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About the Author

Nick Schou is an investigative journalist with OC Weekly.

Inclui os nomes: NickSchou, Nicholas Schou

Obras por Nick Schou

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Sexo
male
Nacionalidade
USA
Ocupações
journalist
writer
Organizações
OC Weekly

Membros

Críticas

P.97
Gary Webb, commenting on the CIA's selling crack cocaine to raise $ to pay for arms for the contrast in El Salvador:
" 'I became convinced that the whole war on drugs, 50 years from now, we're going to look back on it like we look back on the McCarthy era, and say, "how the f*** did we ever let this stuff get so out of hand?" ' Webb told author Charles Bowden in 1998. 'How come nobody stood up and said this is b*******?' "

P.143
Alexander Cockburn, author, speaking of MSM's attack on Webb's story, thus covering up for the CIA and Reagan:
" 'I've never taken the view that the mainstream press in the u.s. is to be redeemed,' Cockburn says. 'The rhetorical pose is always that the New York Times could be doing a better job and so could The Washington Post and then we would have a responsible press. My view is that the official corporate press is there to do a bad job. That's its function and nobody should be surprised. The miracle is that the Mercury news was asleep at the wheel and didn't realize what Webb was doing--and printed his story.' " [Referring to the sloppy editing on his story that allowed it to be attacked.]

P.168:
The CIA went through the motions of an "investigation" into drug trafficking by its agents.
"Former CIA officer Duane R. Clarridge, who ran the agencies covert war against the Sandinistas, refused to answer any questions, and told the LA Times he wrote the CIA a letter describing its investigation as 'bullshit.' Pete Carey covered the release of the report for the Mercury News. His story reported that CIA investigators had argued with a witness who claimed the CIA knew about drug trafficking by people the agency had used on various assignments. 'You guys don't want to know the truth,' Carey quoted the witness as telling the CIA."

P.186:
"David Corn of the Nation magazine says the CIA report only 'partially' vindicated Webb. 'It didn't vindicate his story,' he says. 'It vindicated his interest in the subject and his belief that this was important and that something terribly rotten had happened.' Nonetheless, Corn feels that the reports contained 'tremendous admissions' of wrongdoing by the CIA. 'While Nancy Reagan was saying "Just say no," the CIA was saying, "Just don't look," ' he says.
Corn is still amazed that the fact that the CIA finally admitted it had worked with and protected from prosecution Nicaraguan Contra drug traffickers--and then lied about it for years--wasn't a major scandal. 'Here you have the CIA acknowledging they were working with people suspected of drug dealing and it got nary a peep,' he says. 'I think in some ways that's journalistic neglect --criminal neglect. In what definition of news is it not a front - page story that the CIA was working with drug dealers?' "

P.224
French journalist Paul Moreira filmes a 45-minute documentary about Webb.
" 'It was much, much more grave than Watergate,' Moreira says. 'The report comes out precisely in the middle of all the noise around Monica and Bill, and no one pays attention! That's when I discovered that media - noise is the new censorship.'

An amazing book that makes you realize how f***** up our government is, that small-time recreational drug users and small-time drug dealers, in the 80s, were made totally Paranoid by the persecution they got from law enforcement, when all this time our own government was dealing drugs big-time and flooding South Central L.A. with crack cocaine, so they could raise money to send to a guerilla force that tortured and disappeared people, all so they could control a central American country whose government was attempting to serve its own people.
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Assinalado
burritapal | 2 outras críticas | Oct 23, 2022 |
A biography of investigative journalist Gary Webb and the series of articles which simultaneously catapulted him to fame and ended his career.

Webb's 1996 "Dark Alliance" series in the San Jose Mercury News revealed connections between Los Angeles drug dealers and the "Contras", a loose coalition of US-backed terrorist groups seeking to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. Webb unearthed evidence that the CIA was turning a blind eye to Contra drug trafficking, which, he argued, had contributed to the surge in crack-cocaine use in LA in the 1980s. The article sparked controversy as some readers held it up as "proof" that the CIA had deliberately started the crack epidemic, while mainstream newspapers published vicious attack articles seeking to discredit the series and Webb himself. Ultimately, Webb lost his job at the Mercury News and was effectively pushed out of journalism altogether.

While the book did a good job of explaining the story and the controversy around it, parts of the book felt like filler. I thought the book spent a little too long on Webb's early life, which was largely irrelevant to the main story, and went into excessive sordid detail about Webb's personal problems following his departure from the Mercury News, culminating in his suicide in 2004. However the core of the book felt very thorough, balanced, and well-researched, incorporating quotes from numerous sources both supportive and critical of Webb's work.

