As
mainstream medical science continues to explore the healing properties of
cannabis, research indicates the plant has several properties that reduce the
risk of cancer in people who smoke it. Some scientists believe cannabis could
even be cancer’s proverbial silver bullet.
Most
cannabis smokers will admit that while cannabis is great for what ails them, it
certainly can’t be good for the insides of their lungs. However, experiments
performed at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) suggest smoking
cannabis might actually prevent lung cancer.
Dr. Donald
Tashkin is a pulmonologist at the UCLA. He has studied the effects of marijuana
smoking since the 1980’s. Agencies, institutes and think tanks across the
country often reference his work.
He
performed a study to determine if there was a link between lung cancer and
smoking cannabis. Although marijuana does contain the same chemicals in tobacco
that cause cancer, Dr. Tashkin discovered that chemical compounds in cannabis
protected the human body from tumor growth.
While
patients who smoked tobacco were twenty times more likely to develop lung
cancer than non-smokers, cannabis smokers showed no increased risk. Dr. Tashkin
believes the THC, one of the psychoactive components within marijuana, kills
aging and unhealthy cells before tumors can form.
In
another scientific study performed in Spain, research scientists at Madrid's Complutense and
Autonoma Universities separated 30 laboratory rats with brain cancer into two
groups of 15. One group was given infusions of THC to treat their affliction.
The first untreated group died in
two weeks. 9 of the THC-infused rats lived longer than a month, and 3 of the
rats were cured. Scientists believe that THC causes cancerous cells to die
prematurely, leaving healthy cells unharmed.
In October of 2003 the medical
journal Nature Reviews published an article written by world-famous cancer
treatment research scientist Dr. Manuel Guzman that discussed in great detail
the antitumor effects of cannabinoids.
Cannabinoids are one of the principle chemical compounds found in
cannabis.
Dr. Guzman discovered in study after
careful study that cannabinoids selectively target cancerous tumors, destroying
them, and at the same time even protect non-cancerous cells from harm.
Another study conducted by
scientists at the California Pacific Medical Center of San Francisco also found
that THC, in many experiments, destroyed cancerous brain cells without harming
the healthy ones.
The Italians are also part of the
march to cure cancer with cannabis. In July of 1998 research conducted at the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that cannabinoids prevented
tumor growth in cells of patients afflicted with breast cancer.
During
the 90’s the federal government used $2 million taxpayer dollars to conduct
research on cancer in mice and rats. Conducted by the U.S. National Toxicology
Program, conclusively determined that THC protected cells from cancer.
Upon
reaching this conclusion, the federal government hid the results. The report
was leaked to AIDS Treatment News and
the results were later published in the national media, but despite the
positive results, the federal government has yet to conduct further research.
As the
country gets greener with legalization, many people can attest to the
beneficial effects of cannabis for treating their symptoms. If more knew about
the research that indicates cannabis just might cure cancer, the legalization
effort would attract greater numbers.
Ever since the death of Samuel Clemens in 1910, the country has been in constant need of home-grown, brutally honest authors to gaze upon our world with x-ray perception and tell us the real truth of how we are doing things right or wrong, regardless of who we are or the extent of the backlash. Henry Rollins is a musician, performer and writer that has been doing just that with his regular journalistic contributions to magazines such as Details, LA Weekly, Vanity Fair and The Huffington Post.
Along with his stand up comedy, spoken word performances and YouTube series, “WordswithMeaning!” the critical observations of Rollins have been the perfect vehicle for a sustained, uncompromising assault upon hypocrites, idiots and pundits on both the left and the right at a time when everyone else seems to be lining up to kiss a large amount of corporate and/or government ass to make a buck.
