- Seventy odd years ago, when the DuPonts, Mellons, and
Hearsts decided that new advances in the technology for processing the
hemp plant were a danger to their net worth, they went to war against the
plant. Hearst had a significant portion of his wealth in timberland and
paper processing (hemp can replace wood for paper) and the DuPonts owned
chemical patents which were valueless if hemp seed oil were readily available
at commodity level prices. A Mellon son-in-law took care of the federal
end of the deal.
-
- How did these people succeed in criminalizing a plant
which has been in continuous cultivation worldwide for for 4,000 years?
-
- They used the US news media.
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- In those days there was really only one game in town,
newspapers. There was no TV and radio was still in its commercial infancy.
Conveniently, Hearst then owned a good chunk of the nation's press.
-
- The technique Hearst used was simplicity itself. Every
time there was a car wreck, or a murder, or an assault on a young woman,
Hearst reporters included marijuana in the story. If a roach was found
*that* became the sole cause of the crime. A driver who plowed into 10
people in an intersection may have been so drunk he couldn't stand up,
but if he had even a gram of the "killer weed" on him that became
the one and only cause
-
- (Hearst preferred the word marijuana over hemp for two
reasons. One, he already had a multi-decade psysops war in progress against
all things Mexican, also for economic reasons. Two, by re-naming the plant
he erased its history as one of the foundations of the American economy.
For example, early colonists were *required by law* to devote a portion
of their fields to hemp it was such a critically important raw material.)
-
- What does all this have to do with the horrific reality
of a young child being shot dead in school by a classmate?
-
- Just this. Every year a significant number of young children
are murdered, very often by the people who are supposed to be caring for
them. There are also a number of accidents involving the careless use of
firearms, but those numbers have been declining significantly. The risk
that children are at for serious abuse is almost *never* a national story.
Neither is the fact that firearms are handled more safely now than any
time in our history.
-
- In Flint, we had the terrible situation of a young child
who was living unsupervised in appalling circumstances bringing a loaded
handgun to school and firing it causing the death of an innocent child.
That's what happened. It's not a sign that our school are "out of
control" or that a generation of children have become "mindless
predators." This event had nothing whatsoever to do with Columbine
or any of the other small handful of incidents which have been portrayed
as deranged youth going on deliberate killings sprees.
-
- Regardless of these facts, we can expect a wave of media
fed hysteria about dangers in our schools and the need to take guns away
from everyone, including the vast majority of law abiding people who use
them safely. Unsafe automobile use is exponentially more dangerous than
gun use in terms of the number of people killed each year, yet extravagant
car use is encouraged, even glorified, 24/7 on TV.
-
- Why such a discrepancy? It's simple:
-
- The powers that be have it in for the private ownership
of firearms and they also want to extend the federal security apparatus
to our local schools. Therefore, we can count on them to latch onto this
sad Flint tale with the enthusiasm of thirsty vampires.
-
- One thing they don't want to do though is address the
real question here. Note this from a news wire article on the story:
-
- "Classes were canceled at Buell Elementary on Wednesday,
but the school was open to offer counseling services."
-
- Where were the counseling services when a six year old
was sent to live unsupervised in a crack house with loaded firearms lying
around all over the place?
-
- His father was in jail and his mother had just been evicted
from their home. Is there no system in place to see that social services
are available to six year olds in these circumstances if needed? We have
the mechanisms to place a man in jail and throw a woman and her children
out onto the street, but no system that notes that there are entirely innocent
people caught up in dire circumstances who have no way to help themselves.
-
- What kind of a system should we have? I don't know. But
any society that routinely permits children to be put in such circumstances
doesn't deserve to consider itself even remotely civilized.
-
- Outlawing guns, criminalizing youth, and establishing
a police state in our public schools is not the way to help this situation,
but that's the only solution we'll be offered because the problem is "guns"
and "kids" not us.
-
- What sadistic hypocrisy!
