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SOROS INFILTRATES CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT
Cliff Kincaid | American Daily | 02/07/06

Calvina Fay of the Drug Free America Foundation has pulled out as a speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which begins in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, because a “mini-debate” she was scheduled to appear in had been stacked against her. As it now stands, the event will feature two advocates of drug legalization, both of them funded by leftist billionaire and anti-Bush activist George Soros.

Having put most of the left-wing political movement and many liberal Democrats on his payroll, it is apparent that Soros is now working to manipulate the conservative movement. It is surprising that CPAC is facilitating his scheme.

A convicted inside trader who specializes in manipulating the currencies of the nations of the world, Soros is usually depicted as a “philanthropist” who believes in an “Open Society.” Hence, the name of his major funding mechanism, the Open Society Institute. In the Soros view, of course, an “open society” means encouraging behavior that undermines the traditional values and culture of America. This is hardly “conservative.”

In addition to promoting drug legalization, his causes include open borders, gay rights, abortion rights, opposition to the death penalty, lighter sentences for criminals, and assisted suicide. He tried almost single-handedly to buy the White House for Democrat John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election by spending over $20 million on controversial “527” organizations promoting his candidacy. On foreign policy issues, Soros is a big backer of the U.N. and opposes the Bush Administration’s war in Iraq and handling of the war on terrorism.

The scheduled Friday CPAC event on “A Conservative Drug Policy” was to feature a mini-debate between Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) and Calvina Fay. The “moderator,” hardly unbiased, was scheduled to be Rob Kampia of the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP). The Soros Open Society Institute has given the DPA millions of dollars, including $2.5 million in 2004 alone. MPP has been funded by Soros as well as Peter Lewis, chairman of the Progressive Corporation, who was arrested in New Zealand several years ago after customs officers found marijuana in his luggage. Lewis, who gave $340,000 to MPP in 2004, is also a major funder of the ACLU.

Court documents show that Kampia himself was convicted in 1989 and sentenced to prison for possessing and intending to distribute marijuana.

While paying thousands of dollars to appear at a conservative conference, MPP is selling $500 tickets to a March 30 fundraising “party” at the Playboy Mansion. Playboy founder Hugh Hefner provided the seed money for the drug legalization movement, which is now underwritten mostly by Soros and Lewis.

“Playmates will be available to give tours of the mansion grounds as you enjoy great music and comedy in one of America’s most renowned settings,” says MPP’s website. A member of the “host committee” for the Playboy event is Tommy Chong, who participated in pro-marijuana movies as part of the “Cheech and Chong” team and served nine months in prison for selling drug paraphernalia. You won’t need an NSA surveillance program to know what’s going on in the Playboy Mansion on March 30.

When Calvina Fay saw that the CPAC “debate” had been stacked against her, she pulled out. However, her group will still have a booth at CPAC. So will the Drug Policy Alliance. Later in the day, after the “debate,” Kampia’s MPP will host an event for all CPAC attendees and guests on why the War on Drugs should not target marijuana users. It is not known if Playmates will appear.

The Drug Policy Alliance also participated in CPAC last year, boasting that Executive Director Nadelmann was “well-received” and “appeared on several conservative radio shows coinciding with the conference.”

This is troubling because DPA and MPP are part of a major deception campaign to convince people that marijuana is harmless or even has medical benefits. Accuracy in Media last year disclosed the existence of documentary evidence that the “medical marijuana” movement is a fraud that exploits sick people. Video footage of a pro-marijuana event showed Ed Rosenthal, formerly of High Times magazine, speaking to dozens of marijuana activists. “With all the talk about medical marijuana, I have to tell you that I also use marijuana medically (laughter),” he says. “I have a latent glaucoma, which has never been diagnosed (more laughter). And the reason why it has never been diagnosed is because I’ve been treating it (laughter)…But there is a reason why I do use it. And that is because I like to get high. (cheers, applause). Marijuana is fun.”

Another video excerpt showed Richard Cowan, former director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, saying that “The key to it [legalization] is medical access because once you have hundreds of thousands of people using marijuana medically under medical supervision the whole scam is going to be blown…Once there’s medical access and if we continue to do what we have to do―and we will―then we’ll get full legalization.” Not surprisingly, a federal investigation of “medical marijuana” clubs and dispensaries in California has found they had been used as a cover for drug dealing and money laundering.

(LothNote: It just so happens that the author of this article happens to be the same author that wrote about the video in Accuracy in the Media a while back, which to my knowledge was not picked up by any of the mainstream press. Go figure. The video was taken strictly out of context. Check out Pete's rant on it over at the Drug WarRant from June of 2005.)

At the same time, evidence of a connection between marijuana and mental illness continues to mount. The influence of marijuana figures in the sensational murder case of Colin Roger Cotting, a 16-year-old in Alaska who allegedly raped his stepmother, beat her to death with a baseball bat, and stuffed her in a freezer. The murder resulted from a dispute when Cotting was confronted by his stepmother about his marijuana use. Cotting told police that he was too stoned on marijuana to remember what had happened.

