5 Reasons the Drug Scheduling System Should Be Abolished

The United States' drug scheduling system is a great idea... in theory.  But in practice it's a total nightmare, categorizing drugs not according to their actual potential for harm but arbitrary "addictive potential" and often without the required scientific scrutiny necessary to even determine THAT.  Here are the top 5 reasons this system should be abolished today (in no particular order):

Note the lack of "toxicity/chronic organ damage risk" 

1.)  The long and short-term toxicity of drugs isn't even considered.  The only considerations are "medical potential" and "addictive potential".  Tobacco and alcohol have zero medical applications and are toxic to multiple organ systems at any dose in both the long and short term, yet they're fully legal/unscheduled.  Cannabis, which is known to have a long list of medicinal applications (nausea, epilepsy, pain, muscle spasticity & glaucoma to name a FEW) and has never directly killed anyone, has been in Schedule I since 1970, aka 56 years ago at the time of this writing.  

2.)  Addictive potential lies within the individual, not the substance.  Drugs affect us all wildly differently, and a person is only going to abuse/become addicted to a drug if they enjoy its effects the first few times they try it ("chasing the dragon").  If a given substance makes you feel like shit--irritable, depressed, tense, panicked, anxious, sick or otherwise dysphoric, the chances you're going to abuse it and become addicted are practically 0.  This is why not everyone who tries alcohol becomes an alcoholic or everyone who tries cocaine becomes a coke addict.  You must LIKE the substance's effects first & foremost.  Other factors like genetic predisposition to addiction, childhood trauma, environment and mental illness also contribute to a person's likelihood of becoming an addict. 

Also:  If a drug is addictive but not toxic & doesn't cause negative behavioral effects, is that really a problem?  Plenty of legal drugs cause withdrawals upon cessation (SSRI antidepressants, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, sedating antihistamines, blood pressure meds and even caffeine) but aren't addictive in the traditional sense.  Nobody's freaking out about having to consume them daily to avoid acute withdrawal symptoms.  It would appear our lawmakers are more concerned about us experiencing euphoria or spiritual enlightenment than destroying our organs or enduring the pain of withdrawal.

3.)  Many of the most dangerous/toxic drugs are in lesser schedules than more benign ones.  Cannabis, LSD, MDMA (Ecstasy), peyote cactus, methylone, ibogaine, MXE & 2C-B are all in Schedule I (most restrictive class) while methamphetamine, cocaine, fentanyl, pentobarbital, secobarbital & multiple fentanyl analogues are in Schedule II (available by Rx).  This in itself is proof of a broken system, yet people continue supporting the U.S. drug war.  Drugs in Schedule I can't even be studied scientifically because obtaining them requires all sorts of legal hoop-jumping, yet they were often placed there without any such scientific scrutiny to begin with!  This ensures that any potential medical uses of these drugs is never discovered, a Catch-22 situation.

4.)  The process by which drugs are scheduled is entirely unscientific.  While it's supposed to be based on medical benefit/addiction risk, the scientific process is usually bypassed entirely with "emergency scheduling" or tacking bans onto the end of 20+ page bills nobody reads before signing.  In 2026, Trump rescheduled cannabis from Schedule I to III while banning "intoxicating hemp" products including CBD, killing the legal hemp industry overnight with the stroke of a pen.  No input from the voting public, scientists or medical professionals.  Not even an explanation for his decision to make such sweeping changes.  Why should any single politician from either party have the power to make such consequential decisions without a vote of the people or expert medical/scientific input?  

Partnership for a Drug-ee Monopoly in America

5.)  The same politicians making these decisions often receive campaign contributions from industries that benefit from keeping other drugs illegal.  Namely, the alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical industries.  That's a conflict of interest.  If people can access other recreational drugs legally, that's competition for these other legal drugs, and they'll do anything to keep that from happening.  Recall The Partnership for a Drug-Free America, which was comprised of alcohol, pharma & tobacco industry big wigs?  Yeah.  They don't actually care if you overdose and die or your brain fries like an egg from all that acid--they just don't want those nasty untaxed drugs competing with their precious OxyContin or Jim Beam.  

Bonus:  The U.S. has both the highest number of overdose deaths and addicts on the planet despite incarcerating more of our population than any nation.  That means one thing:  this system is not working, at least not for We The People.  It's working exactly as intended for those who profit from keeping certain drugs illegal & incarcerating certain demographics for their use and non-violent sale.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hopefully this helps you see that these laws do not exist to keep society safe but to enrich certain entities and maintain social control.  Banning drugs or any other inanimate object/idea like "terror" really means locking up and criminalizing a country's own citizens.  You can't call this a "free country" if consenting adults aren't truly free to expand their minds as they see fit in the privacy of their own homes.  If you don't like drugs, by all means don't use them.  Teach your kids to stay away from them, preach about it at your church & other private gatherings, but that's where your rights end.  Individual private drug use harms no one but perhaps the individual using them as long as they don't get behind the wheel or neglect their kids.  Like it or not, we all have a right to harm ourselves if we so choose.  We don't lock people in prison for attempting suicide and we shouldn't lock up addicts/drug users either. 

You can't claim addiction is a "disease" on the one hand while supporting the incarceration of addicts (i.e. treating it like a crime) on the other.  The U.S. incarcerates more of its population than any nation on Earth including North Korea, Russia, China or other so-called "communist" or authoritarian countries.  Despite this, brutal rapists and child sex offenders often get a slap on the wrist, billionaires never pay a dime in federal taxes & not one CEO has ever been put to death for crimes against humanity or the planet.  So who is getting all that prison time?  Non-violent drug offenders, sex workers & petty small-time thieves who can't afford bail or private legal representation.  Black & brown people; immigrants & poor uneducated whites with drug problems.  Those who can't buy their way out of punishment.  Are we safer as a society as a result of this?  