-
- Ken McCarthy www.brasscheck.com
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- Clipped by www.sightings.com
-
- Michigan Boy Killer 'Didn't Understand What He'd Done'
By Michael Ellis http://news.excite.com/news/r/000301/13/crime-shooting
3-1-00
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- MT. MORRIS TOWNSHIP, Mich. (Reuters) - The 6-year-old
Michigan boy who shot and killed a 6-year-old girl in their classroom had
severe problems at home and appeared not to understand the seriousness
of what he had done, investigators said Wednesday.
-
- He seemed to regard it as a television-style killing,
they said. When police stopped quizzing him about the shooting -- which
horrified Americans because the shooter and his victim were so young --
he turned to drawing pictures.
-
- Investigators said the boy got the loaded gun he used
from under blankets on a bed at the house where he was living -- a "crack
house" where he wound up after his father went to jail and his mother
was evicted from their home.
-
- The dead girl was the youngest victim in a series of
shootings in U.S. schools in recent years, the most serious of which was
the April 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, where two
students killed 12 students and a teacher before taking their own lives.
-
- That and other shootings prompted anguished discussion
about gun control, school security and related issues that the Michigan
incident was certain to intensify.
-
- Arthur Busch, the prosecutor for Michigan's Genesee County,
said detectives had told him they were convinced that they boy "did
not understand what he had done, did not appreciate the consequences of
his actions and appeared to take this as some sort of, well that just kind'a
happens like on television."
-
- "He did not seem to appreciate nor understand the
gravity of what he had done...when the interview was concluded, he sat
there drawing pictures," Busch told a news conference.
-
- Genesee County Sheriff Robert Pickell told reporters
later that the boy and his 8-year-old brother had been living in what their
jailed father described as a "crack house" for the past five
or 10 days.
-
- He said the children wound up there after their father
was sent back to jail on a parole violation and the mother was evicted
from the home in which the family had been living.
-
- Pickell also said the boy's father told him his son had
been suspended three times from school in a short period of time, once
for stabbing a classmate with a pencil.
-
- The father, he added, said the boy once said of other
students at the school, "I hate them."
-
- Busch announced that a man identified as Sir Marcus Winfrey
-- an uncle with whom the brothers were living -- had been arrested on
an outstanding felony warrant alleging that he received and concealed stolen
property.
-
- He said another unnamed person was being sought in connection
with the case. Pickell said that man was a crack dealer living at the uncle's
house.
-
- Both the gun used in the shooting and a loaded shotgun
also found in the home were stolen, Busch said, adding that drugs were
also found in the house.
-
- Police and witnesses said the boy, now in the custody
of a state child welfare agency, showed off the .32 caliber handgun to
a few students at Buell Elementary School, north of Flint, Michigan, while
the teacher and most of the rest of the class were leaving the classroom.
-
- He pointed the gun at another boy then whirled and shot
Kayla Rolland once through the neck. She died shortly afterward at a local
hospital.
-
- Mt. Morris Police Chief Eric King told the briefing that
students who witnessed the shooting gave conflicting accounts of whether
the boy said anything to the girl before he shot her. The two were reported
to have had a playground spat the day before.
-
- King said the boy put the gun back in his desk after
the shooting. Earlier reports said the child left the room and threw the
weapon in a restroom waste can.
-
- Busch said investigators would meet Thursday to determine
"if someone can be held criminally responsible for the death of this
little girl." He reiterated earlier statements that the boy cannot
be charged with a felony because of his age.
-
- He urged compassion both for the family of the little
girl and for the boy, saying "this little guy has some severe problems
that need to be addressed...he needs all the support and help we can give
him." He said the boy was living in a house where he did not even
have his own bed.
-
- "This kid is as much a victim, in my opinion, as
the little girl," Busch said earlier on CBS.
-
- Classes were canceled at Buell Elementary on Wednesday,
but the school was open to offer counseling services. Parents and young
children arrived at the school, some of them placing flowers and teddy
bears near the entrance.
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