volume as a tool to suppress fear if needed. I might just put Lux Aeterna by Clint Mansell on repeat as it is an incredibly powerful song. The combination of these factors (when added on top of intense training, simulation, superior armour and weaponry) basically turns you into an extremely focused and deadly force, a one-man-army. The words of a madman? Yes, for sure

[wildbill]

Good thread namkha, thanks for posting it,

As regards challenging their charitable status, I think it would be difficult to implement change because of it.

There are many clearly bogus charities in operation, it is seen as an "easy loophole" by many, imo.

I felt similarly when I found out that Margret Thatcher has her own charity to "spread the word of Thatcherism", purely incidental that she can offset the cost of fights, hotels, office costs, meals etc; imo.

I would also like my own charity one day, to "spread the Wildness around" :wink:

keep it up

Bill

Edited July 27, 2011 by b.wild

[no2schwag]

Actually, tyranny is completely natural and normal for the human race. Look throughout history, all societies were ruled by tyranny and dictatorship. Democracy and human rights are fairly recent ideas in the timeline of human existence. I'd even go so far to say that it's part of our natural instinct to try and control and manipulate the world and the people around us for our own personal gain.

Thankfully most people have evolved somewhat and now feel as though personal freedom and the right to quality of life are things that everyone should enjoy. But the natural instinct for control is still present, and tyranny is still employed by all governments, but delivered in a more covert manner. Banning naturally occuring plants and 'declaring war' on them is effectively declaring war on nature and mankind. A war that can never be won, but keeps the prisons in supply of fresh, fit young people to work in the factories or pull up roadsides for disgustingly low wages. A war that ruins capable and talented young peoples' lives and means they can never climb to an economic level higher than the lowest echelons of society. Dictatorships run on fear and misinformation, propaganda and prison vans. Governments of the western world have the most efficient and effective propaganda tools in the known universe. It's not too difficult to spread mass hysteria about anything they like when a lot of people don't think beyond the memes and slogans.

I know I'm going off on somewhat of a tangent but I think it all ties in to this post, and most other posts in this forum. If people thought a little more critically about things, governments and the media couldn't get away with spouting this utter rubbish daily, for years and years. As long as your average, non-cannabis smoking, middle class, middle aged person's attention is diverted away from any really important issues by the tits on page 3 or which celebrity is addicted to heroin this week, they will just take the 'soundbyte' style phrases like "Skunk psychosis" as solid fact on any issue that doesn't affect them directly.

I think the only thing educated people can do is directly challenge these propagandists and the misinformation they're spreading, start off by educating those around you and maybe one day enough people will see through the bullshit that some serious changes can take place and people like Mary Brett will be ridiculed instead of praised. Each one teach one.

This is just my own semi-coherant stoned ramblings about how things have gotten to this point in what is supposed to be a civilised, and truth-seeking society. Make of it what you will.

[namkha]

I'd agree with all that, except on this detail:

A war that can never be won, but keeps the prisons in supply of fresh, fit young people to work in the factories or pull up roadsides for disgustingly low wages.

afaik many of the 500,000 people locked up in the US for breaking drugs laws (of the total 2.3 million locked up in the US) are rotting in enforced idleness

Barbarous Confinement

By COLIN DAYAN

Published: July 17, 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/opinion/18dayan.html?_r=2&ref=opinion

MORE than 1,700 prisoners in California, many of whom are in maximum isolation units, have gone on a hunger strike. The protest began with inmates in the Security Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison. How they have managed to communicate with each other is anyone’s guess — but their protest is everyone’s concern. Many of these prisoners have been sent to virtually total isolation and enforced idleness for no crime, not even for alleged infractions of prison regulations. Their isolation, which can last for decades, is often not explicitly disciplinary, and therefore not subject to court oversight. Their treatment is simply a matter of administrative convenience.

Solitary confinement has been transmuted from an occasional tool of discipline into a widespread form of preventive detention. The Supreme Court, over the last two decades, has whittled steadily away at the rights of inmates, surrendering to prison administrators virtually all control over what is done to those held in “administrative segregation.” Since it is not defined as punishment for a crime, it does not fall under “cruel and unusual punishment,” the reasoning goes.

As early as 1995, a federal judge, Thelton E. Henderson, conceded that so-called “supermax” confinement “may well hover on the edge of what is humanly tolerable,” though he ruled that it remained acceptable for most inmates. But a psychiatrist and Harvard professor, Stuart Grassian, had found that the environment was “strikingly toxic,” resulting in hallucinations, paranoia and delusions. In a “60 Minutes” interview, he went so far as to call it “far more egregious” than the death penalty.