Not just 'no' but fuck no.  Exactly the opposite.  Violent criminals who should be locked up walk free due to prison overcrowding.  Cartel & gang violence runs rampant; addicts commit crime to support their habit.  Drug users overdose & die from adulterated black market drugs.  Non-violent offenders are housed in jail cells next to hardened violent criminals and learn the tricks of the trade while being subjected to inhumane conditions that make them less mentally stable than when they went in.  This makes us ALL less safe.

I say we should reserve prison for violent offenders, treatment for the sick and freedom for responsible consenting adults.  This isn't being "soft" on crime or admitting defeat in the War on Drugs, it's just the common sense Constitutional thing to do.  Instead of worrying so much about the birth rate, billionaires should focus on making society more livable for those currently living.  Instead, they directly kill us off with lack of universal healthcare, godawful working conditions & the barbaric drug war. 

The same people complaining about "illegal aliens" crossing the border support the very policies that drive them here!  If we promoted the health/well-being of our own adult population by paying a living wage at all jobs and ending the drug war so cartel violence South of the border would cease, illegal immigration would drop precipitously.  Not only that, but the drug supply would no longer be adulterated so all these overdose deaths would stop as fast as they started.  But as long as we're losing millions of working-age Americans to preventable disease and hundreds of thousands to drug overdoses, we have no choice but to "import" workers from other countries.  At least until AI/robotics takes over.  

Even with our constant wars, religious freedom laws that spawn killer cults, police brutality & gun culture, the top 3 deadliest disasters in U.S. history are all public health crises:  AIDS, the opioid crisis & COVID.  And all 3 happened in the last 40 years.  If that doesn't scare you, it's not because you're a brave fearless patriot but a willful idiot in denial of the reality in which you live.  The way this country is being run into the ground is not just "not working," it's killing us by the millions.  Those in power know this; they have the data.  Therefore, refusal to change the way we're doing things constitutes intentional genocide.  

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From Cult Leaders to CEOs: How Power Turns People Into Monsters

 What would you do if you woke up to find yourself surrounded by a group of devoted followers who believed you were holy, divine... God himself?  Men, women & children ready to die or kill for you, wait on you hand and foot & subjugate themselves totally, all because they thought you were somehow superior?  

We know what would happen because we have cults:  Jonestown, Rajneeshpuram, Heaven's Gate, NXIVM, Scientology, Children of God, The Manson Family, the Branch Davidians, Warren Jeffs' FLDS, Anne Hamilton's "Family"... the list goes on.  Even in less culty "religions" like the Assembly of God, pastors and preachers like Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart ended up abusing their power.  But it's a chicken or egg situation:  did those people become cult leaders due to their pre-existing narcissism & psychopathy, or did they start out normal(ish) and only become evil due to the (CIA-supplied drugs) and power going to their heads?  Put another way, could anyone become evil if granted a certain amount of power and control?

Again, we know the answer is yes due to the Stanford prison experiment, which transformed normal people into abusive monsters by simply granting them power over other humans.  So why do we continue to intentionally place humans in positions of unchecked power and immunity from prosecution?  We preach about equality and justice while defending capitalism, which is based on the "one slavemaster/99% of the population in chains" hierarchy.  Religious leaders are given insane amounts of power due to our religious freedom laws, which also allow cults to get away with things secular individuals never could.  We give our politicians the power to make laws that affect public health and safety with no input from scientists, medical professionals or the people they serve.  Why? 

Trump: Made in America

President Evil

Pretending Trump is some random aberration is absurd.  In actuality, he's a manifestation of everything America promotes and rewards:  ruthlessness, ambition, capitalism, greed, cruelty, proud ignorance & narcissism.  Ditto Elon Musk and every other billionaire born into privilege who likes to cite the virtues of "hard work" & sacrifice.  The truth is, you don't get to that level of wealth & power via "hard work" but by unremitting psychopathic behavior + being born into privilege.  Paying people starvation wages & keeping the "excess", overworking employees in unsafe conditions, firing long-time workers days before retirement for undisclosed reasons, not paying a dime in federal taxes that everyone else has to pay, using your money to influence law and politics & rewarding bad behavior is psychopathic by definition.  It lacks empathy & compassion for other people & is often coupled with a "nice guy" charming persona that a blind man could see through.  Yet for some reason, many Americans cannot.  Instead, they worship at its altar as if sucking its asshole will make them rich/powerful by osmosis.

These same hypocrites often cite the "sanctity of human life/marriage" when trying to restrict the reproductive freedom and marriage rights of others. The CEO caught on Jumbotron with his 6th mistress while spewing platitudes about "family values", the politician raping children a on private island, the billionaire whose factory workers financed his trip to the moon while they pissed in bottles and died on the factor floor... these animals are not in a position to discuss the "sanctity" of ANYTHING.  They are the anti-Christ, literally.  The opposite of Jesus Christ, whose religion Americans like to claim this nation was "founded on".   

Bullshit.

Amazon driver's piss bottle near an L.A. highway. 

The only solution to this insane extremism is a more equal distribution of wealth and power.  Put more things up for a vote of the people instead of letting politicians decide with the stroke of a pen & influence from lobbyists.  Form more unions and co-ops, focus on mutual aid instead of charity.  Either make everyone pay their fair share of taxes, or no one does.  Stop granting tax exemption to religious organizations that get directly involved in politics, which is most of them.  Either drug test everyone at every job (including lawmakers) or nobody is tested.  Everyone gets the same shot at a fair trial, not just those who can afford bail & private counsel.  And so on. 