While Rollins was doing all of that he also won a Grammy for Get in the Van: On the Road with Black Flag, and authored the spoken word classics Black Coffee Blues and Think Tank. After getting his start in radio in 2004 as the host for Harmony in My Head on Indie 103.1 FM Los Angeles, in 2009 he began hosting a live show Saturday nights on KCRW 88.9 FM public news radio, where he combines kissaki-sharp analysis with cutting edge music for the massively perceptive. What’s next for a man with a career as intricate, illustrious and revolutionary as Henry Rollins? I am sure you have a lot going on right now. What projects are keeping you busy?
The super boring job of proof reading and editing a lot of material. One of the books I have coming out is easy to wrap up, but the others will take a lot of surgery. Editing books takes a lot of time in between working, meetings and auditions. That’s what I do when I’m not touring. I’m also looking for employment.
It’s hard to imagine a person as prolific as yourself looking for a job.
It’s a non-tour year. Last year I did nearly 190 shows. It gets to the point where shows are still coming in, but the tour is booked so your calendar gets pretty marked up. Now it’s a non-tour year, I’m in this interesting position of having some solid jobs, I have a lot of contract stuff to do, but I still have to look for employment. That necessitates pitch meetings and auditions. Yesterday I was in a line thirty people long auditioning just for a microscopic role on a television show. We’ve mostly been pitching ideas for shows that I might be plugged into.
It is an interesting position, one year you are the guy, you are on the billboard, the marquee, and the next year you are in line hoping some casting person who doesn’t know you will throw you a bone. It’s good, though, that it keeps you humble.
What kind of show would you want to do? I could easily imagine you as the History Channel equivalent of Anthony Bourdain.
I’d like to do a show that tells you where and how the history books got it wrong. Just an entire series where we point out the facts and reveal how history is written by the winners, so of course the winners give themselves a white hat.
For example, if you tell a person in rural American that we lost the Vietnam War, you’ll be eating your dinner through a straw in your neck because he’ll break your jaw. But if you go over to Vietnam today, the Vietnamese have moved on. They are very sure they won that war, because they survived it. That’s how they think. “We are still alive, so you didn’t beat us.” What I mean is…there are a lot of ways to look at any historical event.
A cable television show that tells the real truth about the history of America? That’s way too controversial for prime time.
Doing that kind of show would be interesting to me, but since so many channels have corporate investors, you have to go with Current TV or some other equivalent, but they couldn’t afford to do it because they are always broke.
Watch the Fox News financial channel. They keep saying that we’re in a big recession so you have to invest in Home Depot. To people like that, someone else’s disaster is a shot in the arm for the economy.
When it comes to Hollywood, it’s all about the money, and a big part of that is maintaining a corporate-approved, advertising-friendly environment.When you go into the entertainment industry as a worker bee, and see how the sausage is made, you really see how it’s all just based on a scorched earth policy. You end up having really mercenary conversations with people, when it comes to what you will do.
Nobody would wants to see a show that tells people the truth. They might know too much. They won’t fight our wars for us, fill our prisons for us. They’ll question authority. When you sell bombs and bullets for a living, you push a political agenda that’s going to make you the most money.
You don’t touch cannabis, but you support its legalization. What is your honest opinion about this controversial topic?
Smoking marijuana, in my opinion, is a monumental waste of time, but I’m not going to slap it out of your hand. But I not only want it legalized, I want it decriminalized. At least then you won’t go to jail for smoking it.
I see marijuana as just another stimulant. I fear alcohol. It fuels a guy up so he punches his wife and drives his car into a tree. I’m afraid of a person buying two AR-15’s and shooting up a shopping mall…that guy should get marijuana. I fear stupidity in America more than I fear someone buying weed.
My question is, will the states have the intestinal fortitude to retroactively free the black prisoners who are unfairly incarcerated for using marijuana if it’s legalized?
Probably not. The prison-industrial complex would lose a lot of money if it happened. I don’t think President Obama could ever let it happen.
I remember how, at one point I thought of the term, “prison-industrial complex.” I looked it up, and it turns out someone else thought of it a long time ago. Once they legalize it. Maybe the incarcerated won’t get their money back, but at least they will be free.
