The War On Medicinal Plants | Health/Medicine |Axisoflogic.com

“A dog starvd at his Masters Gate
Predicts the ruin of the State…”

~ William Blake, from “Auguries of Innocence”

Living in suburbia, I noticed years ago that the two most prevalent businesses amid the plethora of intersections were gas stations and pharmacies — a red, white and blueprint for America. According to the Mayo Clinic in 2013:

“Almost 70 percent of Americans take at least one prescription medication, and more than half take at least two, according to a new study by researchers at the Mayo Clinic. The most common prescriptions are for antibiotics, antidepressants and opioid painkillers.”[1]

During the peak of virus-times it became clear that Big Pharma was taking in huge profits, then soon it became clear that Big Pharma, Big Tech, corporate media and the government were at the same time suppressing preventatives and remedies, herbal and otherwise.[2]

Recently there was a no surprise headline: “U.S. Oil and Gas Companies Set to Make Tens of Billions More from Wartime Oil Prices in 2022.”[3] I'm no expert economist but I've come to the conclusion that the phrase “disaster capitalism” is redundant — so pick one of the two words. From the pump to the pharmacy, big business profits whether people are struggling to survive a virus or a war.

Speaking of oil, Steven Donziger was on house arrest in his NYCity apartment with a monitoring ankle bracelet for almost two years, then briefly imprisoned for winning a court case against Chevron-Texaco for the fossil fuel behemoth's egregious polluting of Ecuadorian waterways that are part of Indigenous Peoples’ territories.

Donziger “represented over 30,000 farmers and indigenous Ecuadorians in a class action case against Chevron related to environmental damage and health effects caused by oil drilling.”[4]

“The sprawling legal saga stems from a 2011 judgment in Ecuador where Chevron was ordered to pay $9.5bn in damages to people, represented by Donziger, blighted by decades of polluted air and water allegedly caused by the company’s oil drilling operations.”[5]

Seeing photos of oil-blackened waters is enough to dispel the “allegedly.”

Did you catch the topsy-turvy hypocrisy, the outright outrageousness?

Imprisoned for WINNING a court case; a case which, in effect, stands for the cleanup and protection of the waterways, along with respect for the Original Peoples and those who work the land to feed the people. A case which could become a legal precedent worldwide.

To the Indigenous Peoples of Ecuador fighting Chevron, the rainforest is their pharmacy. In suburbia, unless you have the wherewithal to grow or access/obtain medicinal herbs plus the know-how to use them properly, the pharmacy is the pharmacy.

You don't have to go to a rainforest or jungle to be convinced that the Earth is our natural pharmacist, as the plants and herbs are right there in front of us – except that many, especially in suburbia, have been brainwashed to consider them as “weeds” for the killing. Some may call it yard/lawn maintenance, but I call it a form of suburban Nazism.

In her book Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America, Annie Jacobsen writes:

“..antiplant work in herbicides was one element of Detrick's three-part biological weapons division, the other two being antiman and antianimal. Antianimal weapons were aimed at killing entire animal populations, with the goal of starving to death the people who relied on those animals for food.”

“The army's herbicidal warfare program during the Vietnam War started in August of 1961 and lasted until February 1971. More than 11.4 million gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed over approximately 24 percent of South Vietnam, destroying 5 million acres of uplands and forests and 500,000 acres of food crops—an area about the size of Massachusetts. An additional 8 million gallons of other anticrop agents, code-named Agents White, Blue, Purple, Pink, and Green, were also sprayed, mostly from C-123 cargo planes.”[6]

As to “antianimal,” ask the Native Peoples of the Plains what happened to the buffalo; and that was before so-called Nazism:

“...between 1850 and 1890, bison numbers... were reduced from around 50 million to less than 1000, due to overhunting by Whites.”[7]

A more recent example of “antiman”: In her NYTimes bestseller, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander notes:

“...the odd coincidence that an illegal drug crisis suddenly appeared in the black community after—not before—a drug war had been declared. In fact, the War on Drugs began at time when illegal drug use was on the decline.”[8]

Did you catch the topsy-turvy hypocrisy, the outright outrageousness?

Guilt by association fallacy
Some recent historical references reveal how non-pharmacy drugs have been used to manipulate people's consciousness and lives:

“'You want to know what this was really all about?' [John] Ehrlichman [Nixon's aide on domestic affairs] asked, referring to the war on drugs.

“'The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.