This is not communism, it's just basic fairness and justice.  It's common sense if you want a happy, well-adjusted society.  Not even that--a functioning society that isn't constantly ripping itself apart at the seams due to feelings of powerlessness, hopelessness and misguided rage.  The fact is, those in power don't give a shit about the mood or well-being of the country or in fact the survival of the planet--they're only in it for themselves.  For the here and now.  For the stockholders.  For the nookie.

Nobody likes to admit that they would become a soulless, dopamine-chasing sadist if they had a little wealth/power because it's not pleasant to think about.  We like to think more highly of ourselves and others, to "see the good" in the human race.  Unfortunately that's just not borne out in the scientific literature.  But sometimes science is redundant.  Just look at the reality in which you live!  

Scopolamine: Date Rape Drug of the Elite?

"Ask Chris about my trumpet plants" reads an email by Jeffrey Epstein.  It sounds innocent enough, especially when lost in the sea of other more blatantly troubling media and communications included in the Epstein Files.  But like most things in this case, once you scratch the surface, things suddenly become a lot darker.  

The Devil's Drug

Colombian woman on scopolamine

Trumpet plants ("Angel's Trumpet") are the common name for Brugmansia, a bell-shaped flower that contains scopolamine.  This substance is also goes by the names "the Devil's Drug" and "the World's Scariest Drug" for its ability to turn a person into waking zombies.  In Colombia, scopolamine is used to spike tourists' drinks or blown into their faces, after which time they can be prompted to drain their bank accounts or taken to the ATM and robbed blind.  It's also a perfect date rape drug due to its powerful deliriant effects and the fact that it doesn't show up on drug tests.  It also causes near-total amnesia of the events after the fact.  Very convenient.  

Brugmansia belongs to a family of plants known as nightshades, which includes harmless things like tomatoes and potatoes but also toxic drug plants like Datura (Jimsonweed), Henbane and Belladonna.  These plants are deliriants that contain tropane alkaloids such as atropine, hyoscyamine and scopolamine.  In small doses, scopolamine has medical uses like treating motion sickness and nausea after surgery.  But in larger amounts it causes powerful and long-lasting effects like stupor, confusion, agitation, impaired memory, confabulation and akathisia.  It can even cause death by triggering tachycardia (rapid heartbeat) & severe overheating--a horrific way to die.  Scopolamine's effects have been compared to sleepwalking or fugue states, which is nothing at all like the more typical psychedelic drugs (LSD, magic mushrooms).

Learn more about this nightmare drug here:

The World's Scariest Drug by VICE (2013)

Epstein Connection

Brugmansia ("Angel's Trumpet")

A 2015 forwarded email to Jeffrey Epstein by Antoine Verglas (a famous photographer of models) contains an article on scopolamine with the title "Scopolamine: Powerful drug growing in the forests of Colombia that ELIMINATES free will."  Fucking YIKES.  But it gets worse:  the article says "scopolamine makes people 'highly suggestible'. "You can guide them wherever you want. It's like they're a child."  🤢

Manzaro victim impact statement referencing scopolamine (click to enlarge)

But it gets weirder.  The Epstein files contain a victim impact statement sent to US Attorney in South Florida in 2022 by a man claiming he was drugged with scopolamine.  His name is Joseph Manzaro.  Ring any bells?  Manzaro also showed up in a Diddy lawsuit, claiming he was raped at a freak-off in 2015.  More on that here.  So why tf is this included in the Epstein Files?  Nobody knows, but it seems safe to say that Epstein most likely used this drug on at least some of his victims.  "My" trumpet plants suggests he was in the process of buying or growing this toxic nuisance.

Love for him to photograph my daughter (Antoine Verglas) 🤢 .

The bigger implication here is that scopolamine is a well-known, commonly used date rape drug among elite rapists and pedophiles in the U.S. and abroad--not just in  the slums of Colombia.  And that's bad because it's so toxic, in a whole other league from "roofies" and other downers.  Why would Antoine Verglas, a well-known photographer who launched the modeling career of Melania Trump, send such a creepy email to a convicted child sex abuser?  Has Verglas used it on women himself?  I know someone who was drugged at a club in Florida, though the offending substance was never determined.  Why does Florida keep coming up in these creepy rape/pedo cases?  So many questions.

Of course, the deadly nightshades are completely legal in the U.S., a testament to the pointlessness of our drug laws.  A string of tourist deaths--many American--have occurred in recent years in Medellin, Colombia, and many are linked to the drug.  

Here's an excellent episode of Sidebar that discusses this whole sordid matter in more detail than I've seen elsewhere:  

Law & Crime w/ Jesse Weber

The Death of Fun 💀

Do people like to have fun anymore?  Not like sitting in a dark room and doomscrolling while watching gay-ass Netflix, I'm talking real fucking fun.  Music and junk food and running naked through the woods on shrooms in the daytime & collapsing in a cuddle puddle on pure MDMA at night and watching the stars turn to sunbeams as you discuss the nature of death and God and receive the best head of your life before passing out only to do it all again the next day. 

Laughing until your sides ache at stupid inside jokes with old friends; dancing until your legs feel like Jello with strangers who feel like friends.  Soaking your cares away in a natural hot spring.  Reaching a near-transcendent state in a desert drum circle; partaking in the sacred medicine of the Native American Church around a fire in a tee pee.  Road-tripping with the top down and the volume up.  Dancing in the rain and scattering like cockroaches when lightning strikes.  Sliding backwards down a water slide in an innertube with 3 other screaming maniacs in the summer and then doing the same down a snowy mountainside in the winter... 