In a case that received national attention, Joseph Smith, the convicted killer of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia, tried to blame his criminal behavior on using drugs, including cocaine and marijuana.

British newspapers are now covering a sensational case of “cannabis psychosis,” involving a music producer, Lisa Voice, who “was viciously assaulted in her home by a family friend who had been made psychotic by the drug,” as the London Sunday Times noted. She suffered a broken jaw, broken nose, collapsed lung, and eye injuries, and has already had 11 medical operations to rebuild her face and head. The attacker had been smoking marijuana since the age of 15 and believed he was getting subliminal messages from television.

In Britain, penalties for the use and possession of marijuana had been lowered after the drug had been reclassified. But Dr. Shahrokh Mireskandari, lawyer for Lisa Voice, was quoted in the Sunday Times as saying, “Let government ministers who say cannabis is a harmless drug come and explain that decision to Mrs. Voice and her many doctors. Cannabis should never have been reclassified and people such as Mrs. Voice now face a lifetime of pain because of the dangers of this drug.”

So why is CPAC giving Nadelmann, Kampia and their ilk a platform?

(LothNote: What a mouthful. Discuss.)

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Dennis

Accuracy in Media, yeah right.

Go ahead Kincaid, attempt to sow your seeds of hate about marijuana. You'll never realize you are in fact promoting the marijuana legalization movement. These days people read your articles and applaud these pioneers of marijuana law reform. Reading your article makes me so proud of them.

As far as your out moded yesteryear values are concerned, Society has changed and continues to change. No one values the hateful treatment of of marijuana consumers. You're the one who is out of touch with todays values.

Thanks for the article though, it was great! I think you're actually helping people get used to the idea of legalized marijuana. I mean, no one wants to be a hateful old douche bag like you.

And Faye, is the deck stacked against you, are you to yellow to have an open debate, or do you realize your views are full of crap? I wonder which one it is? I love your attitude, it's actually helping the drug law reform movement. Please don't go around crying just because no is buying your ignorant opinion about marijuana anymore. Afterall, marijuana prohibitionists expect some level of maturity from their drug free scapegoat.

troublemaker_42

LOL....last I checked, the two weren't mutually exclusive to one another. I can think of a number of substances that both are not harmless, and do have medical benefits. Cocaine, asprin, oxycotin, methamphetamine, tylenol, ibuprofin, the list could go on nearly forever.......all are far from harmless, but all have legit medical uses. Of course, all of them are MUCH more dangerous than marijuana, but stating the obvious truth (you know...Accuracy in Media?) wouldn't serve his purpose very well, now would it?

Accuracy in the Media? Not in THIS article

Cassius

George Soros is my hero.

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Buzzby

Most of this article is wasted on ad hominem attacks on the supporters of the marijuana legalization movement rather than any substantive discussion of the pros and cons of marijuana and its legalization. That's not much of a surprise, as Kincaid is King of the Logical Fallacy.

As for the debate being "stacked", let's see... On one side is Ethan Nadelmann and Rob Kampia. (The latter constrained to relative neutrality by his position as moderator.) On the other side is Calvina Fay and a whole room full of Conservatives. It sounds pretty evenly matched to me. Well, maybe not in brain power...


None of the major players in the legalization movement claim that marijuana is "harmless". Just about anything can be harmful if misused. The real question is, "Should people receive criminal sanctions for being in possession of something that is potentially harmful?" If the answer is "yes" then we had better start banning cars, knives, beer, baseball bats, and the internet.

Anyone who still believes that marijuana has no medical benefits is either on the federal payroll or addicted to ideology rather than fact.


There is documentary evidence that someone made a joke about fact that marijuana has both medical and recreational uses...


This isn't evidence of a conspiracy. It's a logical projection of what will happen when hundreds of thousands of people are using medical marijuana and none of the myths about marijuana users come true.


I understand that Cotting ate Rice Krispies for breakfast that morning. Since that preceded the crime it must be the cause of it, right? We should run a poll: "Have you ever killed anyone and stuffed them in a freezer?" I suspect that we'd have few "yes" answers and we have a lot of marijuana-years represented on this site.


Among intelligent people this is known as a "lame excuse".


Why does Kincaid put so much weight on the lame excuses of murderers?


He smoked marijuana. He was psychotic. Therefore, smoking marijuana made him psychotic. Could it be that Conservatives simply need a remedial course in basic logic?


Conservatives will do anything for money?

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Cassius

The biggest problem I had with the article was that it promotes the idea that medical marijuana is nothing but a farce designed to lead to eventual recreational legalization.

