SAVAGES: America's backyard

Three-time Oscar-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone tackles the drug war in

America's backyard

Stone has a terrifying and convincing thesis as to why the film has to be set in America, with American characters: "The point," he says, "is that wars come home, they come home to roost. And there are connections: one of the two main guys has come home from Afghanistan and Iraq, and he's brought all that with him, what I think are new levels of cruelty and combat technology we have out there."

The thriller Savages is in the same brutal, druggy realm of Natural Born Killers, but Stone has evolved in the past decade and a half, and the new film has a deeper, more complicated perspective. The violence isn't a kick. It's horrifying, senseless. Amid the mayhem, you think, "It didn't have to go down this way."   Why does it? Business.

Oliver Stone's film, Savages, with  Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Taylor Kitsch,  Blake Lively ,
Salma Hayek, Benicio del Toro,  John Travolta ,  Demián Bichir...   C A S T
Dirty, Rotten, (Industrialized) ‘Savages’!

Salma Hayek’s Fierceness Is The Only Reason We Will Be Seeing Savages

Hayek had plenty to draw from in the lives of 

Griselda Blanco and the "La Reina del Pacífico" (Sandra Ávila Beltrán).

(Still at large though are such notorious female narcos as Ana Cristina Aguirre Monje)

The film is based on a book with the same name by Don Winslow, but while the book was released to acclaim, the film was released to mixed reviews.  The consensus is that the performances, with the exception of Blake Lively, are riveting. 

"How liberated from an agenda is this movie? 

Savages will be released on DVD and Blu-ray on November 13, 2012.  

WILL SAVAGES INFORM THE REST OF THE COUNTRY 

ABOUT THIS LITTLE SLICE OF AMERICAN BACKYARD? 

 Are homespun entrepreneurs/Pharma V the Mexican drug cartels coming to a turf near you?  Presidential contender Romney knows what American addicts have known for years, send the uninsured to a nearby hospital emergency room.  Some addicts go bi-weekly and are well known by staff.  "Yes every medic and ER doc knows... "  

Why not ask them?

"Drug addiction should be treated as a potentially fatal illness and not a crime"

Russell Brand

CRY FOR HELP/RUSSELL BRAND BEFORE COMMONS SELECT COMMITTEE

"My problems have gotten worse. Now I am also dealing with health issues, and it is definite that I will be needing surgery some time in the next month or so. 
I was served an eviction notice yesterday and am facing that situation also.
I have zero income, no phone, no car, and soon no house. I am at a check mate position 
and just want to give up. I cant take this anymore."

Liver transplantation / Kidney transplantation

Lost, alone and steps away from homeless, it is not enough of a deterrent.  (the fastest-growing group of homeless people in the United States is composed of single women with two or three children)  The characters change, the locations change, the substances change, yet it is the same stories told time and again.  "After Helen persuades him that "Don the writer" and "Don the drunk" are the same person, Don finally commits to writing his novel The Bottle, dedicated to Helen, which will recount the events of the weekend. He drops a cigarette into a glass of whiskey rather than drink it. He recalls that while packing for his lost weekend his mind was on a bottle suspended just outside his window, he ponders, over a reversal of the opening shot, how many other people in New York City are in the same position as he." 1945 The Lost Weekend

It seems simple when it was just The Bottle.  Now there is an excess from street drugs to pharmaceuticals.  With no end in sight of tortured addicted souls.  Growing are the professionals who make it all too easy:   Emergency room doctors at a Santa Barbara hospital saw a disturbing trend for more than a decade – patient after patient hooked on prescription drugs shared the same physician.   Dr. Julio Gabriel Diaz  "In addition, two women taken to a hospital emergency room indicated they were among numerous people who used sex to pay Diaz for narcotics, according to an affidavit filed in the case."
"Yes every medic and ER doc knows him. His nickname is Dr. Candy. Yes, every time I ran a call and found his name on the bottles, I documented it. As did Cottage hospital. We and they can only do so much and document so much. However, there is nothing more we could do but document and file complaints. For whatever reason, someone decided to take us seriously and take the next step. It is a shame it took so long."

Drug addiction should be treated as a potentially fatal illness and not a crime, 

comedian Russell Brand has told a parliamentary select committee.

RUSSELL BRAND BEFORE COMMONS SELECT COMMITTEE

THE FOLLOWING VIDEO IS WORTH A LISTEN.

