I came home from work Thursday night and found a big fat love message on my sidewalk from Mark Herschler, the heart of my world in this happy valley. Mark and I shared an apartment for years and I used to love to come home from work and find him playing that very guitar on the back porch. He is the best singer writer I've ever known and I think maybe we've been connected for millenia. It's uncanny, I was thinking of him and the rest of the family the night before. I haven't seen them in months.
He left a flyer for what appeared to be an impromtu gig with his new band, Gross National Project at the place formerly known as the Baystate Hotel. I hadn't stepped across the threshold of the building in three years. Not since the new owners renamed the building. I loved the Baystate and I hated the so called restoration.
The note on the poster said, "Libby, if you can come check out this Rhythm section, we have something fun for you." It sure looked like a fun group. I recognized Peter Kim the bass player but I had no idea who the drummer was so I finally went into Bishop's and had a fabulous time.
It was a real love fest, I saw so many dear friends who I've neglected for far too long. I knew 90 percent of the people in the room. Mark and Molly Bode, Jane and Ed, Janet and Mitch, George and Greg and Evan who work there. Jamie showed up late without his gorgeous wife Maki who is not home from Japan yet but he promised she would be at the annual Fourth of July bash on the boat, which I would have forgotten to show up for if I hadn't seen everyone.
Valley readers, look for this band. The music is great and it's a fun crowd.
The liquor is being sold in supermarkets and restaurants and has so far elicited no complaints from the Czech anti-drug crowd. For myself, I can't imagine it would be that popular. I mean how good could it taste? As I recall, marijuana tea tasted pretty yucky.
I am not at all a morning person and I'm rarely awake in time to call in to the Washington Journal. However, it was early today when I flipped on CSPAN. The host is reading a piece on the UN report promoting the fiction that the eradication efforts in Colombia have actually had any effect on the availability of cocaine in the US, a story we covered here four days ago. I decide to call in on the listener line, as they repeatedly invite you to do. Keep in mind that I am so low tech, I don't even have a cordless phone much less a cell, so I can't hear or see the television while I'm using my only phone.
It's my first time calling. The only rule I know about is you're allowed one call in 30 days. It takes a long time but I get through. The guy answers the phone, "Good morning CSPAN, should the Greens nominate Ralph Nader?"
Not the greeting I expected but I answered without missing a beat, "Sure but what good would it do?"
I figured it might be some kind of competency test. After asking when my last call was, he muttered something I didn't catch about my TV set and told me I'd be on the air. I can now hear the program again, and sure enough they are talking about Nader.
Now I have a lot to say about Ralph Nader, and in retrospect I suppose I could have used his position on drug policy to segue into my point on the earlier piece but at that hour, I didn't think that quickly. I hung up so as not to be trapped into wasting my call on Ralph's ego problem.
I call back and get through again. I overhear the guy complaining to his co-worker about how crazy the morning has been as he's picking up the phone. When I tell him I don't want to talk about Nader, he tells me the open phone thing has ended and to try again in an hour. So I try to ask if I'll be able to talk about the story then because I think the UN report is dangerously inaccurate and it's the only issue I want to address. He hangs up on me in mid-sentence.
I don't care if he's disinterested, but he knew it was my first time and could have spent the extra 15 seconds to let me finish the sentence and tell me what their policy is on bringing up topics from earlier segments so I would know whether it was worth spending my time trying to get through. I found this unpleasant exchange so irritating that not only did I not try calling again, I switched off the program altogether.
It's this kind of rudeness that contributes to the overall deterioration of civil society. If CSPAN's phone screeners are too indifferent and/or too harassed to be polite, the least they could do is transfer you to a pre-recorded set of guidelines. Hanging up on inexperienced callers hardly seems a way to encourage a wide range of fresh viewpoints, nor a way to retain viewers.
Brazil claims to have safeguards in place to avoid shooting down innocents, however Peru also had safeguards and if memory serves, the missionary plane was shot down on account of a language barrier. The pilot didn't understand the military plane's communications.
Brazil alleges their airspace is being constantly violated by drug traffickers who make obscene gestures as they fly by, secure in the knowledge that they can't presently be intercepted. Interestingly, Brazil is negotiating the terms of the law with the US government which begs the question, since when do they need our permission to enact their own legislation?
Meanwhile, Colombia quietly resumed their policy of shooting down suspected courier planes in 2003 and the Washington, AP news agency reports almost a dozen planes have been down this year alone with intelligence assistance from the US government.
Anyone recall reading about the US sneaking this policy back into practice in the main stream US media? Me either.
Drug WarRant has several good posts up this morning. Pete alerts us to a new mandatory sentencing scheme. Senselessbrenner proposes horrible new sentencing bill gives the details on, "Defending America's Most Vulnerable: Safe Access to Drug Treatment and Child Protection Act of 2004 sponsored by House Judiciary Chair Jim Sensenbrenner." This is really evil folks and seeks to only to incarcerate more non-violent consumers without any chance of probation of sentencing based on judicial discretion.
Also check out George Bush's latest scheme to screen the entire population of the US for mental illness. It wouldn't be such a bad idea, if he would demonstrate it's usefulness by having himself and his cabinet screened first, unfortunately Pete delivers the evidence that this is just another thinly veiled scheme to promote pharmaceutical drugs and facilitate the pharma companies obscene profits.
Meanwhile of course they plan to continue spending almost 40 billion of your tax dollars on their war on some drugs. Those would be the ones the pharmas don't make a profit on.
