The main goal of the Prohibition era was to effectively enforce a ban on the production and consumption of alcoholic beverages. However, like most situations where there are set rules, someone is bound to break them. While legislation was enacted to curb the drinking in America, many argue that alcohol consumption rose to record levels during the Prohibition (specifically, consumption was decreasing during the years before the Prohibition, and rose to new peaks a few years after, with the Prohibition still in effect). When Prohibition went into effect and there were a number of new problems — such as a drinking epidemic among children — that had not been there before.

So where does the Conspiracy lie in all of this? Well many people went to the hospital during this time due to alcohol-induced illnesses. Doctors were accustomed to alcohol poisoning by then, the routine of life in the Prohibition era. The bootlegged liquor often made people sick. The alcohol produced in hidden stills (which were illegal by law) frequently came tainted with impurities. But this outbreak was bizarrely different. The deaths, as investigators would shortly realize, came courtesy of the U.S. government.

Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after placing a ban, federal officials had decided to try a different method of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The plan was to scare people into giving up illegal drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal “poisoning program”, by some estimates, had killed over 10,000 people.

The government redesigned formulas used to make industrial alcohol undrinkable. These “formulas” included adding kerosene, gasoline, and benzene, among other things, to the alcohol, making it toxic. Denaturing of alcohol lead to a drastic increase in the number of ill-people and deaths. Some anti-Prohibitionists, including Missouri Senator James Reed and New York Medical Examiner Charles Norris, spoke out against this poisoning program. After the uproar created by these individuals from speaking out, the Prohibition eventually ended in 1933. The bottom line is the FBI used lethal chemicals in an attempt to steer people away from alcohol, and the results were horrid. How do you guys feel about this situation?

A good book to check out if you ever get the chance is, “The Poisoner’s Handbook.”

For decades, America, like the rest of the world, has relied heavily on oil and natural gas as the main energy sources. As many of you know, this has created many environmental issues, with the most prominent one being global warming (climate change, to be scientifically accurate). The over-exhaustion of these non-renewable resources has created loud uproar and political movements against its usage. For example, the Green Party of America, an electoral alternative to the two-party system, was created to improve the quality of our environment and everyday lives. They have been around since 1984, and have devoted their attention to establishing a national Green presence in politics and policy debate. If you have watched energy politics debates, you would see that the Green Party has not been able to dent the dominant two-party system.

A much stronger political campaign that has started recently is fossil fuel divestment; specifically, fossil fuel divestments for colleges and universities. Fossil fuel divestment is a student-driven political movement that aims to force universities to sell-off the parts of their endowment portfolios that are most tightly tied to coal, oil, and gas. The question is should colleges divest, and how much of an overall impact will this movement have?

In November of 2012, Unity College, based in Unity, Maine, became the first school to vote for fossil fuel divestment in coordination with 350.org. Since then, there are currently 210 active divestment campaigns across the nation, including colleges such as Stanford, Syracuse, and Dartmouth. However, opponents of this divestment movement say that it will have a negligible impact on oil companies, following the “too large to fail” logic. This is a valid point because if this movement was successful and every American university divested, University endowments hold less than 1 percent of the market capitalization of fossil fuel companies worldwide, so their divestment would only have a tiny impact on the companies.

Another argument is that schools with large endowments from these companies will lose their competitive edge if they were to lose the funding. An example of this scenario is Harvard University. Harvard is the most endowed school in the country with $30.7 billion dollars, and if they were to lose the funding received from oil companies, would they really be able to sustain a top international ranking?

Divestment from select fossil fuel producers would send a powerful message to the energy industry and the nation. Although the message may be strong, how much of a real impact will divestment have on the major companies?

Hendey, Eric. “Does Divestment Work?” The Institute of Politics at Harvard University. Harvard University, n.d. Web. 20 Feb. 2014. <http://www.iop.harvard.edu/does-divestment-work>.

Smith, Randall. “A New Divestment Focus on Campus: Fossil Fuels.” DealBook A New Divestment Focus on Campus Fossil Fuels Comments. New York Times, 5 Sept. 2013. Web. <http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/09/05/a-new-divestment-focus-fossil-fuels/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0>.

For the Deliberation Unit I will be moderating Option Two: Work Together and Repair an Ailing Society. There are a few things a moderator should be able to conduct a successful deliberative dialogue.

While a moderator is the one that presides over a deliberative body, the most effective moderators are the ones that can conduct a discussion without too much of their own input. Successful discussions are those in which many people are participating, so it the moderator’s job to encourage participation, without trying to force certain people to speak, as this will only further intimidate them.

A moderator should also be able to propose questions to pick up a conservation that is turning “dead.” They should also know when to direct the conversation to another topic or a different aspect if the discussion starts to polarize and resemble a debate. At the end of the discussion, a moderator’s success is dependent on if the group heard all the sides of scenario, not necessarily determining a “right” and “wrong.” These are some ways a moderator can do an effective job.

