Marijuana Growers Will Launch Terror Attack? Wtf?

[Southern Cross]

And the Reefer Madness Continues.

 

This makes Oakland County's Drug Warriors look almost normal by comparison.

 

Weirdest Training Drill Ever: Feds Imagine Marijuana Growers Will Launch Terror Attack?

Drug War Chronicle / By Phillip Smith

 

 

November 21, 2010

Northern California pot growers bomb a car and a bus, then take over Shasta Dam in a bid to free an imprisoned comrade. It sounds like the plot to a very cheesy Grade-B thriller, but it was actually the premise for a day-long terrorist attack drill conducted by 20 state, local, and federal law enforcement agencies Wednesday.

 

According to an account published in the local paper the Redding Record Searchlight, the Shasta Dam scenario had the "Red Cell" pot grower/terrorists blowing up the car and bus to create a distraction and then taking over the dam. Holding three people hostage, the terrorist pot growers then threaten to flood the Sacramento River by opening the flood gates unless their imprisoned comrade is freed.

 

The drill was part of the US Bureau of Reclamation's Critical Infrastructure Crisis Response Exercise Program, which started in 2003. It identified six dams, including Shasta, the nation's second largest, as possible terrorist targets. Similar exercises took place at Utah's Flaming Gorge Dam in 2003, Washington's Grand Coulee Dam in 2005, and Hoover Dam on the Arizona-Nevada border in 2008. But none of those exercises identified pot growers as the putative terrorists.

 

According to bureau spokesperson Sheri Harral, the drill took 18 months of planning and cost the bureau $500,000. The other emergency and law enforcement agencies that participated paid their own expenses.

 

As of press time, Harral had not returned a Chronicle call asking why marijuana growers were selected as the terrorists. Northern California is home to thousands of pot growers, many of them doing it legally under the auspices of California's medical marijuana law. There are no known incidents of pot farmer terrorist attacks on critical infrastructure.

 

Dale Gieringer, head of California NORML and an observer of the state marijuana scene for decades, told the Chronicle he was unaware of any California pot grower terrorist cells—ever. "No, never," he said.

 

Nor was he impressed with the pot grower as terrorist scenario. "That was so stupid," he sighed. "I don't know what inspired it. I can see the need to do better pat downs for air travelers to make sure they're not holding joints in their underpants, but this? It sounds like something some yahoo red county sheriff would dream up."

 

Neither was the Marijuana Policy Project amused. "This is a classic example of law enforcement's utterly inaccurate stereotype of who is involved with marijuana," said the group's communications director, Mike Meno. "For decades, they have villianized users and people involved in the industry to such an extent that they now equate them with terrorists. It might be laughable," he said, "but it gives us real insight into the drug warrior mentality and what they think of marijuana people."

 

 

"Red Cell" plotter? No, just more Reefer Madness

"The whole idea that they would equate growers with terrorism is absurd and insulting," sputtered

 

NORML

 

founder Keith Stroup. "This is too ignorant to take seriously. It's hard to imagine that in this time of fiscal crisis, someone would have the nerve to propose spending money on such a ludicrous exercise. My goodness! Of all the potential violent criminals out there, the idea that they would focus on pot growers shows that this is a political game," he said.

 

 

 

"People will be laughing about this for decades," Stroup continued. "You have almost half the people in California voting for marijuana, and on the other hand, this. It's hard to believe this is going on.

 

 

 

At least, they could have called it the "Green cell."

 

Redding, CA

United States

 

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/148942/weirdest_training_drill_ever:_feds_imagine_marijuana_growers_will_launch_terror_attack/

[peanutbutter]

Whip any dog for a long enough period of time and they will bite you.

[+EdwardGlen]

I think the "Mad Season" has hit.

[Kingpinn]

WOOF WOOF

[+RevThad]

It goes hand in hand with sensationalized stories like this one...

 

‘Major marijuana dealer’ sentenced to prison for 2nd-degree murder

[welj31]

If someone picks this story up and runs with it it could be the undoing of such actions. $500k is a lot of $$ to spend on something that has never happened and most likely wont ever happen. This should be showen it the light of day for what it is. Pure crap and a waste of money.

 

On the other hand I can see why they would want to lump MM into this group. It makes it easyer to build cases (in court and the court of public opinion).

[+Silverblue]

what a waste.

 

Sb

[freemannabis]

Very worthy post.

 

Much obliged.

 

On the flip side of "another era":

 

"The legislature finds that members of such groups frequently use their office or position to advocate and teach subversive doctrines. The legislature finds that members of such groups are frequently bound by oath, agreement, pledge or understanding to follow, advocate and teach a prescribed party line or group, dogma or doctrine without regard to truth or free inquiry. The legislature finds that such dissemination of propaganda may be and frequently is sufficiently subtle to escape detection in the classroom. It is difficult, therefore, to measure the menace of such infiltration in the schools by conduct in the classroom."

 

http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,1607,7-153-54463_18670_18793-53650--,00.html

 

For some reason Big ol' Daddy War-Bucks' barbaric, "shock and awe" psychological-extortion techniques harshed my mellow all the way back to my very first days of "class-distinction-indoctrination," way back in "grade school," when I was first snatched right out of the craddling bosoms of my loving, caring, nurturing parents, then bused away in mass-quantities of children, to a neighboring town, to "elementary school", then stuck inside a suffocating institution where I, like too many others with, before and after me, all were forced into the herded assembly line of terror-eyed, broken innocence would be daily, irrepairably, brutally dispirited, socially "classed" (aka: stigmatized) and "academically standardized" (aka: "graded") for the very first time.

 

And just then when I was thinking this ongoing trauma called childhood reality might not be such a good thing to be forcibly endurerd by a "reasonable" soul barely a half a decade off the umbilical cord ...

 

... then came the sudden, blaring "air-raid" sirens - "safety-drills'" "our authorities" explained to our fearfilled, no longer as innocent-minded young heads afterwards. That is, much too long after we were herded down the dungeony sub-basement that doubled as a "Fall-Out/Bomb-Shelter" when it wasn't quite so incognito as an "ordinary" building boiler-room; Where we were all too hastily corraled into the groping, life-griping darkness of the boiler-room/bunker [allegedly] "for our very 'safety,'" where we were ordered by "our teachers" to crouch down on the floor in a fetal position and "not even make one little peep" or else "they" would break-in to the utter darkness of our hiding to find us ... then we'd all be sure to want to die just to escape from "the enemy's" slow, painful, tortureously horrible death at the hands of the "invaders'" heartless armies that were looking "to get us".

 

When it was "finally all over," and the lights were allowed to be turned back on and we were herded back to our "classes," and "they" said we were "safe" from the "bad guys," "the teachers" proclaimed it all was a "practice raid" meant only to "help" [as "to serve and to protect] us" from "the enemy".

 

All these decades later I still - as much as I shudder to - remember "who" really scared me the most back then.

 

And, I know - for sure - "who" really goes to extremes to terrorize "We the People" now.

 

"The legislature finds that such dissemination of propaganda may be and frequently is sufficiently subtle to escape detection ..."

 

Talk about subversive!

 

Yup! Same ol' same ol' ...

 

For shame; For shame; For sure.

 

Let FREEDOM Ring - long and far and true.

 

SHARE The CURE

 

HARVEST The HEALING