Morning Roar: Congress Quietly Ends War on Medical Marijuana, Majority A-OK with Torture, and Was an Agent Provocateur at Oakland Protests?
Start your week off right, with a cup o' joe with an extra shot of liberty in the Morning Roar!Congress Quietly Ends the Federal War on Medical MarijuanaYou may have heard a thing or two about the massive $1.1 Trillion "CRomnibus" spending bill that was passed late Thursday night. And while it's mostly all bad (like the expansion of the NSA's domestic spying powers, for starters...), there is at least a tiny flicker of a silver lining inside the behemoth bill. As the San Francisco Gate highlights, a provision in the bill effectively rolls back the federal war on medical marijuana:
In a landmark moment for cannabis law reform, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a measure late Thursday night to de-fund the federal war on medical marijuana. The provision passed the Senate Saturday and is expected to be signed by President Obama, bringing a halt to the three-year-long medi-pot crackdown in California and other states.The Hinchey-Rohrabacher Amendment to the $1.1 trillion cromnibus spending bill blocks the use of Department of Justice funds to “prevent [medical marijuana states] from implementing their own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.”The vast majority of Americans (78 percent) support states’ right to allow access to medical cannabis.
This is, of course a positive development. But while a majority of Americans support "states rights to allow access to medical cannabis", we've still got a long ways to go before the majority of Americans have a support the individual right to possess a plant or substance so long as they are not using it to harm others. Even if marijuana were fully legalized, 17-year-old Jacob Lavoro would still be potentially facing life in prison for possessing brownies containing hash oil.While the political victories for medical and recreational marijuana are a good sign of rational thinking prevailing on this particular issue, as long as people generally hold that coercive governments should have the option to ban this or that substance, the rights violations will continue.But hey, that's what we're working on here!Majority A-Ok with TortureWhile many have expressed shock and outrage on social media at the shocking revelations of the torture report, sadly none of this stuff is news to those of us who have been paying attention to this issue for some time. From Abu Ghraib to Bagram Air Base to Guantanamo, reports of torture have been surfacing for years.Despite the high profile of the torture report revelations, the sad fact remains that most Americans (there's that pesky majority again) are rather okey dokey with the use of torture, so long as they are convinced it can somehow increase their safety. This is supported by many polls in recent years, as broken down by Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post:
In 2009, the Pew Research Center found that 49 percent of the public said that "the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information" can "often" or "sometimes" be justified. This belief was held by 64 percent of Republicans, 54 percent of Independents and 36 percent of Democrats.Including the number who say that torture can rarely be justified, 71 percent of Americans accept torture under some circumstances.Overall 25 percent of respondents said torture could "never" be justified. Fourteen percent of Republicans said the same, compared to 38 percent of Democrats.While these figures are from 2009, a more recent YouGov poll from 2012 showed similar levels of support for torture among the public overall. A 2014 report by the advocacy group Amnesty International found that U.S. respondents were more supportive of torture than people in other wealthy Western countries.UPDATE:Pew data from 2011 paints largely the same picture.
And here's a nifty graph if you're into that sort of thing.
Again, while many people will express shock and outrage at the specifics that they hear in the torture report, many will still support torture as a viable means used to gather intelligence. Still others will decry torture but support "enhanced interrogation" techniques, and then go on to claim that whatever methods were used on certain detainees only fall into the "enhanced interrogation" category.Lost in the torture conversation is a discussion of individual rights, which would lead one to question the very detention of many of these individuals in the first place, let alone their treatment once detained. The majority of detainees have never been charged with a single solitary crime, and some tortured were even found innocent, yet continued to be held anyway. From Business Insider:
The report repeatedly questions the quality of the information obtained through enhanced interrogation techniques. It found at least 26 people were wrongly detained as part of the program. One detainee was recommended for release because he was given to the CIA under false pretenses. Instead, the CIA transferred the detainee to US custody for another four years. The report noted detainees who were tortured "provided fabricated information on critical intelligence issues."