These are the moments that make a life.  Not the selfies posted, the overtime worked, the test scores made, the money spent or other superficial shit.  It breaks my heart to see kids going through the motions & focusing so much on appearances that they forget to live.  Perfectly-coiffed Gen Z clones who regurgitate the same lame catchphrases, poses and clothing styles--nary an independent thought between them.  Paying hundreds for concert tickets only to spend the entire show with their lame-ass cell phones in the air.  I could understand 5-10 minutes as a souvenir to remember it by, but not the WHOLE. FUCKING. CONCERT. 

It's like going to the beach on a beautiful day with your friends only to spend the entire day with your head down searching for seashells to take home.  Never talking to anyone, not setting foot in the water, bodyboarding or soaking up the rays next to an old boombox while you watch hotties walk by.  Just obsessively scanning the sand for shells.  Alone.  But when you get them home, they're just some stupid fucking shells.  The same is true of photos and videos:  They could never be as magical as actually living in the moment & recalling it with your own brain.

Hey Siri, what is "off my phone?"

It's far better to enjoy the proverbial "concert" while it's happening--to dance, sing, mosh, chat with the cool chick next to you, fight with some drunk bitch in the lobby & actually enjoy the band than do a shitty job of documenting the concert for later.  But try telling that to anyone born after 2001 and prepare for the buffering screen of death.  (Wow, there's even a name for it!  Give you one guess what it is).  

Sure, I might be an introverted autist who spends 90% of my time alone and indoors, but no matter where I am, I'm 100% present.  And all that fun shit I listed above?  Actually did it, and lots of other cool stuff.  There may not be many pictures or Snaps to prove it, but I and all the other people who were there remember it which is what counts.  Despite the tomfoolery, I somehow still managed to get a degree, maintain a 12-year relationship (over now, but nevertheless), make and keep the best friends in the world, live independently & stay out of jail/rehab/debt.  If I died tomorrow the only thing  I'd regret is getting stuck on people who weren't worth the tears & didn't feel the same about me.  Kinda happens a lot.  But at least I'm not a fake drone living a hollow ass life.  🤷🏻‍♀

Now off to buy snacks for girls' night.  

Global Burden of Disease + A Warning for America

*70q0 is the probability of dying before age 70.

The Global Burden of Disease Study is the most comprehensive global death probability calculation estimate in the world.  It's published in The Lancet every few years and is extensively researched and meticulous.  You can read the whole thing here.  It includes not only health-related causes of death but all other causes as well (accidental injury, war/terrorism, extreme weather, suicide, etc).   

From 1990 to 2023, ischaemic heart disease and stroke consistently ranked as the first and second leading causes, respectively—except in 2021, when COVID-19 temporarily ranked as the leading cause of age-standardised deaths.


Here are Top 20 killers in various years:

Click to enlarge

First, the good news. The global all-cause age at death increased from 46.8 years in 1990 to 63.4 years in 2023.  The global reduction in dying before age 70 due to tuberculosis from 2000 to 2023 is a success story.  There was an overall decline of 60·0% in females and 58·0% in males.  Lower respiratory infections declined 51.2% among females and 47.4% among males between 2000 and 2023 due to reductions in various risk factors, including reductions in household air pollution, a decrease in the prevalence of childhood wasting, and improved vaccine coverage.  Global improvements were also observed in diarrheal diseases, with declines of over 70% for males and females. 

Over the past three decades, there were large improvements in life expectancy where four causes of death were concerned:  respiratory infections and tuberculosis, nutritional deficiencies, other infectious diseases, and enteric infections—which had individual declines ranging from 58.9% to 79.0%. This achievement was facilitated by many years of sustained international cooperation with local governments.

Now the not-so-good:  70q0 due to drug use disorders increased by 56.8% in males and 68.0% in females globally.  Between 2020 and 2023, COVID-19 had an immense global impact, resulting in 18 million total deaths.  Among these, 10·5 million deaths were in males, and 7·53 million (6·98–7·96) deaths were in females. 

Differences between the sexes didn't end there.  Among the top 50 global causes of death for females, the 15 with the largest increase in 70q0 between 2000 and 2023 were (in decreasing order):

interstitial lung disease and pulmonary sarcoidosis;
drug use disorders;
 lip and oral cavity cancer, 
atrial fibrillation and flutter;
Alzheimer's disease and other dementias;
diabetes;
hypertensive heart disease;
pancreatic cancer;
Parkinson's disease;
ovarian cancer 
other cardiovascular and circulatory diseases;
breast cancer;
endocrine, metabolic, blood, and immune disorders (+29·9%; 0·1%);
chronic kidney disease (+27·7%; 0·6%);
and non-rheumatic valvular heart disease

For males, the 15 causes of death with the largest increase in chance of dying before age 70 included (in decreasing order):

diabetes
drug use disorders
AFIB and flutter
Interstitial lung disease & pulmonary sarcoidosis
Alzheimer's and other dementias
Parkinson's disease
endocrine, metabolic, blood, and immune disorders
pancreatic cancer
lip and oral cavity cancer
prostate cancer
non-rheumatic valvular heart disease
chronic kidney disease 
colon and rectum cancer
urinary diseases and male infertility 
other cardiovascular and circulatory diseases


Ten countries had an increase in overall chance of dying before age 70.  The largest was in Palestine (33.1% increase), more than double that of the next-largest increase in Lebanon with 15.3%. The staggering increase in Palestine is driven almost entirely by the conflict between Israel and Palestine, with an increase in 70q0 of 8980% due to conflict and terrorism.  Within the first year of the war, Palestinians lost an estimated 30 years of life expectancy.  