Obama may be against it, but the states have the tenth amendment, and can tell him to piss up a rope. But if it’s legalized then everyone who went to jail the month before over a back pocket full of weed should be let out.
The real problem is, if you decriminalize marijuana, you have a lot less opportunity to put Johnny in jail. It’s the prison-industrial complex. You see how much money is spent. The prison guard union is one of the strongest unions in America. They sell light bulbs for prisons, cement, paper, the food, and they need Johnny to break more laws. They say they are fighting crime, they are building prisons. Who’s making the money? Why is it that cannabis still illegal in America?
Because brown skinned people grow, sell and use it. A lot of those Fox news assholes smoked it in college, but now they use coffee and martinis, so it’s only for faggot hippies. “I’m a responsible chemical dependant. I use booze. It’s just five martinis.”
Pot, by comparison, is messy. You are buying a plant from someone that is not in a vacuum sealed, federally-approved package at the local 7-11. Besides, everyone out there is buying weed right now, anyway. Why not just legalize it?
What is the cannabis legalization movement doing wrong?
By having guys and gals going to the medical cannabis places with their bullshit hangnail prescriptions. For most, it’s a scam. Oh, you hurt your knee so I’m going to write you a prescription for your hangnail.
But the reason why the legalization movement is such a clusterfuck is because there is no clear political plan. The first time I saw medical marijuana, I was at a friend’s house. His mother would smoke these government-approved medical marijuana cigarettes. My friend would steal them. Medical marijuana is never in a black or white area. It’s always in the grey.
That’s obviously the case in a lot of places. Since we are already there, why not just legalize it? It’s stupid how someone with cancer pain has to worry about being arrested. If marijuana can help, why wouldn’t you want them to feel better? Why would you be okay with them being in pain? If you can help someone, right now, why won’t you? We are supposed to promote the general welfare; it says so in the Preamble to the Constitution.
What is your best advice for proponents of cannabis legalization?
As a non-smoking, marijuana decriminalization proponent, I would go at in as sensibly and legally as I could. Take into account the people who oppose you. They count on you to be unkempt, sloppy, illegal and high. Don’t go into an intellection battle high. Go in with your facts and figures and stats tattooed on your brain pan. When you do that, an opponent will still have to respect you for it.
Fortunately, the world is changing. The President actually mentioned the word gay. That set a precedent. In a hundred years they will talk about Barack Obama and how he said, “Gay brothers and sisters.” That took a lot of brass.
In a political world, if you say that you smoke cannabis you might as well be say you like to make it with little kids and sheep. All the other side has to say is, “My opponent wants your son to get high at school.” Why can’t someone say, “My opponent likes wine so he wants your son to get drunk at school.
But they are elected officials. They are in a very precarious position. I get a second chance, if I screw up. They don’t. If someone loses an election, he doesn’t get to come back. You can say you back gay marriage, but that is as red hot as you get. Saying yes to marijuana has to no longer be seen as, “He said what!?”
Your country is changing very rapidly, though. If I was writing for a cannabis-based magazine, I would be showing that marijuana smokers are not the funny characters the media always depicts, but that they are doctors and lawyers…professional, responsible people, just like the people who drink four beers and watch the game after working at the office all day.
In this transition to a weed economy, there is going to be a drunken sailor syndrome. When you take a sailor off the boat he’s going to drink his paycheck. There’s going to be a transition. As Joseph Stalin said, “When you cut wood, chips fly.” Someone will abuse weed. It’s going to happen. They are going to drive recklessly, have THC in their blood, and a bunch of people will overreact because of it. But let’s face it, cannabis is already out there. Legalizing it will not change anything.
I am sorry I took so long. Halloween is always very busy for me, and by the time I was done, there was no time to post anything on my humble website because I had to make money doing freelance writing, the moonlight was in my eyes, and I had to see a man about a hearse. Here is more information to back up my awesome theory.
