“Counterfeit Cash,” by Alpha Unit

In Memphis, Tennessee, two early morning Black Friday shoppers were arrested for passing counterfeit bills. Police confiscated a total of about $1,600 in fake bills, computer equipment to make fake bills, and methamphetamine.

The circumstances are similar to earlier cases, such as the case in Oklahoma City in which two people were arrested after a raid at their home. Police found large amounts of marijuana, cocaine, and methamphetamine, along with several sheets of counterfeit 20-dollar bills.

Materials and equipment for making fake currency were found in a home in Santa Rosa, California, during a raid. In addition to counterfeit bills the police found drug paraphernalia and methamphetamine.

Not that long ago counterfeiting was a difficult and expensive operation. The best counterfeiters were skilled printers who used heavy offset presses to turn out pretty convincing 20s, 50s, and 100s. Doing so required the ability to cut intricate designs by hand into metal plates. Not anymore. A lot of teenagers in this country can tell you that all you need to make fake money nowadays are a PC, a scanner, and color inkjet printer. (Of course, those teenagers are usually caught in no time, since it’s not easy to produce truly authentic-looking bills.)

In case after case of counterfeiting you will see drug use implicated – particularly methamphetamine. Meth addicts often steal mail and commit other property crimes to get their hands on the money they need for their habit. They can stay awake and focused on repetitive tasks for days, making them good at such crimes as forgery, identity theft, altering checks, and trying to perfect counterfeit currency.

Millions of dollars worth of counterfeit cash is supposed to be in circulation in the United States, and there’s usually an uptick in detection during the holidays. Counterfeiters see this as the ideal time to try to pass fake bills; that’s when they think they’re more likely to get away with it. A business that ends up with counterfeit bills doesn’t get compensated for the loss and usually raises prices to make up for it.

If you end up with a counterfeit bill, the US Secret Service wants you to tell them. They say to notify your local police department or the nearest Secret Service field office. There’s no financial compensation for turning it in, though. Central banks say that to do so would subsidize counterfeiting, providing a financial reward for counterfeiters’ criminal behavior. Turning it in is just another civic duty.

Who Is Frank Calzon?

An overview of Frank Calzon, member of the Miami Mafia. Also reviews Freedom House, an organization that is more or less run by the CIA and the US State Department as a pure propaganda arm of the state. In addition, we look into some of the most corrupt of the US rightwing labor organizations which spent years fighting against workers in the US and abroad. Warning: Long, 57 pages on the web.

Cuban Blackmail, 50 Years After the Missile Crisis

By JEB BUSH AND FRANK CALZON* (see notes below)

WALL STREET JOURNAL
OPINION
October 23, 2012

The past decades have shown that the Castro brothers’ behavior in October 1962 was perfectly characteristic.

With this week marking the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, Americans are recalling the 13 days in October 1962 when the Soviet Union and Cuba’s Fidel Castro [sic --but not the USA?] brought the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon.

But in assessing the crisis, and President John F. Kennedy’s decisions over those 13 days, it is equally important to consider what has happened since. Using what the late U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick called the “politics of deception,” Cuba’s Castro brothers have maintained power through international deceit, blackmail and hostage-taking.

The past decades have shown that the behavior of the Castro brothers in 1962 was perfectly characteristic. Fidel Castro has never shied away from a political gamble such as deploying secret Soviet missiles and then lying about them. He assured other governments that he would never do such a thing, just as the Soviet Union’s ambassador to the United States told the Kennedy administration that rumors about missiles were false. But the missiles were there, and their deployment was an effort to intimidate and blackmail America.

Today, Havana’s intimidation and blackmail are of a different magnitude, but there are plenty of examples.

Days ago, a Cuban court sentenced young Spanish [rightwing] politician Angel Carromero to four years in prison for committing manslaughter in the death of Oswaldo Payá, one of Cuba’s most prominent human rights leaders. Payá died while a passenger in a car Mr. Carromero was driving, when it veered off the road and hit a tree under suspicious circumstances.

Payá’s family says that Mr. Carromero has sent text messages saying that a vehicle (presumably driven by Cuba’s state security police) was attempting to force him off the road. The family was prevented from attending the trial and is calling for an international investigation.

[Note that not only did Mr. Carromero not say any such thing in his trial, but his other passenger --a Swedish political activist who returned to Sweden after the accident -- contradicted this, along with witnesses along the road who all confirmed that Carromero's car was speeding way over the speed limit, passed signs warning of road construction, and that no other car was remotely involved. This would not be surprising given that Carromero's license in Spain was revoked for numerous incidents of excessive speeding. klw]

For years, state security had tried to intimidate Payá and his foreign visitors, part of a larger effort to discourage democracy advocates from visiting or contacting Cuban dissidents.

Havana similarly tries to intimidate other countries—such as Spain, whose nationals have business interests in Cuba—into accepting its routine violations of human rights, including the beatings of dissidents. [This is of course insulting not only to Cuba but also to Spain, but then, a country that routinely puts business over human rights would hardly find it strange to assume another country would do the same. klw]

Joining Mr. Carromero as a hostage in Cuba is Alan Gross, an American development worker held since December 2009.

His supposed crime: giving a laptop computer and satellite telephone to a group of Cuban Jews. [For those who haven't been following the Gross case, the USAID subcontractor went to Cuba five times, supposedly as a tourist but handing out to people the US hoped would support its efforts to change the Cuban form of government, sophisticated hi-tech satellite phones with special chips commonly used by spy agencies. klw]

Mr. Gross has lost some 100 pounds in prison, according to his wife, who also reports that he has a growth on his shoulder that may be cancerous. The Castro regime intends to keep him in prison until the U.S. government releases five Cuban spies from prison in the U.S.

There is long history here. In 1962, Fidel Castro wrung $53 million from Washington in exchange for releasing the prisoners he had taken after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion [Untrue. The US was supposed to provide baby food and medicine, but never did. klw].

Before that, during the guerrilla war against the Batista dictatorship, Raúl Castro extorted thousands of dollars from owners of sugar mills, threatening to burn down their homes and mills unless they aided the guerrillas. In June 1958, he tried to force negotiations with Washington by kidnapping 29 American sailors and marines; when word got out that Washington might send U.S. Marines to rescue the hostages, the Castros freed them.

In dealing with Cuba’s regime, the Obama administration has too often sent contradictory signals of U.S. resolve. Though Raúl Castro (who now heads the Cuban government) has refused to allow Mr. Gross to return to the U.S. to visit his seriously ill mother, the Obama administration allowed a Cuban spy to leave an American halfway house to visit his sick mother.

While Mr. Gross remains in prison, the Obama administration last year issued visas to Raúl Castro’s daughter and her retinue so they could visit America and attack its Cuba policy. [It should be noted that the former Bush administration also gave a visa to Mariela Castro "and her retinue" but nobody seemed to protest that visit except perhaps the ultra-rightwing Florida Cuban legislators. klw]

The lessons of October 1962 must not be forgotten. President Kennedy showed fortitude and resolve in forcing the Soviet Union to stand down. Whoever wins the Nov. 6 election ought to deal similarly with today’s intimidation and deception from the Castro regime.

Mr. Bush is a former governor of Florida. Mr. Calzon is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba in Washington, D.C. [read all about Calzon and his center below--klw]
*

As reported in SourceWatch:

In 2007 Calzon noted that: “I am a Cuban refugee who has spent most of my life advocating human rights for Cubans and others. From l986 through 1997 I was Freedom House’s Washington representative. I have testified before the U.N. Commission for Human Rights in Geneva and for the last ten years I’ve been the executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba.”

Frank has a tendency to deny he ever had anything to do with CIA, even threatening Counterpunch through his attorney to force them to retract their statements on his CIA employment.

We merely note that, according to The Freedom House Files by Diana Barahona at HaitiAnalysis.com, Freedom House alone is a notorious den of Agency types, even employing a former CIA Director, R. James Woolsey, who joined Freedom House in 2000. As for his various anti-Cuban operations (Center for a Free Cuba, Free Cuba Foundation), they were not exactly staffed by choirboys…

According to TerrorFileOnLine’s U.S. Terrorism in the Americas – Standard Encyclopedia, developed out of Venezuela:

Born 1947 in Cuba. Emigrated to the U.S. in 1960. Graduated from the University of Georgetown, where he was president of the Association of Cuban Students. Recruited by the CIA during his time as a university student.

From a very young age, Calzon became involved in Miami terrorist organizations of Cuban origin like Alpha-66 and Abdala. In Abdala Calzon held leadership positions and took part in subversive activities against Cuba.

During the 1970s, he co-founded, along with counterrevolutionaries Elena Mederos, Siro del Castillo and Humberto Medrano the Of Human Rights organization. Through this organization he maintained a systematic and intense defamatory campaign against Cuba, based fundamentally on supposed human rights violation and the state of counter-revolutionary prisoners.

During this period he became part of the board of directors of the Miami-based counterrevolutionary organization Committee of Intellectuals for the Freedom of Cuba. During these years, Calzon directed his attacks against groups that promoted a policy of understanding with the Cuban Revolution such as Areito magazine.

In 1981, Calzon founded the American National Foundation, along with Jorge Mas Canosa, Francisco Jose “Pepe” Hernandez and other emigrés of Cuban origin known for their terrorist activities against Cuba. In CANF, he was executive secretary, a position he used to promote laws against Cuba in the U.S. Congress, as well as to set up the well-known subversive radio station Radio Marti.

During this time he was also responsible for spearheading a number of aggressive press campaigns against the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) of Cuba.

Calzon left the CANF in 1987, after a power struggle with president Jorge Mas Canosa.

Afterward, he joined the New York based nongovernmental organization Freedom House. Founded in 1941 by conservative sectors, Freedom House is dedicated to launching campaigns, under the guise of human rights, against countries that don’t share their ideologies. Calzon has used this organization to launch defamatory campaigns against Cuba, to lobby against Cuba at the UN Human Rights Commission and promote subversive activities against Cuba.

With the fall of the socialist camp, Freedom House intensified the development of programs directed to subverting Cuba, fomenting the creation of counterrevolutionary organizations and ringleaders in the national territory. Between 1995 and 1997, Calzon directed the Cuban Program of Freedom House, using the same methods employed against former socialist states in Eastern European. His long history with the CIA, beginning at a young age, was a perfect reference point for this post.

As part of the Cuban Program, Calzon has sent numerous collaborators to Cuba for several different illegal missions related to supplying and financing counterrevolutionary groups.

In August 1997, David Norman Dorn, a U.S. labor activist traveling in Cuba under a tourist visa, was detained in Cuba, for delivering money to counterrevolutionaries ringleaders under the orders of Frank Calzon.

These subversive activities committed against Cuba by Frank Calzon, through the posts he occupied at Freedom House and the Center for a Free Cuba, have been financed by the U.S. government via the Agency for International Development (USAID).

The first funds provided by USAID to Freedom House were announced in October 1995 by then president William Clinton, to the amount of half a million dollars; a figure that has steadily increased proportionately to escalating U.S. aggressions against Cuba.

Frank Calzon systematically attended sessions of the UN Human Rights Commission, in Geneva, where he organized anti-Cuba campaigns and supported U.S. anti-Cuba resolutions. — Link.

The Freedom House Files, 2007

By Diana Barahona – HaitiAnalysis.com

“Freedom House is an independent non-governmental organization that supports the expansion of freedom in the world.” – Freedom House

Freedom House is a small but influential organization based in Washington and New York with more than 120 offices around the world and an annual budget of US$19 million.1

Calling itself “America’s oldest human rights group,” it is best known for its yearly “Freedom in the World” report, which rates countries as “free,” “partly free” and “not free.” What it is not known for is the high percentage of its funding that comes from the State Department—an average of 95% between 2000 and 2003—or its list of trustees, a Who’s Who of neoconservatives from government, business, academia, labor and the press.