Attorneys for the state argued there is no exception in state law for the use of peyote by Indians and said that even if the court ruled there was such an exception, it could not be extended to cover non-Indians.
The high court ruled that state law incorporates the federal regulation but does not specify a restriction on peyote use only by members of federally recognized tribes. Use of the hallucinogenic drug is limited to bona fide religious ceremonies as part of the Native American Church, Justice Jill Parrish wrote.
The court rightly noted that, "permitting the exemption for some church members and not others would violate the equal-protection clause in the United States Constitution."
Thanks to CCLE, who made the decision available here.
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
It also kind of answered the question I had on my mind when I found it again. So sue me, I like those little cosmic moments.
Dishes at the restaurants in Guizhou province contained varying degrees of the opium derivative morphine, the report said.
"Consuming soup or hot pots mixed with poppies for a long time will make you become addicted ... and eventually lead you to drug abuse in serious cases," Wei Tao, deputy chief of the Food Institute with Guizhou Provincial Center for Disease Control, was quoted as saying.
Nothing has been said about prosecutions but one wonders if there will be a protest raised by those patrons who got hooked on the food.
I have to confess that in 1970 I snorted up a whole lot of crystal meth myself. We used to get it from some kid at MIT that brewed it up in the school labs or maybe his dorm room. So I'm thinking if they've been cooking this stuff up for at least the last 34 years -- why haven't we heard about all this toxic waste until recently? I put the question to the fine minds on my discussion list.
It turns out this is just another failure of prohibition policy. When the government made purchasing the precursor ingredients against the law, they made the "clean" method of cooking meth with safely manufactured chemicals impossible. The meth makers were then forced to find ways to make the precursor ingredients as well and I'm told that these are the culprits that cause the toxic waste. The laws didn't stop the manufacture of the drug, they merely made it more dangerous.
The devil of this failed prohibition is in this sort of unintended consequence. Whereas before, you had only the problem of meth addicts, now you also have the problem of properties contaminated from the unregulated processing of the substance.
Let me say this again, "You can't stop people from using drugs and as long as there is a market, there will be suppliers." If they had legalized and regulated this drug 30 years ago, landlords like 78 year old Clifton Moneymaker (who has never even heard of meth) would not be forced to clean up the mess the DEA left behind -- not to mention he would still be collecting the $500 rent he depends on to meet his expenses.
The Colombia government, aided by the US, did manage to successfully poison 116,000 hectares of land in the Amazon Rain Basin, while displacing thousands of indigenous peasants, ruining legitimate crops and sickening the few local residents who would not or could not leave. However, despite all the damage, the Andes still managed to produce three times more cocaine than the US market consumes.
The Incomprehensible Lie of the Week award though goes to drug czar John Walters, who said in a statement that the report shows ``when democracy, stability and security flourish in drug-producing nations, progress can be made against the narco-terrorists who threaten our way of life.''
To add insult to injury, the Australian government with obvious US inspired prosecutorial greed, took possession of the family home (because they could) and intend to charge them rent. The couple, who built the house with their own bare hands, will not go without a fight.
"They will have to drag us off," Mrs Davies said.
Meanwhile, the parties' lawyers are hashing it out and it appears the government might be willing to offer free rent. What a joke. They should be returning the Davies assets and offering an apology.
And finally, in an attempt to make amends for my self-absorbed wailing in the last week, I just checked Dispatches from the Culture Wars and let me say Ed Brayton is right, I probably need serious help. The hypochondria takes up enough of my time without adding paranoid delusions into the mix however, not to split hairs but I don't think it's impossible to instinctively dislike a person. Not to mention if the criteria for posting about someone is actually knowing them personally, then we had all better give up blogging. I mean for instance, how many bloggers actually "know" George Bush?
In any event, no one can accuse Ed of "knowing" me (as he clearly does not, since as my friends can attest -- to know me is to love me) but in my own defense, I was trying (and apparently failing) to be amusing. Believe it or not, a lot of people find me uproariously funny but my sense of humor is apparently an acquired taste and my jokes seem to lose a lot in translation without the voice inflections.
Meet at Tully O'Reilly's for a beer any week night at 6:00 though and I promise to make you laugh....
The mission also collected thousands of pristine bits of the comet that could yield answers to the origins of this universe. The lab scientists will be receiving comparative data as soon as July 4, 2005 when, "NASA's Deep Impact will slam a probe into comet Tempel 1."
Sounds a little ominous but very cool, doesn't it?
The newsletter itself is fascinating reading. I don't know if anyone can subscribe for future updates, but, check out the entire April issue anyway. It covers everything smuggled from candy to cocaine to African yopo seeds. There's even a jobs section.
However, as Pete Guither's moving post at Drug War Rant reminds us, not every child enjoys such good fortune, particularly under mandatory minimum sentencing for non-violent drug offenders. There's something wrong with a policy that creates more victims than it protects and today, hundreds of thousands of children will not see their Dads because the ill-advised war on some drugs imprisoned their parent for a victimless crime. My heart -- goes out to them.
Whole Lotta Love
Cannabis martinis at 4:20?
Calling CSPAN - manners matter
What a drag it is getting up
Fear of Flying
Vision quests protected by Utah high court
Meme game revisited
Soup is good food
Meth clean-up costly
UN claims Colombian coca production reduced
Send in the clowns
Davies vow to stand their ground
Communication Breakdown
Stardust gets in your eyes
