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Anonymous Announces OpCannabis, Phase 1

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Odd_nonposter

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Anonymous Announces OpCannabis, Phase 1
By Steve Elliott ~alapoet~ in Culture, News
Sunday, April 8, 2012 at 8:00 pm

The online activist organization Anonymous has begun Phase 1 of OpCannabis, its effort to educate the public and work on behalf of cannabis legalization worldwide.

In announcing OpCannabis, which officially launches on April 20, Anonymous released the following statement:

Dear Citizens of the World

For far too long cannabis has been oppressed by big corporations, big pharma and governments when it could be benefiting all of mankind on many different levels. We have heard and we have watched your government lie and deceive you on all the dangers of cannabis. Show support by making your profile pictures green this April 20th on your social network profiles.

OpCannabis phase 1, initiated. We are Anonymous.....Expect us.

Attention individual people, governments, companies and fellow Anons!

We are Anonymous and we have an important message for you:
...
Anonymous will begin its support for the legalization of marijuana on 4/20/12. So please show your support by educating yourselves and making your profile pic or timeline banner on your social services accts green or 420 friendly.

We have all seen the power of the SOPA blackout so Anonymous feels that we can help cure the world simply by everyone showing their support for this most beneficial plant! We must end the prohibition of cannabis!!

These oppressors make trillions of dollars off of the war on drugs by keeping their privately owned jails overcrowded with nonviolent drug offenders! We are approaching the 11 billion dollar mark that the government has spent on the drug war this year alone and have put millions of nonviolent offenders behind bars. This is a true crime against humanity and needs to end!

Saying cannabis is a dangerous drug and is not a medicine is NOT a noble lie... it is simply a lie!

WE ARE ANONYMOUS.

WE ARE LEGION for legalization!

WE DO NOT FORGIVE the crimes of the War on Drugs.

WE DO NOT FORGET our brothers + sisters locked up because of it.

EXPECT US.
Click to expand...

Source: http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2012/04/anonymous_announces_opcannabis_phase_1.php
 
I suspect they will probably lose quite a bit of support in middle America because of this :(
People are so brainwashed that this plant will kill you, but continue to intake poison on a daily basis.


Fucking hypocrisy.
 
Good for them. I highly doubt this operation will influence legislators to green it up in the White House, but will at least stir up some civilians to get involved. The Internet is the new daily paper, people are much more accepting it seems to posts written online than an actual document containing the same information. Attention spans on average must be growing shorter again.
 
I don't see what Anonymous can really do. The people who are friendly to pot already know all this. The people who don't know, don't care, or who are against it will continue to be that way.

It all comes down to who has the power to change this; that's the government, and they're not going to.

In fact, the only way the U.S. gov will change it's current DEA policy and violations against civil liberties is with massive civil disobedience. But look around... America is unhealthy, indebted, and overburdened. Who is going to stand up?
 
exactly thats why they are unhealthy, indebted, overburdoned and uneducated. So that they dont know how to fight back, or so that they cant organize to fight back. Pretty sad considering we were once upon a time the greatest country on earth. not to mention this country was founded on civil disobedience.
 
Anonymous is lame. Also anyone else get kind of annoyed by the massive amount of publicity 420 gets?
 
i think it's useful to get people talking. my profile pic will be green.
The people who don't know, don't care, or who are against it will continue to be that way.
Click to expand...
pro pot has been steadily gaining in the polls. a couple years ago it passed 50% in favor of legalization. we have to continue the dialogue.
 
slightly off topic- What ever happened to "whatistheplan?"? Shouldn't they be in the final stage of that by now?
 
Brilliant, a bunch of "hackers" who a lot of the world looks down on - is going to try and educate people about cannabis.

This pisses me off and i'm a toker, all your average persons gonna see is a bunch of lame criminals promoting drugs. Thanks, but i'd rather have someone reputable fighting this cause. Fuck you anonymous!
 
^ that's the point of the profile picture thing -- if enough reputable people have green profiles...

i think a lot of the anti anon stuff is from false info. there is no "anonymous," anybody with a youtube account can send an anonymous "offocial" message. there is no official source, it is just thousands of varying people, who sometimes collaborate on important issues.

why are they nonreputable and "lame"? have they done anything against the interests of the human species?
 
Foreigner said:
I don't see what Anonymous can really do. The people who are friendly to pot already know all this. The people who don't know, don't care, or who are against it will continue to be that way.

It all comes down to who has the power to change this; that's the government, and they're not going to.

In fact, the only way the U.S. gov will change it's current DEA policy and violations against civil liberties is with massive civil disobedience. But look around... America is unhealthy, indebted, and overburdened. Who is going to stand up?
Click to expand...

This is the type of defeatist talk that will never lead us in a good direction.
You have no feeling of power or responsibility.
You have given up all of your individual responsibility and are trying to encourage others to do so as well.

You are wrong that only the government has the power to stop the drug war.
The people have power over the government.
If 75% of the voting public came out as being strongly against the drug war, it would be stopped very, very soon.
The people have the ultimate power, despite how it often seems.