In 1940 a liberal New Yorker named George Field and some friends formed the National Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies to build support for the U.S. entering WWII. The group attracted prominent figures in the arts, journalism and government—including Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt—and “within a year it was drawing thousands to rallies at Madison Square Garden and making headlines.”2

A month before the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Field joined with Republican presidential candidate Wendell L. Willkie and some anti-Nazi groups to found Freedom House “as a counterpoint to the Nazi Braunhaus, Hitler’s propaganda center in Munich.”3

After the war Freedom House joined with other government agencies such as the CIA and State Department to combat “Soviet and Chinese Communism, anti-Semitism and the suppression of human rights in Eastern Europe and Asia.”4

It championed NATO abroad but supported liberal causes at home, condemning the Ku Klux Klan and McCarthyism and sharing its New York headquarters, the Wendell Willkie Memorial Building, with the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League and the Metropolitan Council of B’nai B’rith.

Field retired as executive director in 1967 but served as secretary to the board of trustees until 1970. In the 1970s and ‘80s Freedom House lobbied at UNESCO against the New World Information and Communications Order, an attempt by Third World countries to create media systems that weren’t dominated by First World corporations and governments.

During the 1980s the organization began to receive a majority of its grant income from the newly created NED (founded by Congress in 1983), and contracts for Latin America far surpassed those for Eastern Europe.5

Under the Reagan-Bush administrations Freedom House continued to promote the foreign policy objectives of the United States in Central America, “supporting the death squad-linked ARENA party in El Salvador while attacking the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, championing Contra leaders like Arturo Cruz, and serving as a conduit for funds from the National Endowment for Democracy.”6

Considered “neoconservative” even at that time, the group’s trustees and associates were affiliated with the State Department, the National Security Council (Jeane Kirkpatrick), the CIA (through front groups), the U.S. Information Agency, the Trilateral Commission (Zbigniew Brzezinski), the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Committee on the Present Danger, Accuracy in Media, the American Enterprise Institute, Crisis, The New Republic and PRODEMCA, a group that raised funds and lobbied for the Contras.

During the 1980s Freedom House also formed the Afghanistan Information Center, one of several NED-funded groups supporting the mujahedin. This was to complement the government’s US $3,000 million covert funding program for the anti-Soviet groups.7

According to Freedom House’s IRS Form 990, prior to 1997, its government funding was in the form of “government fees and contracts,” presumably for work performed on behalf of the State Department. After that year, however, the funding was qualified as “grants.”

But with neoconservatives such as Kenneth Adelman, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Otto Reich, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Samuel Huntington, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Malcolm Forbes Jr. on the board of trustees, there was no danger the organization would change its ideological course.8

Freedom House’s government-linked trustees have traditionally shared seats in the boardroom with corrupt, right wing union bosses.

In the 1980s and 1990s there were cold warriors Lane Kirkland, William Doherty, Albert Shanker and Sol C. Chaikin. Doherty, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, was executive director of the CIA-linked AIFLD.

Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, was also on the board of the Committee on the Present Danger, the NED and the NED-funded Free Trade Union Institute. He served on a private sector committee which advised the U.S. Information Agency on labor, “help[ing] the USIA enhance its programming through increased use of the ‘international activities’ of U.S. labor organizations.”9

Sol Chaikin was president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, and he followed the lead of his predecessor, 30-year president David Dubinsky, in embracing “piece-rate wages, no-strike pledges, five-year contracts, opposition to the minimum wage, and opposition to government aid” in an attempt to keep the garment industry in New York City.10

He also embraced corruption and racketeering. By 1997, according to longtime union activist Robert Fitch, “New York City’s mostly unionized garment industry, with about 35,000 workers, had become a mob-dominated racket that made a mockery of collective bargaining while pushing wages down and hours up to the limits of human endurance.”11

Chaikin never tried to clean up the racketeering or better the third-world working conditions of the union’s largely immigrant garment workers, but he was a crusader against communism in other countries, joining the Committee on the Present Danger and the board of the Free Trade Union Institute. Chaikin was succeeded as ILGWU president by Jay Mazur, who served from 1986-1995.

Mazur is president emeritus of UNITE, the ILGWU’s successor, where he banked over half a million dollars in his last year in office while representing New York sweatshop workers who earned an average of $7,000 annually.12

Mazur likewise succeeded Chaikin on Freedom House’s board of trustees. Like Chaikin, Mazur allowed high levels of corruption in his union but took a hard line on international communism, chairing the AFL-CIO’s International Affairs Committee from 1996 to 2001 and overseeing the Solidarity Center during that time. As of 2004 Mazur was also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission, according to the Wilson Center.13

Trustees Terence O’Sullivan Sr. and Jr. come out of labor’s “mob monolith,” the Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA). In 1975 Sullivan Sr., who was secretary-treasurer “was forced into early retirement as punishment for disrupting” a mobster’s funeral “with his importunate demands for higher office.”14

His son, Terence O’Sullivan Jr., had better manners: as top assistant to Genovese mob puppet Arthur Coia Jr., he was next in line to become the union’s president when Coia was removed by the Justice Department in 2000.

Adrian Karatnycky has been a prominent fixture at Freedom House since 1993, when he served as executive director. He served as president from 1996 to 2003, and then became a senior scholar. Karatnycky’s links to labor seem to stem from his political work with the AFL-CIO, which in the 1980s and early 1990s continued its implacable decline in the United States but was eager to exercise its influence abroad in the fight against communism.

Karatnycky supervised AFL-CIO’s programs of assistance to the Polish union confederation, Solidarity, as well as to independent labor unions in Russia, Ukraine and other Eastern-bloc countries. From 1991 to 1993 he was assistant to the president of the AFL-CIO. He is listed as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has contributed to its magazine, Foreign Affairs, as well as the New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Washington Times.15

Freedom House has also traditionally had journalists on its board of trustees. Currently these include Mara Liasson of National Public Radio, P.J. O’Rourke of Rolling Stone, and former Reagan aide and Bush Sr. speechwriter Peggy Noonan, now a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal.

NPR Vice President for Communications Andi Sporkin said in an email to the author that Liasson, NPR’s national political correspondent since 1985, is no longer a Freedom House trustee; however she is listed as one from at least 1997 to the present.16 IRS 990 forms from 1999 show that Paul Wolfowitz, Otto Reich, Donald Rumsfeld, and Steve Forbes were all together at one time listed as officers, directors, and trustees.

Target Cuba

In 1995, at the same time Miami exiles and their friends in government were predicting the rapid fall of the Cuban revolution, Freedom House began its USAID and State Department-funded Cuba Program to “provide assistance to Cuba’s civil society” and to “raise awareness among international audiences regarding the need for a peaceful transition process in Cuba.” From 1995-1997 this program was run by Frank Calzon, a Freedom House principal since 1989.17

It is currently run by Xavier Utset in Washington, DC. Journalist Walter Lippmann says Freedom House was granted US$2.1 million for its Cuba program in 2004.18

On May 11, 2001, the Permanent Representative of Cuba to the UN lodged a complaint with the NGO Committee, alleging that Freedom House engaged in activities that violated its consultative status, objecting to “those NGOs that were being used as agents by certain governments to violate the sovereignty of other States.”19

The organization was “a machinery of subversion, closer to an intelligence service than an NGO,” he said. “Documents showed receipt of money by illegal groups in Cuba and evidence of clandestine activities. The current Cuba program of Freedom House involved the recruitment and training of journalists from Eastern Europe and sending them to Cuba for subversive activities.”20

Cuba said that during the 57th session of the Commission on Human Rights, “the NGO had accredited as its representatives members of terrorist organizations. Also, accredited Freedom House representatives had lent their badges to non-accredited persons of Cuban origin in order to enter the Palais de Nations, which was not only illegal but put diplomats at risk.”

New York librarian, Robert Kent, expelled from Cuba in 1999 for espionage, told the New York Times that Freedom House paid for “some of his 10 trips” to Cuba21 and he dropped Frank Calzon’s name while he was there meeting with paid “dissidents.”22

But Amanda Abrams, press officer for the organization, says that nobody at Freedom House knows Kent.

Haiti and Venezuela in the Sights

The State Department and Freedom House have also targeted Haiti and Venezuela for regime change. The organization reacted favorably when President Hugo Chavez was briefly overthrown in 2002,23 claiming on its website that “in Venezuela, it worked with those seeking to stem the authoritarian direction of the Chavez government.”

But Abrams claims that Freedom House has only been supporting opposition groups in Venezuela since 2004, funded by USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives. 24

IRS 990 documents from July 1, 2003 to June 30, 2004 show that Freedom House received 95.6 percent of its funding from the United States government.

On March 17, 2004, days after the coup against Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, The Washington Post published an editorial by Adrian Karatnycky, titled, “Fall of a Pseudo-Democrat, “25 which rationalized Aristide’s ouster.

Karatnycky called Haiti and Venezuela “pseudo-democracies” to justify the overthrow of democratic governments that were not to Washington’s liking. This stratagem—saying that the target government wasn’t a true democracy—was used previously by Dr. Jennifer McCoy of the Carter Center, who told a U.S. subcommittee on March 15, 2000, that the Chavez government was an example of “new, subtler forms of authoritarianism through the electoral option.”26

McCoy invented the term, “hybrid democracies, ” to describe democracies that produced results the United States disagreed with.

In “Fall of a Pseudo-Democrat,” Karatnycky charged that President Aristide had “squandered his democratic mandate by tampering with elections, intimidating the opposition and tolerating widespread corruption.”

If in fact any of these charges were true, and there is no evidence that they are, as the spokesman of an organization which claims that it’s mission is to promote democracy, Karatnycky should know that the democratic way to change the government is not through a military coup, but through elections. This is true especially, as in the case of Haiti, when the leaders of the coup are known human rights violators.

The coup was predictably followed by a bloodbath and widespread persecution of supporters of the elected government, who when not executed with their hands tied behind their backs were imprisoned without charges.

According to a study published by the medical journal Lancet, under the interim government installed with the coup, 8,000 people were murdered and 35,000 women and children were raped in the greater Port Au Prince area alone. Haitian Death squads, made up of criminals from the disbanded Haitian military rampaged across Haiti opening jails and targeting supporters of the elected government.

Using a fallacious comparison, Dr. McCoy likened the Chavez government to the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori in Peru in her testimony before Congress. Karatnycky put both Aristide and Chavez in the category of undemocratic leaders: “Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, having survived a coup attempt in 2002, faces mass discontent and intense growing civic pressure because he has strayed from the democratic path.”

An even more outrageous attack on Chavez by Freedom House was published in the Miami Herald in August 2006.27

Today Freedom House continues to serve as both a think tank and a “civil society” funder as part of the State Department’s modern “democracy promotion” complex. Frequently cited in the press and academic works, the reports and studies produced by Freedom House and its affiliates promote the neoconservative ideology of its trustees and government sponsors.

Although some names and affiliations have changed, the group is still dominated by neocons. Brzezinski and Forbes are still on the trustees list, as well as Liasson, O’Rourke and Noonan. Trustee Ken Adelman is a contributor to the Project for a New American Century, along with former CIA director R. James Woolsey, who joined Freedom House in 2000.

Adelman was an assistant to Rumsfeld from 1975-1977, U.N. ambassador and arms control director under Reagan, and is currently a member of the Defense Policy Board. He wrote an article for The Washington Post in 2002 titled, “Cakewalk in Iraq”28 in which he said: “I believe demolishing Hussein’s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk.”

Another trustee, Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington, is the U.S. author of the Trilateral Commission report, The Crisis of Democracy and The Clash of Civilizations and Remaking of World Order (1996).

1 Freedom House, “Freedom House Statement on the Passing of George Field,” June 1, 2006.

2 Robert D. McFadden, “George Field, Defender of Human Rights, Is Dead at 101,” New York Times. May 30, 2006. Proquest database.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 Michael Flynn, “Freedom House” Interhemispheric Resource Center, Right Web Profile. July 2005. Total income for Freedom House during fiscal year 1987 was $2,108,320. Its total income from grants and contributions was $1,315,759.

