posted January 24, 2013 12:10 AM            

But I think the soul is not bound to the chart, I think there is more to the soul than the inner planets...I believe that insofar as people have love, charity, virtue in them, they have divinity.

Mercy is a form of divinity; carrying a badge that says you are a Christian is not necessarily divinity. Not in my reckoning.

Anyway...

Happy birthday aquaguy!

posted January 24, 2013 07:43 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by aquaguy91:
yta, i have just one question for you, if someone close to you were to get into trouble with the law would you feel the same way? for example: what if your son were to start running with a bad crowd in college and got into drugs and got busted, would you still advocate harsh penalties for petty crimes ?

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I'll send him away. In fact, I'll quickly report him, and his mother and I told him that already. There are consequences for ill action, and I'll say he has to learn his lessons. There is a price to pay for bad decisions.

But that's a hypothetical because I raise my sons correctly. There isn't a single in my entire extended family who isn't an outstanding citizen because we uphold high values. We aren't here to impose our standards on anyone, but I'm here to advocate the removal of all miscreants. Sorry but I don't need such miscreants around my children, my future grandchildren, and their children.

I won't even get into moral values because I'm not here to stand on some pulpit. Apparently, some of you are.

I don't see drugs as a petty crime. I view drugs as felonious because of their extremely serious nature. Behind "innocent" demand is ugly supply side.

You guys see a joint as a joint. I see a joint as crimes against humanity. I already told my son's intended college that I have taught my son to report all instances of drug use to the authorities. In fact, a kid in that college went to the police to report on cocaine and sent five students away for running a distribution ring.

I already requested drugs to be removed from all discussions in this forum, but management here says its alright. Since it's your forum, that's your perrogative.

The only person whose opinion I truly care has an even stronger stance than I do: trhow away the keys. Honestly, that's all I care about. I'm glad I have someone who shares my viewpoint. Birds of the same feathers flock together.

posted January 24, 2013 03:12 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by YoursTrulyAlways:
Sorcha,

I apologize but I wholeheartedly disagree with whatever studies you have presented. You wouldn't be able to sway my opinion, so let's just leave it at that and agree to disagree.

My point of view is that felonious activity is injurious to society. You want to reform individuals, and that is your honorable objective. My objective is just to remove the element from society and prevent exposure of my children and grandchildren from such harmful influences.

Am I selfish? Perhaps. But I intend to secure my security interests, just like I operate to secure my own economic interest in a capitalist economy.

As far as compassion goes, my compassion is for the individual and not the act. As far as I am concerned, felonious behavior removes all privileges and rights, including that of the right to bear arms. In that sense, I believe that aspect of the Patriot Act didn't even need to have been legislated. It is already implicit, if not explicitly denoted in federal and state statutes.

As far as finances go, from my perspective, keeping a well established prison system is money well spent to ensure the internal security of the nation, just like maintaining a defense infrastructure to ensure the national security of the nation.

Sorry, but rehab makes no sense to me. My view is that prison in America is far too cushy and lenient. I happen to be in agreement with Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona and his methods of incarceration as an effective deterrent to crime.

If what I have written engenders ill feelings, then I cannot help it. I'm just providing my honest opinion. Again, nobody has to like me or respect me. It's up to others to deal with me in their own way because I'm not changing my mind, and they are not repressing my opinion.

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I'm not asking you to apologize for believing what you believe so I hope you didn't infer that from what I wrote. I absolutely disagree with you on most of your points, but you are entitled to your view of the world just as I am entitled to mine.

As far as facts go, however, there is one point in which you are just wrong. Prisons are not cushy. Maybe you read a misguided article about prisons (written by someone who has never been in one, most likely) or heard someone on the radio complaining about prisons being lenient? Whatever the case, the concept of lenient prisons falls under opinion, not fact, unless you equate 'dangerous' and 'cushy' as the same thing.

One of my degrees is in criminology and psychology and so this is a subject that I know a lot about. I can confidently tell you that there is nothing Club Fed-like about prison - I have been to prisons, spoken to prisoners, read stories written by prisoners, studied this for years, etc. and it's an incredibly dangerous place to live.