"'Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did,' he concluded, according to Baum.”[9]

The mass incarcerations and suffering due to that policy have been staggering. Along with the recent legalizations of marijuana in various states, there's another chance for change – if the Senate agrees:

“Drug policy reform advocates and progressive lawmakers celebrated the U.S. House of Representatives' approval of a bill to decriminalize marijuana nationwide, expunge federal cannabis convictions and arrests, and provide resources for communities targeted by the war on drugs.”[10]

And another telling episode in drugs history:

“During the Cold War, the CIA conducted clandestine experiments with LSD (and other drugs) for mind control, information gathering and other purposes.

“These government acid experiments—which also involved dozens of universities, pharmaceutical companies and medical facilities—took place throughout the 1950s and 1960s, before LSD was deemed too unpredictable to use in the field.

“When Project MK-Ultra became public knowledge in the 1970s, the scandal resulted in numerous lawsuits and a congressional investigation headed by Senator Frank Church.”[11]

Afghanistan grows tons of lovely poppies... some of which get converted to heroin. Indigenous Bolivians are fond of the coca plant... some of which gets converted to cocaine. Colombia is a major trafficking route for cocaine while Indigenous and other farmers struggle to make ends meet, or sadly worse, as the country is rife with violence and assassinations. “UN: Violence in Colombia Registers a 621% Increase This Year”[12]

Let's stop shooting ourselves in the feet with which we walk the Earth
My view of drug use (prescription and otherwise) is that there are three basic categories: 1) medicinal/healing; 2) recreational, which can include conscious use for insights, self-exploration, and communing with the natural world, some of which is often referenced as how a shaman uses plants with hallucinatory and other multi-dimensional effects, though then the category could be considered another level of medicinal/healing/helping others; 3) escapist/addictive.

The world currently runs on another addiction: oil.

And behind all of this, or below it, is the “antiplant.” Animals feed on plants as do humans, both for food and medicine. Yet some serious brainwashing began in the 1950s when the chemical companies (a residue of Operation Paperclip) exacerbated the war on medicinal plants.

Recently while in a friend's garage I happened to notice that on the back of a bag of Expert Gardener (a registered trademark of Walmart Inc.) Feed and Weed is a list of the approximately 250 weeds that the product gets “controlled.” The problem is, this is pure brainwashing via word-game mind-control. As examples, “dandelion, burdock, mugwort, clover, thistle, wild marigold” are plants aka medicines — but by labeling them “weeds” and convincing people that a lawn should not have them, the corporations and chemical industry became antiplant, and subsequently, the ignorant consumer became a foot soldier in the war on medicinal plants. Yet even those to whom I mention the attack on so-called weeds sometimes refuse to change... because it's a just a lawn, their lawn; thus brainwashing trumps ignorance.

Herbal and other remedies were suppressed by Big Pharma, the government and their media stooges in favor of vaccines. While the vaccines are helpful for some, the herbal and other remedies could have saved many lives.

Pharmacies are needed to help many people. Rainforests and jungles are needed to help many people and not just human beings.

In the US and elsewhere, we have to do better than simply gassing up the car to get to the pharmacy. Our long-term well-being and the well-being of the Earth depend upon that.

The twisted psychology of antiplant, antianimal, antiman tries to isolate people and make them afraid of and mistrusting of Earth energies, which leads to taming if not killing, instead of communing; as William Blake wrote:

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower…”

NOTES:
[1] “Almost 70 Percent of Americans Take at Least One Prescription Medication, Study Finds”

[2] “Video: “COVID-19, A Second Opinion.” Senator Ron Johnson Is a Truth Warrior and COVID Hero” 38 minutes.

[3 See here.

[4] Steven Donziger

[5] “Lawyer Steven Donziger found guilty of withholding evidence in Chevron case”

[6] Back Bay Books / Little, Brown and Company, 2014, p.389 & p.388.

[7] "The Plains Indians – Surviving With the Buffalo”

[8] The New Press, 2010, p.6.

[9] “Top Nixon adviser reveals the racist reason he started the 'war on drugs' decades ago”

[10] “We Did It': House Passes Bill to Decriminalize Marijuana, Expunge Convictions”

[11] “LSD”

[12] See here.

Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) is an essayist and resident poet at Axis of Logic. Check out his newest book Moving Through The Empty Gate Forest: inside looking out.

In addition to his work as a writer and small press publisher, he travels a holistic mystic pathway staying in touch with Turtle Island. His website is here.

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