Officials at Pelican Bay, in Northern California, claim that those incarcerated in the Security Housing Unit are “the worst of the worst.” Yet often it is the most vulnerable, especially the mentally ill, not the most violent, who end up in indefinite isolation. Placement is haphazard and arbitrary; it focuses on those perceived as troublemakers or simply disliked by correctional officers and, most of all, alleged gang members. Often, the decisions are not based on evidence. And before the inmates are released from the barbarity of 22-hour-a-day isolation into normal prison conditions (themselves shameful) they are often expected to “debrief,” or spill the beans on other gang members.

The moral queasiness that we must feel about this method of extracting information from those in our clutches has all but disappeared these days, thanks to the national shame of “enhanced interrogation techniques” at Guantánamo. Those in isolation can get out by naming names, but if they do so they will likely be killed when returned to a normal facility. To “debrief” is to be targeted for death by gang members, so the prisoners are moved to “protective custody” — that is, another form of solitary confinement.

Hunger strikes are the only weapon these prisoners have left. Legal avenues are closed. Communication with the outside world, even with family members, is so restricted as to be meaningless. Possessions — paper and pencil, reading matter, photos of family members, even hand-drawn pictures — are removed. (They could contain coded messages between gang members, we are told, or their loss may persuade the inmates to snitch when every other deprivation has failed.)

The poverty of our criminological theorizing is reflected in the official response to the hunger strike. Now refusing to eat is regarded as a threat, too. Authorities are considering force-feeding. It is likely it will be carried out — as it has been, and possibly still continues to be — at Guantánamo (in possible violation of international law) and in an evil caricature of medical care.

In the summer of 1996, I visited two “special management units” at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence. A warden boasted that one of the units was the model for Pelican Bay. He led me down the corridors on impeccably clean floors. There was no paint on the concrete walls. Although the corridors had skylights, the cells had no windows. Nothing inside could be moved or removed. The cells contained only a poured concrete bed, a stainless steel mirror, a sink and a toilet. Inmates had no human contact, except when handcuffed or chained to leave their cells or during the often brutal cell extractions. A small place for exercise, called the “dog pen,” with cement floors and walls, so high they could see nothing but the sky, provided the only access to fresh air.

Later, an inmate wrote to me, confessing to a shame made palpable and real: “If they only touch you when you’re at the end of a chain, then they can’t see you as anything but a dog. Now I can’t see my face in the mirror. I’ve lost my skin. I can’t feel my mind.”

Do we find our ethics by forcing prisoners to live in what Judge Henderson described as the setting of “senseless suffering” and “wretched misery”? Maybe our reaction to hunger strikes should involve some self-reflection. Not allowing inmates to choose death as an escape from a murderous fate or as a protest against continued degradation depends, as we will see when doctors come to make their judgment calls, on the skilled manipulation of techniques that are indistinguishable from torture. Maybe one way to react to prisoners whose only reaction to bestial treatment is to starve themselves to death might be to do the unthinkable — to treat them like human beings.

Colin Dayan, a professor of English at Vanderbilt University, is the author of “The Law Is a White Dog: How Legal Rituals Make and Unmake Persons.”Barbarous Confinement

By COLIN DAYAN

[soto]

I know the site is quiet these days, it's made me reminisce about all the stuff going on those years ago.

It's always worth checking in to see what Debra Bell, David Raynes and Mary Brett are up to.

It looks like Mary Brett's organisation Cannabis Skunk Nonsense (sorry I mean sense) is still going but doesn't seem to have charity status anymore. I wonder how that played out?

Was crazy how an organisation like that could get charity status in the first place given how political it was. It was political campaigning from the outset, I mean a brief check of Google at the time would I'm sure have made the Charity Commission realise what she was up to. But as namkha alluded to, complaints pretty much fell on deaf ears. Was a long time ago. Man it has been a hell of a long time hasn't it.

Edited June 5, 2023 by soto

[twigs]

she was just a piece in the puzzle (game) that was the ‘formal’ re-licensing/patenting of modern medical cannabis and it’s production, she was most probably set up as a strawman, cover, as private licenses were invented out of thin air to allow the investors first claim in the new game.

 

everyone knew it was a hoax apart from the ignorant, uninformed and the players

 

she was for a purpose, a part (of the act) of business that she was handed and remunerated for, a star position on the stage, a “look how good I am” (and you’re not!)

 

God and the Devils weed!  

 

..she’s probably a toker

 

 

 

 

[Boojum]

5 hours ago, soto said:

Was crazy how an organisation like that could get charity status in the first place given how political it was.

 

 

I think it just shows what a fucking joke the charities commission and 'charitable status' really are. It's rife with corruption, 'charities' set up to give people a nice, well-paid position on the board or as nothing more than tax write-offs for the rich - the whole notion of tax relief for charitable donations is a fucking nonsense.

Edited June 5, 2023 by Boojum