This is Part IV of an exploration into the nature of Demogorgon (or The Monster, as I prefer to call it) in the Netflix sci-fi/horror masterpiece, Stranger Things. You can read Part I here, Part II here and Part III over here. Spoiler alerts will follow, as usual.
(HELL)O AGAIN
I dropped da bomb regarding my theory several weeks ago.
Instead of debating with people who do not believe my theory, it has been more
enlightening to read the ideas of others and see if their ideas were more
bullet-proof than what I came up with. So far I am quite pleased. In discussing
their own ideas, nobody has dived into the conspiracy theories that make up the
mythology of Stranger Things, which is very important to the work, in order to explain what The Monster is.
I’d like to apologize if I mislead anyone into thinking that
The Monster in Stranger Things is Eleven’s alter ego. It
is not. I referenced other films that dealt with similar themes regarding spontaneously
appearing imaginary beings in order to show that the Netflix series was dealing
with material that actually had roots in previous film and literature. Now I am
going to talk about a few more films, and then I am going to dive into the
conspiracy theories that make up The Monster.
That being said, throughout the first episode X-Men #134 is
mentioned a lot. In this comic, Phoenix, a female character with awesome
psychic powers (including telekinesis) has a dramatic personality change (mind
control is involved, of course) and becomes an alter ego, Dark Phoenix, turning evil. The Duffer Brothers would not have mentioned this comic without a
good reason.
THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY
The Duffer Brothers did not just reference other films when
they were creating the series. They also referenced conspiracy theories on the
Internet. Sure, the cinematography, subject matter and other themes draw from
serious literary and film influences, but the writing goes beyond that to
fulfill its objective. The Internet is a gigantic library of logic and
instinct, magik and science, business and entertainment. While wacky conspiracy
theories make up much of Stranger Things, so does quantum physics, forbidden
science and black magik.
RANDOM CHAOS
The fantastic yet horrific story the Duffer brothers told to
entertain us did not include a creature that had no rules whatsoever. If it
did, the audience would notice and the story would suffer. Most horror films
deal with adversaries that have supernatural origins. However, the supernatural
elements still follow guidelines, either because a proper authority tells us
the rules, or because the monster in question is based on some cultural
mythology that has rules we already understand since we are familiar with the
legend, thanks to previous sources. Werewolves can be killed by silver bullets.
Vampires can be killed by stakes through the heart. You know the drill, once
reminded.
THE RING
The Ring is a horror film about a little girl who dies,
becoming a ghost that kills people. In life she expired because her parents
dumped the little girl into a well, leaving her to die. Now, anyone who doesn’t
share the videotape of her insane, macabre mental images is doomed to be killed
by her avenging, somewhat digital image. The bodies seem to be dead because of
a heart attack induced by fear. This makes sense. I Am the Pretty Thing That
Lives in the House features a similar series of circumstances. In The Ring, you
have to share the videotape, or you will die. Think about it. The little girl
was ignored. Now everyone has to pay attention to her, or they die. Too bad the
whole world abandoned VHS for DVD a long time ago.
THE GRUDGE
In The Grudge, a father killed his wife, his child and a cat
in his house, somewhere in Japan, right before he committed suicide. Because of
this, anyone who enters the former docile of the murdered, doomed family is
under a curse. No matter where they go the person sees images of the family
until they are killed by the angry ghosts, usually because they have lethal
heart attacks induced by fear. While the haunting that kills people seems to
have random elements, there is still a pattern by which the narrative is still
infused with drama. People walk into the house where the murders occurred. They
see something horrible. Bad stuff happens to them in the form of hallucinations
that are reminiscent of the members of the family until either the father or
the mother kills them. Simple rules. Don’t go in the house, unless you don't enjoy terror, hallucinations and death.
NO RULES?