Hey, there's even a nugget for the utilitarians in there! How on earth can a program which produces fabricated information be a good one?Ultimately, people will broadly approve of torture, "enhanced interrogation", and indefinite detention so long as they lack a proper conception of individual rights (there's that pesky term again!) In the meantime, let's hope the torture report at least horrifies enough people to get those poll numbers down a tick or two.Was an Agent Provocateur at Oakland Protests?You may have seen various internet reports regarding an undercover cop who was apparently at an anti-police brutality protest in Oakland last week. It's reported that the man was inciting violence, and upon being identified as an undercover officer, had a confrontation with several protesters and was photographed pointing a gun at a cameraman. Was this officer an "agent provocateur?"Let's head to WikiPedia to check out the commonly held definition of "agent provocateur":
An agent provocateur (French for "inciting agent") is an undercover agent who acts to entice another person to commit an illegal or rash act or falsely implicate them in partaking in an illegal act. An agent provocateur may be acting out of their own sense of nationalism/duty or may be employed by the police or other entity to discredit or harm another group (e.g., peaceful protest or demonstration) by provoking them to commit a crime - thus, undermining the protest or demonstration as whole.
The fine folks at BenSwann.com have done a great job in breaking down the facts surrounding this case, so I turn the floor over to them:
Later on, as the protest thinned down to around 30 to 50 people, protesters noticed two suspicious masked men, who, according to tweets by eyewitnesses, seen below and cited by SFGate, had allegedly been attempting to incite the crowd to commit acts of vandalism and banging on the windows of local businesses. The relative calm of the protests faded, and the demonstrations descended into chaos, as some among the crowd began looting and throwing rocks at shop windows. Angry demonstrators circled around the two masked men, believing them to be agent provocateurs sent by police to incite violence and discredit the protest. What happened next is in dispute and ended in a California Highway Patrol officer pulling out his service weapon on protesters and a photographer covering the protests for the San Francisco Chronicle.A protester who identified himself as Dylan told KTVU that he grabbed a bandanna off of the officer’s face, exposing him to the crowd, and that the officer responded by assaulting a different African-American protester. Said Dylan, “I’m a white man, and I pulled off [the officer's] mask, but they punched a black man… He got arrested.” Dylan said that the two masked men never identified themselves as police officers.Freelance photographer Michael Short, who was covering the event for the San Francisco Chronicle, described what happened next at around 11:30 PM in comments to SFGate, “Just as we turned up 27th Street, the crowd started yelling at these two guys, saying they were undercover cops… Somebody snatched a hat off the shorter guy’s head and he was fumbling around for it. A guy ran up behind him, knocked him down on the ground. That guy jumped, backed up, and chased after him and tackled him and the crowd began surging on them… The other taller guy had a small baton out, but as the crowd started surging on them, he pulled out a gun.”The officer then pointed his gun, held sideways, directly at Michael Short, who snapped a photo of the tense moment.The bandanna-wearing officers were later identified as working for California Highway Patrol. CHP Golden Gate division Chief Avery Browne told KTVU, “[The officer] told me he didn’t know if he was going to make it out alive… They were outnumbered, they were assaulted, and at that point, two officers were not going to be able to arrest 30 or 40 or 50 individuals.” Chief Browne confirmed that his division did send what he referred to as “plainclothes” officers to keep an eye on the protest and that they were wearing bandannas on their faces in order to blend in with others in the crowd, but claimed that they were not there to incite protesters and that he had not heard any reports alleging that the officers were encouraging violence. Said Browne, “We put plain-clothes officers in the crowd to listen and gather information.”
Let's see..."undercover agent?" Check. "Entice another person to partake in an illegal act?" Place innocent people in direct harm by pointing a (presumably) loaded gun at them? BONUS Check!He certainly seems to fit the bill.Read the full article at BenSwann.com. And of course, read The Morning Roar every weekday Monday-Friday!The Lions of Liberty are on Twitter, Facebook & Google+Receive access to ALL of our EXCLUSIVE bonus audio content – including “Conspiracy Corner”, “Degenerate Gamblers” and the “League of Liberty Podcast” by joining the Lions of Liberty Pride and supporting us on Patreon!