Maybe the less healthy Americans get, the more will need medical cannabis, including those previously brainwashed into thinking it is more dangerous than alcohol. Their children will watch cannabis improve their lives, and things will change.

You think because Americans owe money, they won't stand up for social change?

Gandhi gathered Indians that were so poor that most of us here could never imagine the difficulties of their lives. They rose up and won over the powerful British, without using violence.

Martin Luther King gathered blacks that were poor and disenfranchised. They had no money or power. They rose up and took back their basic freedoms, forcing white America to treat them as equal.


Your whole way of thinking is strange to me.
It sounds defeatist and defeated.
Worse, you are trying to convince others to give up their hope.
Instead, why don't you spend your time sending emails, or organizing people, to try to right this wrong?
Or join some group, and support them with $10 a month. Or make a sign and stand on the street.
Or make a video showing the benefits of cannabis. Or publish a poem on how cannabis has helped you, or write a song about how people deserve the freedom to explore their own consciousness.

There are so many ways to help the cause. Maybe all of them will be small, incremental help, but to gather the masses and turn the tides, this is required. You don't seem to know this, or lack the patience to do so.
But what you don't see is that, although the war on drugs is old, things are changing rapidly.
Medical cannabis is legal in around one-third of the US states.
More and more people are having their minds opened.
There is more research on cannabis and other drugs, and much of it shows that alcohol and tobacco are two of the more dangerous drugs we have available. It is getting harder and harder to argue that cannabis and LSD should be illegal while alcohol and tobacco are legal.

You have to choose whether you want to be a straggler, and slow us down, or jump in and join us, but the force of this thing makes the end of the drug war look inevitable. It may take 5 years or 50 years, but we will be looking back on the present with sympathy for the poor victims of the drug war and disgust for what happened.

Will you be saying "I helped this along the whole way"? Or will you only commit once the issue is already decided, when it is safe and certain?
 
Newbierock said:
Brilliant, a bunch of "hackers" who a lot of the world looks down on - is going to try and educate people about cannabis.

This pisses me off and i'm a toker, all your average persons gonna see is a bunch of lame criminals promoting drugs. Thanks, but i'd rather have someone reputable fighting this cause. Fuck you anonymous!
Click to expand...

no, fuck you newbierock.

expect us.
 
slimvictor said:
This is the type of defeatist talk that will never lead us in a good direction.
You have no feeling of power or responsibility.
You have given up all of your individual responsibility and are trying to encourage others to do so as well.

You are wrong that only the government has the power to stop the drug war.
The people have power over the government.
If 75% of the voting public came out as being strongly against the drug war, it would be stopped very, very soon.
The people have the ultimate power, despite how it often seems.

Maybe the less healthy Americans get, the more will need medical cannabis, including those previously brainwashed into thinking it is more dangerous than alcohol. Their children will watch cannabis improve their lives, and things will change.

You think because Americans owe money, they won't stand up for social change?

Gandhi gathered Indians that were so poor that most of us here could never imagine the difficulties of their lives. They rose up and won over the powerful British, without using violence.

Martin Luther King gathered blacks that were poor and disenfranchised. They had no money or power. They rose up and took back their basic freedoms, forcing white America to treat them as equal.


Your whole way of thinking is strange to me.
It sounds defeatist and defeated.
Worse, you are trying to convince others to give up their hope.
Instead, why don't you spend your time sending emails, or organizing people, to try to right this wrong?
Or join some group, and support them with $10 a month. Or make a sign and stand on the street.
Or make a video showing the benefits of cannabis. Or publish a poem on how cannabis has helped you, or write a song about how people deserve the freedom to explore their own consciousness.

There are so many ways to help the cause. Maybe all of them will be small, incremental help, but to gather the masses and turn the tides, this is required. You don't seem to know this, or lack the patience to do so.
But what you don't see is that, although the war on drugs is old, things are changing rapidly.
Medical cannabis is legal in around one-third of the US states.
More and more people are having their minds opened.
There is more research on cannabis and other drugs, and much of it shows that alcohol and tobacco are two of the more dangerous drugs we have available. It is getting harder and harder to argue that cannabis and LSD should be illegal while alcohol and tobacco are legal.

You have to choose whether you want to be a straggler, and slow us down, or jump in and join us, but the force of this thing makes the end of the drug war look inevitable. It may take 5 years or 50 years, but we will be looking back on the present with sympathy for the poor victims of the drug war and disgust for what happened.

Will you be saying "I helped this along the whole way"? Or will you only commit once the issue is already decided, when it is safe and certain?
Click to expand...

I assure you I have been very involved in activism, more than anyone I know. As someone said above, support for pot in the U.S. has passed 50% already. Since democracy is majority rule, why is government policy not changing?

It's about maintaining economic and political supremacy, ensuring that the private prison system and law enforcement all retain their jobs. I mean, look at hemp. As a product, hemp could change the world, but it too is suppressed. Hemp and pot are of the same source. If anything, hemp is a BIGGER threat than pot to industry.