  There is a bit of a culture clash here which makes his words and reactions to the committee members comments all the more valuable.  Parliament UK


Brand told MPs that more money should be devoted to treating and educating drug users, instead of punishing them, and suggested that ministers should consider decriminalisation.
What Happened When Portugal Decriminalized Drugs?
Santa Barbara girl Katy Perry & Russell Brand Are Now Official DIVORCED!!

Teenage Russell Brand  Ay ay ay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This story blows away all those “Faces of Meth” ads

Jael Strauss was on Cycle 8 of America’s Next Top Model  five years ago looking gorgeous, and now her face is ravaged by a six-year meth, cocaine, and painkiller addiction (that’s right, she was using while on the show.) She is unrecognizable now, and her family staged an intervention on Dr. Phil.

FALLING APART WITH DR.PHIL

Consider this your 

“Don’t do drugs” 

PSA for the day.

(Jael’s mother initially believes her daughter is addicted to Vicodin, Oxycontin, 

and possibly meth.  Jael agrees to rehab)

A former “America’s Next Top Model” contestant who we haven’t seen in a long time
is headed back to our television sets, but this time the reason is not so pleasant. Jael Strauss, who participated in the 8th cycle of Tyra Banks’ model competition,
is set to appear on an intervention-style episode of “Dr. Phil” tomorrow when her family confronts her about her addiction to methamphetamine.

Where are the models of ANTM now?

America’s Next Top Model Winner CariDee English 

Describes How Sucky It Is To Win ANTM

FACES OF METH

Stay off the pipe!
Officials said containment of the blaze, which quickly lapped up a hillside during the height of Friday's rush-hour commute and prompted temporary closure of the Getty Center, remained at 40%, a figure reached by Friday night.

Assassinated

Griselda Blanco, Original Cocaine Kingpin With SoCal Ties, 

Assassinated in Colombia

You're probably asking, What took so long?  Blanco was one of the most murderous drug kingpin's in recorded history, having turned Miami into a city of blood in the late '70s and early '80s before coming to Orange County.

February 15, 1943 ~ September 3, 2012

1.  Gerald Posner (interview) Back in the Limelight In 

Biography Channel's Griselda Blanco Doc.

2.  Cocaine Cowboys  is a 2006 documentary (Official Thread). 

3.  Cocaine Cowboy2

4.  El Colombiano reporting that Griselda Blanco has been murdered in Medellin.

5.  Cocaine 'Godmother' Who Was Proud of Murdering 2-Year-Old Was No Hero.

DRUGS AND THE DRUG WAR ARE BAD FOR WOMEN

Whether a pill popping wife of a Senator or scraping the bottom of a barrel there

is no glamour and lasting win.  Money does help but that is not the reality for most women.

Santa Barbara police arrest the Cook Avenue residents after month-long investigation.

In the most lovely of cities you can hear story after story of women desperate

enough to  prostitute or forced into some form of slave labor.  Their faces meld into a  stereotypical archetype you can recognize as if you knew them.  Age is not their friend. For many of these women their drug addled brains convince them it is love with their captors.  For years Santa Barbara's  family and geriatric physician, Dr. Julio Diaz, 

better known as the "candy man" was in business.  Eleven known fatalities later and  the DEA stepped in.  Dr. Diaz was also known to trade pills for sex in the typical way female addicts become manipulated by anyone they
may meet or in a business association.  It is part of the lifestyle.
Tragically, the drugs take away any sense of self and well being.
There are thousands of these stories.  The few that the "candy man" brings up is a small evident part of these monstrous crimes.

GORE, GUTS AND GONADS they didn't come more treacherous than the

Stay off the pipe!

... and do something about sucking on those nicotine sticks!

* It is being called the worst fire season of the decade *

This is when it gets disheartening to see workers with cigarettes hanging from their mouth.  Why can't they wait to take a break?  Hiring cheap labor isn't always the best answer, but that is how some of the old Santa Barbara privileged like to roll. Old families like tradition and they've made hiring under the table to escape labor costs a way of life.  They do it year after year and it works for them.  They don't seem to mind if they depend on henchmen to keep the crews in line, some sick stories are told in the hills of beautiful Santa Barbara.  Everyone else is not as happy with that arrangement, most of all during fire season.   Sure methheads need work too, but can't you find a foreman that can stay off the pipe?

It hasn't been that long since evacuating a large part of town was reality.  Yes, it could be worse if a fire sweeps down into our little tinder box of a town, no one is that safe.  And here we sit at the mercy of faulty equipment, wealthy cheapskates full of pride with how they play their slave labor games.

