Coca-Cola Series

For God, Country, and Coca-Cola by Mark Pendergrast, 1999, Excerpts

By 1919, there were 1,200 plants; virtually every town in America had a Coca-Cola bottler. The bottling business had one unfortunate, unforeseen consequence, however. No longer simply a soda fountain drink for upper-class urban white processionals, Coca-Cola was increasingly consumed by blacks. Sensational stories of “Negro coke fiends” attacking whites caused many to fear the widespread availability of Coca-Cola. As the century turned, so did public opinion, and in 1900 Candler found himself under intensified pressure to reform his “dope.”

In September of 1906, a major race riot occurred in Atlanta, though it primarily involved whites attacking blacks rather that vice versa, caused by inflammatory newspaper accounts of black “brutes” attacking white women. Long before the riot, cocaine, the 1885 wonder drug, had become the 1900 scourge of humanity, and in the South it allegedly caused crazed Negroes to attack their bosses and rape white women. There may have been vestiges of truth behind the sensational headlines, since many farmers were giving cocaine to their black sharecroppers in lieu of food, and cocaine in the city, where 50 cents bought a week’s supply, was a cheaper high than alcohol.

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, 2007

Articles

Electricity Rationed in Zimbabwe

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6638993.stm

May 9, 2007

Households in Zimbabwe are to be limited to four hours power supply a day in the latest setback to hit the country's struggling economy. Rampant inflation has led to widespread shortages of fuel and food. The monthly rate of inflation rose to 2,200% in March, the highest in the world.

Zimbabwe Inflation Reaches 2,200%

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6597993.stm

May 7, 2007

Inflation in Zimbabwe reached a record 2,200% in March amid a deepening economic and political crisis. This is the highest rate in the world. The figures had been due for release earlier this month but were delayed. Zimbabweans spend any money they have as soon as they can, before prices rise even higher.

Exporters claim their businesses have been devastated by this skewed exchange rate. Mr Gono earlier that month said Zimbabwe was suffering from "economic HIV". President Robert Mugabe's critics accuse him of destroying what was one of Africa's most developed economies. He blames the economic problems on western countries trying to topple him.

Bread, Net Disasters Hit Zimbabwe

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5359504.stm

Sep 19, 2006

Shops in the Zimbabwe capital Harare are running short of bread after three top food-makers were arrested for over-charging for their products. Prices of bread and other staple foods are controlled by the government and bakers say the official price does not even meet production costs. The bakers said last week that their costs had risen by up to 289% in the month of June alone.

In another sign of Zimbabwe's economic meltdown, its main internet connection has been shut because of unpaid debts. Zimbabwe's Internet Service Providers Association (Zispa) said that e-mail traffic and web use was down by 90% after the main satellite internet connection run by the state-owned TelOne was closed over a debt of $700,000.

TelOne says it is waiting for the foreign currency to pay the bill from Zimbabwe's central bank. "This is catastrophic as all legal Internet Service Providers utilize TelOne for their outgoing bandwidth to the World Wide Web as well as for e-mail traffic. In short, this... is causing an almost collapse of the Internet in Zimbabwe," said Mweb, the country's biggest provider.

Zimbabwe's annual inflation is running at 1,200% - the highest rate in the world. Earlier this year, Zimbabwe knocked three zeros off the denomination of its banknotes in an effort to contain inflation. The opposition says President Robert Mugabe has destroyed one of Africa's most developed economies through his policies. He blames the problems on a western plot to remove him from power.

Rush to Spend Old Zimbabwe Money

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5271154.stm

Aug 21, 2006

People in Zimbabwe have been rushing to shops to spend their old banknotes before they cease to be legal tender at midnight on Monday. Three weeks ago Zimbabwe adjusted its currency, removing three zeros from the values after years of high inflation. The central bank has indicated that it may allow extensions to the deadline in exceptional circumstances. But the authorities insisted that the roll-out of the new currency, meant to tackle hyper-inflation, would go ahead.

