DdC

Italy's centre-right government has approved a proposal making it an offence to possess and use even the smallest quantities of mild narcotics. The move could give Italy some of Europe's most severe anti-drugs laws.

People caught with modest amounts of cannabis, cocaine, ecstasy and other drugs will be subject to penalties such as deprivation of their passports and driving licences. Those with larger amounts will face prison sentences of up to 20 years.

The proposal, adopted by the prime minister and his cabinet on Thursday, must still be passed by parliament. But approval seems likely because all four parties in the coalition government, headed by Silvio Berlusconi, supported it. The coalition controls both legislative chambers.

The proposal goes further than anti-drugs legislation in other European Union countries by abolishing the distinction between so-called "soft" and "hard" drugs. It also virtually turns existing Italian law on its head by starting from the principle that it is drug use, rather than drug abuse, that must be stamped out.

In a referendum in April 1993, Italians voted to decriminalise the possession of drugs such as cannabis for personal use. The vote reflected the social reality of a country in which consumption of mild drugs had become increasingly common and whose sunny climate permits extensive cultivation of marijuana, notably in large plantations in the mezzogiorno, or south.

According to a 2001 study cited this year by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, the EU's official body for analysing trends in drugs use, 9.4 per cent of Italians between the ages of 15 and 34 had used cannabis in the previous year.

An article in Cannabis Culture, a Canadian magazine, estimated in 1998 that at least 2m of Italy's 57m people had used cannabis. "Italy has a one-year mandatory draft, and it is common knowledge that an overwhelming majority of the soldiers smoke joints," it said.

If the government gets its way, it will no longer be possible - as happened last February - for a court to rule that a 17-year-old student who took 40 joints on a school excursion did nothing wrong because they were for his own use.

The legislation draws a dividing line between the amounts of drugs that will incur administrative sanctions - such as passport suspension - and those that will trigger prison sentences.

Administrative sanctions will apply to people caught with up to 500 milligrams of cocaine, 300mg of ecstasy, 250mg of cannabis, 200mg of heroin and 50mg of LSD. Any quantities above these limits will incur penal sanctions. For cannabis the law will consider not the joints' weight but the amount of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the brain-affecting substance contained in them.

Italy Seeks To Bring in Tough Law on Drugs By Tony Barber
Source: Financial Times UK November 14, 2003
Contact: letters.editor@ft.co m * Website

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Catholic Church Calls on World Governments to Reject Drug Legalization,
But Says Repression Cannot Be Sole Response

In a new pastoral manual issued last week by the Vatican, the Catholic Church called on the governments of the world to resist the temptation to legalize the drug traffic. The manual, "Church, Drugs, and Drug Addiction," was produced by the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry after Pope John Paul II called in 1997 for a study of "the distressing drug problem in the world."



How the Vatican collaborated with fascism in Yugoslavia

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty,
He is always in alliance with the despot,
abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
Thomas Jefferson, 1814

What the WHO doesn't want you to know about cannabis
International: Howard Marks War on Drugs - it's a state of mind

'Relax Your Muscles as Much as Possible'
What's life like in our prisons for those 77,000 marijuana convicts? Let's steel our nerves and go visit the Web site http://www.spr.org, where the Los Angeles outfit "Stop Prisoner Rape" has posted the little plain-talking handbill it has prepared for young men entering our prison system, titled "For Prisoners: Advice on Avoiding HIV/AIDS."

The group's handout -- targeted primarily at heterosexual men who have no desire to ever be involved in homosexual activity -- advises:

"HIV/AIDS transmission during a sexual assault is a serious concern. The following are practical tips for reducing your risk...

Still going to tell me that treating them in this manner is just the way you show your "compassion" as you seek to "protect them from the health risks" of lighting up a joint, not to mention "sending the right message to the children"?

"The horrors experienced by many young inmates, particularly those who are convicted of nonviolent offenses, border on the unimaginable. Prison rape not only threatens the lives of those who fall prey to their aggressors, but it is potentially devastating to the human spirit. Shame, depression, and a shattering loss of self-esteem accompany the perpetual terror the victim thereafter must endure."
"U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun, Farmer v. Brennan

SPR - Stop Prisoner Rape

DdC

Canada: Death Sentence for Growing Pot
Restore-Digest Saturday, November 15 2003 Volume 2003 : Number 278
From: "D. Paul Stanford" stanford@crrh.org

In Malaysia? Singapore? No, right here in Nova Scotia.

