Threats of Violence in the Comment Section Will Not be Tolerated
Nevertheless, I want to make it perfectly clear that this is not the place to post comments that threaten or endorse violence against police. This is the sort of thing I'm talking about:
AMERICANS MUST MAKE IT TO DANGEROUSE TO HAVE THIER HOMES BROKEN INTO BY THESE THUGS TERRIOSTS LIKE THESE MUST BE MEET WITH THE FIRE POWER TO STOP THIS BEHAVIOR OR IT WILL CONTINUE
I hesitate to even dignify this kind of talk with a response, so I'll leave it at this: violence is not a means through which we'll achieve drug policy reform, or any social justice goal, ever. Advocating violence destroys and discredits popular movements. We need not and will not stoop to that level, both because it is morally wrong and tactically suicidal.
I hope everyone, except possibly the person(s) responsible, will understand why it is necessary for me to delete comments like this from the site. I do not enjoy censoring anyone and I will never remove anything simply because I disagree with it, but language like this embarrasses our movement and carries the potential to damage vital relationships if we become associated with it.
I felt it was necessary to bring this up because I've had to remove a few comments recently and I want to be open about that. Moreover, I want to make it clear that any comments which are relevant and do not advocate violence are very welcome and I tremendously appreciate the overwhelming majority of the feedback we receive.
Thanks for reading and understanding.
Update: Our friend has returned with another comment, which in this case I will share instead of delete:
MAYBE YOUR DOG WASENT SHOT BY CRAZY POLICE IN FRONT OF YOUR CHILDREN .MAYBE YOU WERNT HELD TO THE GROUND WITH A SHOT GUN TO YOUR HEAD MAYBE YOUR FAMILY WASENT HELD HOSTAGE BY THESE TERRIOSTS .WHILE THEY RIPPED YOUR HOUSE APART LOOKING FOR A FEW JOINTS .I STAND BY MY RANT .TRY IT AGAIN YOU WILL FEEL THE STING OF MY RIFLE .NO MORE NAZIS WHY DID I SERVE IN VIETNAM JUST TO COME HOME TO BE ROBBED BY SCUM SUCH AS THEM .MAYBE I DONT HAVE THE EDUCATION TO RIGHT SENSABLE .BUT I HAVE ENOUGH SENSE TO KILL MY ENEMIES WHEN ATTACKED IN MY HOME .WTF
Sir, I think we all understand how you feel. And you read the blog so you know that I'm well-versed in the horrible things police do to people in the name of the drug war. But we are here to save lives, not end them. Getting yourself killed in a shootout with police won't bring back your dog and it won't end the drug war. If everyone took your advice, it would make things worse, not better. Maybe you're so angry you don't care. I hope not.
But please, hear me out on one thing: there are police working with us to end the drug war. The folks at Law Enforcement Against Prohibition are doing incredible work and I don't want them coming to our site and reading comments about killing cops. You are welcome to post here anytime, and I don't care if you're a brilliant writer. You can tell us what they did to you. You can tell us about your dog. But please stop telling us to shoot the cops. Please, tone it down just a little. That's all I'm asking.
Unfortunately, that very
Unfortunately, that very statement that you banned, is indeed the correct action if your house is broken into at night through a "no-knock warrant", as determined per individual states "Castle Doctrine". I still very much agree that we shouldn't even be having a conversation like this, but per law, the statement, while unfortunate, is correct.
Tell it to the judge
No, you can't shoot police acting on a no-knock warrant. You think a judge is gonna sign that warrant and then let you off for shooting at 'em? Knowingly firing on police is a crime under almost every imaginable circumstance. You can't even fire on police by accident without catching a dozen charges.
It's hard enough to get off killing a criminal in your home these days. Open fire during a drug raid and you'll be lucky if you live long enough to get railroaded like Cory Maye or Ryan Frederick.
Come on, we all know how they do it. They say they announced. They threaten your neighbors. They've been known to plant drugs, etc. We've seen this too many times.
You Guys Make Fools Of Yourselves By Acting As Censors
I seem to remember another flap you had a few months ago about censorship, which wound up making you guys look like idiots.
