cannabisnews.com: Cultivating Compassion 





Cultivating Compassion 
Posted by CN Staff on April 25, 2004 at 08:05:45 PT
Editorial Opinion
Source: Salt Lake Tribune 
Whenever folks over at the U.S. Justice Department were feeling blue about anti-American terrorists, uppity librarians or naked statues standing behind the attorney general, they could always take a deep drag on the anti-drug drug by busting a few terminal cancer patients in California.   But now some derned activist federal judge has taken that simple pleasure away from them. Some days it just doesn't pay to be a jack-booted thug.
It will be of great comfort to a few people, at least for awhile, to be members of the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana in Santa Cruz, Calif. That's because a federal judge Wednesday ordered the feds to stay away while the dispute over California's medical marijuana law plays out in the courts.   The co-op's garden was shut down 18 months ago by a federal raid, surely one of the ugliest acts of governmental bullying on record.   But U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel, echoing an earlier appeals court ruling, found that the Wo/Men's Alliance was protected by a state law that allows people with a doctor's recommendation to use marijuana to ease the suffering attendant to cancer, cancer treatment, glaucoma or other ills that, many believe, are eased by the drug.   The case is wending its way up to the Supreme Court. But, for now, California co-ops run on volunteer labor and donated funds that do not engage in anything resembling interstate commerce, may grow and distribute free pot to suffering people.   Even if the medicinal benefits are oversold, medical marijuana laws in California and eight other states are clearly motivated by the desire to ease human suffering.   The administration's actions seem motivated by baser instincts including, perhaps, fear that someone might win relief from a substance they can grow themselves rather than being at the mercy of the price-gouging pharmaceutical industry.   The Wo/Men's Alliance grows the marijuana, but the Justice Department is full of weeds.   Newshawk: global_warming Source: Salt Lake Tribune (UT)Published: April 25, 2004Copyright: 2004 The Salt Lake TribuneContact: letters sltrib.comWebsite: http://www.sltrib.com/ Related Articles & Web Sites:WAMMhttp://www.wamm.org/Pictures From WAMM Protesthttp://freedomtoexhale.com/eventpics.htmPot Group Basks in Victory, Eyes New Harvesthttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread18728.shtmlJudge Prohibits Raids on Pot Clubhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread18712.shtmlSanta Cruz Group Wins Court OK To Grow Pot http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread18707.shtml 
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Comment #5 posted by Jose Melendez on May 03, 2004 at 08:41:54 PT
"Bring it on." 
'Let the future unfold without market micro-management and prostituted science.'Hear, hear!http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread18782.shtml#10
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Comment #4 posted by afterburner on May 03, 2004 at 08:25:48 PT
Economics Is the 'Dismal Science'
Saying such things as the food supply grows incrementally, but the population grow geometrically. In other words, demand for food outstrips supply. Oil and hydro-electric were the fuels of the Industrial Revolution. Those corporate-controlled bureaucrats wish to maintain the profits by clinging to outdated technologies and suppression of emerging technologies. The culture war is much broader than just the war on cannabis. We cannabists rightly see the solution in hemp-based foods, paper, fuels, and spiritual/medical/social guidance. "I'm from a new land, I come to you and, See all this ruin, What are you doin' " --Alabama by Neil Young. In the future, fuel cells, hydrogen filling-stations, wind farms [sufficient to provide twice the world's energy needs --Greenpeace], and solar generators in space [ The High Frontier by Gerard K. O'Neill http://www.space-frontier.org/HighFrontier/ ] will be part of the manifest technology. The essence of the Free Trade argument is a level playing-field, with the ideas, technologies, and countries rising to prosperity based on their own "comparative advantages." In the words of the President I say, "Bring it on." Let the future unfold without market micro-management and prostituted science.
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Comment #3 posted by FoM on May 03, 2004 at 07:49:39 PT
afterburner
You asked a good question. This is my opinion and not a fact by any means. If the US wants oil to be in their control the only way for that to happen is to go to war and conquer the country that has an abundance of oil like what is happening in Iraq. It's about the black gold that our country needs. I know I'm cynical but I can't help feeling that way. Also we have too many people of child bearing age. War's control population explosions too if we lose a lot of men and women. 