I completely understand and appreciate wanting to protect your children. When you said, however, that you have compassion for the individual and not the act, I think it's really important to remember that behind every 'felonious act' there is a real person. So I have to admit that it's difficult to totally buy into your comment (on a humanitarian level at least), given that particular statement.

It's really easy to be compassionate towards people when they have the same beliefs as we do and act the same as we do. To me, that's not so much compassion as relating to another person with the same values.

Real compassion is when you are forced out of your comfort zone somehow and challenged to see people from a new angle....in the case of addicts, to understand that they have their own sets of challenges and a path that lead them there and judging them based on your own values is a fruitless endeavour since you really cannot know their experience.

You've made it clear what your position is in all this so please don't feel that it's necessary to re-state that you have no intention of changing your view. I'm not trying to change it, nor am I "standing on a pulpit". I'm simply expressing my own views on this. I have a lot of passion for this subject and I couldn't *not* write something in this case.

The only two things I will add, is that I do think that your ideas of harsher penalties would only serve to create a climate of fear and repression.

posted January 24, 2013 03:33 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by aquaguy91:
yta, i somewhat understand your sentiments, but you are not understanding the point of the matter... the government does not give a sh*t about protecting you or me from the menace of illegal drugs,its all about money! if they truly cared about getting people off drugs they would be more concerned with rehabilitating people instead of sending them offf to the pen where C.O's smuggle in drugs everyday. which sounds better to you... going to a place where you are supported every step of the way or going to a place where you are at severe risk of being beaten or raped and that place is full of drugs because the people in charge want your money....

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Totally. Follow the money

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Passion, Lust, Desire. Check out my journal

posted January 24, 2013 04:32 PM            

The CIA is Wall Street, and Drug Money is King

Article worth looking into.

While I'm at it, I believe a big reason US and British troops are in Afghanistan is for drug smuggling. Research that on the internet and you will find things like:

quote:

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Military police are investigating claims that British soldiers may have been involved in heroin trafficking in Afghanistan.

Officials said they were aware of "unsubstantiated" claims that troops were buying the illegal drug from dealers and using military aircraft to ship it out the country....

[Last year the Sunday Times spoke to one dealer who said members of the military were the second largest buyers of heroin after foreign drug lords.

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I don't have time but I could find dozens of articles like this. I've found them before.

posted January 24, 2013 05:02 PM            

quote:

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Opium production in Afghanistan has been on the rise since U.S. occupation started in 2001.

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posted January 25, 2013 03:08 PM            

A loyal cop catches the speeding man and drags him to jail. He has to, for if he does not, he would be sent to jail for life or put to death, considering the kind of harsh punishments being advocated.

Next thing is Kaboom!

Is the Law Maker also not culpable for the deaths? What should be his punishment?

And, if one feels that there have to be extremely strict laws for simple crimes, then that same kind of karmic judgment is considered acceptable by the Higher Judge for even the simplest of errors by the strict Individual.

posted January 25, 2013 03:47 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by iQ:

And, if one feels that there have to be extremely strict laws for simple crimes, then that same kind of karmic judgment is considered acceptable by the Higher Judge for even the simplest of errors by the strict Individual.

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I don't know how the Higher Judge thinks, but I suspect that people usually reap what they sow.

In Ian's case, he believes we should "throw away the key" when drug offenders go to prison. But that's because he has a personal bias against drugs. What if minor banking errors, prosecuted as fraud, were punishable with life imprisonment?

Some people strongly believe much of Wall Street belongs in the slammer anyway:

quote:

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The harms from this refusal to hold Wall Street accountable are the same generated by the general legal immunity the US political culture has vested in its elites. Just as was true for the protection of torturers and illegal eavesdroppers, it ensures that there are no incentives to avoid similar crimes in the future. It is an injustice in its own right to allow those with power and wealth to commit destructive crimes with impunity. It subverts democracy and warps the justice system when a person's treatment under the law is determined not by their acts but by their power, position, and prestige. And it exposes just how shameful is the American penal state by contrasting the immunity given to the nation's most powerful with the merciless and brutal punishment meted out to its most marginalized.