Some people, as indicated in the examples provided in the article, may indeed be trying to do that. However, that is no reason to dismiss the vast amount of people that DO get medical benefits from marijuana. All you have to do is talk to one MS patient for a few minutes and you won't be so eager to take his marijuana away anymore. But obviously, the author of this article and those like him aren't interested in empathizing with people who are suffering. They are just interested in making sure that those of us who aren't suffering, also don't have any fun to go along with our non-suffering.

MrIMStoned

I think someone needs to start a website called lies in the media and only feature systematic breakdowns of all the lies and half truths and rhetoric in kincaid's articles.

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"In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable what then?"

johnnyd

He does put his money where his mouth is.

They are two distinction issues but the DEA would rather lump it all together as one big issue, instead of breaking it down into its descreet components. Its much harder to argue several issues than just one.

Dennis

I wanted to remind you that not ALL conservatives are bad. I'm willing to bet that many at CPAC think that something needs to be done in the area of marijuana law reform. I consider myself a moderate conservative and I'm for marijuana legalization.

Buzzby

Free Weeds
The marijuana debate
William F. Buckley | The National Review | 06/29/2004

Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great. The laws aren't exactly indefensible, because practically nothing is, and the thunderers who tell us to stay the course can always find one man or woman who, having taken marijuana, moved on to severe mental disorder. But that argument, to quote myself, is on the order of saying that every rapist began by masturbating. General rules based on individual victims are unwise. And although there is a perfectly respectable case against using marijuana, the penalties imposed on those who reject that case, or who give way to weakness of resolution, are very difficult to defend. If all our laws were paradigmatic, imagine what we would do to anyone caught lighting a cigarette, or drinking a beer. Or — exulting in life in the paradigm — committing adultery. Send them all to Guantanamo?

Legal practices should be informed by realities. These are enlightening, in the matter of marijuana. There are approximately 700,000 marijuana-related arrests made very year. Most of these — 87 percent — involve nothing more than mere possession of small amounts of marijuana. This exercise in scrupulosity costs us $10-15 billion per year in direct expenditures alone. Most transgressors caught using marijuana aren't packed away to jail, but some are, and in Alabama, if you are convicted three times of marijuana possession, they'll lock you up for 15 years to life. Professor Ethan Nadelmann, of the Drug Policy Alliance, writing in National Review, estimates at 100,000 the number of Americans currently behind bars for one or another marijuana offense.

What we face is the politician's fear of endorsing any change in existing marijuana laws. You can imagine what a call for reform in those laws would do to an upward mobile political figure. Gary Johnson, governor of New Mexico, came out in favor of legalization — and went on to private life. George Shultz, former secretary of state, long ago called for legalization, but he was not running for office, and at his age, and with his distinctions, he is immune to slurred charges of indifference to the fate of children and humankind. But Kurt Schmoke, mayor of Baltimore, did it, and survived a reelection challenge.

But the stodgy inertia most politicians feel is up against a creeping reality. It is that marijuana for medical relief is a movement which is attracting voters who are pretty assertive on the subject. Every state ballot initiative to legalize medical marijuana has been approved, often by wide margins. Of course we have here collisions of federal and state authority. Federal authority technically supervenes state laws, but federal authority in the matter is being challenged on grounds of medical self-government. It simply isn't so that there are substitutes equally efficacious. Richard Brookhiser, the widely respected author and editor, has written on the subject for The New York Observer. He had a bout of cancer and found relief from chemotherapy only in marijuana — which he consumed, and discarded after the affliction was gone.

The court has told federal enforcers that they are not to impose their way between doctors and their patients, and one bill sitting about in Congress would even deny the use of federal funds for prosecuting medical marijuana use. Critics of reform do make a pretty plausible case when they say that whatever is said about using marijuana only for medical relief masks what the advocates are really after, which is legal marijuana for whoever wants it.

That would be different from the situation today. Today we have illegal marijuana for whoever wants it. An estimated 100 million Americans have smoked marijuana at least once, the great majority, abandoning its use after a few highs. But to stop using it does not close off its availability. A Boston commentator observed years ago that it is easier for an 18-year old to get marijuana in Cambridge than to get beer. Vendors who sell beer to minors can forfeit their valuable licenses. It requires less effort for the college student to find marijuana than for a sailor to find a brothel. Still, there is the danger of arrest (as 700,000 people a year will tell you), of possible imprisonment, of blemish on one's record. The obverse of this is increased cynicism about the law.

We're not going to find someone running for president who advocates reform of those laws. What is required is a genuine republican groundswell. It is happening, but ever so gradually. Two of every five Americans, according to a 2003 Zogby poll cited by Dr. Nadelmann, believe "the government should treat marijuana more or less the same way it treats alcohol: It should regulate it, control it, tax it, and make it illegal only for children."

Such reforms would hugely increase the use of the drug? Why? It is de facto legal in the Netherlands, and the percentage of users there is the same as here. The Dutch do odd things, but here they teach us a lesson.