Assuming that the fiscal years for both NED and Freedom House overlap for the most part, that means that Freedom House received a full 35 percent of its total income from the Endowment during 1987. Of its total grant income, the figure becomes a staggering 57 percent.”

6 International Relations Center, “Freedom House,” Group Watch Profile. March 1990.

7 Jim Lobe and Abid Aslam, “Afghanistan” Foreign Policy in Focus. Nov. 20, 2003.

8 Freedom House IRS Form 990, 1997.

9 IRC, 1990.

10 Robert Fitch, Solidarity for Sale (New York: Public Affairs, 2006), 200.

11 Ibid, p. 193.

12 Ibid, p. 197.

13 Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (Feb. 26, 2004).

14 Fitch, p. 143-144.

15 Yuri Shevchuk, “INTERVIEW: Adrian Karatnycky Speaks on Ukraine’s Internal and Foreign Affairs,” The Ukrainian Weekly, No. 43, Vol. LXXI, Oct. 26, 2003.

16 Freedom House, 2006. Board of Trustees.

17 IRC, 1990.

18 Walter Lippmann, “Overt U.S. Government Funding for Cuban ‘Dissidents’ 2004.”

19 Scienceblog.com.

21 Felicia R. Lee, “A Library In Cuba: What Is It?” New York Times, June 28, 2003, p. B.7. Proquest database.

22 Eliades Acosta Matos, “The Truth About Robert Kent,” Cuban Libraries Solidarity Group, June 20, 2005.

23 Diana Barahona, “Uneasy Standoff in Venezuela’s Media Wars,” Counterpunch.org, Aug. 16, 2005.

Steve Chapman was the author of a pro-coup editorial published on August 14, 2002, in the Chicago Tribune. He said in a telephone conversation that he wasn’t knowledgeable about Venezuela and that in order to write the editorial he had made phone calls to Freedom House, as well as consulting clips from the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and the New York Times. He said he didn’t know FH was funded by the State Department until I told him.

24 Amanda Abrams, 2006. Email response to query by author: “Freedom House has had a Venezuela Program for human rights defenders since 2004. The program is funded by USAID, the Office of Transition Initiatives. Freedom House’s Venezuela program is a regional effort to tie human rights defenders throughout Latin America with one another, sharing best practices and lessons learned, through targeted exchanges and workshops focused on important human rights issues.

The program is designed to strengthen the capacity of Venezuelan human rights defenders to do their job, and to tie them to counterparts in other countries.”

25 Adrian Karatnycky, “Fall of a Pseudo-Democrat,” The Washington Post, March 17, 2004.

26 Justin Delacour and Diana Barahona, “The Carter Center’s Jennifer McCoy: Can She Be an Impartial Observer of Venezuela’s Referendum?” Counterpunch.org, Aug. 14, 2004.

27 Walker, C. and Tatic, S. (Aug. 3, 2006). “Eroding Democracy.” The Miami Herald.

28 Kenneth Adelman, “Cakewalk in Iraq,” The Washington Post, Feb. 13, 2002.

If you want more of a refresher course on US-backed counterrevolutionary terrorists, for whom Calzon and all of the Bushes had the highest regard, read on:

REICH-POSADA-BOSCH: The Axis of Deceit

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD (Granma International staff writer)

4/5/2005, Granma

While five Cuban patriots remain imprisoned in five different penitentiaries throughout U.S. territory for having counteracted the terrorist plans of Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles and others of their ilk, these two terrorists, the most dangerous in the hemisphere, receive high-level support from Otto Reich.

THROUGHOUT their lives they have pursued their personal interests, within the CIA and its networks, displaying total disdain for their adopted country, which they systematically discredit and deceive. They form the most dangerous axis that has ever penetrated the United States of America, the Axis of Deceit, and one of the many symptoms of a cancer which is slowly but surely leading that country down the road to perdition.

One of them works in the White House. He is Otto Reich, currently assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs – in other words, the U.S. government’s Number One man in Latin America.

The second is “Dr. Death” Orlando Bosch, the “capo” of the most fanatical terrorist grouplets in Miami and the “godfather” of the Commando of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU), the extremist secret society responsible for more than 50 murders in the United States, Cuba and other nations. He was “liberated” from a Venezuelan jail and absolved thanks to Number One.

The third, Luis Posada Carriles, is now in a Panamanian prison along with four accomplices in murder. He is another former “godfather” of CORU and guilty of innumerable attacks, was once the head of Venezuela’s political police, is a proven drug trafficker involved in the Iran-Contra scandal and a buddy of all the Miami and Central American mafiosos, and he now awaits his release – announced by his drug-dealing lawyer and financed by dirty tricks conceived by Number One and Number Two.

Of course, they have one common characteristic: in the early 1960s they fell into the clutches of the CIA and became the most rabid of that agency’s Cuban contacts. At the same time, through “the Company” they made fortunes from working for the million-dollar Cuban-American counterrevolutionary cartel, utilizing an impressive set of contacts established through deceit, extortion and terror.

They evolved in different ways: Reich, wearing a coat and tie, concentrated on penetrating the circles of power and palling around with the various capos of the Miami mafia; while Posada and Bosch guided the activities of their murderous organizations from Buenos Aires to Santo Domingo, from Montreal to Madrid and Luanda.

DISCOVERED BY CIA AGENT FRANK CALZONE, A MASTER OF DISINFORMATION

Born “accidentally” in Cuba, as a commentator once put it, of an Austrian father and a Cuban mother, Otto Reich was taken from the island when he wasn’t yet 15 years old, and his family took up residence in Charlotte, North Carolina, a considerable distance from the Caribbean.

He hooked up with the CIA while at the university, having been selected by Frank Calzón, who would become the CIA’s trusted agent in various disinformation operations. Later on, he would collaborate with Calzón on the Freedom House project, a supposedly pro-democratic invention of the CIA. A master of disinformation, Calzón recognized Reich as an able and willing student.

After getting his degree, Reich was anxious to act on his newly declared U.S. citizenship, so he went into the army for two years and was stationed in – guess what? – Panama, the mecca of the counterinsurgency movement.

Otto Reich moved to Miami in 1972, very consciously linking himself to the right-wing Cuban-American circles that were already imposing their terrorist dominion on the city. Moreover, the CIA maintained its most active center of operations there, especially aimed at Cuba and the continent it planned to dominate.

ALL IS FAIR WHEN COVERING UP DIRTY TRICKS

Reich came into the public eye in the United States during the era of Ronald Reagan and the dirty war in Nicaragua. At that time he was chosen to head the Office of Public Diplomacy, conceived by the CIA to carry out officially – under the cloak of the State Department – the cover-up and disinformation he had already been doing covertly.

At that time, former CIA agent and former CIA Director George Bush was Reagan’s vice president and confidant. He took charge of sponsoring Reich’s entrance into those high levels of government, with the same determination he had used as CIA director to approve the creation of the strongest anti-Cuba terrorist organization, CORU, whose chain of crimes is almost endless.

Under the title of State Department Special Counsel for Public Diplomacy, he worked furiously on matters that later helped provoke what is known as the Iran-Contra Scandal, although it should have been called the Narco-Contra Super-scandal.

In Reich’s eyes, any action was justified in the effort to support the mercenary Nicaraguan contras, and of course to cover up the dirty tricks carried out by CIA operatives in that effort.

Today, the whole world knows that the arms sales to Iran were just the tip of an iceberg that included – in much larger proportions and multi-million-dollar profits for the contras – the transfer and sales of drugs (mostly marijuana and cocaine) from South American producers to the U.S. market.

This monstrous drug trafficking operation, engineered entirely by the CIA, utilized the network created in U.S. territory by the members of Operation 40, following the Bay of Pigs invasion. (For more information, see Jerry Meldon, The CIA’s Dope-Smuggling Freedom Fighters, available on the Internet.)

THE SAME OPERATION, FROM WASHINGTON TO ILOPANGO

From his office in Washington, Reich was in constant contact with two Cuban-Americans who were directing the whole operation: Félix Rodríguez (alias Max Gómez) and Luis Posada Carriles, both of whom worked out of the Ilopango air base in El Salvador.

Rodríguez was a Watergate burglar and a trusted confidant of George Bush Sr. In fact, years later, Bush officially received him in the White House, despite his criminal record, with full protocol.

Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch are the terrorists responsible in 1976 for blowing up a Cubana Airlines passenger plane in mid-flight, thereby killing all 73 persons on board. Posada Carriles has also carried out more than 50 assassination attempts, both successful and unsuccessful.

After the CIA and the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) helped him escape from the Venezuelan jail where he was being held in relation to the Cubana airplane bombing, Posada returned to his dirty work, and the CIA recognized his great talent in such activities.

For years, Reich energetically backed the efforts of these two Cuban-Americans with innumerable lies. He knew perfectly well that they were terrorists who had been specially trained by the CIA and utilized in that utterly illegal operation.

A report by the General Accounting Office would later expose to the U.S. Congress the nature of the deceitful maneuvers feverishly perpetrated by Reich, utilizing his government position.

As a result, the U.S. public discovered how, with taxpayers’ money, Reich had fabricated news items, with the objective of disinforming both the citizenry and the politicians, claiming that the Sandinistas were persecuting the Misquito Indians [something that the late Russell Means and other unwitting Native Americans bought into for a time -klw], that they had purchased MiG-29s from the Soviet Union and that were preparing attacks on U.S. territory.

To promote these official lies, Reich expressly ordered that false letters of denunciation be written, signed with the names of the mercenary contra leaders.

Refining his methods, Reich used (illegally, of course) government funds to publish requests for donations to the contras. The purpose of this maneuver was to justify the existence of the money that really came from drug trafficking, collected by his cohorts in Ilopango and deposited in bank accounts, in Grand Cayman and Switzerland, belonging to anti-Sandinista mercenaries.

Reich’s collaboration with arch-terrorist Luis Posada Carriles was maintained until the Ilopango operation was exposed in October 1986, when a light aircraft belonging to the CIA was shot down. The pilot, Eugene Hasenfuss, not only denounced the drug trafficking operation, but also identified Félix Rodríguez and Luis Posada Carriles, the latter a fugitive from Venezuelan justice.

FOR ORLANDO BOSCH, REICH IS LIKE A BROTHER

Given this situation, the Reagan-Bush administration ushered Reich out the back door, suddenly appointing him U.S. ambassador to Venezuela.

In Caracas, Reich was so diplomatic that he was able to continue his activities of official deceit in Washington. Clearly, he was in Venezuela for one purpose: to find a solution, whatever the method, to the case of Posada’s buddy Orlando Bosch Avila, a CIA agent and also imprisoned for the bombing of the Cubana flight. Reich also serviced the Cuban exile mafia, also conspiring to get its piece of the U.S. pie.

Otto Reich was like a brother to Orlando Bosch. Using who knows what subterfuge, he obtained a court order for Bosch’s release, after having prepared his departure to his adopted land, Miami.

But Bosch’s case remained delicate: like Posada Carriles, Bosch had a terrible reputation in the United States. Despite his “exemplary” behavior in the CIA, the killer pediatrician had a long criminal record in that country, identifying him as a terrorist leader and eliminating his chance of being granted a visa.

What’s more, in an interview published in the May 3, 1977, issue of New Times, Bosch admitted to having responsibility for more than 50 attacks executed by CORU.

Having arrived from Cuba on July 28, 1960, with a 30-day visa, Bosch created the Insurrectional Movement for Revolutionary Recovery (MIRR), later identified by a representative of the Attorney General’s Office as “an anti-Castro terrorist organization. “

On September 16, 1968, Bosch led a bazooka attack on a Polish merchant ship, the Polanica, in Miami harbor. On November 15, 1968, as punishment for that crime and for having sent letters containing death threats to the president of Mexico, the Spanish head of state and the British prime minister, the South Florida federal court sentenced him to 10 years imprisonment.

In 1972, Bosch violated parole by leaving the United States and reappearing in the Dominican Republic, where he and Posada Carriles took the lead in creating CORU. It goes without saying that there, he received not only the CIA’s blessing, but its total assistance.