For this post I will discuss a conspiracy that involved a Church (you may find later on that this does not constitute most people’s definition of a church). Operation Snow White, sounds as innocent as the Disney character, right? It was far from that. This was the name for the Church of Scientology’s major criminal conspiracy during the 1970s to purge disparaging records about Scientology and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. Why would the Church conspire to eradicate these records? First I’ll provide a concise explanation of the Church of Scientology’s belief: people are immortal spiritual beings who have forgotten their true nature. Basically, the major tenet is that a human is an immortal alien spiritual being that is trapped on Earth in a physical body.

As early as 1960, L. Ron Hubbard had proposed that Scientologists should infiltrate government departments by securing jobs within many different branches. After being severely scrutinized by several U.S. Federal Agencies (such as the FBI and IRS), the Church decided to take their own action, which was unfortunately a foolish one. The decision was to infiltrate and steal any documents in government offices that were “false” and plant different false information. As you all know, this is a highly illegal operation and was exposed by the FBI in 1977. After the exposure, eleven high officials (excluding L. Ron Hubbard but including his wife) were given serious prison time.

This is an example of a rather radical “religion” taking extreme measures to cleanse their records and replace existing information in government offices with false material. The repercussion lies in the credibility of this Church. Operation Snow White painted the entire Church of Scientology in an extremely negative light and earned them significant negative opinion. Of all the accusations against the Church, it is one of the most known and certainly the farthest reaching. Now although this conspiracy may not be as high profile as some others, it is quite alarming that a “Church” without much inside connections could potentially infiltrate into government offices and eradicate or replace files with ease.

For my Civic Issues blog this semester, I will focus on how the energy business affects the world in economic, political, and environmental ways. Any region’s ability to manage and expand its economy hinges on its access to energy. However, as the price of fossil fuels rises and resources continue to be depleted across the world, the United States is looking for options closer to home. These options include natural gas (the controversial topic of fracking will also be discussed in my blogs), and renewable sources such as wind, solar, geo-thermal, nuclear, etc. All of these raise new questions about environmental impact­­–particularly with natural gas and nuclear.

While the United States hopes to become energy-independent by 2025, environmentalists are pushing for the United States to become a green energy country. However, an issue arises concerning the efficiency of alternative energy today, and if it can match production levels of fossil fuels. Another issue with alternative energy sources is their expense in comparison to fossil fuels, which has sparked discussion in areas as high as the White House. Are countries ready to rely heavily on green energy? Is the transition worth the cost? Our energy challenges have been decades in the making, and as we continue to exhaust available fossil fuels, the million-dollar question is “What next?”

SOURCE: http://sites.nationalacademies.org/Energy/

What is the purpose of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)? The most formal definition, taken from their official website (www.cia.gov), is “to collect, evaluate, and disseminate foreign intelligence to assist the president and senior US government policymakers in making decisions relating to the national security.” The CIA is supposed to keep the country a protected place. Many people would make the argument that they are not fulfilling their duties, but my post is to bring to light one of the many conspiracies revolving around the CIA: drug running. Drug running in the simplest of terms is trading of illegal drugs. How did the CIA become a part of the black market of drugs?

While there has been a long history of accusations made against the CIA for being involved in illegal activities, investigative journalist Gary Webb provided a series of three evidence-laced stories in 1996 that were published in the San Jose Mercury News titled “Dark Alliance,” regarding CIA’s involvement in drug trafficking. It alleged that Nicaraguan drug traffickers had sold and distributed crack cocaine in Los Angeles during the 1980s, and that drug profits were used to fund the CIA-supported Nicaraguan Contras. Better known as the Contra War, it culminated in humiliation for Reagan and the CIA when it was revealed they had been trading arms to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages in Lebanon. The money Iran paid for American missiles was passed through covert back channels to the Contras fighting against the Nicaraguan socialist Sandinista government. Better known as the Iran-Contra scandal, all of this was, of course, against U.S. policy. The cocaine being sold in those neighborhoods was being used to support guerilla warfare in Central America.

His work should have been celebrated, but major publishers (possibly influenced by government officials) such as the L.A. Times, The New York Times and even The Washington Post published page one stories critical of Webb’s findings. Why would these major newspapers go against Webb’s exposé? The issue seemed to be that Webb and his paper had overreached in its writing and conclusions. They said he had implied the CIA, acting as a coke-crazed puppet master, orchestrated the Contra drug operation.

However, that’s not really what his story said. Webb’s piece said that the drug traffickers had ties to Contras backed by the CIA. It wasn’t a CIA operational plot, but rather it sanctioned the Contras and failed to stop the illegally gotten gains. These articles make me question whether newspapers can even be trusted as viable sources, let alone the internet. The government has their hands in everything, and they will choose to hand you certain things while leaving the rest in the other hand, unopened. I could bring up the controversial death of Gary Webb in 2004, but that’s a different conspiracy.

I’m sure you’ll find relations between Gary Webb and whistleblowers of today’s world (Snowden).