Red flag fire warning issued; 

lightning, gusty winds possible

Southern California fire danger to rise Wednesday

Memories are short.

    2009 Cody Duncan:  Here’s a few more pics of the Jesusita fire

 SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) -- Firefighters struggled Friday to get ahead of a raging wildfire that has moved dangerously close to heavily populated areas around this idyllic coastal city and forced the evacuation of an roughly 30,000 people.


Larry Williamson saved his Mountain Drive home from the Tea Fire. He was unable to save his Electric Truck.

Tagged ‘Santa Barbara fire’

millionaire meth
Life while using Meth is time spent waiting for death
Rich man, poor man, methamphetamine

The Bad Girls of New Castle

Child mugshots of the 1800s were like a depressing episode of The Little Rascals

During the Victorian era, kids as young as eleven received adult sentences for minor crimes. Here's an assortment of children's mugshots taken in Newcastle, England during the early 1870s.

 from the Tyne & Wear Archives and Museums'
Life in Newcastle in the 1800's

Ann Burns 18 convicted of stealing a waistcoat sentenced to 1 month

Jane Farrell, 12, convicted of stealing 2 boots, sentenced to do 10 hard days labour












Mary Catherine Docherty 14 convicted of stealing iron sentenced to 7 days hard labour

Isabella Smith 60 convicted of stealing poultry sentenced to 6 weeks

"Pep, The Cat-Murdering Dog" was a black Labrador Retriever admitted to Eastern State Penitentiary on August 12, 1924. Prison folklore tells us that Pennsylvania Governor Gifford Pinchot used his executive powers to sentence Pep to Life Without Parole for killing his wife's cherished cat. Prison records support this story: Pep's inmate number (C-2559) is skipped in prison intake logs and inmate records.





1871-1873

Victorian morality and Women in the Victorian era

Beginning in the late 1840s, major news organizations, clergymen and single women became increasingly concerned about prostitution, which came to be known as "The Great Social Evil." Although estimates of the number of prostitutes in London by the 1850s vary widely (in his landmark study, Prostitution, William Acton reported that the police estimated there were 8,600 in London alone in 1857), it is enough to say that the number of women working the streets became increasingly difficult to ignore. When the United Kingdom Census 1851socio-economic one. The 1851 census showed that the population of Great Britain was roughly 18 million; this meant that roughly 750,000 women would remain unmarried simply because there were not enough men. These women came to be referred to as "superfluous women" or "redundant women," and many essays were published discussing what, precisely, ought to be done with them.


2012: Not all of the bad, bad lawless fiends of Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties have received their appropriate scold or just deserves.  Stay alert and a vigilant citizen.  Meth Heads and chronic frauds are still out there. 

There are more "axles to grind."  A well concealed thriving criminal element with connections to the DMV can produce or alter paperwork that is very convincing.  
August 14, 2012  Auto Theft case  By Roger the scanner guy

Been fighting extradition from Mexico since 2007

'Queen of the Pacific' 

Mexican officials extradited the suspected drug trafficker known as the 'Queen of the Pacific' to the United States on Thursday.

Sandra Avila Beltran was handed over at the Toluca airport outside Mexico City to U.S. Marshals who took her to Miami to face federal cocaine-trafficking charges, the attorney general's office said.

She told the cops she was just an innocent housewife

 who dabbled a little in the rental market.

  

* * * * * *
Imagine this: You're out drinking when the bartender lets you know it's last call. But you're not quite ready to go home yet – in fact, you'd actually like a few more drinks. 
Illegal little houses: The dangerous underground club scene of South LA

33 arrested in Anaheim gang crackdown ~ More than 250 law enforcement officers target the Eastside Anaheim gang at 54 locations in Orange County and elsewhere.
A year-long investigation into one of Anaheim's most entrenched street gangs has resulted in 33 arrests and the seizure of dozens of guns, a crackdown that comes on
 the heels of weeks of street protests triggered by the fatal police shootings of two men. LATimes August 11, 2012

Southland body armor business is going ballistic
With strong international sales bolstering steady U.S. law enforcement demand, Cerritos body armor makers Stephen and Jana Armellino 
strive to maintain innovations in design and materials.

 Nationwide Drug Bust Includes SJC, LN

A Continuously Updated Global Display Of Major Drug Interdictions