The above image was made with stable diffusion using the prompt 'cannabis in a cell.'
Today I learned that Singapore kills people over cannabis. A 46-year-old man named Tangaraju Suppiah was recently executed by hanging for coordinating the delivery of a kilo of weed. Yes, you read that right. The guy was murdered by the government over a kilogram of plant matter.
Before learning this news, I generally had a high opinion of Singapore. Yes, their rules are strict, but their system is orderly and technologically progressive. I've worked with several writing clients in Singapore and always had good experiences with them. But executing someone over a kilogram of cannabis is atrocious. Because of this act alone, I now rank their regime among those to avoid at all cost.
Closer to home, a block of politicians is trying to establish new work requirements for recipients of public food and medical assistance. According to CNN:
Under the package, childless, able-bodied adults ages 18 to 55 could get food stamps for only three months out of every three years unless they are employed at least 20 hours a week or meet other criteria. Currently, that mandate applies to those ages 18 to 49 ... The provision would put about 900,000 folks between the ages of 50 and 55 at risk of losing their food assistance unless they work sufficient hours and record that employment with their state agencies, receive an exemption or live in an area where the mandate is waived ... The [Medicaid] provision would result in about 1.5 million adults, on average, losing federal funding for their Medicaid coverage, according to the CBO. But states would pick up the full tab for about 900,000 of them, leaving around 600,000 uninsured.
Many years ago, I was unable to work due to cluster headaches for an extended period. One day, my social worker called and told me that there was now a work requirements for me to continue receiving food assistance. He was new and unfamiliar with my medical situation, so I explained it to him and he said that I didn't need to worry, the new rules didn't apply to me. Then my benefits stopped suddenly. Then I was told that I had to have my doctor fill out a form to get the benefits back, but my doctor was a terrible person who refused to fill out the form. So I spent the next year making due on a few hundred scavenged calories a day while also dealing with incapacitating headache attacks.
Murdering people over cannabis. Starving the poor. These are the kinds of things that despotic regimes do. Sadly, the world is filled with despotic regimes and their supporters. They are the enemies of freedom and humanity, and yet somehow they keep ending up in charge.
This is an old story, but lately it's been bothering me more than usual. How can it be that tyrants and fools are still calling the shots in 2023? How can anyone see what the US government does and still think that it makes sense? The answer to both questions is momentum. A momentum that was accelerated by the pandemic response.
Part of that momentum involves the programmatic suppression of dissent, so opinions that differ from the official story are filtered out of public discourse. Part of it involves social atomization. Part of the momentum involves the consolidation of wealth. And part of it involves ongoing attacks on individual sovereignty. Whatever else is happening, events always seem to move in these directions. And the corporate world leads for the most part.
The suppression of dissent and social atomization make it unsurprising that many continue to buy into the official story. News and social media manipulation have become basically universal, which points to an interesting idea. The idea is that there are other versions of reality the public might believe, if we weren't being subjected to the perpetual PsyOp. They probably wouldn't need to do all of that suppressing if there weren't a movement to suppress.
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