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Tuesday, Jun 03, 2003
leaf blower
"Canada's move to decriminalize is part of a shift in international attitudes toward pot, away from the "reefer madness" legacy. Spain and Italy decriminalized marijuana in the 1990's. Portugal decriminalized it in 2001, Luxembourg and Belgium the next year. In the Netherlands — where pot has been available since 1976 — "pharmaceutical grade" cannabis is provided, free of charge, through the national health service. Britain plans to reduce penalties for possession this summer, a policy supported by the nation's leading medical journal, The Lancet. It concluded, "moderate indulgence in cannabis has little ill effect on health."
Meanwhile, the United States has escalated its war on pot. The number of marijuana arrests now approaches three-quarters of a million annually, largely for simple possession. More people are in prison for marijuana crimes today than ever before. Dozens, if not hundreds, are serving life sentences for nonviolent pot offenses. Attorney General John Ashcroft has called for full enforcement of the pot laws and spearheaded a crackdown on medicinal marijuana providers in California, though their efforts are legal under state law."
Monday, Jun 02, 2003
maass or men
"His latest post mentioned an afternoon he spent at the Hamra Hotel pool, reading a borrowed copy of The New Yorker. I laughed out loud. He then mentioned an escapade in which he helped deliver 24 pizzas to American soldiers. I howled. Salam Pax, the most famous and most mysterious blogger in the world, was my interpreter. The New Yorker he had been reading—mine. Poolside at the Hamra—with me. The 24 pizzas—we had taken them to a unit of 82nd Airborne soldiers I was writing about."
Wednesday, May 28, 2003
old guard
"The US remains a liberal democracy, but those who have hoped for progressive policies at home and enlightened policies abroad may be forgiven if they have become deeply discouraged by a not-so-benign soft imperialism, by a fiscal and social policy that takes good care of the rich but shuns the poor on grounds of a far from "compassionate conservatism," and by the conformism, both dictated by the administration and often spontaneous among the public, that Tocqueville observed 130 years ago. Some will say that it could have been worse; but a blunter form of domination might have resulted in sharper and more organized opposition."
peace out
Tuesday, May 27, 2003
attack machine
"LiberalOasis
Interviews Sidney Blumenthal"
Monday, May 26, 2003
even potheads get the blues
high concept political weblog from the people that brought you The Cannabis Cup. shouldnt they be too unmotivated to update regularly?via mouse musings
whore able
"An internal e-mail by Judith Miller, the paper's top reporter on bioterrorism, acknowledges that her main source for such articles has been Ahmad Chalabi, a controversial exile leader who is close to top Pentagon officials. Could Chalabi have been using the Times to build a drumbeat that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction?"
flower power
"In the first of two part interview, "LINDA" a former call-girl recounts meeting and then working for the New York madam, Sydney Biddle Barrows, in the late seventies. Following her arrest, the press annointed the pearl and power suit wearing Biddles, "The Mayflower Madam." About hookers, Biddles once said, "A call girl is simply someone who hates poverty more than she hates sin."via gawker
Sunday, May 25, 2003
monetary poliseed
"PARIS, May 25 (UPI) -- A senior member of Saddam Hussein's government handed Baghdad over to U.S. troops in exchange for a pay-off and a safe exit from Iraq, Le Journal du Dimanche claimed Sunday.
Citing a senior Iraqi source, the French newspaper reported that Soufiane al Tikriti, head of the Special Republican Guard in Baghdad, ordered his troops not to defend the capital against attack by U.S. and British forces, and particularly to hold fire against coalition helicopters circling over the city.
In exchange, Le Journal claimed, Tikriti was paid several hundred thousand dollars and, along with 20 family members, was ferried in a U.S. aircraft out of the country on April 8."
Thursday, May 22, 2003
24
"There are no innocent parties in "24" because, in the show's vision, everyone plays a part in that fate. When Edward Rothstein claimed in the New York Times last week that "24" presented a "pop-thriller version of power-drunk war mongers [that] resembles Noam Chomsky's nightmare version of America" in which "terrorist guilt is mitigated," he couldn't have been more wrong. No one's guilt is mitigated in "24" and, unlike Chomsky's view, in which we are powerless in the face of the military-industrial-media complex, every character in "24" has a chance to affect the course of the country by their actions. That sounds like the very definition of citizenship to me -- and the very opposite of a self-hating view of America as a neofascist empire that has reduced its citizens to puppets. What may have upset Rothstein is that "24" did not simply presume that the enemies of the republic lurk exclusively without."