Stoned seniors: Germany faces epidemic of hippy pensioners

Tony Paterson reports for the Independent:

They include sixty-plus grandmothers spaced out on LSD and 70-year-old grandpas in court for dealing dope: Germany is struggling to cope with a rapid increase in “pensioner hippies” who are still hooked on drugs nearly half a century after the end of the Flower Power era.

The “stoned grandparent” phenomenon has begun to alarm legal and welfare authorities in the country’s most populous state of North Rhine Westphalia, where the number of pensioners annually convicted of drug offences has almost doubled over the past decade to around 117 each year.

The problem has prompted the launch of a scheme to help geriatric specialists familiarise themselves with addiction and old age. “Older people are increasingly turning to illegal drugs,” Gaby Schnell of the regional senior citizen’s association told Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine. “This is a new development which has only surfaced over the last few years.”

Most of the cases on record have involved pensioner-aged hippies convicted of drug related offences. In one incident, a narcotics crime squad in Dortmund arrested a 69-year-old drugs dealer nicknamed “Opium grandpa”. Officers tricked the pensioner into selling them 20 grams of the drug in exchange for €250. He was given a two year suspended sentence.

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McLuhan on Maui

MoM 17h: keep me abreast of things

McLuhan On Maui-17 2011-06-20

The playlist for this video contains much interesting discussion and may be viewed in its entirety here.

The Spiders of Wall Street: Threads of History Run Through Occupy Boise

Big Bill Haywood was a renowned leader with mine and other unions, and a founder of the IWW in the turbulent years of the early 1900s. He was put on trial for murder in Boise.

Former Idaho Governor Steunenberg had been assassinated outside his home. The authorities went gunning for Union leaders. A lower level operative, Harry Orchard, with a long troubled record, was jailed. Orchard finally took a deal and squealed – implicating Haywood and others.

Then a former Pinkerton detective, James McParland, who had earlier infiltrated and helped bring down the Molly Maguires, aided in a kind of within-the-US-rendition of Haywood. Haywood was abducted from Colorado, and whisked to Idaho on a “special train”.

Wikipedia describes the event:

McParland then used perjured extradition papers, which falsely stated that WFM leaders had been at the scene of the Steunenberg murder,[17] to cross the state line into Denver, Colorado and arrest Haywood, Moyer, and George Pettibone.[6] On February 17, 1906, in what writer Peter Carlson described as a “kidnapping scheme,”[17] McParland forced the three men onto a special train and extradited them to Idaho before the courts in Denver could intervene.[18] The abductions were so egregious that even American Federation of Labor president Samuel Gompers, who had little good to say about the WFM, directed his union to raise funds for the defense.[19] Yet a habeas corpus appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court failed, with only Justice Joseph McKenna dissenting.[20]

Mother Jones autobiography describes how this train had the right of way over every other train on the line from Denver to Boise, and then:

When the men arrived in Boise, they were taken to the penitentiary and placed incommunicado. Not for days did their families and friends know of their whereabouts.

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Homeless Man Says Occupy Atlanta Saved His Life

Even helped cure his 30-year crack addiction.

The Spiders of Wall Street: Threads of History Run Through Occupy Boise

...Former Idaho Governor Steunenberg had been assassinated outside his home. The authorities went gunning for Union leaders. A lower level operative, Harry Orchard, with a long troubled record, was jailed. Orchard finally took a deal and squealed – implicating Haywood and others.

Then a former Pinkerton detective, James McParland, who had earlier infiltrated and helped bring down the Molly Maguires, aided in a kind of within-the-US-rendition of Haywood. Haywood was abducted from Colorado, and whisked to Idaho on a “special train”.

Wikipedia describes the event:

McParland then used perjured extradition papers, which falsely stated that WFM leaders had been at the scene of the Steunenberg murder,^[17] to cross the state line into Denver, Colorado and arrest Haywood, Moyer, and George Pettibone.^[6] On February 17, 1906, in what writer Peter Carlson described as a “kidnapping scheme,”^[17] McParland forced the three men onto a special train and extradited them to Idaho before the courts in Denver could intervene.^[18] The abductions were so egregious that even American Federation of Labor president Samuel Gompers, who had little good to say about the WFM, directed his union to raise funds for the defense.^[19] Yet a habeas corpus appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court failed, with only Justice Joseph McKenna dissenting.^[20]

Mother Jones autobiography describes how this train had the right of way over every other train on the line from Denver to Boise, and then:

When the men arrived in Boise, they were taken to the penitentiary and placed incommunicado. Not for days did their families and friends know of their whereabouts.

So — is this where the dark door opened by the NDAA may be headed? Outsourcing to Blackwater types government-sanctioned internal abductions on a special train?

The Spiders of Wall Street

At least Big Bill got a jury trial. Clarence Darrow was his attorney. Mother Jones attended. And the trial’s outcome stunned everyone. The Idaho jury acquitted Haywood.

Some scholars believe the verdict of the Idaho jury in the summer of 1907 is the best example of the rule of law in American history. Certainly their verdict shocked many in the court room and beyond. ...

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