Just as the Duffer brothers looted past films for Stranger
Things, they looted the Internet in a similar way for The Monster. Eleven has
rules. So does the splinter from her personality that has incarnated from her
mind to terrorize the world. Imagine a series where the monsters had no rules? 1977’s
House, a Japanese horror film, seems to be this way. A pack of young girls go
to a house where a crazy old woman is hanging out with her cat. Without
explanation, bad stuff happens.
A chandelier shoots crystals at people. A young girl loses
her head in a well, and it flies around and bites people. A piano eats a young woman. Stacks
of flaming wood attack people. People look into mirrors and see monstrous
versions of themselves until their face shatters like glass. Monstrous
phantasms appear. Chandeliers eat heads. Turns out it is the old woman, but if
you destroy her painting of a cat blood shoots out and people burn alive. WTF.
Don’t go in the House.
Watching a series like that would become the opposite of
fun, fast. Why is this stuff happening? Why should we care if everything seems
so random? Why get attached to characters that randomly die in hallucinogenic ways? The Walking Dead has gone on for many years using the same old rules
for their zombies. As an audience, we can handle mystery early on when we are
enjoying our monsters, but after a while the novelty fades and somebody who
seems to know what they are doing appears and explains all the chaos.
DEMOGORGON
Eleven has telekinesis, controls electricity and can open
wormholes into another dimension using electromagnetism. The Monster detects
electricity, follows it, devours the energy, can open wormholes into another dimension and also has electromagnetism. (Sharks
can also detect electricity, using a process called electroreception.) It can
manipulate objects (before Will gets grabbed, it uses telekinesis to open the
lock on the door). Then, it creates a wormhole to suck the person into The Veil
of Shadows. It is also large, strong and somewhat invulnerable. It can be
slowed down, fought off or temporarily evaded, but Demogorgon seems to be
pretty unstoppable, according to its own rules. Where did those rules come
from? At one point the characters have a meeting about The Monster, and compare
the thing to some sort of primordial beast or roving animal. There is a sense
that it is not evil, just doing what it does to exist.
There are many fascinating blogs and YouTube videos that
attempt to figure out more about it based on the show itself, which is an
intelligent approach. My plan is to use the Internet and explore other angles
by using conspiracy theories, the occult and quantum physics, plus some weird,
evil science stories, to give you all more information to help back up my
theory, and show that the Duffer brothers really have done an amazing job of
explaining a demon in a story by avoiding the occult and embracing the darker
side of scientific experiments our world is heir to, all the way back to WWII.
CONSPIRACY THEORY CHAOS?
The heart of the argument is the combined conspiracy
theories the Duffer brothers accessed to make their monster. Yes, there are
many old influences affecting the cinematography, the casting (I am sure you
noticed the Sheriff looked like Jack Nicholson in The Shining), the credits,
etc., but brand new influences kept it all fresh. Instead of basing The Monster
on Germanic legends of the Black Annis, myths about werewolves or stories about
zombies, the Duffer brothers mined conspiracy theories found on the Internet.
Each of these modern myths provided a piece of the overall idea that made
Demogorgon. I am going to run through them, pointing out the pieces as we go.
Without these conspiracy theories, you don’t have Eleven, you don’t have The
Monster, and you don’t have Stranger Things.
MKULTRA
Back during WWII the Nazi’s had a lot of disposable people,
some really evil individuals running the show, and a scientific drive to do
anything, and commit atrocities of any nature, to control everybody Adolf
Hitler wanted controlled. People were chosen from concentration camps for Nazi
scientists to experiment on. There were no rules, no ethics and no limits.
Massive funding, unlimited bodies, anything goes. Only Satan knows what they
came up with.
At the end of WWII, many Nazi scientists ended up in
America, thanks to Operation Paperclip. The American government wanted the
knowledge these scientists possessed, especially because the USA thought
fighting the USSR was more important than anything. One of these scientists,
Dr. Josef Mengele, ended up in our country where the CIA put him to work
experimenting on people the same way the former Nazi experimented on Jews in
the name of science, fascism and evil.