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The Untouchables: How the Obama Administration protected Wall Street from Prosecutions

posted January 26, 2013 09:08 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Faith:

Now I'm not saying Ian did anything wrong whatsoever, but his colleagues may have, and if some people had their way, the drug offenders would be out of jail, and white collar criminals would take their place.

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Faith,

For financial crimes, give them 30 years to 40 years. without parole. I shed no tears for them. And hard labor in the hot Arizona/Texas sun and Alaska winter. Bernie Madoff should be hung.

I have uniform disdain for people who deliberately violate laws. Needless to say, I'm all for securing the borders.

As far as the Afghan war went, I would have prosecuted it in a different manner and I would have napalmed all the poppy fields. But I won't go into that here.

posted January 26, 2013 11:34 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by YoursTrulyAlways:
As far as the Afghan war went, I would have prosecuted it in a different manner and I would have napalmed all the poppy fields. But I won't go into that here.

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Part of the reason the war got started is because the Taliban "napalmed" the poppy fields in defiance of the demands of Western elites. Check out that wiki link on opium production, you'll see that the poppies were obliterated in 2001. That's okay we got right back in there for the next growing season.

And they don't call it Pipeline-istan for nothing.

So of course the financial sector has its vested interested in war, wholly outside of principle. The natural resources and the out-of-control military-industrial-surveillance complex keeps you rich.

As Obama's one-time foreign policy advisor (and your professor) Zbigniew Brzezinksi said to Congress: "The 'war on terror' is a mythical historical narrative."

And Alan Greenspan is another one willing to talk straight: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil."

posted January 26, 2013 11:41 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by PixieJane:
I lost count of how many times cops were busted framing thousands of people...

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posted January 26, 2013 11:49 AM            

I'm sad that you are in pain. I wish I could do something else for you, more than just sending my prayers.

You raise an excellent point: isn't it possible that Big Pharma is also behind some of the anti-drug legislation, because they don't want to compete with cheaper, more effective natural cures?

posted January 26, 2013 01:24 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Faith:

As Obama's one-time foreign policy advisor (and your professor) Zbigniew Brzezinksi said to Congress: "The 'war on terror' is a mythical historical narrative.

And you HAVE to be smart enough to know that. So we can keep having a BS conversation about the BS reasons for the wars, or go a little deeper. Who knows, maybe you can teach me something.

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Just FYI, I called Zbig a Carter relic and that his doctrines were extremely effective with the Ayatollahs, so he can shove them you know where. Of course, after I collected my course grade. My advisor in school was a Reaganite, and we were like two schlubs against the mob wave. I did meet and speak to Madam Halfbright of the Bubba era and she was a lot less egotistical and open to dialogue. For that matter, I met His Royal Bubbaness and I do like the guy personally.

As for Chevron Texaco, Shell and BP, good for them. The people around the Caspian have oil. India wants oil. The energy companies do well. Their stockholders get capital gains. It's a win situation.

My motivation is that 5 of my personal friends and 26 colleagues went down with those damn Towers. I almost lost my life without even being able to fight. That doesn't endear me to the whack jobs. Give me a M4 and I'll go to Afghanistan myself. Except the various militaries won't take me now because I'm too damn old.

posted January 26, 2013 02:45 PM            

Lexx, you brought up my next point for me. First, let me say that I am sorry that you are in such pain. I know several people in the same boat as you and it's truly sad that anyone should have to live in such pain EVERY SINGLE DAY. It's more like surviving than living on many days and so I extend to you a big ethernet/interwebs hug. (A gentle one)

As for the pharmaceutical companies, although I cannot go in to detail, sadly, in the past my family has had some extremely intimate and terrible experiences with one of them. That period of time lasted for about 7 or 8 years and it was specifically because of what both Lexx and Faith mentioned: they are 1000% behind keeping cheaper and more effective drugs from becoming legislated. And if they cannot do this through lobbying or even other shady means, they will go so far as to chase you down and/or walk right in to your living room to make their point. (And no, I am neither crazy or melodramatic. I am deadly serious.)

And in any case, since this has become largely a thread on drugs, I will also mention the fact that many of the prescription drugs of the world are far more dangerous and often addictive than a little bit of weed. Um, hello Oxycontin?!

I don't do drugs myself but that doesn't prevent me from seeing the value of marijuana as a medication and pain reliever.