To: eco man , lisbethduck@...
CC: cannabisaction@yahoogroups.com, mayday@yahoogroups.com,
themillionmarijuanamarch@yahoogroups.com,
amarijuanasmokerslounge2@yahoogroups.com, AMSL3Discuss@yahoogroups.com,
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From: Matthew McDaniel
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 09:16:08 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: DW. Re: Akha: Mr. Ah Nay beaten, broken ribs by Thai Army. [Fwd. Drug war terror continues]

Lisbeth:

 

Hey, I try to be polite.  Economics.  It costs me 2,000 baht for each two hour one way trip to town to work all the email that keeps the army from killing people.  I make many trips a month.  It costs me 3000 baht per month after installation to have 150/250 kps data transmission right in the village and be there in the region most the time. This protects the Akha, lets me save donor money that can be spent on health care and books.

 

Opiates if used correctly as a god given natural sap that comes out of flowers (smoked any of that lately?) keeps coughing children alive, eases pain of people who have no food, cancer (that is what they will give you when your brain is expanding out of your head on your last leg) relaxes the mind, will help you work very hard, and will help you recover very hard.  You will not steal much or beat people much on opium like you will on alcohol or anger or stress or whatever.  It is a mellow drug, will not cause you to crash your car or jump off buildings.  The most it will do is kill your pain, help you think and make you sleep more than you have time to if you have to do many things.  It will stop the shits, which are common here in the mountains where all the water is dirty.  It will stop old age back and joint pain, a great sleep provider. The few smokers in the village are the medics for all the other people. 

 

Have you ever heald a baby while it was dying cause all the doctors were in the wrong place?  Well, babies vomit cough syrup, they die of lung congestion and exhaustion from coughing.  Breathe opium smoke into their lungs, they relax, sleep and LIVE.

 

But opium is not taxed, squeezed, packaged or sold by the gov or the mega pharmaceuticals. Therefore they are against SOME drugs.

 

Keep in mind that drugs are PAIN KILLERS and that people in pain use them, what aught I to dictate? 

 

My final offer is this.  You come here for six months.  I will give you a metal hoe, and a hut.  You can bring no cash, no change of clothes, no ID card and no food.  You are a new relocated Akha.  You can live or die, and I won't condemn you if you smoke whatever to keep your mind.

 

I want a satelite dish because there are not ngo's here.  Amnesty got all their info on the June 6 2003 report from me cause I hung my ass out in the wind, not because they like to leave their cushy office in Bangkok and London.  Then they didn't have the nerve to ask me for all the OTHER people who had been killed. Sort of lame.

 

My Akha wife and kids live a kilometer from the border.  Nothing stops someone from walking in and killing all of us in the middle of the night.  Life is cheap here.  I work the roads five and six hours a day, any time of day or night, there is an endless line of Akha, Lahu, Lisu, Hmong, Yao coming to my door to ask me to save them from death, from an army threat to kill them, to get their husband out of jail, their wife, just to beg for help.

 

I am two hours by twisting road from Chiangrai.  Three volunteers just left because they were petrified scared to death.

 

I am into 300 Akha villages in Thailand in an area the size of half the state of Oregon with roads worse than any found in Oregon.  I have a highly modified Toyota four by four, I will go up any mountain any time of day or night, rain or shine and come help your ass if you call in or use the Akha village to village talking system.  I will go and fight with army or police or forestry or jailers or medical people anywhere anytime they decide it is their place in life to hurt people rather than help them.

 

My annual budget as posted on the www.akha.org website comes to about $675 per month for all services and fuels, repairs.  There have been scores of Akhas murdered by police in the last six months, Amnesty has never contacted me though I met the London boss in Chiangmai three weeks ago. She had nothing to say.

 

I have just finished a 300 page journal of incidents and documents of the Akha that I now get ready for press.

 

NOBODY, drug user, drug "abuser" anywhere deserves to be injured or abused for their beliefs, even if it is to "destroy" their lives with drugs, which I have yet to see here.

 

The only injuries I see are the army and police using drugs as an excuse to do ethnic cleansing.

 

I work here now for 12 years.  I have no salary, no health care, no retirement.  I do this because I don't see anyone else here to do it and I don't agree with what I see being done to these people to exploit and abuse them. 

 

Matthew McDaniel

The Akha Heritage Foundation.
http://www.akha.org Akha Heritage Site.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Akhaweeklyjournal
Donate: http://www.akha.org/donate/donate.htm
PO Box 6073 Salem, OR. 97304 USA.

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