2026 and Beyond

What's in store for the next 10 years?  Nobody knows, but things aren't looking rosy in the U.S.  I stumbled upon this study while looking into the Lancet's recent article on RFK, Jr.  It's startling in its candidness and pulls no punches about how disastrous this administration has been to our already ailing healthcare system.  Here's a little snippet:

"Little hope for U.S. health and science"

Full article here.  This is one of, if not THEE most respected peer-reviewed medical journal in the world.  Med journals aren't known for getting involved in politics, so this is truly troubling. 




Endgame

Top 10 Richest fucks in the world.  Notice a pattern?

My theory is that, after seeing the way COVID-19 enriched so many of the top 1%, turning billionaires to centibillionaires for the first time in history, the U.S. government would love to unleash another pandemic on the public to aid in the further upward transfer of wealth to the donor class.  Who cares if we kill off a huge chunk of our own population?  We can just import more work-age adults from South America and Mexico (Democrat strategy), or do away with child labor laws (Republican strategy).  Heck, why not do away with those pesky labor laws altogether?  Not like most employers abide by them anyway. 

Sure, this also happens to be the anti-science crowd, but simply distrusting science and "mainstream" medicine is not an adequate explanation for the aggressiveness with which the government has done such severe harm to our already struggling public healthcare system.  There's only so much $$$ you can make pushing detox supplements and other alternative medicine horseshit.  This reeks of something more sinister. 

Ample motivation for another pandemic.

Once billionaires have stolen ALL the money in circulation, then they'll make poverty/homelessness a crime in all 50 states & incarcerate more people to get more free labor in our prisons.  Who needs healthcare when you've got 3 hots and a cot?  The new pandemic will kill off another million or so elderly, sick and feeble Americans so only the "good breeding stock" with "good genes" are left behind, simultaneously purging Social Security and the social welfare system of millions more poor and disabled people.  Think of it as a Jonestown Massacre for the 21st Century.  Then Elon and Bezos can race to Mars to determine ownership of the red planet, blasting off in their slavery-funded rocketships and leaving us all behind in waist-deep boiling sludge to fight over Earth's remaining resources.  

Whew, that spiraled quickly.  But we must assume these despots have an endgame in mind when they make sweeping cuts to our already ailing public healthcare infrastructure, fire scientists, reduce childhood vaccine recommendations/requirements and other shit that's 100% certain to trigger another mass wave of death that could make COVID look like the a head cold by comparison.  Ignorance alone doesn't explain such aggressive--and aggressively stupid--behavior.  Things that a literal retard could see are a bad idea if preserving human life is the goal (it's not).  At a certain point you've got to assume malice. 

What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall at Trump's secret cabinet meetings; to read their communications like we're now reading Epstein's emails.  I can guarantee terms like "apocalypse insurance," "Great Replacement" and "social murder" are littered throughout.   

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Spoiler Alert: Tyra Banks Is the Devil

 


I loved America's Next Top Model back in the day.  Not only did it feature gorgeous hotties, it was full of gay people back when Ellen was the only "representation" we had.  Miss J, Jay Manuel, lesbian models like Ebony Haith, Kim Stolz & Kayla Ferrell were suddenly all over our screens.  It was prime time appointment viewing in my dorm and I'm sure many others.  (I even did a very short stint writing for an ill-fated Tyra fashion website online.  In true Tyra form, they fired half the writing staff early on but I made the cut only to quit later because they wanted magazine-quality pieces for $15 per article).  Anyway, I was gut-punched to see the recent documentary Reality Check: America's Next Top Model which showed what REALLY went on behind the scenes and on our screens.  Things were very different than I remembered.  

Let's start with the offensive-but-not criminal things (I dare not call any of it "small stuff" because chiiiiile).  Not only keeping the girls stick-thin but celebrating when they fainted, vomited or got taken to the ER due to being underweight & overworked.  Racism on a show executive produced by a Black woman (race-swapping, REALLY?).  Using the contestants' most traumatic life experiences to try and provoke a mental breakdown (and creating brand new traumatic ones specially for the show!).  The list goes on and on.

How they framed a rape

But by far the most shocking and disgusting revelation to come from this documentary was the one involving Shandi Sullivan of Cycle 2.  Not only was this woman raped on the show with cameras rolling, not a single person intervened to stop it.  But it gets worse.  Cameras continued rolling when she broke the news to her boyfriend and he called her a stupid bitch and dumped her on national TV.  And of course it didn't stop there.  They spun this horror as a "cheating scandal" and painted the victim as a perpetrator, even calling Shandi to come on Tyra's nightmare daytime TV talk show and playing footage of the assault on the big screen after she'd asked them not to. 

Rape victim told by Tyra to "fight her carnal desires".  

Background on the assault:  Shandi was starving and underfed, then got overly drunk one evening when it was sprung on the contestants that male models would be coming over for dinner.  She was blackout drunk when one of them climbed on top of her and raped her as cameras continued to roll.  Let me repeat:  A VIOLENT CRIME WAS COMMITTED ON CAMERA AND BROADCAST TO THE WORLD with the victim painted as the villain.  That's a whole other level of wrong.  The fact that a woman could be raped--literally forced to have sex when she was incapable of consenting--while the whole world watched, and then PAINTED AS THE VILLAIN is proof that rape culture is alive and well.  Today, in 2026.  Because to this day, no one has been prosecuted or even questioned by law enforcement about this incident.  The offender's face & name are immortalized on camera and he continues to walk free.  

But back to ANTM.  The girls pretended to be homeless once.  They did a shoot on the impacts of smoking, so silly.  They forced a model to close the gap in her teeth against her will.  This is what the documentary does, somehow managing to center Tyra and the ANTM judges when there were women being abused and endangered on their watch.  And here come the meme lords turning it all into a big joke AGAIN. 

