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                                              Indictment of the Month      

 

    ‘Operation Margarine’


In France one time,

A manufacturer ran

An ad campaign about

How the French, gourmets

Of the table, would never

Eat margarine, only

Butter. But it was

Selling just that.

Roland Barthes called it

‘Operation Margarine’.


And here and now

And for some decades

The state has seen fit

To make illegal,

Various drugs –

The sort that make

You think you’ve found

‘The Answer’ (except

No one ever has)

Or numb the senses,

Send to sleep, in

General, tranquilize.


What a perfect way to

Keep critical thinking

Down, anesthetise

Revolutionary tendency!

How marvellous that the

Disaffected fight for

A right to sleep and dream

Merely because the state

Has marked it ‘banned’.


Operation Margarine

Strikes again.