You cite past victories accomplished by the people, such as in the days of the British Empire. Back then, the British government did not have swat teams, sonic cannons, water cannons, pepper spray, tear gas, and anti-terrorism laws that essentially strip the public of habeas corpus, the constitution, and judical rights. There are a million and one videos on youtube of legal protests being disbanded, and people engaging in civil disobedience getting pepper sprayed or jackbooted in the face before being hauled away. You can't even wear masks or videotape police action anymore - but they can. Legal protests are now being disbanded in the United States. It's becoming incredibly difficult to get protest permits if your protest does not operate outside of designated "protest zones" that won't cause "public disruptions". They want you to protest far away from anywhere that matters so that the status quo can continue. Meanwhile, the whole POINT of activism is to be disruptive. People have forgotten. Look at what happened to the 99% protests. The media turned on them, even though their protest cause was 100% correct and focused on the source of the problem: the banks and the crony capitalists. And because the general public is asleep at the wheel, they listen to what the media tells them. People stopped focusing on the message of the 99% movement, and instead started focusing on the anecdotal reports of people acting badly.

It was at that point that I stopped being an activist. There's no point... we need People power in this country, and people are no longer politically awake to what is required to vigilantly maintain freedom. The point is not to be safe, the point is to be free and live with the consequences of that freedom. Can you imagine the government bypassing the 1st or 2nd amendments 60 years ago during the height of the civil rights movement? There would be bedlam. But today that is precisely what the government is doing - and people are not rising up. If the people do not rise up, then the government will continue its statist expansion. Since the 99% movement, the government has passed increasingly militant laws that allow for the warrantless detention of citizens, and disbanding of protests. The media might have downplayed the 99% movement, but the government took notice and took action. Those protests will not be happening again because now the police can arrest you without haebeas corpus. These are the fruits of 9/11. The people have become the enemy of the state.

As long as this nation moves more and more toward crony capitalism and corporate socialism, the drug laws are not going to change. I'm not defeatist, I'm a realist. Of the people who CAN protest (who aren't slaves to minimum wage or dying of various chronic health disorders), a lot don't want to because they are being watched by cameras, detained without charges, fingerprinted, and basically blackbagged. I've not only been an activist but my undergrad was in political science, international relations, and domestic policy. If defeating the DEA were a matter of logic and public benefit, it would have happened within 10 years after Reagan. The fact is, it benefits a select few, much like the rest of the economic policy formed by successive administrations. Our entire economy as it current stands is now destroying small business, individual liberty, and is fully supportive of what many now call the 1% - the plutocrats.

Just like religion and state must be separated, so too must business and the state. Until then, we will just have the aristocratic barrons of industry running government, and they have zero interest in the legalization of things like pot and hemp, just like they have zero interest in fully subsidizing the green energy sector and moving away from oil. It's all big money, and old money.

So yeah... keep calling me a defeatist. The commoners in the United States have been stripped of power, and now thanks to the GOP, even unions are going the way of the dinosaur. Industry does not need a middle class anymore in America, not when they have China and India pumping out their crap for dollar-a-day wages. The middle class was created in the U.S. to service industry - that is all. As we move toward a service based economy and away from manufacturing, our civil liberties are gradually vanishing. Marx himself pointed out the relationship between a nation's economy and the social welfare of people - and he was right. As I said in another thread, things are going to get a lot worse before they get better, but maybe that intensity is just what our country needs to turn off their televisions and stop eating twinkies all day.

There's no point in fighting to improve a system that is broken at its very foundation. I say let it burn. Let the whole god damn thing crash. Don't fix what is broken. We need something completely different, which is why I prefer to stand on the side lines and watch it go down. Protesting, at this point in time, is completely redundant and useless. Smoke pot if you want. The law is not going to change to help you out. It might at the State level, but the DEA is not going anywhere. They'd rather people die in the hundreds or thousands every year over gang and border shootouts than legalize this damn plant already. These are the fruits of tyranny, and legalizing pot is the LEAST of our worries right now.

You think the People are going to rise up and change this. I think the People have been lulled to sleep with entertainment and promises of safety and security, and the bourgeoise are taking over. Let Rome burn - it's not coming back to its glory days.
 
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^ I appreciate your viewpoint, and probably agree with 98% or more of your political views.
Therefore, I think that our perspectives are very similar.

And yet, I refuse to give up hope.
There was no reason to think that poor Indians had any hope of beating the British army, or that poor blacks in the South had any hope of getting the right to go to school with whites, with the governor of Mississippi saying that blacks and whites would go to the same schools "over my dead body". And yet these things were accomplished. Because people pushed.
While things have changed greatly post-911, the principles are still the same. The prisons are already full, so if a million people get on the streets and protest the drug war, where would they put all of us if they wanted to arrest us?

We can win.
We will win.
It will take time, but ultimately, just as communism couldn't continue forever, the wall will be torn down.
 
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