AS IF LYING WERE AN INFALLIBLE METHOD

Otto Reich took recourse once again in deceit, as if lying were an infallible method.

He told State Department officials that a special team of Cubans were going to Venezuela to kill Bosch and that therefore Bosch had to be taken out of that country as soon as he was released from prison.

But those officials – apparently doubting the word of their former special counsel for public diplomacy – continued to refuse Bosch a visa. So Reich resorted once again to illegal methods.

He organized his protégé’s exit from jail and sent him directly to the United States, where he was arrested on May 17, 1988, for violating his parole.

Reich, by now a true believer in the power of deception, had to get Bosch out of jail again. It wasn’t so hard for him: he just asked President George H. Bush to spring him.

Even for the man then occupying the White House, and no less a former director of the CIA, obtaining the release of such a confirmed criminal – of a killer who had demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that he had no remorse for his actions, no matter what the outcome – isn’t an easy task.

An astute politician, Bush knew what was politically correct.

If he freed Bosch from prison, he ran the risk of provoking another scandal. But on the other hand, he had to worry about appeasing the Miami mafia, which could even decide the presidency, as Bush’s son proved a few short years later.

In July 1990, after consulting with the CIA and listening to the remarks of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen – always ready to support anti-Cuba terrorism, no matter what the consequences – George Bush Sr. signed the papers releasing the killer pediatrician.

Behind the scenes, “lobbyist” Otto Reich, the man truly responsible for this absurd decision, applauded Bush’s action.

Twelve years later, Orlando Bosch continues to endorse violence as a political solution and doesn’t lose a single opportunity to fan the flames of terror from within the Miami mafia.

In August 2001, three weeks before the criminal attack on the Twin Towers, Orlando Bosch and the most criminal elements of the Cuban-American community published a call to terrorism in the Miami Herald.

And just a few days ago, the man responsible for the destruction of a passenger plane in full flight and the resulting deaths of 73 people, along with more than 50 assassination attempts, several of them fatal, appeared once again on a public tribunal, as the guest of honor of 60 mafia groups and grouplets meeting to share their nostalgia for the Bay of Pigs.

These same terrorist groups hysterically demand the release of Luis Posada Carriles and his accomplices from their Panamanian jail. And just last week they celebrated the White House’s official appointment of Otto Reich as assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere!

Through all this, five Cuban patriots remain under lock and key at five U.S. penitentiaries, for having risked their lives, fighting to counteract the terrorist plans of Bosch and Posada Carriles. What an irony that the two terrorists who belong to the Axis of Deceit can depend on the total support of that government’s top authorities.

Links

Terror File Online

SourceWatch

Silk Gloves to Kill the Revolution

By Nicanor Leon Cotayo

Prensa Latina, 30 August 1996

One of the front organizations utilized by the U. S. government to carry out subversive plans against Cuba is the Washington-based Freedom House Foundation. Its leader is the Cuban exile, Frank Calzon, has since his arrival in the US in 1960 has specialized in propaganda campaigns against Cuba under the sponsorship of CIA.

Spy vs. Spy – Cuban Dissidents March to Orders of U.S.

8/5/2008 Machetera

Frank Calzon 4/16/04 Cuba Socialista:

“Another ex CIA agent and former director of the terrorist groups ABDALA and the National Liberation Front of Cuba. He also was one of the first directors of the CANF. Presently he is one of the directors of Freedom House and Cuban Committee of Human rights.

Both of these organizations amply financed by the US government. He also receives substantial amounts of money from the International Development Agency in Washington. He is also the director of Free Cuba Center; a center financed by Washington. Calzon finances the activities of Gustavo Arcos and other counterrevolutionaries in Cuba.”

Center for a Free Cuba - Calzón is Director

Free Cuba Foundation – founded by Calzón

Cannabis and Cancer: Is There a Link?

Dan writes:

You may want to check your facts as well. Though the link between marijuana and cancer is one that is still very much up for debate there is no doubt that many studies have linked the smoking of cannabis (without tobacco or any other additives) to various types of cancer including lung, testicular, and bladder.

Also, as a previous poster pointed out marijuana does contain carcinogens (pretty much anything that creates smoke does) and on top of that any hot vapor that is inhaled can singe the alveoli of the lungs. In conclusion, feel free to enjoy smoking your marijuana just don’t try to say that it is some magic substance that has no side effects (everything has side effects).

At the moment, there is not yet any proven link between cannabis smoking, or any cannabis use, and cancer. Though if any readers can dig up any studies, I might like to read them. Smoking isn’t exactly good for you though. You can now smoke cannabis via a vaporizer, and you inhale almost no smoke. It’s a better way to go.

Surely cannabis use has ill effects (especially heavy use does) but cancer doesn’t seem to be one of them.

Drugs, Mental Illness and Psychiatrists

Sutanu writes:

Hi Robert,

Your article was very interesting, I have a very personal experience with schizophrenia and I do not know the role marijuana had to play in it. I have been a pot user since I was about 22. My wife was a cigarette smoker since age 18 and alcohol user since 20.

She started smoking pot since age 24 – sometimes 3-4 times a week sometimes once daily. Around the age of 29 she started developing symptoms of schizophrenia, which was full blown by the time she was 30 (with auditory hallucinations). She has been in treatment for the last nine years.

In the opinion of her psychiatrist, it was the use of pot that triggered and maybe even possibly caused the illness. Reading your article and your responses, I am now confused whether this is possible as you have said that the safe age to start on pot is 21. Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Statistics show that there is no increased risk of schizophrenia after age 20. Your risk is almost all used by age 19 or 20 anyway.

Anyway, the cannabis-schizophrenia link does not appear to make any sense. Of all of the recreational drugs out there, cannabis is one of the easiest of all on your brain. Schizophrenia appears to be characterized by extensive damage to the brain. Since cannabis does not cause extensive damage to the brain, there is no way that cannabis could possibly cause the sort of brain damage that is present in schizophrenia.

Since the 1960′s, rates of cannabis use have gone through the roof and the rate of schizophrenia has been completely flat. In fact it has actually declined a bit. If cannabis were causing any schizophrenia at all, much less tons of schizophrenia, we would have expected rates to have increased if not skyrocketed since the 1960′s They have not, so the notion that cannabis or illegal drugs in general cause schizophrenia is very dubious.

I have known hundreds to thousands of cannabis users in my life. Two developed schizophrenia. One had very extensive meth use for decades. They other has a mother with schizophrenia.

It’s certainly possible that cannabis can trigger schizophrenia in a vulnerable person. However, those persons were probably going to get it anyway. Cannabis may bring schizophrenia on sooner than before. This is a tragedy as each year lost to the illness is a year is a lost year for the person who has it.

Psychiatrists are assholes. They all hate illegal drugs, and they think that illegal drugs cause tons of mental disorders. If you have a drug history and you go to a psychiatrist, the asshole will automatically and immediately say that the drugs caused your disorder, no matter which disorder you have or how little you drugs used. If you smoked one joint in your whole damned life, the asshole psychs will insist that it caused whatever you might have.

Psychologists on the other hand for some reason to not seem to have these same prejudices against illegal drugs and in general to not seem to blame illegal drugs for causing tons of mental illnesses.

My observation has been that heavy drug users sometimes appear to be mentally off in some way or another, and sometimes their behavior is disordered. In general however, the off mental behavior seems to clear up when the person stops using, and they just go back to their previous psychological state. I do not believe that drug use in general causes long term psychological damage persisting after the use of drugs has ceased.

“Canada At Ground Level: Observations of a US Refugee,” by Odin Crow

Warning: Long, runs to 51 pages. This is a fine piece by US expat Odin Crow. Relax and enjoy it.

Canada At Ground Level: Observations of a US Refugee

By Odin Crow

I am an American citizen living in Canada. I am not a sociologist, anthropologist, economist, linguist or any other ist. What I am is a middle class, late 40s working-guy who wishes to share with you what he’s learned about his adopted country from his own personal experiences and hopefully dispel a few misconceptions at the same time. But first, my take on the differences in basic character of these two countries and how they came about.

A Tale Of Two Siblings

If Canada and the US were brothers, the US was the one who said “fuck you” to the parents and left home as a teen. Granted, mom and dad were treating him like shit; he was a breadwinner, the loud, risk-taking one with big plans and ambitions and, to be honest, mom and dad were oinking up the fruits of his labors without giving him any say in how the household was run.

Sure, mom and dad got him started, set him up with everything he needed to be successful, but the dynamic didn’t seem fair to Elder Brother, who went indy.

Canada, on the other hand was the brother who just wanted to live his life and be left alone. He didn’t ask for much from mom and dad; they gave him very little to work with and neglected him for the most part. But Younger Brother never complained and did receive the benefit of some guidance and wisdom from time to time as he grew up as well as help when he really needed it.

So Younger Brother kept his nose to the grindstone, worked hard, minded his own business and slowly built a nice sane, stable life for himself.

Meanwhile, after a nasty spat with the folks, who started it out of sheer vindictiveness (and whose side was taken by Younger Brother, since Elder Brother lashed out at him and, to be honest, Younger Brother was still basically an extension of Mom and Dad) Elder Brother built a dizzyingly dramatic, risk-taking, get-the-fuck-outta-my-way life for himself, with stellar highs and deep, abysmal lows, being sometimes unbelievably heroic and idealistic and sometimes bewilderingly selfish, paranoid and self-righteous.

Over time, though, both siblings and parents’ relationship evolved into one of general support and respect, coming to each other’s aid, engaging in great endeavors and providing moral support to one another, even though one or more of them may not always have clearly been on the side of right.

So if the US is the “loud” one, the flashy, big-talking Type A, the stunning over-achiever who makes everyone else in the room feel inadequate (or at least tries to), the one who’s been out in the world reaping fame and glory, constantly striving always to grow his own wealth, power and influence, Canada’s the one that dresses down, doesn’t dominate the conversation at the dinner table, has his mortgage paid off and worries more about just being a good neighbor and minding his own business.

He’s the one who, through patience and consistency, has built himself a very comfortable, stable, relaxed life, and people generally find his company enjoyable. Others generally have mixed feelings towards Older Brother, being sometimes jealous of him, sometimes afraid and very often both. Older Brother wants everyone to be like him and feels the need to justify his choices constantly; Younger Brother’s the one who goes, “No thanks, I’m good, but whatever works for you.”

How I Got Here

I married a Canadian woman, it didn’t work out, and I stayed. I had applied for permanent residence with my wife as my sponsor, which involved paying around $900, submitting a criminal background check and medical examination, filling out a form and waiting seven months. During the interim, I was not allowed to work legally or receive any public services.

Once my application passed, I received my “landing papers”, a SIN (Social Insurance Number or Canadian SSN) and was then eligible to live permanently, work and receive health care. My status lasts 5 years between renewals, during which I must spend a minimum of 2 years on Canadian soil or abroad as an employee for a Canadian company. I cannot vote or serve in the military.

If I had applied for public assistance (welfare, etc) during my first 3 years, my sponsor (ex-wife) would have been responsible for paying it back to the government. I can and have received unemployment insurance.

What It’s Like To Be a Working Guy in Canada

I have no college degree and am actually a high-school dropout, though I’ve always lied about it, and it’s never been questioned (fortunately, they didn’t check on that in my residency application). I live in Alberta now, so I don’t pay provincial income tax.

Regardless, when I was in Nova Scotia, I still took home more of my wages than I did in California, despite paying both federal and provincial income tax. Canadian tax rates are lower for lower incomes, higher for higher incomes. If I were to make 100 grand a year, yes, I’d pay a higher tax rate, but I don’t.

The Canadian and US Dollars hover around parity for the most part, so for all intents and purposes, a buck is a buck. My cost of living is about the same as in the US. Rents are comparable and so are utilities.