I can't imagine how Shandi must be feeling right now or for the last 20+ years.  Do we know how her mental health is holding up, if she has access to therapy and other support?  Legal representation?  These scumbags should've been sued under the table for what they did to her.  Cycle 2 should've been the final cycle and everyone involved should've been held legally and financially accountable.  That's what would've happened if we lived in a world where misogyny & rape culture weren't the law of the land.  If preventing suicide and other harmful outcomes was REALLY as important as all these networks make it out to be when they broadcast suicide hotline numbers at the end of episodes where they've driven someone over the edge for ratings.  

Molested on set & told to shut up.  

Shandi is incredibly strong for surviving that--all of it.  If by chance she ever reads this, I hope she knows none of that was her fault and there's NOTHING for her to feel bad about.  She had every right to sue the producers including Tyra and to publicly tell the world what happened at the time.   I don't blame her for not being able to do that, but she had every right to.  The fact that she survived and is still here with us is all that matters.  It's now on law enforcement to follow up on the perpetrator(s), though there's probably some bogus excuse not to ("statute of limitations," or "she didn't press charges").  Therein lies the problem.  The one time on the show where a model (Keenyah Hill) DID speak up for herself because she was being groped by a male model, the panel of judges shut her down, basically telling her to shut up and take it.  




"A Different Time"

Because common sense & basic decency didn't exist until Twitter.

The fact that everybody acts like the mid-2000s were "a different time" before basic morals existed is also ridiculous to me.  Sure, #MeToo hadn't happened yet and Black Lives Matter didn't exist, but those movements are not the starting point for morality or law and order either.  Rape was still a crime; a Black woman should've known not to paint white women Black and put dashikis on them for a photo shoot.  Knowledge of the harms of eating disorders was most definitely a thing. 

For a show populated by so many minority and gay people, ANTM sure wasn't very conscientious about the crap they were churning out to impressionable young viewers.  Would a show full of male contestants EVER think to behave this way?  Today's reality TV landscape suggests not.  Shows like The Real Housewives, Dance Moms, Sister Wives and Toddlers and Tiaras prove that exploitation of women and children is not just accepted but celebrated in American society, even as the Epstein files rule the headlines.  Cue faux performative outrage.  Keep scrolling.

The fact is we live in a world where people will watch a crime against humanity unfold and say "that's wild."  No, you dumb shits, it's not "wild".  Wild is bonkers, bananas, silly.  Like Nick Cannon's "Wild'n Out."  This shit is criminal.  Revolting.  Psychopathic.  Unforgivable.  The fact that the modeling industry is a major playground for Epstein-affiliated crooks like Jean-Luc Brunel goes completely unmentioned in this documentary, naturally.

And all of you enablers calling Tyra a "perfect scapegoat" and making excuses for her because she happens to be a Black female:  stop.  You're giving rape apologist vibes.  It's the same shit that happened when Cosby, R. Kelly & Diddy's crimes were revealed.  Not every Black person is MLK or Maya Angelou.  Some people are just indefensible narcissists worthy of every bad thing written and said about them.  The fact that these assholes victimized OTHER BLACK PEOPLE seems lost on you terminally stupid excuse-makers.  She said it herself:  this show was her dream.  Her baby.  She was Executive Producer, editor, judge and host.  It made her even filthy richer than she already was at the expense of poor, traumatized and minority women, and then she comes out unapologetically and promises us "Cycle 25".  If you don't see the issue with that, you can burn right alongside her.  

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Whistleblower Karen Silkwood: Driven Off the Road TWICE?

 

A burgeoning nuclear industry clashing with a growing unionization movement.  Increasing knowledge of the effects of radiation exposure combined with the shoddy handling practices and frequent contamination incidents at a nuclear facility in a small Oklahoma town.  40-66 pounds of missing plutonium hand-waved away by a government that moved the goalposts of how much nuclear material was allowed to go "missing" before corporations had to report it.  A fatal one-car crash of a union leader on her way to meet with a New York Times reporter on a desolate stretch of highway on a cold November night in 1974.   These are just some of the troubling details of the still-unsolved Karen Silkwood case.  

The 1970s were a very different time.  We were still friendly with Iran, which had yet to undergo the Islamic revolution.  Studio54 was all the rage and its patrons were powered by pure Colombian and Bolivian cocaine.  Quaaludes, a powerful depressant (sedative-hypnotic) that fell somewhere between barbiturates and benzodiazepines, were handed out at anxiety clinics the same way opioids were at pain clinics in the early 2000s.  The Vietnam war was just ending around the mid-70s, bringing home a generation of mentally and physically wounded men.  But aside from that, things tended to feel like one big party.  Baby Boomers were in their 20s and bands like Queen, Aerosmith, Funkadelic, the Bee Gees and Black Sabbath ruled the airwaves.  Jimmy Carter was president, and his focus was on things like solar power and pot legalization.  

But dig a little deeper and you'll see the '70s weren't all that glamorous.  Musicians and celebrities routinely had sex with underage "groupies" and drugged women to rape them without consequence.  Women's rights in general were abhorrent, and Black people and gays were still treated like 3rd class citizens.  Homosexuality was considered a mental illness by the APA until early 1974.  This was also the year that Karen Silkwood, a high-level lab technician at the Kerr-McGee nuclear plant in Cimarron, OK, died in a mysterious one-car crash on her way to meet with a New York Times reporter.

Silkwood's badly crushed vehicle.

Karen first got on her employer's bad side when she engaged in an unsuccessful strike in 1972.  (Actually, she probably already had a strike against her for being female in the male-dominated factory/technician field).  Strike 2 (or 3) came when Karen became the 1st woman elected to the union's bargaining committee, for which her job was to document health & safety violations.  Among the many disturbing violations she noted was missing plutonium--specifically between 40 and 66 POUNDS of it.  