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Comment #2 posted by afterburner on May 03, 2004 at 07:42:33 PT
'why are we americans having so many wars'
[Toronto Star] May. 3, 2004. 01:00 AM, 
 
 
U.S. eyes proposal to draft women.WASHINGTON http://tinyurl.com/3yazl
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Comment #1 posted by global_warming on April 25, 2004 at 15:02:55 PT
WOW -war on war
From the NYTimes,
The WOD is just a part of the mentallity that drags us into deeper disparity in our world. Is any else wondering "why" are we americans having so many "wars" on something or someone??
gwhttp://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/25/opinion/25DOWD.html?ex=1083470400&en=8aa96831844f2239&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLEThe Orwellian Olsens
By MAUREEN DOWDPublished: April 25, 2004
Columnist Page: Maureen Dowd
E-mail: liberties nytimes.comWASHINGTONIt's their reality. We just live and die in it.In Bushworld, our troops go to war and get killed, but you never see the bodies coming home.In Bushworld, flag-draped remains of the fallen are important to revere and show the nation, but only in political ads hawking the president's leadership against terror.In Bushworld, we can create an exciting Iraqi democracy as long as it doesn't control its own military, pass any laws or have any power.In Bushworld, we can win over Falluja by bulldozing it.In Bushworld, it was worth going to war so Iraqis can express their feelings ("Down With America!") without having their tongues cut out, although we cannot yet allow them to express intemperate feelings in newspapers ("Down With America!") without shutting them down.In Bushworld, it's fine to take $700 million that Congress provided for the war in Afghanistan and 9/11 recovery and divert it to the war in Iraq that you're insisting you're not planning.In Bushworld, you don't consult your father, the expert in being president during a war with Iraq, but you do talk to your Higher Father, who can't talk back to warn you to get an exit strategy or chide you for using Him for political purposes.In Bushworld, it's O.K. to run for re-election as the avenger of 9/11, even as you make secret deals with the Arab kingdom where most of the 9/11 hijackers came from.In Bushworld, you get to strut around like a tough military guy and paint your rival as a chicken hawk, even though he's the one who won medals in combat and was praised by his superior officers for fulfilling all his obligations.In Bushworld, it makes sense to press for transparency in Mr. and Mrs. Rival while cultivating your own opacity.In Bushworld, you can reign as the antiterror president even after hearing an intelligence report about Al Qaeda's plans to attack America and then stepping outside to clear brush.In Bushworld, those who dissemble about the troops and money it will take to get Iraq on its feet are patriots, while those who are honest are patronizingly marginalized.In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq, even as they increasingly merge the two in America.In Bushworld, you can claim to be the environmental president on Earth Day while being the industry president every other day.In Bushworld, you brag about how well Afghanistan is going, even though soldiers like Pat Tillman are still dying and the Taliban are running freely around the border areas, hiding Osama and delaying elections.In Bushworld, imperfect intelligence is good enough to knock over Iraq. But even better evidence that North Korea is building the weapons that Saddam could only dream about is hidden away.In Bushworld, the C.I.A. says it can't find out whether there are W.M.D. in Iraq unless we invade on the grounds that there are W.M.D.In Bushworld, there's no irony that so many who did so much to avoid the Vietnam draft have now strained the military so much that lawmakers are talking about bringing back the draft.In Bushworld, we're making progress in the war on terror by fighting a war that creates terrorists.In Bushworld, you don't need to bother asking your vice president and top Defense Department officials whether you should go to war in Iraq, because they've already maneuvered you into going to war.In Bushworld, it's perfectly natural for the president and vice president to appear before the 9/11 commission like the Olsen twins.In Bushworld, you expound on remaking the Middle East and spreading pro-American sentiments even as you expand anti-American sentiments by ineptly occupying Iraq and unstintingly backing Ariel Sharon on West Bank settlements.In Bushworld, we went to war to give Iraq a democratic process, yet we disdain the democratic process that causes allies to pull out troops.In Bushworld, you pride yourself on the fact that your administration does not leak to the press, while you flood the best-known journalist in Washington with inside information.In Bushworld, you list Bob Woodward's "Plan of Attack" as recommended reading on your campaign Web site, even though it makes you seem divorced from reality. That is, unless you live in Bushworld.  
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