Food can be more expensive, and smokes are over 10 bucks a pack for most brands in Alberta and more in some other places; the more liberal, the more expensive – same with booze. Gas is currently about $CN 1.12/liter., ($4.20/gallon.) in Alberta, which has the lowest gas prices in the country, naturally. It’s as much as $CN .50 more a liter in other places.

Canada has a federal sales tax of 5% known as the General Sales Tax (GST). Each province can add to that their own sales tax, the combined sales taxes being called a Harmonised Sales tax (HST). This can vary widely from province to province depending on their social leanings and economy.

Nova Scotia, being a notoriously liberal and socially-conscious province with higher unemployment than the national average, has a HST of 15%; the idea is that when more people are unemployed, social services and support become even more critical to maintaining quality of life.

Alberta, which is shoveling in oil revenues like there’s no tomorrow and has a thriving agricultural industry (grain and cattle) is probably the least socially-conscious of all the provinces, being somewhat the Canadian version of Texas. It has no HST, only the 5% GST.

So, in short, I’ve sort of made a deal with the devil by coming out here for work after having been laid off in Nova Scotia; I enjoy the economic benefits, but am slightly at odds with the social climate which is, to be fair, still more liberal than that of the US as a whole.

Here’s an example of the difference between the IRS and Revenue Canada: I get a check every 3 months for $CN 100 as a GST rebate because I make below a certain income level (I gross between  $CN 38k-45k/year). When was the last time you ever got anything from the IRS aside from something terrifying telling you you’re fucked?

Summary: Being an average, middle-class working person in Canada means you can actually have a good, comfortable life.

Health Care

If you live here, either as a citizen, on a visa or as a permanent resident, like myself, you get health care. Each province administers its own system, and it comes out of the tax base; there is no premium deduction from your pay, no check box on your tax return form. I hear Alberta (surprise, surprise) used to have a mandatory premium deducted from your tax return each year, but not any more.

Your provincial health card will get you care no matter where in the country you are. Emergency room, ambulances – no charge to the insured. Neither dental nor optometry are covered, and seeing a specialist requires a referral. My employers provide me with health insurance for things like optometry, dental, chiro, prescription plan, etc, as does everyone else’s, to my knowledge.

But if you’re a small business, one less burden of responsibility and concern has been removed. Even if you’re a cheap, mean bastard who cuts corners every chance he gets, you and your employees are still covered.

Here’s how my Canadian doctor visits have gone:

Scenario 1

Receptionist: Hello, dear, have you been here before?
Me: No.
Receptionist: Can I see your card, dear? (I hand her the card). Is this your current address?
Me: Yes.
Receptionist: OK, here’s your card back, have a seat and someone will call your name in a couple minutes.
10 minutes later: Mr. **********?

Scenario 2

Receptionist: Hello, dear, have you been here before?
Me: Yes.
Receptionist: Your name?
Me: **********
Receptionist: Is this your current address?
Me: Yes.
Receptionist: OK, have a seat and someone will call your name in a couple minutes.
10 minutes later: Mr. **********?

This is not a fantasy; I am not exaggerating. No co-pay, no multi-page forms to fill out, no pissed off, fat, black bitch in teddy-bear scrubs studiously ignoring me as I wait for her attention, all-but-daring me to interrupt her personal phone call by meekly saying “Excuse me”, no interminable wait, nothing.

Now, I’m sure a clinic in a huge city like Toronto or Vancouver would probably be much busier (though nothing like the Cinco de Mayo fiestas of Southern California, I’m sure) and its staff more unpleasant (my experiences are limited to Halifax and my small Southern Alberta town of 2,000), but seriously, anyone who can compare this with an HMO experience in the US and see no difference is an abject boob.

My ex-wife was diagnosed with thyroid cancer when she was 20. She had surgery, was treated, recovered fully and takes thyroid medication. Aside from the cost of the prescription, which was about 12 bucks a refill, her cost was zero. She had merely to show her Nova Scotia Health Card and her life was saved without any worries that she would face any complications when it came to receiving care or paying for it afterwards.

Summary: It is not a myth – the Canadian health care system works and it works very well. For everyone.

Politics

Quick primer on the parliamentary system:

Political parties elect a leader. General elections are for MP’s (Members of Parliament), the equivalent of House representatives in the US. Whoever gets the most MP’s in Parliament is the Majority – their leader becomes Prime Minister. You do not elect a Prime Minister, you elect a Party with whom you agree. As long as that party is in the majority, their leader is Prime Minister.

There is a Canadian Senate as well, but Senators are appointed by the Prime Minister – not elected – so they are all, inevitably, of the same party as the Majority (I’m sure there are a couple exceptions, but for the most part, who’s going to pick a guy from the Opposition?). I’m not clear what the Senate does, but I know that the lawmaking process is not bicameral.

The Majority party is the Progressive Conservatives (PC), colloquially known by the traditional English term “Tories”.

The Opposition are the Liberal Party (which held power for quite some time but has diminished in recent years due to lack of leadership), the New Democrats (which are the largest minority and surged suddenly in ranks at the last general election), the Green Party (a handful) and I think Bloc Quebecois still has a couple MP’s.

Bloc Quebecois is essentially an ethnocentric provincial party whose only real platform has been the secession of Quebec, and their place in national politics has been the subject of some contention; they have been, however, utterly decimated, many of their seats lost to the burgeoning ND Party in the last election.

There may be some stragglers from all-but-defunct other parties with a seat here or there, but I’m not sure and nor would be your average Canadian.

A Canadian Conservative is a lot closer to a US Democrat than it is to a US Republican. They are not trying to repeal universal health care, abortion rights, gay marriage or any of the other causes celebres of their Bizarro-World US counterparts. They object to things like making trans-gender public restrooms mandatory and legalizing pot and support things like privatizing government entities and easing up on business regulation, etc., for the most part.

Yes, PM Harper and his crew are trying to emulate some US Republican fashion trends, for example a “3-strikes, tough-on-crime” bill and building more prisons, but everybody’s response to that is generally, “Why? The crime rate is actually dropping.” Thanks to the Canadian Parliamentary system though, the MP’s are really not much more than what they should be, which is bureaucrats put in charge of keeping shit running smoothly, sanely and reliably.

Canadian politicians are also by-and-large not millionaires and lawyers as they are in the US. They come from a pretty wide demographic (a recently-elected ND MP from Quebec is actually a female bartender).

At the provincial level, Canada has Premiers instead of Governors (It always reminds me of some Communist Eastern European country when I hear that term – still doesn’t sound right to me). They attain office the same way as national PM’s: Parties field candidates as reps for the various provincial “ridings“, and the Party with the majority’s leader becomes Premier.

In Alberta, the Tories have maintained a hegemony over provincial politics for the last 40 years (PM Stephen Harper is an Albertan).

The current Premier, Allison Redford, was a constitutional attorney, a field of expertise rather uncommon amongst US Republican politicians, but not among Democratic Presidents it would seem.

Provinces sometimes have provincial political parties, limited to provincial politics, though Quebec’s Bloc Quebecois made its way into Parliament, concerned as they are with Quebec’s secession, though their position and influence in federal politics is marginal to say the least.

Alberta‘s further-right party, the Wild Rose Party, went balls-out during the last provincial election, and their gaffes were many and hilarious; one of their candidates mentioned in a mass emailing something about gays being “condemned to a lake of fire,” and another quipped that he would win his riding easily as he was the “only white guy“ on the ballot.

In true neocon fashion, the party responded not by asking either of the doddering farts to step down, but by making the statement that “there are many differing views within the Wild Rose Party, and all are tolerated.” Needless to say, they got their asses handed to them instead of winning a majority.

In Alberta, the Tories have been making noises about privatizing Alberta Health, giving the usual bullshit arguments about how the “private sector can deliver services more efficiently and cost-effectively than the provincial government can,” etc., but it’s not a position that seems to be gaining much traction with the electorate…..

To put it simply, Canadians are generally not stupid; they see what works with their own eyes, thus they are far less susceptible to specious arguments, panic-mongering and outright bullshit than their US counterparts. They know when something is working and aren’t obsessed with change for its own sake, not even Albertans.

Summary: Politics in Canada actually has more to do with working for the people than it does furthering ideological agendas or political careers.

Immigration and Race

Per the most recent census statistics, Canada is comprised of 80% Whites, 16.2% visible minorities and 3.8% Aboriginals.

One of the things I truly love about Canada is that there aren’t Mexicans all over the place. There are no undocumented aliens per se, since not only is Canada not conveniently within walking distance of Mexico, but an illegal alien isn’t able to get work or free medical care here. There are no mobs of day laborers in the Home Depot parking lot, nor have I seen massive, ethnically-homogenous ghettos in which an illegal can live and receive community support with impunity.

This may not be the case in the bigger cities like Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, but the numbers of illegals must be so low as not to have much effect as a socioeconomic issue. Illegals aside, I don’t see Canada suffering the negative social and cultural impact of being overwhelmed by immigrants from one particular culture.

Canada has a policy of basing immigration approval upon needed skills. Since Canada is not suffering from a shortage of gardeners, pool cleaners or sidewalk ice-cream vendors, that would pretty much exclude the bulk of the Mexicans wanting to come in.

Canada has a foreign temporary worker program just like the US used to since there’s more work here than there are people who want to do it. A Newfoundland seafood processing plant that had shut down for awhile opened back up when the catches improved and couldn’t find enough locals for the jobs, so they imported a bunch of Thais along with an interpreter.

However, in most other circumstances, immigrants have to prove a functioning grasp of either English or French depending where they‘re going to be working and living. Children who cannot speak English are sent home by public schools, and the parents are informed that the school will be happy to teach their child once the parents have taught the child English.

Recently, the English requirement for citizenship was actually increased. Canada seems to feel, oddly enough, that two of the keys to properly managing immigration are ensuring that an individual not only can speak one of the official languages but that they can somehow contribute to the economy and society as a whole.

Absent giant ethnically-homogenous communities of immigrants, Canadian immigrants seem to assimilate much more quickly and willingly than in the US. Every first-generation-born Canadian I’ve met has no foreign accent; they say “eh”, and they seem to hang out with just about anybody.

I never get the vibe that foreigners and their kids here hate Canadians while enjoying the benefits of being Canadian. The mayor of Calgary, the biggest city in the most conservative province, is a Muslim – Naheed Nenshi – and you’d never know by hearing him speak on the radio. You see “people of color” scattered throughout the media and government, and they all seem to retain ethnic names, despite sounding and acting like Canadians.

Blacks in Canada are not ubiquitous. In Calgary, the Blacks I meet are invariably immigrants; there is no “Black” part of town.

In Halifax, which was, among other things, at the other end of the Underground Railroad, the Black population is mostly descended from former American slaves and is proportionally larger than in many other areas of the country.

This population in Halifax began in earnest following the War of 1812 during which “Black loyalists” (slaves willing to fight their masters in exchange for freedom) were deeded land on the outskirts of Halifax as reward for helping the Crown, which was named Africville.

Africville has a tragic and disappointing history which I’m going to expand upon in a separate piece, but suffice it to say that Blacks in Nova Scotia suffer from many of the same socioeconomic problems as do their counterparts in the US, though certainly not to the same degree.

I understand that there are Black communities in and around Toronto which are primarily Caribbean in origin, that there is public housing inhabited mostly by Blacks and that crime rates are higher in these areas, but I’m not aware of specifics.

I have never heard a Canadian say “nigger”. Oh, I’ve had friends say “What up, my nigga,” plenty of times, but as far as it being used as a pejorative, never. Much of what many Canadians believe about Blacks, since many of them have never spent much time around or lived around them, they get from US TV shows, so many of them are understandably scared shitless.

In Nova Scotia, where there is a Black population descended from American slaves and not immigrants, I often heard the general stereotypes bandied about by Whites: They don’t like to work, but they do like to commit crimes, do drugs, get bitches pregnant and split, etc.

My ex-wife was utterly petrified of them. She saw a Black kid walk down our street once and, since no Black people lived on our street, wanted to call the police, I shit you not. She did not, though, and the ensuing argument lasted about two hours.