By giving attention to comments by neanderthals you draw attention to them. *Just ignore them you galoots!* People will have more respect for your website if you tolerate adversity. You don't need to censor anything. Your readers will survive, and so will your site. Do you think you know better than ourselves what is proper for discussion? Will reading the above badly misspelled rant convert anyone to gun-toting rednecks, who at the coronary inquest, will have only Stopthedrugwar to blame for their new-found bloodlust?? Are you sending the wrong message to children?? What kind of weird cult is DRCnet anyway.
#1 It's their website #2 There is no tolerance for violence
"People will have more respect for your website if you tolerate adversity."
I greatly support passionate advocacy, but I have no respect for any organization that sits on the sideline and tolerates wackos sabotaging their efforts by advocating violence against anyone.
Any serious reformer should quickly distance themselves from wackos of this sort and assume they are probably just provocateurs working for the DEA or ONDCP.
Huh?
"I seem to remember another flap you had a few months ago about censorship, which wound up making you guys look like idiots."
I recall no such thing. Let's see if you can find anyone on the web substantiating that. Regardless, if I were a shameless censor, I'd not write a whole blog post pointing out what I'm doing and why. So cut me some slack.
Police Violence and Drugs
Violence perpetrated against recreational drug users by the police has accomplished less than nothing in terms of reducing drug use and winning the drug war. Anslinger enjoyed depicting pot smokers as violent. Talk of violence by drug users only reinforces the old reefer madness mythology.
To think the converse, that violence perpetrated against cops by drug users will result in anything positive, has no basis in fact or precedent. Assassinations of inquisitors in the Middle Ages increased public sympathy favoring the Inquisition, a legal institution infamous for its use of torture to elicit confessions involving the slightest deviations from the faith.
Passive resistance works; it just seems to take forever. The heretics will always win in the end. Speeding up the process requires cleverness, not violence.
Giordano
Response to #s
"I have no respect for any organization that sits on the sideline and tolerates wackos sabotaging their efforts by advocating violence against anyone."
If DRCnet states somewhere (do they?) that they are not responsible for the comments of readers, then your point is moot. Sitting "on the sideline" is not the same thing as toleration of divergent viewpoints, however badly they are expressed.
The "it's their website" point is odd and a sad and classic example of liberal fascism worldwide. Why do they have a comments section at all? So readers can preach to the choir?
"Any serious reformer should quickly distance themselves from wackos of this sort and assume they are probably just provocateurs working for the DEA or ONDCP."
Letting a crackpot post a comment is not the same thing as advocating their views nor joining in their ranks.
I suppose we should get rid of the Bill of Rights as well in order to save ourselves from provacateurs?
Open Mouth Insert Foot
"I seem to remember another flap you had a few months ago about censorship, which wound up making you guys look like idiots."
" I recall no such thing. Let's see if you can find anyone on the web substantiating that.
O.K. Scott: Here's over 700 people world wide who have viewed your DRCnet censorship debacle:
http://suprbay.org/search.php?searchid=402843
Here's a full version of the imbroglio that netted DRCnet an EFF email to a reader:
http://suprbay.org/archive/index.php?t-21853.html
"Regardless, if I were a shameless censor, I'd not write a whole blog post pointing out what I'm doing and why. So cut me some slack."
Huh? This is such a feeble comment I don't know what to make of it.
p.s. sorry about the redundant posts but Captcha sucks. Think about upgrading to a sytem you can't crack.
Really?
You got me there, but this ain't exactly a raging act of impropriety on our part. The complainant was mad that our intern wrote a blog post criticizing his "Crackheads Gone Wild" video. He made nasty accusations against her, which Dave Borden deleted with an explanation that remains on our site. It was a personal conflict between a former intern of ours and a guy who was defending his product. I didn't see the deleted comments, so I can't say whether I'd have deleted them.
Regardless, Dave explained why he deleted those comments, and I wrote this today explaining my actions as well. Straight up, I would never have written this post if I didn't agree that censorship is inherently questionable. No one called me out on this. I wanted to make my decision known and I exposed myself to criticism willfully. Readers of our site can decide for themselves whether we've acted unethically. Since we almost never delete anything, I hope this won't be an ongoing problem.
utterly hilariious
That guy claimed to have no relation to the Crack Head videos whatsoever. Borden made the connection up hoping no one would think it was just an example of crude censorship on his part.
ubangi.baywords.com has all the posts Borden censored.