Overall, an interesting, though somewhat depressing, case study on the workings of the US news media system.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
gcthomas | 2 outras críticas | Jul 11, 2021 |
When people hear the word LSD or the phrase 'turn on, tune in, drop out,' a couple images likely come to mind. One is Timothy Leary, the most publicized advocate of LSD. Another is a group of spaced-out hippies in psychedelic clothing (often optional) at a 'be-in.' What probably doesn't come to mind is a smuggling operation responsible not only for bringing tons of marijuana into the country from Mexico, but manufacturing LSD and smuggling hashish from Afghanistan. Yet as Nicholas Schou explores in Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World, those were among the main activities of The Brotherhood of Eternal Love.

The Brotherhood stemmed from a concept of a man named John Griggs. Griggs was a marijuana dealer in Laguna Beach, Calif., in the mid-1960s when he discovered LSD. Griggs quickly became an evangelist. Despite his somewhat shady background -- and many members of the Brotherhood would have criminal records -- Griggs quickly came to believe that LSD was the path to enlightenment, a sacrament by which to discover and commune with God. In fact, when Leary later took up with the Brotherhood, he called Griggs'the holiest man who has ever lived in this country.'

Griggs gathered a tribe of followers who engaged in communal acid trips. Originally about a dozen members, the group grew, dubbing themselves the Brotherhood of Eternal Love and actually forming a church by that name. Griggs and a number of others were serious about spreading peace and love through acid. 'We were experiencing a whole new viewpoint of life that was so beautiful and loving and caring of others and the whole world. We felt connected to the source of all life,' one early member relates in the book. But opinions differed. Owsley Stanley, one of the first and best known of the freelance makers of LSD, cursorily dismisses the Brotherhood, calling its members a 'bunch of loose cannons on a ship of fools.'

Schou, a reporter for the OC Weekly, did a feature article on the Brotherhood in 2005. With Orange Sunshine he delves more deeply into the group, interviewing not only about a half dozen of the original members, several later members and law enforcement officers. Even if spreading peace, love and LSD to the masses was the Brotherhood's goal, Schou leaves little doubt that its criminal activity was equally, if not more, widespread. Members of the group smuggled tons of marijuana in from Mexico and distributed millions of hits of acid. In fact, starting in 1967 the group would be responsible for the manufacture and distribution of millions more hits of a form of LSD with 200 times the regular dosage, an LSD tablet Griggs would call 'Orange Sunshine,' Several members of the group also made repeated trips to Afghanistan to smuggle tons of hashish into the U.S. The book also suggests that members of the Brotherhood who ended up living on Maui after smuggling tons of marijuana into the state were responsible at least in part for the development of a strain of marijuana that came to be known as 'Maui Wowie.'

Some of the smuggling reflected a blend of two California cultures. Many of the prominent Brotherhood members were surfers. Surfboards often became the mechanism for smuggling marijuana, hash or LSD across borders. In fact, not only does one of those surfboards appear in the Jimi Hendrix film Rainbow Bridge that was shot on Maui, members of the Brotherhood appear in the movie.

Orange Sunshine seems less focused than Schou's prior book, Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb but there are a few reasons for that. First, this is a far broader subject involving dozens and dozens of individuals. Additionally, many who were involved in the Brotherhood remain reluctant even today to talk about it and its activities. In fact, it is perhaps surprising how many people agreed to be interviewed by Schou, although as the book occasionally notes, the arrangements for some interviews were rather unique. Yet all this leaves the book feeling a bit amorphous at times and it is at times difficult to track the various alliances within and associated with the organization.

Whether the Brotherhood was as massive a drug smuggling operation as its members claim or the book suggests, there is little doubt it was a major cartel. Law enforcement cracked down on the Brotherhood on August 5, 1972, arresting 57 persons associated with it and confiscating two and a half tons of hash, 30 gallons of hash oil and 1.5 million tablets of Orange Sunshine. Following the busts, Rolling Stone called the group the 'Hippie Mafia.' Since its inception, the Brotherhood had clearly moved from its goals of enlightenment to to a commercial drug dealing enterprise. In some ways, that transformation could be viewed as mirroring the transition of the 1960s to the 1970s, Certainly, the cry of ''turn on, tune in, drop out' had already rung hollow by then.

Orange Sunshine may not be the definitive book on LSD culture of the 1960s. Still, it provides insight into an aspect of that milieu and counterculture with which few are familiar.

(Originally posted at A Progressive on the Prairie)
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1 vote
Assinalado
PrairieProgressive | Jun 20, 2010 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
5
Membros
193
Popularidade
#113,337
Avaliação
½ 3.4
Críticas
4
ISBN
18
Línguas
1

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