There are also reports that buses and some shops were already refusing to accept the old notes on Monday, and that long queues were forming at banks as people tried to change their old money.

The new currency is intended to end the necessity of carrying bags of cash for even small purchases, and eliminate the multiple zeros that Zimbabweans have become used to seeing on price tags. A loaf of bread, for example, will now cost 220 Zimbabwe dollars, as opposed to 220,000 old Zimbabwe dollars.

Critics say the measure does not tackle the underlying causes of Zimbabwe's inflation. They accuse President Robert Mugabe of ignoring economic principles and trying to bribe voters by seizing productive white-owned farms to give to poor black families. He maintains that Zimbabwe's economic woes are the result of a western plot intended to bring down his government.

Coca-Cola Series

For God, Country, and Coca-Cola by Mark Pendergrast, 1999, Excerpts

Asa Candler consolidated his claim to Coca-Cola two weeks after Pemberton’s death, on August 30, 1888. He bought the remaining interest through a tangled chain of titles. Throughout 1889, without much advertising, Candler saw sales of Coca-Cola mushroom. The combination of cocaine and caffeine induced repeated calls for Coca-Cola and the first indication of habitual users, soon labeled “Coca-Cola fiends.”

Candler’s Coca-Cola had phenomenal growth. From almost 20,000 gallons in 1891, sales shot up to 35,360 gallons in 1892, then [during a nationwide depression] to 48,427 in 1893, 64,333 in 1894, and 76,244 in 1895. By 1900, Coca-Cola was already not simply a soft drink, but a phenomenon. With success, however, came increased notoriety and controversy. The drink’s cocaine content had been a source of trouble from the beginning, but it was also a major selling point.

The early ads were almost universally medicinal. Curiously, this was a turn away from Pemberton’s first ad for Coca-Cola, which called it “Delicious and Refreshing.” While the firm letterhead did proclaim that Coca-Cola was “Delicious, Refreshing, Exhilarating, Invigorating,” Candler’s early ads failed to use those adjectives. Instead, Coca-Cola was “Harmless, Wonderful, Efficient, Quick, Relieves Headache, Gives Prompt Rest.” It was the “Ideal Brain Tonic and Sovereign Remedy for Headache and Nervousness. It makes the sad glad and weak strong.” Candler believed in the drink’s beneficial effects, even if he denied they were due to cocaine.

[This was a common t-shirt logo during the late 1970s and early 1980s]

Coca-Cola Series

For God, Country, and Coca-Cola by Mark Pendergrast, 1999, Excerpts

Pemberton may have first resorted to morphine to ease the pain of his own Civil War wounds, continuing its use throughout his periodic illnesses. Pemberton was an addict. “Morphinism,” as it was called then, was increasingly prevalent, particularly among physicians and pharmacists. Pemberton had a personal interest in coca as a cure for morphine addiction. In the late 1970s, Pemberton first read about this miraculous new substance.

Pemberton told a reporter in 1885 that “I am convinced from actual experiments that coca is the very best substitute for opium, with a person addicted to the opium habit that has ever discovered. It supplies the place of that drug, and the patient who will use it as a means of cure, may deliver himself from the pernicious habit without inconvenience or pain.”

Pemberton granted that cocaine, if misused, could be dangerous, but he same could be said for any effective medicine. “I wish it were in my power to substitute the Coca and compel all who are addicted to the use of opium, morphine, alcohol, tobacco, or other narcotic stimulants to live on the coca plant or any of its true preparations,” he said. “It is perfectly wonderful what coca does.”

Pemberton’s label for his new syrup: “Coca-Cola Syrup and Extract for Soda Water and other Carbonated Beverages. This Intellectual Beverage and Temperance Drink contains the valuable Tonic and Nerve Stimulant properties of the Coca plant and Cola nuts, and makes not only a delicious, exhilarating, refreshing and invigorating Beverage [dispenses from the soda water fountain or in other carbonated beverages], but a valuable Brain Tonic and a cure for all nervous affections – Sick, Head-Ache, Neuralgia, Hysteria, Melancholy, etc. The peculiar flavor of Coca-Cola delights every palate.”

