Of course, that topic could fill a book… but for now, note that the U.S. Government claims marijuana has no legitimate uses and insists on keeping it illegal. Why, then, has it patented the medical use of cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants? Flipping hypocrites. I’ve always believed that the U.S. Government has no intention of eliminating drugs; it only wants to control their distribution and sale and the immense profits therefrom. Call me paranoid now!
Category Archives: US
US
NDP Motion to Let War Resisters Stay Passes
It’s nice to know Parliament supports this, but Harper will never, ever piss off his buddy George II by doing anything about it. It’s interesting that during the first Gulf War, Canada gave an Iraqi officer refugee status and permission to stay in Canada on the grounds that he was being forced to take part in an illegal war. Americans making the same claim in the second Iraq war were told to pack their bags and head back to Leavenworth. (Under Mr. Dithers’ Liberal government.)
“What’s Your Excuse, Mr. Gore?”
Despite my plea of poverty I broke down a bought Gore’s “Assault on Reason” (it was on sale!) The overwhelming feeling it left me with was: if this man refuses to run for the Presidency of the United States in 2008, what excuse could he possibly give?
After arguing that America desperately needs a return to reason in politics and public discourse; after proving he can win a Presidential election; after demonstrating his ability to communicate with and motivate large and diverse sections of American society; and being the only potential candidate with serious qualifications for the job… would it not be cowardly to decline?
It’s never really possible to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, and US Presidential politics is a vicious and dangerous sport, but… I have to wonder: if I knew I might be able to make such a dramatic difference to a country and to a planet, would I not feel a powerful obligation to try? What kind of person would I be if I just walked away?
I wish I knew what was going through that man’s mind! The most I can do is sincerely wish all the best of luck to those US citizens and groups working hard to “draft” Gore into running. It’s not just America that needs a rational and passionate leader. The whole world is pining for someone to step up and cut through the bull****. Maybe he’s not the person for the job but since no one else is exactly looking good for it either, what is there to lose?
“I Didn’t Know Canada Had An Army”
It’s Memorial Day in the U.S.. A time when many reflect on the sacrifices made by soldiers past and present. Recently, a nice young American man said to me “I didn’t know Canada had an army!” as we were discussing Canada’s role in Afghanistan. We had a laugh about it but it brought special poignancy to something General Romeo Dallaire’s father told him when he went off to begin his military career at eighteen: “I should never expect to be thanked; a soldier, if he was going to be content, had to understand that no civilian, no government, sometimes not even the army itself, would recognize the true nature of the sacrifices he made.”
Maybe that’s one of the things that makes service men and women so special: that they somehow manage to find fulfillment in what must surely be the most thankless job on Earth.
“Something bad is going to happen.”
The New Yorker outs the Bush admminstration’s plans for tactical nuclear war against Iran. Don’t read it if, like me, you suffer from Post Cold War Nuclear Stress Disorder. Or if you have an unreasonable fear of psychotic Messiah wannabes itching for the Apocalypse. (If you think I’m talking about the Iranian regime, you’re right. If you think I’m talking about the American regime, you’re right.) It totally f’ed up my Saturday morning, that’s for sure. All we can do is pray that Seymour Hersh has been smoking something very nasty.
Via The War in Context.
For more on the US government’s nuclear nightmares, see the essay “The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy” in Foreign Affairs.
A New Spirit?
Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
From Al Gore’s Martin Luther King Day address, via The Raw Story. One more teaser, then you’ll have to read the rest yourself.
Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: “Men feared witches and burnt women.”…
It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same.
Happy Martin Luther King Day!
Moral Values
They are explicitly saying, for the first time, that the intelligence community should have the ability to treat prisoners inhumanely.
Apparently the willingness to torture other human beings is a sign of superior morality. With independent investigations into prisoner abuse also under veto threat, it seems those most militantly evangelical about democracy find transparency of government unthinkable. I’ve never been more disgusted in my life.
Darth Vader and the Neocons
The Washington neocons go searching for their souls and discover them in Anakin Skywalker and Emperor Palpatine…
And as long as you’ve no qualms about brutality…
“Palpatine is a dictator–but a relatively benign one, like Pinochet. It’s a dictatorship people can do business with.”
The shroud of the dark side has fallen, indeed.