Canadians are, however, very quick to characterize Americans as racists, despite the fact that Canada had Jim Crow “Whites only” bylaws in rural areas just like the US did. But, in fairness, the institution of slavery did not exist here, and that counts for rather a bit.

Aboriginals, still commonly referred to as Indians, seem to take the place, in many ways, that Blacks do in US society. They are disproportionately plagued by crime, poverty, alcoholism, drug addiction and prejudice and are distributed across Canada. They receive government assistance and are spoken of by most of the Whites I know as a “problem” and with little compassion. A disproportionate number of their males are in the prison system.

They are, in effect, the Blacks of Canada, and the origins of their problems are as convoluted and difficult to figure out as are those of US Blacks. However, to be real, they were doing OK before Whitey showed up.

The French

As you may or may not know, the English defeated the French in the battle for supremacy in Canada but allowed the French to stay and maintain their own culture. Like any defeated people, despite the magnanimity of the victors, a lot of them are still sore about it.

As I’ve mentioned before, there are elements within Quebecois society who believe that Quebec should exist as its own separate country. Anglo Canadians love to point out that the federal government paid for and built their infrastructure, so if they want to pay back all of that, fine, go ahead; many Anglos are constantly irritated and annoyed by the French.

Despite this, however, Quebec and its French culture are clearly things that make Canada, well, Canadian and add an extremely cool flavor to the whole mix here. In 1980, Quebec held a referendum about whether it should secede from the Canadian federal government or stay.

Literally thousands of people from all over Canada came to Quebec to plead with the citizens to remain part of Canada. I’ve heard the old radio news reports from that time, and people were actually crying, “Please don’t leave.” Many Quebecois were also crying, saying, “How can we consider this? What does it say to the rest of the world?”. Fortunately, the results were 60-40 against.

I can’t help but imagine that if Texas tried to do the same thing, millions of Americans would show up saying, “Please! Do it! Leave and good riddance!” OK I was being a smart-ass with that one, but I think you’ll understand my point. Canadians seem to like other Canadians more than most Americans like other Americans, even when they’re French.

Summary: Canada is very White, its culture is Western European, and the people who emigrate to it seem to acknowledge and appreciate that, as such, it is a much better place to live than wherever they came from. Canada is a clear example of the superiority of Western Culture and the benefits of White Rule.

Religion

Yes, we have it here. I see churches all over the place, especially in Alberta, which I believe boasts more churches per capita than any other province (once again, proof that Alberta secretly wishes it was the 51st State of the US).

However, there is much less “religion” here. It is not part of the political conversation and seems rarely, if ever, to be part of polite conversation. Alberta is the province which boasts the most Evangelicals, and it’s the only one where I’ve seen occasional billboards in rural areas featuring Right-To-Life slogans.

However, when I tried to call the 800 number on one to tell them to suck my dick, the number was disconnected, and the website on the sign no longer existed; that’s the degree of religious fervor out here. In Nova Scotia, I did see an anti-abortion protest outside of a hospital: Two old ladies in camp chairs watching a portable TV on an ice chest, their picket signs leaning against the fence behind them as people walked by in both directions.

Summary: In Canada, religion is essentially no one’s business but their own, so shut the fuck up, and please don’t block the sidewalk.

Guns, Crime and Violence

Guns are not banned in Canada; they are regulated and controlled. Allow me to slack off for a second and quote a Wikipedia article for a brief historical background:

Registration of firearms in Canada has been an issue since the 1930s when the registration of handguns became mandatory. Over the past few decades, legislation had become increasingly restrictive for firearm owners and from 1995 until 2012, all firearms were required to be registered. As of April 6, 2012 the registration of non-restricted firearms is no longer required in any province or territory, except for Quebec, pending litigation.

Systematic auditing and criminalization of firearm owners and sports is implemented and enforced in most of Central Canada, and to a lesser extent, in Western Canada (in most cases firearm ownership regulations vary slightly in different provinces and territories, where some provinces have decided to mandate their own laws, such as the Quebec Law 9 course, which is mandatory for all owners of restricted firearms).

The Criminal Code of Canada provides recognition of self-defense with a firearm; The Firearms Act provides a legal framework wherein an individual may, acquire/possess and carry, a restricted or (a specific class of) prohibited firearm for protection from other individuals when police protection is deemed insufficient.

This situation is extremely rare, as evidenced by the fact that the (publicly available version of the) RCMP Authorization To Carry application refers only to protection of life during employment that involves handling of valuable goods or dangerous wildlife.

In short, you can have a gun if you have a good reason for it. “Personal protection” and just being afraid the government is going to show up and shove you in a FEMA trailer for re-education are not considered valid reasons. It is a matter of record that Canada’s rates of homicides and suicides using guns have further decreased as more and more restrictions have been put into place.

This has not eliminated crime, but it has clearly mitigated it. I’d rather have a guy come at me with a knife than a gun even if I’m similarly armed any day – I don’t know about you. To anyone in the US who maintains that lower violent crime can be achieved through an “armed society”, you need only look to Canada to see how absolutely shit-brained-stupid that is.

Canada has crime though. People get their cars stolen, there are rapes, there is drunk driving – all the usual. Canada even boasts some celebrated serial killers as well. Most Canadians do lock their doors when they leave for work and when they go to bed, despite what Michael Moore might want you to believe.

The difference between Canada and the US in this regard is the crime per capita. In a city as big as Calgary (approximately 1.4 million), which is about 30 minutes from me, the amount of crime compared to a similar-sized US city is ridiculously lower. There isn’t even as much trash on the ground. I’m not kidding – same goes for the rest of what I’ve seen of Canada.

What doesn’t exist are gangs to any great degree. In Vancouver you have some Asian gang stuff, some minor shit with Russians and some others in Toronto and Quebec, but nothing even close to what you have in the US.

Another thing I’ve noticed is the role of the “career criminal”.

In the US, being a criminal is an actual occupation for many, one which they pursue with great professionalism and acumen.

In Canada, most of the criminals I’ve seen and read about are basically stupid assholes. They steal some shit, maybe sell some drugs, and they get caught.

This one idiot drug dealer in Halifax lived in a trailer park, yet bought a bright yellow Hummer and parked it out front. After a few stray bullets zipped through his neighbors‘ homes courtesy of a rival “drug kingpin “ (yes, this is how the local news referred to him), the cops pretty much figured out that if they nabbed the guy in the yellow Hummer at the bridge toll-plaza, they’d get some answers.

Random acts of violence occur. Guys get dumped and kill their ex and her new boyfriend; a middle-aged loser who’s sponging off his grandmother’s pension checks decides he can smother her with a pillow and pretend she’s still alive; some guy hears Satan tell him he can fuck Avril Lavigne if he kills his whole family in their sleep, and so on.

But to be honest, most random, violent crimes I hear about around my neck of the woods, few as they are, involve immigrants. You can take the boy out of Viet Nam, but if you smile at his girlfriend during lunch time at the meat processing plant, he just might shove a fork in your neck.

The cops here are actually nice, at least the ones I’ve met. You’ve got your Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP’s), which function as the equivalent of the FBI and State police in provinces without a provincial police force (unlike Ontario or Newfoundland), the city police forces and the “peace officers” who enforce by-laws and do not carry weapons.

The only times I’ve dealt with cops, whether local or RCMP, they have said, “Hey, how’s it going,” introduced themselves and shook my hand, then calmly figured out what was going on. No twitchy hyper-vigilance, no hand on the gun as they approached. I’m guessing they may be a little different in the metropolii, but still, you don’t get Rodney King situations here.

If called to a bar in response to a complaint of a disturbance, a Canadian cop is more likely to say, “Hey, I think your friend’s a little drunk, why don’t you take him home?” as opposed to calling in six cars for backup and making the entire place lie face down with their hands behind their heads.

There are occasional stories of abuse, and there was a spate of deaths caused by tasering, but generally, since everyone doesn’t automatically hate them and want them dead, I think the cops are a bit more relaxed and less concerned with being intimidating. They are, after all, just guys trying to do their jobs, and I get that most Canadians understand and appreciate that.

Despite the fact that they seem less violent as a culture, do not make the mistake of thinking Canadians are pussies. Canadians drink, and they also fight. Hockey, the world’s most violent sport is, after all, a Canadian invention.

The difference, though, is the absence of ubiquitous and constant belligerence. If I go to a crowded concert or sporting event in the US, it’s a safe bet there will be more than one fight. My ex-roommate’s best friend from Northern California was jumped and had his brains beaten after a Dodgers-Giants game in LA; it put him in a coma, and he’s barely escaped being a vegetable.

It would be impossible to me to conceive of that happening here and actually is impossible to any Canadians I’ve spoken with about it. Can Canadians hold their liquor better, or are they just generally less angry, violent and belligerent? Maybe a little of the former and a lot of the latter.

Summary: Less guns, garbage, crime and violence, nicer cops, fewer incarcerated citizens and far less anxiety as a whole.

Weed

I smoke a lot of weed. I have been doing so for over 35 years. In Canada, medical marijuana is federally legal, but I can’t just go to a podiatrist and tell him I’ve been having trouble sleeping to get a license like in California. It requires multiple signed applications by several doctors and, like the gun licensing, the determining criterion is, “Why do you need it?”. Unfortunately, mild insomnia isn’t considered a valid reason.

Things like rheumatoid arthritis, cancer and serious medical conditions which require pain management are generally what are required. Once licensed, it means you can go anywhere in the country without getting hassled; you can even walk through an airport with a sack in your pocket, provided you have your license on you. You cannot, of course, burn one in public (legally). You can also grow some.

Despite the fact that I must, then, smoke weed illegally, there are a couple of benefits to doing so in Canada. First and foremost is that I can get a half ounce of good smoke for 120 bucks. Second is that the general attitude towards marijuana law enforcement is pretty relaxed. In most metropolitan areas, it is considered of “lowest priority,” officially, when it comes to enforcing pot laws.

In Vancouver, there are Amsterdam-style cafes where everyone’s smoking weed, and the cops leave them alone. In the case of illegal grow-ops, though, or significant trafficking, the cops, understandably, do not look the other way. But as far as normal people getting high and not causing any problems, the worst they usually do is take it away from you, tell you to “watch it”, and maybe smoke it themselves after work.

For the record though, Harper and the Tories have stated unequivocally that marijuana will not become legal as long as they are the majority. Fuck the Tories.

Summary: Canada’s a cool place if you smoke weed; just remember it’s still illegal (technically).

Civil Liberties

Gays can marry here – it’s been legal for quite some time – and, despite that fact, they are not running around having anal sex in the streets. Pre-employment and random drug screenings are forbidden as unconstitutional, yet people aren’t snorting coke at work or showing up baked to the gills.

Women can get abortions, and their health care covers it, yet there is not an epidemic of female promiscuity (much as I wish there were). Prostitution is, by certain definitions in certain areas, basically legal, or at least not criminal. Even the age of consent is much lower in some provinces, yet teenaged girls are not being incessantly fucked to death and discarded by middle-aged men.

The guiding principle behind Canada’s attitude towards civil liberties seems to be, “If they’re not hurting anyone or causing a fuss, leave them the fuck alone, it’s none of your business.” Pierre Trudeau wisely stated that the government has “no place in our bedrooms, period,” and he was agreed with by even the most right-wing politicians at the time, eventually.

I laugh my ass off every time I hear some Republican or Libertarian troll threaten to “move to Canada” if Obama gets re-elected. Not only would they not be issued a visa for such reasons, if they were, they would be forced to live in a place where fags can teach their kids, sluts can get abortions, niggers can get decent jobs, hippies can smoke weed and people claiming God speaks to them are not only banned from public office but they’re quite often placed under psychiatric observation.

Summary: I think my freedoms are more well-protected here than in the US.

Language

Canadians do not say aboot. Most commonly, the ow diphthong, which is broken down into the phonemes a (like cat) + oo in US English (and every English dictionary), is very often pronounced eh-oo in Canada, similar to how the Irish pronounce it.

