kinabaloo and tceight: you have both courteously suggested that you don't want to take this thread off-track. However, if I correctly perceive the purpose of this thread to be mapping a path to achieving the desired effects (produced by analogs) while reducing harm, then one might conclude that the "OT" comments are really just extensions of the same premise into the realm of food and pharmaceuticals.
As such, those comments are highly relevant for those of us that have a strong interest in a more comprehensive framework of practical harm reduction.
Bottom line: if you decide to start a separate thread to discuss these non-WTA topics further, then please let us know!
I imagine that you're already familiar with George Orwell and '1984'. I haven't yet read it myself but see it quoted gain and again in the arenas I either contribute to or hang out at. He was able to see the future because that future was already occuring and was clearly going to get worse. He had his eyes open. Today, war is peace; it's almost official.
The nightmare isn't 'over there', it's here.
John Swinton, former Chief of Staff at The New York Times, was asked to give a toast before the prestigious New York Press Club in 1953. Swinton was admiringly called "the dean of his profession" by other newsmen. He made this candid confession:
There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press. We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.
1953 - just imagine how even worse things are now.
A few years later Eisenhower in his farewell adress warned of the military industrial complex, then quite new (
http://www.h-net.org/~hst306/documents/indust.html). Again, just imagine the true reality today.
There are other quotes along the lines of 'if the people knew what is done in their name ...' that I can't find off the top of my head, but you get the picture.
We live in a world few really comprehend, so dark is the reality.
