Obscanity: You'll know it when you see it

As if the recent raid on a Culver City medicinal marijuana cooperative by DEA agents wasn’t enough, it’s now become apparent that this raid was conducted not only by DEA agents, but also by Blackwater employees. Yes, that would be the same Blackwater that has government contracts for private security in Iraq, and the same Blackwater whose trigger-happy thugs killed more than a dozen Iraqi civilians for no particular reason. What’s next – will Blackwater agents start shooting medicinal marijuana patients too?

As I browsed pages while reading about this story, I came across this article about Blackwater’s broader functions in the present and in the future. Then I came across this chilling paragraph:

What could prove to be one of Blackwater’s most profitable and enduring enterprises is one of the company’s most secretive initiatives–a move into the world of privatized intelligence services. In April 2006, Prince quietly began building Total Intelligence Solutions, which boasts that it “brings CIA-style” services to the open market for Fortune 500 companies. Among its offerings are “surveillance and countersurveillance, deployed intelligence collection, and rapid safeguarding of employees or other key assets.”

Now, if you read the LA Times article you’ll find that while the DEA agents and Blackwater people ransacked people’s bedrooms and stole all of the marijuana and live plants on the premises (and uprooted their vegetable garden too), they did NOT arrest anybody. They did, however, crack open the ATM and help themselves to its contents. More importantly, they also seized medical records, which basically would include the names of all of the co-op’s customers. Why does this matter? Well, those patients are not breaking any California laws, but until the CA legislature passes a new employment protection bill, employers can still fire patients who test positive for marijuana use, even if they have a valid prescription, are not medicated while at work, and there has been no negative impact on job performance (although apparently it’s perfectly fine to come to work hopped up on Vicodin or Xanax or suffering a hangover from a massive drinking binge the night before). There are also other non-criminal ramifications of being a known cannabis user.

So what I’m thinking is that we’re seeing Blackwater doing its “CIA-style” intelligence gathering, with the generous and convenient help of the DEA. If you’re a patient who goes to Organica Collective, you can bet both dollars AND donuts that Blackwater has your information now, and will be keeping it on file for those Fortune 500 companies and selling it on the open market.

I think Organica employee Brian V. Birbiglia, a disabled former Marine who was handcuffed for more than four hours during the “raid,” said it best: “We follow the law,” he yelled, his face red and his eyes teary. “We might as well have just got robbed by a bunch of thugs downtown.”

Brian, I think you were closer to the truth than you imagined.

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