Our President appears to have given orders for Israel to retaliate against Hamas, and Europe AND the Vatican, thats the POPE to all devout Catholics out there, have come out unified against this despicable act of terrorism.

(This was AFTER my last post!)

Even Wolf is waking up, this day will be remembered as the last straw for bushes murderous wars, and exploitation of 911 for his re-election.

John Kerry looks great snowboarding, hope he comes out blazing after these revelations!

How long before we impeach this imposter, that's what I want to know.

We need to wake up like the Spanish population, and take our country back today, tomorrow will be too late, if the 'timed' assasination is any indication of what these thugs are willing to do to pre-empt the coverage of bushes lies.

John Kerry had better come out passionately against the war in Iraq, as noone wants a president who is afraid of being labeled anti-war or liberal.

Not at this point!

John Sinclair .com

www.afdc.coe.gov/documents/altfuelnews they welcome comments and suggestion about the content of AFN.

in Golden Co. is where the pilot program is held. in a state of the art new building.

they are looking at grinding up plants, for a process to heat and then ferment the cellulose sugars into Ethanol. I heard somewhere about 99 gals to a acre in corn, they use a hybrid version of the little bugs e-coli to break down the sugars.

There is a website worthy of bookmark status in a hemp folder. That link would be http://www.globalhemp.com/ They have hemp articles on the right side of the page. One article says hemp can be used to make lightweight concrete.

This article http://www.globalhemp.com/News/2004/March/man_thats_good_sewage.php is especially interesting in reference to a problem we have in North Carolina concerning hog waste. Down on the coastal plain they raise a tremendous amount of pork in huge concentrations and they gather the waste into lagoons for collection. Everything east of Raliegh has a low elevation and hurricanes can only mean flooding. This flooding leads to environmental damage when these lagoons that may well break on their own are drowned to overflowing with big rainfalls and flooding.

Russian narcotics officers would arrest rich people or politicians or their children, plant drugs on them, and extort huge sums of money out of them to lose the "evidence" against them.

This is one of the things Putin has done that is good. Arrested a sizable fraction of the national police command for corruption in the space of about a week.

You can bet the Russian Duma wants drug reform.

Any Duma member in a heated political dispute with another faction should definitely fear that members of the other faction might resort to planting drugs on him or her as political blackmail.

They need drug reform in that country, just to save the political system from the combined effects of the criminals and the police.

They have no bail in Russia. If someone plants drugs on you, you sit in jail until you go to trial and prove the drugs were planted.

It's harsh there. You think the drug war here is insane? Ha ha ha.

"Smuggling became harder when customs officials got wise and bought some faster boats. The gangsters then resorted to other means to acquire their liquor. "Medicinal" whiskey was still available in drug-stores, on real or forged prescriptions. Denatured alcohol, legally used in other industries and treated with noxious chemicals to render it undrinkable, was "washed" of its poisonous additives and diluted with tapwater. Worse still, illegal corn liquor stills were used to produce frequently toxic "rotgut". Coroners reports for the first five months of 1923 reveal that a hundred people had perished from drinking contaminated hooch. Officials at the time believed the figure to be much higher."

More at:

http://www.ephidrina.org/alcohol/prohibition.html

The policy on mercury tells us flat out that that the government is corrupted. I wanted to present this link because it says that more mercury is introduced to the environment throught the manufacture of chlorine than through the coal-burning electrical plants that have received most of the attention as the laws were relaxed to increase profits at the expense of everyone's health.

[b]Correction/Update: Russia's New Drug Law Held Up, Due to Go Into Effect May 12 3/19/04 [/b]Last week, DRCNet reported that a new Russian drug law that would remove the possibility of jail or prison sentences for drug users or possessors had gone into effect (http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/328/russia.shtml). We jumped the gun. The law has been delayed for two months while different agencies within the Russian government squabble over what constitutes an "average dose" of various illicit substances, the Russian Harm Reduction Network and members of the Russian Radical Party told DRCNet this week.

Although, as DRCNet reported, the Russian Duma had passed the changes -- amendments to the criminal code of the Russian Federation -- in November, and President Vladimir Putin signed the bill December 11. With the law set to go into effect on March 12 -- 60 days after Putin's signing -- it was derailed by another Duma vote on March 5. In that vote, the Duma gave the government another 60 days to settle the dispute over "average doses."

Under current Russian law, possession of even a single marijuana cigarette can garner a prison sentence of up to three years. But with Russian prisons overflowing and somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 drug offenders contributing to the prison crisis, the Duma and the Russian government have shown themselves open to a new approach to drug use and drug users.