Anyway, better quit while you're ahead on the censorship thing.Let people write what they want and keep it up. Far from coming off as drug war aficionados with towerinng intellects, your behavior is more reminiscent of hall monitors and high school principals. So let's not ruin a good site like DRCnet with the stupid expurgations of half-baked rants.
Of course he did...
"That guy claimed to have no relation to the Crack Head videos whatsoever."
I'm not surprised he claimed that.
But yes, I agree with you that we should allow people to post crazy rants on our site and we have a very good record in that regard. You can find people insulting us and our ideas all over this site in every imaginable context. We've drawn the line a couple times, yes, and I will keep your objections in mind.
Well
I agree that posting threatening messages on the internet doesn't really accomplish anything. And I think that it's the right of a web site's publisher to remove anything they want; it's their property. But, I wonder if anyone ever told Thomas Jefferson he was discrediting the movement by saying things like this:
"When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
Or this:
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
Personally, for me, it's not so much a matter of right or wrong as it is feasibility. The government has most of the guns (and some very big ones), so there's really not any way we could be effective in using force against them. Besides, they're all about to go broke pretty soon, and won't have the money to continue in their many schemes of oppression, like the drug war.
Love is the Answer... Spoken by a true Stoner
"Violence does not just erupt from humans. Violent reactions exist throughout the known universe (e.g. galaxies colliding), including arguably every species of life on Earth in an effort to survive.
It is part of the cost of existing and it sustains all of us (e.g. the food many of you eat results from animal slaughter and/or ripping plants out of the ground)."
I think you are misunderstanding violence with universal harmony. Picking food from the earth or slaughtering animals is a means of survival, that can harbor further creation when practised in balance. A lion taking down a gazzelle for food is an act of love that brings balance to the jungle. Human beings shooting the whole herd, for sport, is not the same thing. Abusing this act, by destroying nature (ie, cutting down rain forests, animal extinctions, environmental polution, etc.,), is not in accordance with perpetuity, and thus is destructive to the entire collective.
I agree with Scott on this post, violence does not create -- it destroys. Harmony exists when both sides of the issue are explored, and voiced; but in the heat of survival, when the scale is tipped too much toward one extreme, nature is pushed out of balance.
We are all in it together....
"Who are you to conclude what is natural and not?"
I'm nobody; but if we look to nature for clues, we see a balance of evolution based on the collective or universe. If an animal species does not servive in nature it is because of natural selection. This is natural. When man destroys forests by exploitation, and mass extictions happen, the ecosystem in collectively destroyed. Although this happens in nature, it is not natural or collective to the universe.
The universe is pushing for expansion (creation), not collapse.
"Take it from a musician (myspace.com/ph0ed1n), a song that is all harmony and not set up by tension (e.g. dissonance) is uninteresting."
Yes, but what always makes the song work is harmonic overture. Don't get me wrong, drug prohibition is extremism. It is only one sided talk the prohibitionist spew, and the violent methods are the order of the day. In order to have successful and truthful drug control, this will have to change.
But violence begets more violence. The best way to nuetralize the harsh drug prohibition climate is fight it with an opposite extreme: peace.
"A dark truth is that you can't have good without bad."
Duh... this is were balance come in. To be harmonious.
WTF
MAYBE YOUR DOG WASENT SHOT BY CRAZY POLICE IN FRONT OF YOUR CHILDREN .MAYBE YOU WERNT HELD TO THE GROUND WITH A SHOT GUN TO YOUR HEAD MAYBE YOUR FAMILY WASENT HELD HOSTAGE BY THESE TERRIOSTS .WHILE THEY RIPPED YOUR HOUSE APART LOOKING FOR A FEW JOINTS .I STAND BY MY RANT .TRY IT AGAIN YOU WILL FEEL THE STING OF MY RIFLE .NO MORE NAZIS WHY DID I SERVE IN VIETNAM JUST TO COME HOME TO BE ROBBED BY SCUM SUCH AS THEM .MAYBE I DONT HAVE THE EDUCATION TO RIGHT SENSABLE .BUT I HAVE ENOUGH SENSE TO KILL MY ENEMIES WHEN ATTACKED IN MY HOME .WTF
Semper Fi
Semper Fi
Sidenote:
For those of you who think that all cops are the scum of the earth, you should check out Law Enforcement Against Prohibiton (www.leap.cc).