MKULTRA is discussed in Stranger Things. What is important
is that this program led to many, many other programs. The scientists at
Hawkins are certainly cut from the same bloody cloth as the Nazi’s that worked
on mind control project for der Furher, and Eleven is certainly the product of
these horrific experiments. Just ask her mother. The work that is being done at
the lab goes much further, leading to other, darker projects. Sure, Eleven’s
mother was the product of MKULTRA, according to the series, but what is going
on at the Hawkins Lab is not that project.
PROJECT MONARCH
Mengele wasn’t the only wacky Nazi scientist engaged in
hijinks and goings on involving the torture and experimentation of human
beings. Another evil expert on the subject was a very terrible guy named General
Reinhard Gehlen, who ended up in America in 1945 after helping Hitler spy on
Russians using scientific experiments best described on Reddit under the Horror
section. According to researchers on the subject that specialized in conspiracy
theories, anything Mengele didn’t do, Gehlen did, and they continued their work
in America, torturing human beings while Americans paid the bill.
For decades experts agree that Gehlen continued to explore
the human mind for the CIA, dedicated to creating the perfect spies and
assassins using hypnotism, the occult, drugs, electroshock therapy, sexual
molestation, trauma and everything else they could think of to break a human
mind, splinter it into fragments, so that each piece formed a shard, or alter,
that was programmed to do different acts according to their subliminal control.
Crazy, fun stuff, right?
Later on, another name pops up: Dr. Donald Ewan Cameron, a
psychiatrist whose favorite method was to attach metal helmets to the heads of
his subjects, electrocuting them into comas so he could remake their
personality. ‘Member the strange, wire covered helmet Eleven is wearing in some
of the flashbacks?
Monarch programming consists of several layers. Beta
programming turns the person into a sex slave. Omega programming makes the
person kill themselves if captured or questioned. Theta programming was based
on making psychic assassins by stimulating their brains to develop psychic
powers to make them trained, lethal, programmed killers. Bingo.
There is a lot of material available online, written by
attorneys, survivors, psychiatrists and investigators, about Project Monarch
and how it still might be going on to this day. What is disturbing is that,
according to researchers, the project used a lot of black magik symbols,
Satanic imagery, occult iconography and other unpleasantness to make the
programming as nightmarish as possible to the child involved, in order to make
sure their normal personality is smashed to pieces so the alters can be
programmed to do their work.
Have you noticed that there is no mention, whatsoever, of
demons, ghosts, the occult or anything else like it in Stranger Things? Nothing at all.
The Duffer brothers used the Internet to make their monster, but they
completely took out references to magik and the occult. You are only getting
the science side of this horror story, which is a very Lovecraftian approach, when you think about it.
Eleven doesn’t have a split personality. She doesn’t become
another person when somebody says the right code word. But there is a fracture
in her psychology, and shard that has been taken from the greater whole, which
explains why the poor girl doesn’t have much of a personality in the show. She
has been raised all alone, with minimal outside contact, and she has been
giving a cocktail of drugs and other psychosurgery for who knows how long. That
would probably explain her odd, distant demeanor.
‘MEMBER THE DARK
CRYSTAL?
At the climax of the story, a splinter is united with the
greater whole and, in a brilliant flash of light, they are united, opening a
rift in time and space that allows the merged being to move on to another
dimension, whole at last. The end. Did I just describe the climax of Stranger
Things? Nope. That is the end of The Dark Crystal.
When Eleven recognizes Will in the photo on the wall, The
Dark Crystal is on the wall next to her. We never see her talking to Will. We
never see them together. She recognizes him, though, because the splinter that
has been shattered from her mind saw Will, and is running around, doing that
evil. In The Dark Crystal the two separated beings unite, becoming a being of
spiny, brilliant light. I am not saying Eleven’s dark half is running around.
It is supposed to be her id. We will get to that, later.
In a few days I will give you another post about this subject, after I post something else for The Man. You know how it is, Bills have to get paid. Money has to be made. See you soon!