Under the amendments passed in November, the law will make distinctions between users and small-time dealers and large-scale traffickers. The severity of offenses will be determined by the quantity of drug at hand, with possession of up to 10 times the "average single dose" no longer considered a crime but an "administrative infraction." Possession of between 10 and 50 times the "average single dose" is punishable by a larger fine and community service, but again, no jail or prison time. Small-scale dealers will find themselves protected against drug trafficking charges by this second provision -- unless they get caught in the act of selling.

What held up the law is the battle royal being waged by recalcitrant prohibitionists, particularly within the Russian equivalent of the DEA, the Federal Drug Control Service, to define the "average single dose" in quantities so small as to render the reform meaningless.

"The agency responsible for setting new doses is the Ministry of Health," said Vitaly Djuma, head of the Russian Harm Reduction Network, "but using its status as a state security agency, the Federal Drug Control Service (FDCS) tried to push through its own determinations where, for example, a single dose of heroin was 0.0001 gram, thus turning all drug users once again into 'drug dealers.' This could not only nullify the humanizing of legislation by the Russian administration but also directly threaten the safety -- and lives -- of millions of Russians who use drugs."

Under the quantities proposed by the FDCS, the "average single dose" of marijuana would be 0.0015 grams. With a standard joint weighing in at about one gram, possession of a single joint would make the possessor subject to penalties for drug dealing because one gram exceeds 50 doses (0.75 grams) by the FDCS standard. Similar, absurdly low "average single doses" are set for other drugs as well. An independent committee of experts has recommended that the "average single dose" of marijuana be a more reasonable one gram.

"These quantities are unrealistically low and appropriate only for laboratory mice," said Dmitry Zlotnikof of the Russian Radical Party, which has been following the process with great interest. "It is unclear why the government sabotaged itself with these unrealistic doses," he told DRCNet, "but it appears it is because of the lobbying action of the state drug mafia, the presidential elections held last Sunday, and the formation of a new cabinet of ministers."

The Russian Harm Reduction Network, the NAN Foundation, and the New Drug Policy Alliance created the group of independent experts to set more accurate dose levels and to prevent the adoption of the FDCS proposal, said Djuma. "The law was intended as leverage to soften Russia's previous extremely repressive drug policy," Djuma wrote in an e-mail. "We have turned for support to the Ministry of Justice and the Commissioner of Human Rights, and some other high-level officials also supported us," he said.

Indeed, in a March 11 letter to the Russian government, Ella Pamfilova, the Russian Human Rights Commissioner, urged the government to adopt more reasonable standards. "The Commission on Human Rights under the President of the Russian Federation believes that approval of above-mentioned drug quantities would directly distort the will of legislators who introduced a strictly differential approach between drug users and those who deal drugs," she wrote, in a translation provided by Djuma. "The Commission of Human Rights can attract experts who are ready to render assistance in developing the draft list of drug sizes. In this connection, the Independent Expert Council with the NAN Foundation has developed an alternative version of the table. We ask you to take into account the stated remarks when drafting the government's order on approval of the doses table."

Now the government has 60 days to arrive at new standards for "average single doses," and Djuma said it will be settled this time around. "I don't think we will see another delay," he told DRCNet. "This happened because of the presidential election. No one wanted to take responsibility for the tough standards before the elections, and on the other hand, no one wanted to take the risk of being progressive, either. But now there is no possibility that the law will not go through, although it will be a tough issue and whatever doses we might suggest, we will always have opponents in the government."

The issue bears close watching. What could be a groundbreaking, progressive new approach to drug use and drug users in Russia is still in danger of being sabotaged by Russia's drug warriors. When the battle over doses is settle, we will let you know the results.

In the meantime, the FDCS has been stalwart in its opposition to any loosening of laws or attitudes about drugs in Russia. In November, Djuma reported, the anti-drug agency issued a letter in which it referred to harm reduction as "propaganda for drug use" and suggested local FDCS offices file administrative or criminal charges against harm reductionists. The movement orchestrated a protest campaign in response, said Djuma, and as a consequence, FDCS has since said it will not oppose the introduction of needle exchange programs.

But now, the narcs are going after books. According to the Radicals' Zlotnikof and reports in the Moscow Times, the FDCS has ordered that Lester Grinspoon's classic "Marijuana: The Forbidden Medicine" be pulled from the shelves as drug propaganda. At a Tuesday news conference, Ultra Kultura, which published the Russian translation, accused the government of censorship.

"Society has a right to access to information," Ultra Kultura editor Vladimir Kharitonov said. "The government is starting to interfere in ways we have not seen for a long, long time."

The narcs don't get it. What they are doing is not censorship, said FDCS deputy director Alexander Mikhailov, drawing a very fine distinction in an interview with Kommersant the same day. "We're tracking adherence to laws and leading an uncompromising battle against drugs," he said. "Censorship is interference in the stage of preparation to publish books and printed materials. We don't do that."