In Atlantic Canada, it is common to hear the diphthong pronounced oh (I had a boss who actually spelled couch as coach because that’s how he pronounced it). They also usually pronounce sorry as soar-ee, been as bean, produce (n.) as prah-duce, project as proh-ject, process as proh-cess, schedule as shed-jule, missile as miss-isle and a slew of other British pronunciations.

What drives me nuts though is their insistence on pronouncing virtually any a they see as the short a in cat. It’s difficult for me to represent graphically, but go ahead and say to yourself the following words with that short a and see how lame it sounds: pAsta, tsunAmi, drAma, mAzda. Ugh. Sonically, it makes me fucking cringe.

And I know it’s a matter of taste, but to me, mispronouncing names and proper nouns from other languages in that fashion just seems ignorant. I guess that’s a vestige of the famous British contempt for other cultures giving a last, dying twitch.

I have adopted the Canadian forms of spelling; I think it’s cool. They use the British forms here almost exclusively: colour, centre, defence, and so on. They do not use the spelling aluminium. They do, however, use the silent h in herb.

But while Canadian spelling I may have adopted, most of Canadian pronunciation I have not. The exception is when I play “I’m pretending to be Canadian.” I have at various times when doing this been pegged as a Maritimer (someone from Atlantic Canada), since I have a good grasp of the accent and “isms“ I absorbed while in Nova Scotia.

Though I am functional in French, I rarely have occasion to use it. Canadian French, though, is far more dissimilar to its parent than Canadian English, and volumes could be written about Francophone (French-speaking) culture in Canada, and I haven’t enough experience to do so with any credibility or thoroughness.

Summary: Someone could drop you in the middle of any major Canadian city outside of Quebec in your sleep, and it’d take you a bit to realize, just hearing people speak, that you weren’t in the US.

Civility

This is, to me, the single most important difference between Americans and Canadians, and I believe this trait informs all the positive ones I’ve previously outlined. Canadians are civil. They are brought up holding doors for other people, apologizing if they think they’ve offended or been a nuisance and just in general trying to be kind and decent to everyone else, even if they don’t like them.

The concept that your negative personal feelings towards others should not inform your actions towards them, that it’s right and beneficial to society to be polite to everyone regardless of whether you hate their guts or not is so obvious to them that it doesn’t bear mentioning.

Canadians’ default mode is “nice”. When in doubt, just be nice. Don’t understand something? Be nice and ask what someone meant, don’t just immediately go “Oh, yeah? FUCK YOU!” and start swinging if you aren’t sure whether you’ve been insulted or not.

Canadians don’t automatically assume the worst motive for the actions of others. If a guy’s going off and making a fuss about something, the first thought is usually, “Wow, he must really be having a bad day.” One of the keys to civility is cutting each other some slack, being easy on each other, at least the first couple times.

Canadians seem much better at this “a mile in my neighbor’s moccasins” philosophy than most Americans. They’ve been inculcated with good behavior through example; they don’t even think about it. As a result, even the immigrants get in on it within a generation.

Of course, there are those who recognize this tendency towards civility and understanding and try to subvert it for their own purposes. These types will invariably either adopt a disingenuously oblivious mien (“Oh, did I cut in front of you? Gee, didn’t see the end of the line.”) or will behave blatantly aggressively in the hopes of causing others to back down and avoid any type of confrontation, something that seems bred into most Canadians from birth.

I am at times frustrated by what I sometimes perceive as a pathological need to avoid confrontation of any kind. I see people allow others to take advantage of and inconvenience them without saying anything, and it pisses me off.

Some ass-wipe the other day at a movie theater, in which one joins a single line while waiting for the next available cashier, was standing near a particular window which looked as if it would free-up next, clearly intending to head straight for it while avoiding the line.

I, of course, ever-vigilant to such things and being a self-appointed Guardian of Civilization and Warrior against the Americanization of Canada, moved forward immediately when the register became available, shoving in front of the asshole and saying, “I was here first. The line’s over there.”

He muttered something under his breath as he walked to the line. Coincidentally, he was quite swarthy and spoke with a thick Middle-Eastern accent. Fuckers who style themselves “wolves among sheep” in this country fill me with cold rage. Despite the fact that your average Canadian finds my attitude and actions inappropriate, I will gladly suffer their disapproval, kinda like Batman has to.

Canadians are also far more respectful, in general, of people’s privacy. I hear less gossip and less mean shit behind people’s backs than I did in the States. People don’t pry as much, they aren’t as obsessed with going through your laundry, and are far less likely to share something private they may have learned about you.

For example, I was a porn actor in the US for a time; I got some press, and my stuff shows up on cable every now and then (gotta love Canadian cable; when they show porn, they leave in the penetration), so I am infrequently recognized.

A guy I worked with, when I confessed about my former occupation after having known him a few months, told me he already knew. When I asked why he didn’t tell me he knew his response was that if I’d wanted him to know, I would have told him, and it was none of his business.

In a similar situation in the US, a guy I worked with was so excited to know that he told everybody I worked with, including my bosses, and from then on, every time I spoke with them, though they never let on they knew, there was this weird awkwardness, like they couldn’t look at me without seeing me naked.

On the flipside, an Iranian immigrant kid I was in training with at this call center in Halifax sat down next to me one day, grinning. “Hey, hey, do you have tattoo? Show me”.

I lifted my sleeve and showed him, and he all-but shouted “Ha! I knew it! I see you, I see you on TV!” I convinced him to keep his mouth shut, but I’d catch the weird little fucker staring and grinning at me from across the room fairly often, and he’d give me the thumbs-up if I looked up at him.

Summary: The more civil you are, the better everyone gets along and the better your civilization.

In Closing

A banking system under control, sane gun laws, lower crime, universal health care, a thriving middle class, no illegal immigration problem, cheap weed, way less garbage all over the place, fewer assholes per capita, a strong federal government with excellent social programs…isn’t this sorta what Obama’s America would look like?

“Summertime in Northern California,” by Alpha Unit

It’s gotten so bad that you can’t go hunting, fishing, or hiking in peace in certain parts of Northern California anymore – all because of marijuana growers with guns.

On Friday the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California announced that law enforcement officials had raided pot-growing farms in the Mendocino National Forest during a 2-week operation that will be ongoing. Every summer law enforcement launches this effort on public lands. At least half a dozen federal agencies took part this year, along with the state anti-narcotics bureau and 6 sheriff’s departments.

This year’s bust, described as “huge,” is supposedly a major blow against illegal marijuana cultivation on public lands in Northern California.

Agents uprooted over 460,000 pot plants. They also seized about 1,000 pounds of processed marijuana, almost 30 guns, and 11 vehicles. There have been over 100 arrests.

According to the Associated Press:

The 900,000-acre forest – larger than Rhode Island – spans six counties in a region of mountains and forests known as the Emerald Triangle for its high concentration of pot farms. Agents raided more than 50 gardens teeming with trash, irrigation pipes, and chemicals that damage forestland and waterways, authorities said.

Pot growers favor public lands for their remote location and rugged terrain, people say. This year’s focus was on the Mendocino National Forest after nearby residents started complaining last year about the increasing number of confrontations with armed guards protecting pot grows.

Moreover, Forest Service officials have complained about the environmental consequences of illegal pot farms.

U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag says that the California National Guard, Forest Service workers, and volunteers removed 46,000 pounds of trash, 120 propane tanks, 116,000 feet of pipe, 13 man-made dams, 57 pounds of pesticides, and tons of fertilizer from raided grow sites.

Usually Mexican drug cartels are blamed for some of this activity. The U.S. Attorney says that 25 of the people arrested are already facing federal charges, but she wouldn’t say where they’re from.

Is Marijuana Ever Laced with PCP?

A commenter has some worries that he may be permanently damaged from smoking PCP laced weed nearly 20 years ago. I try to set him straight on it.

Thanks for your reply, I’m from London, and I stopped bout 17 years ago and only smoked for about a year and a half. I’m not sure if it was about in England, but surely if I did come across it a few times, it wouldn’t have caused any damage? Surely heavy use means people who used PCP specifically every day, so therefore if it was laced on marijuana it wouldn’t be significant?

BTW I’m fine but just a bit freaked out because we had a get together the other day with some ex smoking partners and it was mentioned by someone, so I Googled it, and it was a bit worrying. Anyway I never experienced any kind of hallucinations when I smoked, so I don’t think I came across it, just wanted some reassurance.

Well, a PCP laced joint doesn’t even taste like pot. And no dealers lace their pot with PCP. I smoked dope all through the 1970′s when PCP was very popular and no one ever laced their pot with PCP and sold it. Why would anyone do that? PCP is very expensive and there’s no benefit to putting it on your weed. No one ever put PCP on pot even back then. It was sprayed on mint leaves or came in a sort of silly putty like form.

People used to pass jays and not tell you it was PCP though, just to get you high on the stuff or because they were proseletizers. PCP has a very distinctive taste – it tastes very chemical and metallic. It was generally sprayed on mint leaves. We were usually told whenever PCP was passed to us, and in some cases where we were not, we figured out immediately that it was PCP and refused to smoke anymore.

Sometimes we would be at parties where the PCP jays would be going around along with pot jays. We would try to tell them apart but after a while, it got difficult. The PCP assholes kept trying to pass you the PCP jays to you because they thought you were a wuss for not smoking PCP.

PCP in those days was smoked by “Superfly” type Black 1970′s “hipsters” or “hepcats” (you had to live in the 1970′s to understand what such a person was like – they are not exactly ghetto Blacks at all), barrio Mexican cholo types and really grungy, semi-criminal, low class, “street and jail” type Whites.

Then there were regular guys, some of them my friends, who smoked it once in a while because the high is simply insane. The PCP high is very different from a pot high, and once you have experienced it, you know exactly what it is. I smoked PCP almost before I smoked pot. The high from a full blown PCP trip is one of the wildest and most insane drug experiences you will ever have. Sort of like a really really weird LSD trip, plus being incredibly stoned.

Heavy use of PCP may damage the brain. Very heavy users back in the 1970′s used to exhibit symptoms of brain damage while they were using heavily. We referred to them as “crystallized.” In general, after 6 months of abstention from PCP, these symptoms seemed to clear up and disappear.

I had some friends who were “dusters.” One guy nearly ruined his life on the stuff. He graduated with a BA in Philosophy from USC and then went to law school. Never finished and dropped out due to heavy PCP use.

Got a few “driving drugged” DUI’s for driving on PCP – the stuff gets you really fucked up, and it’s very hard to drive on it, so it’s not surprising you would get a DUI on the stuff. He ended up doing repeated jail terms, having his license suspended over and over. The last time he served 5 months in LA County jail and came out in bad shape. Each time he came out of jail, he seemed more and more fucked up.

Eventually he was homeless, riding a bicycyle and addicted to cocaine. He ripped off at least once for coke money. He would come over to my house and go into the bathroom and shoot cocaine. Later he started smoking the stuff. I tried over and over to get rid of the guy, but there was no getting rid of him. Sad story all around, and PCP basically wrecked this guy’s life.

The guy had some weird stories. One time he was sleeping over at this chick’s house. White woman, 20′s, PCP user. He woke up at 6 AM, and this chick was standing there pointing a pistol at him. He leaped up and kicked the gun out of her hand and then ran out the door. Weird story.

I used it maybe a dozen times in my life, mostly when idiots passed PCP jays to me pretending they were pot jays. Sporadic or occasional PCP use like that is not going harm your brain. The jury is still out on heavy use, but things don’t look too good.

Wahhabis Versus Sufis in Iraq

Repost from the old site.

There is some misinformation going around stating that Iraqi Sufis are pacifists.

In fact, Sufis comprised a large part of the resistance around Balad about 6 1/2 years ago and also around Fallujah a while back. There hasn’t been much recent info on the extent of Sufi involvement in the guerrilla war.

