When Barack Obama met Genevieve Cook in 1983 at a Christmas party in New York’s East Village, it was the start of his most serious romance yet. But as the 22-year-old Columbia grad began to shape his future, he was also struggling with his identity: American or international? Black or white?
Drawing on conversations with both Cook and the president, and details from Cook’s private diaries, David Maraniss has the untold story of the couple’s time together.
Photograph from A.P. Images/Obama Presidential Campaign.
awesomepeoplehangingouttogether:
Johnny Depp and Paul McCartney
awesomepeoplehangingouttogether:
Elvis Presley and Muhammad Ali
awesomepeoplehangingouttogether:
Yoko Ono, Elizabeth Taylor, Liza Minnelli, Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston
P!nk - Stupid Girls (by PinkVEVO)
The war on the truth about drugs | The Guardian
The Conservative MP Priti Patel told the Daily Mail: “These people are not just dealing drugs – they are destroying people’s lives.” Patel should have a word with some of her colleagues. Louise Mensch admits that it is “highly probable” she took drugs in the 1990s, and she’s done all right. Or perhaps it is the tragic case of Barack Obama that Patel has in mind? As a teenager, he made the fatal error of experimenting with marijuana, which led on to cocaine and then – with sad inevitability – to a legal career, and the presidency of his nation.
To be fair to Patel, if you don’t take this “destroying lives” line, you’ll be forever labelled “soft on drugs” (as even the sentencing council are in the Mail). “Drugs are illegal because they are harmful – they destroy lives and cause untold misery,” said a Home Office statement in response to demands for decriminalisation from a group including three chief constables and a former drugs minister last year.
Poor Ed Miliband could only agree, using another favourite formulation. “I worry about the effects on young people,” he said, “the message that we would be sending out.” When a politician says their policy is based on “sending out a message” you can be sure that what they really mean is that it’s wrong, but politically necessary.
Which, of course, has always been the problem with drugs. There are risks associated with their use; but there are very serious risks associated with alcohol, serving in the army or eating badly that we accept. And when the former government adviser Professor David Nutt, pointed out – accurately, in a scientific paper – that alcohol and tobacco were in many ways more harmful than LSD or ecstasy, he was sacked by Alan Johnson because his comments might “damage efforts to give the public clear messages about the dangers of drugs”.
As a country, we look back in horror now at the delusions of other eras – when it was illegal to be gay, for instance, or when women could not vote. Yet we do not stop and see that we are living through another one. Decriminalisation would end the violent illegal drug trade; drug treatment and prescription for addicts would prevent them from committing crime. Both measures would make gigantic savings on the cost of policing and imprisoning offenders, and on clearing up the consequences of their actions. They would also end the outrage of people being locked up for the crime of seeking mostly harmless fun. It’s our laws that are destroying lives. +
The Exile Nation Project: An Oral History of the War on Drugs
Interview with Stephani Conyers
Children are the unacknowledged victims of the drug war. In this interview, Stephani Conyers recounts her experience as the child of drug offenders. Both her father and mother received prison sentences in the state of North Carolina for the cultivation of cannabis. Stefani describes in harrowing detail SWAT raids on her family home while only a young child, life in abusive foster homes, drugs and sexual abuse, and her struggle to maintain a relationship with her parents as they went through the criminal justice system.
phiLOLZophy: How to Diagnose Emotional Stockholm Syndrome
Stockholm Syndrome has been described as “a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them. These feelings are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the…
The Vancouver Sun interviews a drug dealer.
Despite recent ecstasy-related deaths, Vancouver dealer says business is booming | The Vancouver Sun
Sam’s workday usually starts late in the afternoon as Vancouver’s aggressive partiers begin looking for a way to chemically enhance their fun.
Most nights of the week, a host of twenty- and thirtysomethings call Sam’s work phone throughout the evening and into the early morning looking for ecstasy and cocaine. Despite recent headlines about the deadly PMMA-laced ecstasy pills, Sam’s phone still rings with clients searching for a good time.
The charismatic 30-year-old drives in and around downtown Vancouver meeting clients in his nondescript hatchback. Sam, who agreed to the interview on the condition The Sun use an alias, says his customers include kindergarten teachers, financial advisers and even doctors.
In his designer scarf and coat, Sam more closely resembles his customers than the stereotypical Lower Mainland drug dealer tattooed and clad in sparkly Affliction or TapouT T-shirts.
The University of British Columbia graduate fashions himself as an independent businessman, carefully growing a base of patrons. He began with a circle of close friends and grew his roster of clients through word of mouth to about 150. Some are loyal weekly callers, others occasional purchasers who contact him every few months. Almost every week he puts a new customer into his work phone, a cheap cell with a number separate from his personal smartphone.
“Honestly, they’re like me — they’re partiers,” Sam says of his clientele. “I wouldn’t say I have anyone who’s an addict.”
Recreational users of ecstasy and cocaine, “these are people with functioning lives,” he says. +