To this point, none of the workers had been informed that plutonium could cause cancer.  Sounds insane  today, but it's true.  Karen was informed at a September 1974 meeting and was shocked.  She pulled the legislative director aside and told him:

"I work in a quality-control lab, and I noticed the lab technician would use a felt pen on the X-ray to cover over that little thin line that showed a crack in the control rod welds." And [she told me] there was some fooling with the computer data, too."

Silkwood herself had been so badly contaminated (in highly suspicious ways) she likely would've died a horrible death from radiation-related illness if she hadn't been killed in a car wreck.  It's still debated how her apartment became the source of exposure of both plutonium and uranium, and how the inside of her unused work gloves came to contain dangerous amounts of plutonium despite no punctures.  Kerr-McGee outrageously claimed she contaminated herself to make the company "look bad" even though she was legitimately upset to she learn the radioactive material caused cancer.  She'd always taken safety very seriously, so it's unlikely she or anyone else would've done such a thing.  By the end of her life she was very depressed and those who knew her cited the radiation exposure as the major cause of her low mood.




The Crash

Crash site, 2026

Silkwood crashed her car shortly after leaving a meeting with the union at a small cafe, during which she cried quietly about her fear of developing cancer due to plutonium exposure.  She allegedly said the only bright spot was all the documentation she carried and planned to show the reporter later that night.  She was heading Oklahoma City to meet New York Times reporter David Burnham and carrying a folder, a spiral notebook and a packet of documents with her when she left the union meeting.  None of those were recovered from the car or the surrounding scene.  

Her autopsy found levels of methaqualone (Quaaludes) nearly twice the medicinal dose in her system.  Two tablets of the potent drug were found in her car along with a couple of cannabis joints.  A marijuana plant was also present in her apartment.  She was not wearing her seatbelt.  Her car bore signs of possible ramming from behind, and it appeared to some that she'd been awake at the time of the crash.  From Wikipedia:

"In most one-vehicle accidents where the driver has gone to sleep, or because of impaired abilities," Pipkin noted, "the vehicle has always gone off to the right because of the contour of the road, namely the crown." The second thing Pipkin reported was that the Honda tracks in the grass showed the car did not drift, but was actually out of control before it left the highway. "The only way that this car could have been put in that attitude," he wrote, "was either an impact by an unknown vehicle or a combination of an impact by an unknown vehicle and driver over-reaction and subsequent loss of control."

 

The Aftermath

Nuclear bombs: then & now

Turns out, all of Karen's allegations against the plant were proven true and the plant was ultimately shut down a year later.  (The company itself remained a powerful force in Oklahoma, operating a number of gas stations and other filthy businesses for decades).  The plutonium that contaminated her apartment came from a part of the plant she hadn't accessed in years.  Her family sued Kerr-McGee and was initially awarded a record-setting 10.5 million settlement, but it was overturned by the federal government on the grounds that "state governments can't award punitive damages due to federal regulations of nuclear plants".  Never mind that their "regulation" was a fucking joke.  

The real mystery is what happened to all that missing plutonium.  Once you get to the bottom of that rabbit hole, you start to realize why this evil corporation might have wanted to shut Ms. Silkwood up forever.  About 70 other workers at the same plant had already been contaminated, so that alone wouldn't have been motive to literally have her killed.  But having concrete proof of the company selling nuclear material on the black market in a manner that broke world anti-proliferation treaties would definitely do it.  Because you see, the government had a hand in allowing this material to go unaccounted for.  Regulatory agencies kept moving the goalposts, increasing the amount that was allowed to be "missing" from these facilities until it reached an insane 250% margin of error allowed, according to a 1977 Rolling Stone article.  There was also a media blackout on the issue of missing plutonium, allegedly for "national security" reasons. Convenient.

The attorney for the Silkwood family, Daniel Sheehan, claims the missing plutonium was actually weapons-grade material and it went directly to the uber-trustworthy Israel, who was directed to split it with the Shah of Iran and South Africa.  (Remember, Iran was our ally at the time).  This is the side of the nuclear power industry that's rarely discussed today when aggressive nuclear power proponents fill Reddit comment sections with their propaganda.  But even Wikipedia contains a prominent section on the "dual uses" of this "technology," which can be used both for power and weapons like those used in Nagasaki & Hiroshima. 

The nuclear industry has a long and torrid history of scandals that prove human beings are utterly  incapable of responsibly handling such deadly material on a scale large enough to make it a viable energy alternative to oil and gas.  It's not unlike the BSL-IV laboratories that handle the most deadly pathogens on Earth with no informed consent from the public, or the psychopathic scientists tinkering with "mirror life" and AI viruses.  Some among us just can't resist playing God with the most hazardous killing materials in existence (I can't even say "known to man" because some of these things aren't known even to the most science-minded among us.  Even those at the highest levels of government).  That's a problem.



A SECOND Wreck?

Quaaludes were ultimately banned largely for their role in date rapes and causing car crashes.  If not for this detail, it would be 100% clear that Karen Silkwood was murdered.  The pills were prescribed legally for her anxiety and depression, but they alter judgment, coordination and cognition to such a degree that they're never safe to drive on.  The irony is that depressants like benzos, methaqualone, alcohol and barbiturates can worsen depression and other mood disorders to a dangerous degree, yet they're still prescribed for it to this day (mostly benzos).  