There was some media attention given my case during the fall of 2002 when I was sentenced to six years federal incarceration for growing and selling 4 kilograms of pot. Sensational as that was, it was not the story line.

The catch was that I had twice been awarded exemptions by Health Canada to use cannabis to treat a very painful and debilitating medical condition for which all other therapies had failed.

Prior to sentencing I petitioned the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia for relief pleading that Correctional Services Canada (CSC) would not provide my required medicine. Like Pontius Pilate, Justice Hood washed her hands of the matter and sent me off to my fate.

The federal government through Solicitor General Wayne Easter played a political card and refused to allow Health Canada to provide me with my medication. Easter was quoted in the media regarding my case as saying, "If they're in prison, they're not there to smoke marijuana."

I became very ill from the untreated pain and lost over 50 pounds of bodyweight. I was in constant pain, sick from it, unable to eat and though constantly exhausted, unable to sleep for more than an hour or two due to pain. My condition became so grave that I consulted with B.C. attorney John Conroy Q.C. who commenced a Federal Court action to have CSC provide me with Cannabis.

Immediately prior to being sentenced my family physician had become concerned over blood tests that indicated high rheumatoid arthritis counts and booked a specialist appointment for me. A CSC physician concurred and booked me an appointment in Moncton as well.

As all of these medical and legal avenues were being pursued, CSC was developing their court case. From what we have seen, their strategy was to deny me any contact with outside medical professionals so the CSC contracted physician of their choice could state in court, that as the only physician to have seen me, he was of the opinion that I would not suffer irreparable harm by not being provided with Cannabis.

I was officially denied permission to see my family physician of twelve years. When she requested permission to see me she was not refused but now close to a year later, CSC has still not provided her with the necessary clearances. They cancelled three rheumatology specialist appointments and an appointment made by one of their own doctors for me to see an orthopedic surgeon.

By doing all of this they were able to move ahead with their legal plan to have their GP contradict all of my medical history of reports and affidavits from a number of health care professionals including many physicians, specialists and therapists. The conclusion of the Judge at the emergency hearing was then able to be:

"..It is my finding that the Applicant failed to convince this Court that he will suffer irreparable harm if he is not granted access to marijuana."

My condition worsened over the ensuing months to the point that I felt further aggravation would kill me. As prisons are incubators for infectious and deadly diseases I requested Hepatitis vaccinations. As part of that protocol the prisoner is first tested. I came back as Hepatitis C positive.

Aside from surgery in 1980 I had no suspected contact with this disease other than day to day contact with infected people during my prison experience. I had no symptoms or signs of this disease prior to being incarcerated despite the extensive medical testing that I had been subjected to over the years as a result of my disability. I have solid medical opinion that I did not have this disease when sentenced to prison.

The symptoms of Hep C are headache, joint pain, loss of appetite, wasting, exhaustion and insomnia- all symptoms as well that I had developed and complained of as a result of having had my pain medication taken away. If CSC would have investigated my condition rather than scoffed at it, I may not be in this position today.

The Hep C infection rate in the general population is 0.8%. In prison it is estimated to be 50%. Any prison doctor who cannot see and suspect the symptoms of Hep C should not have a medical license.

There is a treatment for the disease but it is brutal physically, emotionally and financially. It is comparable to a straight 48 week course of chemo-therapy, is effective in 48% of cases like mine and costs $30,000.00. Unfortunately I cannot consider it because of my rheumatoid arthritis. RA positive patients cannot attempt the therapy. If CSC had allowed me to attend the specialist appointments that had been booked for me over the past year I would not be dying now. Their court position to keep therapeutic cannabis out of our prisons was more important than the life of one
prisoner.

When I was taken away from my family for growing pot I was a healthy, loving father and husband. I will be returned to them a dying physical and emotional cripple. Is medical marijuana prohibition that important to our society?