Check out this fascinating photo gallery of a group of Kasnazani Sufi dervishes in Kurdistan. Wow, what a bunch of freaks. Let’s let the site speak for itself here:

“Dervishes are Muslim Sufis, both Sunni and Shia, who live in Iraqi Kurdistan, Syria and Iran. They eat blades, cut their tongues with poniards and swords and thrust skewers into their face and body after banging their heads for more than an hour in their ceremonies.”

Whoa, check out the self-mutilating, self-skewering, knife in the head freak show here – what a bunch of kooks! More headbanging , general tripping out and all around freaking than an Ozzy Osborne concert and a Navajo peyote ritual combined! In all fairness, it should be noted that most Sufis do not engage in this weird self-injury stuff.

You might wonder why Wahhabi Muslims would hate Sufi Muslims so much that they would kill them. Since most non-Muslims do not know a thing about Sufism or Wahhabism, a little background is in order.

Let’s start with Sufism. Although Sufism is difficult for a non-Muslim to understand, I will do my best. Going way back centuries in the history of Islam, some Muslims decided to use Islam to go the mystical route.

Their journey to mysticism is akin to Christians who speak in tongues or go off to join ascetic monasteries, Hindus who lie on beds of nails, go off in the wilderness, practice yoga or become yogis, Buddhists who chant, meditate or sequester themselves in monasteries, or hippies who drop LSD and mushrooms.

Indigenous peoples have a long history of seeking God by taking hallucinogenic drugs like the peyote cactus (American Indians), psilocybin mushrooms (Oaxaca Indians in Mexico), ayahausca from a jungle vine (Amazonian Indians), Amanita Muscaria mushrooms (Siberian natives) and DMT powder from a jungle plant (Venezuelan Indians).

The Sufis expanded the rigid definition of Islam by moving it beyond pure, rote Koranic practice. Sufis variously (depending on the Sufi order) sing songs, play music, chant verses, dance, mutilate themselves, go into trances, practice asceticism and self-denial, and generally seek religious enlightenment.

There is a tendency in Sufi practice to try to become one with the universe, to see oneself a part of everything, to merge one’s body into one’s surroundings, to go into meditative and yogic-type trances, in addition to practicing healthy living and to living a highly moral lifestyle. The Sufi initiate typically seeks out a Sufi master who is the head of the Sufi order. The Sufi master serves as instructor in the Sufi way.

Sufi initiates look up to the leader of the order and more or less follow him, similar to how the Shia follow an ayatollah.

Sufis also pray at the graves of famous Sufis (who are often characterized as saints) see these burial grounds and tombs as spiritually-charged locales, and feel that they can access Allah via intercessory prayers.

Wahhabism was founded by Sheik Abdullah al-Wahhab in the Najd Desert in what is now Central Saudi Arabia around 1800.

The Muslims in this part of Saudi Arabia have always been some of the densest, most ignorant, most bigoted, most xenophobic and most pleasure-despising of all the Muslims. Mohammad himself even remarked on this in his writings.

Sequestered away in the blazing deserts of Central Arabia, forced via the harsh climate to adopt a rigid, conservative, misogynistic, xenophobic and brutal form of tribalism, locked away from the rest of the world for centuries, it’s only logical that the Najd would give birth to such an ultra-ignorant and super-reactionary cult like Wahhabism.

The Muslims in the Najd chased away the first visitors who played music and sang songs for them (they thought it was evil and bizarre because they had never heard it before), and they have hated music and singing ever since. Wahhabism, the officially sanctioned Islamic sect of Saudi Arabia, holds the belief that the only real Islam is the pure Islam practiced by Mohammad in the 600′s.

This Islam consists of only the Quran and the Hadith (the often-dubious collections of supposed sayings of Mohammad). Wahhabism holds that outside of the Quran and the Hadith (or Sunnah – the practice of the Prophet – how Mohammad actually lived his life), all else is “innovation” and non-Islamic. All Islamic interpretations after the first 100-200 years post-Mohammad are rejected as deviations and “innovations”.

Wahhabis generally despise all other Muslims, and often refer to them as infidels (non-Muslims), polytheists (worshipers of more than one God) or apostates (those who have left Islam).

Wahhabis often proscribe death for the Muslims they do not approve of. A favorite accusation is one of “shirk” – associating other entities with God. Shirk is a grave accusation when coming from a Wahhabi – it can mean a death sentence. Wahhabis consider singing, dancing, graveyards, saints, and intercessory prayer as shirk.

Wahhabis despise the Shia, the Alawites (a very divergent Shia sect in Syria and Lebanon), the Druze (an extremely divergent Shia sect in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine), the Alevi (a very liberal, secular and humanistic Shia sect in central Turkey – sort of like Islamic Unitarians), the Sufis (described above) and probably a lot of other Muslim sects too.

Wahhabis hate Sufis for chanting non-Koranic verses, singing, growing their hair long, self-mutilation and self-injury, worshiping graves and tombs, praying to saints and the suggestion that, in seeing Allah as part of everything, Sufis are guilty of polytheism.

The Wahhabi sect exploded out from the Najd almost as soon as it was birthed. Around 1808, Wahhabi Bedouin warriors raced out of the Najd all the way up to Mesopotamia (presently Iraq), heading for the Shia shrines at Karbala and Najaf. They lay waste to the Shia city of Basra, and probably some other southern Mesopotamian cities along the way.

They destroyed much of Karbala and Najaf, including the sacred shrines, and slaughtered tens of thousands of Mesopotamians for no real good reason. They also attacked and slaughtered a lot of Mesopotamian Sunnis while they were at it. I’m not clear on the details, but obviously the Wahhabis were pushed out of Mesopotamia shortly afterward.

Many Iraqis, but clearly not enough, have never forgotten this mad Saudi raid 200 years ago. Antipathy for Wahhabis has traditionally been pretty high in most of Iraq since (though notably, not around Fallujah), especially amongst the Shia. It’s unfortunate that so many Iraqi Sunnis have forgotten their history and allowed themselves to get sucked into the Wahhabi death cult.

The Wahhabi sect just sat in the Arabian Desert for the next 110 years or so. Around 1920, charged-up Wahhabi jihadis blasted out from the desert again, this time to conquer the Hijaz, the region along the western Arabian coast where Mecca and Medina lie. Interestingly, the Muslims in Hijaz were never extremely pious and have tended to be more the tolerant Sufi type.

Further, Hijazis have never liked the Najdis, whom they consider to be something like the inbred hillbillies from the American movie Deliverance .

During the 1920′s, the Wahhabi warriors crashed through the Hijaz, conquering the entire land, and laying waste to much of the idiosyncratic architecture. Wahhabis consider only plain and austere architecture to be “Koranic”, especially for mosques.

The Wahhabis also killed many Hijazis, often for no real good reason. This pattern of destroying the cities of Muslim “backsliders” and putting many of the residents to the sword has become a typical Wahhabi pattern.

Many Hijazis are still resentful about this Wahhabi attack, especially the genocidal destruction of their Hijazi culture. Further, there is still significant resistance to Wahhabism in the Hijaz.

By 1932, Wahhabis had conquered much of Arabia. King Fahd cut a deal with the Wahhabi clergy that granted them tremendous power over the kingdom in religious affairs and even the running of the state itself.

Wahhabism was also made the official creed of Saudi Arabia. In return, the Wahhabi clergy allowed the King and his family to officially rule over Saudi Arabia. In other words, the King cut a deal with the devil.

It is essential to understand the power of the Wahhabi clergy in present-day Saudi Arabia. Though their power is not necessarily codified in law, it is de facto power nevertheless. The fact is, in Arabia, the Wahhabi clergy often have more power than the Royal Family themselves. You can’t really understand modern Arabia very well until you let this shocking fact really sink in.

My Old Friends are Dropping Dead

I just received a call that an old friend of mine dropped dead at age 53. He apparently died in his sleep of a heart attack. It’s hard to say what caused it, but his retarded brother also died young of a heart attack. BA had been a bit overweight, but most importantly, he had been a heavy drinker for about 20 years or so. I do mean a very heavy drinker! I wonder if that gave him a heart attack.

The heavy drinkers are already starting to go. A neighbor of mine, apparently a long time heavy drinker, recently died at about age 47 or so. He died of natural causes!

Another extremely heavy drinker, BJ, died at age 43 or a massive heart attack.. He had been an alcoholic for many years, and in addition, he was very obese.

Another fellow, SL, died recently. He had been a cocaine dealer and very heavy cocaine user for many years. He was so high up in the cocaine dealing business that he no longer had to work and he spent his time just having fun, going out on his fishing boat, etc. I saw him 20 years and he had some weird heart jerking or body jerking movements going on. I wonder if it was all the coke?

His wife left him at some point, and after that, he became a very heavy drinker and in addition, he started chain smoking. I mean lighting one after the other, lighting the newest cigarette with the butt of the old one. He died at age 50 of heart failure! How in Hell do you get heart failure at age 50? You must have to heavily abuse your body for many years. I have a feeling that all those years of cocaine abuse may have contributed to his heart failure at such an early age.

Another old friend, RA, recently beat throat cancer at age 53, but he was in very bad shape for a long time with radiation treatments and whatnot. He could hardly eat anything and lost 30 pounds. Great way to lose weight! He had also gotten to the point where he could barely talk. The throat cancer was apparently caused by years of cigar smoking.

I am 53 years old. You can’t mess around anymore at this age. All the people who abused their bodies for years are starting to see their chickens come home to roost in the worst ways. You either get healthy or you’re going to get sick or get dead, maybe pretty soon. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe tonight. Maybe right the fuck now.

Alcohol/Drugs and Brain Damage

Repost from the old site.

For those who are worried, I would add a few pointers from my own life. I’ve been using drugs and drinking, one or the other or both, recreationally, for 35 years, and my health is superb. Of course, as with all things, moderation is the key.

There were some wild binges of drinking and/or drug use where I thought, this time I have damaged my brain for sure. At that time, I just stopped using whatever it was that had me worried and waited, and it seemed that at some point, all my brains came back, and then some.

After 35 years, you would think that I would be getting more and more fried by the year, but it’s just not so. To be quite honest, in many ways, it seems like I am smarter than I have ever been.

Furthermore, no one who meets me or knows me ever thinks I am stupid in any way whatsoever. It is quite the opposite. Not trying to brag here but people regularly say things like, “…One of the smartest people I know.” I don’t think they would say that if I was fried. Pretty good attitude for anyone, I would say.

When you exercise or play sports, they say listen to your body. With drinking and drugs, that too, but also listen to your brain. If things start seeming foggy, slow down for a bit and see if things clear up. Most if not all cases of permanent damage from this stuff have occurred from people who did not heed the warnings and careened right on ahead.

To summarize my writings on the subject.

Methamphetamine and Ecstasy are terrible for the brain, Ecstasy so bad you should not take it even one time. PCP is quite bad for your brain and probably ketamine is too. You can play around with any of those drugs a dozen or so times in a lifetime (and possibly more), and you won’t suffer any permanent damage. Any more than that and things get a lot dicier.

Heroin is easy on the brain but nasty in any other way. Opium, and all opiates, are also harmless to the brain, but can be addicting. Use must be judicious and occasional, if at all. In particular, don’t mix with other downers. Long term alcoholic drinking permanently damages the brain.

With less heavy drinking, the permanence of damage is much less clear. At low levels, drinking causes no damage whatsoever. The widespread notion, proffered even by many doctors, that each drink “kills brain cells” is utter nonsense.

Cannabis, marijuana or hashish is one drug that can be used even very heavily by adults with minimal permanent effects on the brain. Occasional use by adults seems to be completely harmless to your brain. The question of brain damage by very heavy cannabis use has not yet been resolved, but even if it occurs, most of it clears up on cessation.

Daily use of small amounts by adults can occur for years. Any damage that occurs has not yet been proven, but if it exists, it seems to be quite subtle, and I am uncertain how significant it is.

Unfortunately, for minors, the question of little to no damage is much less firm, such that I recommend that anyone wait at least until they are 18 to begin using cannabis.

Of all of the drugs of abuse, as far as heavy use goes, cannabis is by far the easiest on your brain of them all.