But even this detail comes into question when you learn of a little detail that's almost never mentioned in even the most thorough documentaries about Karen Silkwood.  Just 2 weeks before the fatal crash, Karen was involved in a bizarre wreck at 1:15 a.m. on Highway 33 in which she drove BACKWARDS over a 13-foot embankment!  Interestingly, she didn't report it to the police, instead just calling a wrecking service to have her car towed from a desolate country road West of Guthrie, OK.  She did report it to her car insurance company.  But here's the most important detail:  she wasn't taking Quaaludes yet. 

Here are the details from an official FBI report:

In regard to SILKWOOD* s accident that preceded 
the fatal accident, this matter was not investigated by 
the OHP when the accident occurred, however, it has been 
determined that at 1:15 A.M, , on October 31, 1974, 
(Thursday), at a point 3.8 miles west of Guthrie, Oklahoma, 
on State Highway 33, SILKWOOD* s car, a 1973 Honda, went off 
the highway going over backwards off a 13 foot embankment 
and coming to rest against a fence post. 

SILKWOOD left the car in the ditch until 
morning and thereafter contacted Martin* s Wrecker Service 
in Guthrie, Oklahoma. Wrecker service extracted vehicle 
from ditch and as he previously indicated, this accident 
was not reported to the OHP. It is his understanding that 
as result of this accident SILKWOOD filed a claim with the 
Allstate Insurance Company for damage to the left rear 
quarter panel of the vehicle. It is also his understanding 
the wrecker driver who picked up the SILKWOOD car after the 
fatal accident observed in her car a recent estimate from 
the Eskridge Pontiac-Honda Company relative to damage to 
the left rear quarter panel. It is his understanding this 
estimate Was in excess of $300. 

Inquiry by his department determined that SILKWOOD, on November 1, 1974, 
contacted Dr. CLARENCE in Oklahoma City, 
She subsequently contacted the doctor on November 4, 1974, at which time she 
complained she could not sleep.  It is my understanding that 
he prescribed the metnaquaione (methaqualone) as result of SILKWOOD* s visits. 

Emphasis mine.

It's believed the back-end damage to her car came from that incident, yet if that's the case, it only makes the whole thing look MORE suspicious because she wasn't taking downers yet!  The only place I've seen this mentioned was in one Youtube video, which cited the FBI's own document quoted above.  That vid attempted to write off the fatal crash as a result of intoxication and failed to make the connection with the previous wreck and possible foul play, instead insinuating that Karen was just a bad driver. 

The fact that this happened so close to the fatal incident definitely adds fuel to the murder theories IMHO.  If we could know for CERTAIN that Karen wasn't taking methaqualone prior to seeing Dr. Clarence on November 4, 1974, this would all but seal the case as a murder for me.  The fact that she first contacted this doctor THE DAY AFTER the first wreck suggests it caused her significant distress.  

Was Karen having problems sleeping because she was being followed and feared what ultimately ended up happening?  Did somebody tamper with her car in a way that would cause it to suddenly go backwards and plummet off an embankment?  Was some of her depression and crying at the final union meeting due to being shaken up by her previous late night wreck?  We'll never know because the only person who can answer those questions is no longer with us.





The Fate of Whistleblowers in America

Whistleblowing = a deadly exercise in the "Land of the Free"

What do I think happened to Karen Silkwood?  The same thing happening to whistleblowers today. Manning was thrown in a military prison; Snowden has been exiled in Russia since 2013.  Assange was tortured at Belmarsh prison for years, and they were the lucky ones because they're still living.  In more recent times, multiple corporate whistleblowers have turned up dead of alleged suicide.  Thus is the danger of corporate fascism. 

Even if it turns out that all 5 of those men actually committed suicide, it's 100% unacceptable that an employer or ex-employer would be allowed to harass, threaten, defame and otherwise drive workers to that point for having the audacity to report blatant health, safety & environmental violations.  Clearly, our whistleblower protection laws are NOT being enforced.   Meanwhile our government is trying to write laws banning VPNs and other forms of internet anonymity that make it possible to report the crimes of governments and corporations in a safe manner!  They want to make damn sure we can be driven off the road like Karen Silkwood or pushed out a 10 story window like Frank Olson. 

Where the hell is the media?  That's right:  they've got corporate sponsors to suck off.  I can't wait until they're put completely out of business by citizen journalists, who consistently put them to shame with faster, more accurate information and often even beat law enforcement to the punch when it comes to developing stories.  

Whatever caused this woman's death, there's no question she was ultimately a very brave and important figure in the fight against corporate evil and eventually in shutting down the nuclear industry in the U.S.  The Three Mile Accident in 1979 was the final nail in the coffin, but Karen's death drew enough national attention to get Kerr-McGee's shitty plant shut down.  A major motion picture was even made starring Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell and Cher.  Sadly, unions have lost most of their power since the 1970s as relations between regulators and corporations have grown ever more incestuous.  Working conditions continue to deteriorate and whistleblowers arguably face an even more uphill battle than they did back then. 

Rather than staying and fighting when things get hard, most employees just change jobs or even career paths because we've been so thoroughly propagandized and stripped of our historical knowledge of unionizing, labor strikes and civil disobedience in America.  The U.S. just saw its first general strike in EIGHTY YEARS in response to the ICE killings of 2 people--a fact that would've been unthinkable to the workers of the 1930s-1950s.

R.I.P. Karen Silkwood and all victims of state-sanctioned violence whose only "crimes" were telling the truth to protect the public.  For a country that pushes "personal accountability" so hard, you'd think there'd be at least a couple corporate CEOs in prison or on death row for decisions that killed hundreds of thousands of people for no reason other than enriching themselves.  (BP oil spill, Bayer AIDS blood scandal, Vioxx peddlers, Monsanto Agent Orange pushers, etc).  If "corporations are people," they must be held to the same legal standards as the average Joe.

Karen Silkwood
1946 - 1974

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