To the reader who keeps writing in caps, Scott is very well-aware of the effects of drug prohibition, that's why he's writing this blog in the first place. It's one of, if not the most, damaging policies our nation has adapted, but we must support rational, productive means of putting an end to it instead of insisting upon shooting everyone who doesn't agree.
wtf
is that better im only in favor of killing home invaders who in most instances have every intention of killing me .stay out of my house then i wont have to go to your house its up to you.leap yes they are reformed crimnals who have seen the error of thier ways will it save them from eternal dammnation thats yet to be seen
WTF?
People have a natural right to self-defense, even though current laws could end you up capital punished or imprisoned for life. But premeditating murder, and looking for it, is criminal in the eyes of man and also God.
Drug criminals should go out of their way to cooperate with the law; and shooting an intruder should only be in extreme duress when one's life is truely in danger. After all, stupid as they are, the laws are the laws. And you have a choice to obey or disobey.
An eye-for-an-eye or a tooth-for-a-tooth, never benefited anybody. Violent drug activists, run the risk of turning themselves in to terrorists. And turning the whole movement into a subject for Homeland Security.
wtf
20 screamning manics in the middle of the night armed with auto rifles breaking down your door.i think that triggers the extreme duress clause and your life could not be in more danger .what else could your response be.but to drop the offending crimnals like a bad habit.if policy was left to guys like you we would all be speaking german .and i realy hate nazis and pussys
Hey!
Come on, pay attention. You've been reading the site. Be fair. You know that if the policy was left to me, they wouldn't be raiding your house in the first place. Don't act like we're supporting this. You know that's not true.
Being a pacifist, I hate to
Being a pacifist, I hate to admit, but I side with WTF. We all have heard the lies the cops tell to justify their actions, to get a warrant, to cover up their misdeeds. When a team of home invaders enters one's home, how is one to know they are really cops or just gangsters dressed up like them? The danger in no-knock warrant service is totally the product of the cops' actions. They come in screaming like Banshee's because they are hopped up on adrenaline and testosterone, brandishing loaded weapons with their fingers on the trigger. In such circumstances, to respond with all the firepower at one's disposal is the ONLY rational response.
Huh?
"to respond with all the firepower at one's disposal is the ONLY rational response."
If you want to die. Can you name any other likely outcome?
wtf
some times a man has to die your odds are as good as his if properly armed and trained in home defense .
It's not that simple.
WTF, even if you survive the raid you'll eventually end up in the electric chair for shooting a cop. I just don't understand what you're trying to accomplish. You can't beat them all. I know you're pissed off, but what's the point?
wtf
who said anything about shooting cops.im speaking of home invasions commited by crimnals real police dont commit these crimes only crimnals do.or do they
to wtf
What does speaking German have to do with Nazis? I'm not even german or of german descent but i think that is retarded. There are more neo-nazis in this country, speaking english, than anywhere in the world. You sound like a nazi if your answer to your problems is to kill them.
Please read up on the 2nd
Please read up on the 2nd and 4th Ammendments. Thank you.
my two cents-by uppity know-it-all.
First, censorship bad. Even if you just use it occasionally when you really need it. Best not to play with that little gateway drug. As you can see, real discourse only started once we all saw what wtf wrote. You should have left his comments in and replied to them. Then he would have his free speech and you would be able to let everyone know you don't agree or condone his point of view and explain why. I guess you got that anyway but you took the roundabout route to get it and took away his free speech. This hurts your credibility.
Second: WTF, you have to lose the anger. It clouds your judgment. Who do you want to win in the long run? The Freedom fighters or the Fascists? Besides, since you posted these comments there is no way you're going to get off if you actually shoot anyone. Don't believe me, talk to a lawyer. They'll just find them and show them to the jury and there is NO WAY you'll get off. Do you want them to win? You sound like you want vengeance and the only true vengeance will be to beat them all. dying and taking a few of them with you does nothing but give them a story to tell to scare people about us "druggies." In short, if you hurt them you help them.
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