Regards,
Michael Patriquen

Continued...www.mapinc.org/temp/part2848.html

Texass Tom "Coup" DeLay * Fascist Tom Poster

DdC

Who's Smoking Now? By John Leland
Source: New York Times November 14, 2003
When Forbes magazine splashed a marijuana leaf on its cover last month, John Buffalo Mailer weighed the propriety of flaunting such images in public. Mr. Mailer, who is just starting out in journalism, said he hoped never to run such a cover. "It's a personal thing, but I don't believe we should be throwing that in people's faces," he said.

"I don't think that's our role." Mr. Mailer, 25, the son of Norman Mailer and Norris Church Mailer, speaks with the self-assurance of the handsome and intellectually well born.
Read More...www.cannabisnews...17800.shtml

Norman Mailer: Autocrat of the Remainder Table

"...somebody has to take governments' place,
and business seems to me to be a logical entity to do it."
- David Rockefeller - Newsweek International, Feb 1 1999.

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"The struggle between the two worlds [Fascism and Democracy] can permit no compromises.
It's either Us or Them!"
Benito Mussolini Address, from Palazzo Venezia balcony October 27, 1930

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The weed with roots in hell...

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Italian fascism and German Nazism had their admirers within the U.S. business community and the corporate owned press. Bankers, publishers, and industrialists, including the likes of Henry Ford, traveled to Rome and Berlin to pay homage, receive medals, and strike profitable deals. Many did their utmost to advance the Nazi war effort, sharing military industrial secrets and engaging in secret transactions with the Nazi government, even after the United States entered the war. During the 1920s and early 1930s, major publications like Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, Saturday Evening Post, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and Christian Science Monitor hailed Mussolini as the man who rescued Italy from anarchy and radicalism.

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"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . we need believing people."
Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933, from a speech made during negotiations leading to the Nazi Vatican Concordant of 1933

Extinguish the burning Bush
When the governments of South Africa and Brazil tried to help their citizens by encouraging the manufacture of low-cost generic copies of name-brand AIDS drugs produced by the major pharmaceutical firms, America leapt into action - to attack Brazil and South Africa, accusing them of violating WTO commandments regarding the sanctity of patents.

BERLUSCONI:CLOSE FRIEND ACCUSED OF MAFIA LINKS
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A July 21, 2003 article in The Associated Press reported that "Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi used his two-day trip to the United States to bond with President Bush and discuss world affairs." In a joint conference with Bush, the Independent quotes Berlusconi as stating that, "We really need to support and develop a culture of union and cohesion and certainly not nurture the culture of division."

DdC

"All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those towards whom it is directed will understand it. Therefore, the intellectual level of the propaganda must be lower the larger the number of people who are to be influenced by it."

"Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise."
From Benito Mussolini contributing to the "London Sunday Express," December 8, 1935

"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others."
Harry Anslinger, U.S. Commissioner of Narcotics, testifying to Congress on why marijuana should be made illegal, 1937.
(Marijuana Tax Act, signed Aug. 2, 1937; effective Oct. 1, 1937.)

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Silvio Berlusconi Bush


The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers, which are cited to justify it.
President John F. Kennedy Address to newspaper publishers April 27, 1961

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Cannabis prevents brain damage

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From The Natural Mind by Dr. Andrew Weil
(last half of chapter four pg. 86-97)

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"If democracy is ever to be threatened, it will not be by revolutionary groups burning government offices and occupying the broadcasting and newspaper offices of the world. It will come from disenchantment, cynicism and despair caused by the realization that the New World Order means we are all to be managed and not represented."
Tony Benn, British Labour Party Member of Parliament

Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts
Reviews and Related

President Nixon's own Shafer Commission's finding in 1970 that
"marijuana policy had become more damaging to American society than marijuana."

The Shafer Commission of 1970
Marijuana does not lead to physical dependency,
although some evidence indicates that the heavy,
long-term users may develop a psychological dependence on the drug"

"You know, it's a funny thing,
every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish.
What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob?
Richard Nixon missing tapes

The USA Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy 1987
"Cannabis can be used on an episodic but continual basis without evidence of social or psychic dysfunction. In many users the term dependence with its obvious connotations, probably is mis-applied... The chief opposition to the drug rests on a moral and political, and not toxicologic, foundation" .

Might as Well Face it, We're Addicted to Lies

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Ganja/hemp lnfolinx

"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience ... Therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."
Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, 1950

The Tribunal of US Drug War Crimes

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