Shock Doctrine Series

Rumsfeld approved a series of special interrogation practices for use in the War on Terror. The Intelligence Services Board, an advisory arm of the CIA, stated openly that “a careful reading of the Kubark manual is essential for anyone involved in interrogation.” These included the methods laid out in the CIA manuals: “use of isolation facility for up to 30 days,” “deprivation of light and auditory stimuli,” “the detainee may also have a hood placed over his head during transportation and questioning,” “removal of clothing” and using detainees’ individual phobias [such as fear of dogs] to induce stress.” According to the White House, torture was still banned – but now to qualify as torture, the pain inflicted had to be “equivalent to the intensity of the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure.” According to these new rules, the U.S. government was free to use the methods it had developed in the 1950s under layers of secrecy and deniability – only now it was out in the open, without fear of prosecution.

The thousands of prisoners rounded up in the raids were brought to CIA agents, U.S. soldiers and private contractors who conducted aggressive interrogations to find out whatever they could about the resistance. The Green Zone now became a magnet for a different breed of shock experts, those specializing in the darker arts of suppressing resistance movements. The private security companies padded their ranks with veterans of the dirty wars in Columbia, South Africa and Nepal. Blackwater and other private security firms hired more than seven hundred Chilean troops for Iraq deployment, some of whom had trained and served under Pinochet.

One of the highest-ranking shock specialists was the U.S. Commander James Steele, who arrived in Iraq in May 2003. Steele had been a key figure in Central America’s right-wing crusades, where he had served as chief U.S. advisor to several Salvadorian army battalions accused of being death squads. More recently he had been a vice president at Enron and had originally gone to Iraq as an energy consultant. When the resistance rose up, became Bremer’s chief security advisor. Steele was directed to bring to Iraq what was chillingly called “the Salvador Option.”

As resistance mounted, the occupation forces fought back with escalating shock tactics. These came late at night or very early in the morning, with soldiers bursting through doors, shining flashlights into darkened homes, shouting in English, men’s heads were forcibly bagged before they were thrown into army trucks and sped to prisons and holding camps. In the first three and half years of occupation, an estimated 61,500 Iraqis were captured and imprisoned by U.S. forces, usually with methods designed to “maximize capture shock.” Inside the prisons, more shocks followed: buckets of freezing water; snarling, teeth-baring German shepherds; punching and kicking; and sometimes the shock of electrical currents funning from live wires, incidents documented in the infamous Abu Ghraid photographs. Another Sergeant told of a prison on a military base called Tiger, near al Qaim, close to the Syrian border.

Congress approved the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Although the White House used the new bill to claim that it had renounced all use of torture, it left huge holes allowing CIA agents and contractors to continue to use Kubark-style sensory deprivation and overload, as well as other “creative” techniques including simulated drowning [‘water-boarding”].

Overthrow by Stephen Kinzer, 2006, Edited Excerpts

Philippine War, 1901: Newspaper reporters sought out returned veterans and from their accounts learned that American soldiers in the Philippines had resorted to all manner of torture. The most notorious was the “water cure,” in which sections of bamboo were forced down the throats of prisoners and then used to fill the prisoners’ stomachs with dirty water until they swelled in torment. Soldiers would jump on the prisoner’s stomach to force the water out, often repeating the process until the victim either informed or died.

Abu Ghraid: Google it.

Waterboarding Instructions:  Youtube it. 

Medieval Waterboarding – Tormento del Agua

Medieval Torture in Art

http://www.romeartlover.it/Torture.html

The Army Disease

Pemberton Creates Coca-Cola

Medicinal Cocaine Controversy

Coke Fiends

Coca-Cola Cocaine Content Removed

Santa and Coca-Cola

Schools and Coca-Cola

Nutrition and Coca-Cola

Tea and Coca-Cola

Military and Coca-Cola