Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 12:07:10 -0500
To: greenpartydrugsgroup@...
From: Dana Beal
Subject: MMM 2004 #15: Contact Kerry HQ--Remove Beers!; Peoria, Rostock
Make 134 Cities on the Spring Offensive!
CC: niall@..., tents444@..., yerbanena@...,
risto.mikkonen@..., indianbud@...,
initiativ@..., mojca@..., ezpz@...,
newagecitizen@..., hromi@..., tushona@...,
pariah_mob@..., jc0_66@..., irena.krzan@...,
legalizemichigan@..., Newagecitizen@..., hri100@...,
info@..., hempSA@..., has.cornelissen@...,
farid@..., inorml@..., mohemp@..., Boris.it@...,
chris@..., iowanorml@..., duncaneddy@...,
RoadsEnd@..., rastapeace@..., pdxnorml@...,
hempSA@..., smuuthc11@..., acididea@...,
anna_ganja@..., andyganja2001@...,
fiddlefoot420@..., torml@..., fearless_420@...,
melacs42x60@..., rebelart@..., pcornwell@...,
martin@..., CAMPNC@..., Blocpot@...,
DennyLane@..., hanfparade@..., mayday@onelist.com,
prohibitionx@..., freddiefreak@..., sokrates@...,
restore@..., rastapeace@..., j_thang@...,
Hempsters@..., texasm5@..., rscherer@...,
phillty2@..., steph@..., billdowning@...,
mmm@..., Usersvoice.jmt@..., forml_2000@...,
chris@..., pakaloha@..., werkhausen@...,
chairman@..., bloom@..., pdr@...,
aksh1@..., stinkygreens@..., Hanf-tv@...,
blair@..., jstatzer@..., encimer@...,
tnsmith44@..., CFFHS@..., globalpeas@...,
emanuel@..., dangssdp@..., fine_time909@...,
miriamwhite420@..., bud_jamesbud@..., mappnow@...,
xchaos@..., btm42@..., wachtel@...,
mgesuald@ilmanifesto, terryparkerjr@..., fjhc@hotmail,
rzr@..., legalise@..., spacehippie@...,
artworks@..., phillyweed420@..., info@...,
doncriss@..., joewein@..., normalpotluck2002@...,
info@..., OCannabisSociety@..., writch@...,
mmackenzie2@..., hilary@..., escandonavia@...,
jipiando@..., leoparda_azul@..., faenadub@...,
don@..., ultra_plus_estrella@..., helmcke@...,
m_bandida@..., malcomska@..., foroalici@...,
earthfirstswt@..., dmcvay@..., taudarknes@...,
hemptress@..., newpaltznorml@..., bitchcrafts420@...,
melacs42x60@..., baren1@..., gica@...,
TCW@..., amec@...

So far, 134  Cities are Signed up for 2004 .

MAYDAY IS JAY-DAY!

(This year, the first Saturday of May falls on May 1. We are recommending Sunday, May 2 or Monday May 3 in cities where there is significant conflict with other local events--or as a rain date. Of course, we understand that some schools have to do it on 4/20 because their school year is over by May, and that some northern cities have to do it a little later in May...)

albany
albuquerque

amherst

amsterdam

ashland

athens

atlanta

auckland

austin

bakersfield

basel

bergen

berlin

berne

boone

bratislava

bremen

buenos aires

buffalo

burlington

capetown

chico
christchurch
cincinnati

cleveland

cologne

columbia

dallas

darmstadt

darwin

dayton

des moines
detroit
dover

dublin

dunedin

eau claire

eugene

fairbanks

fayetteville

flint

frankfurt

ft. lauderdale

geneva

halifax

hearst

helsinki

hilo

houston

hull

kansas city

kingston

kristiansand

lansing

las vegas

lausanne

lebanon

leipzig

leon

levin

lexington

lima

londnn

lucerne

marlysville

mexico city

minneapolis

missoula

montpelie

montreal

moscow

napier

nashville

newark

new orleans

newton

new york

nimbin

ogden

omaha

orlando

oslo

paducah

paris

parkersburg

peoria

perth

philadelphia

phoenix

portland

portland

potsdam

prague

raleigh-durham

rapid city

richmond

rio de janero

roanoke

rome

rosario

rostock

sacramento

salt lake city

san diego

san francisco

san juan

san marcos

sao paulo

spokane

springfield

stavanger

st. louis

sturgeon falls

tallahassee

tampa

tel aviv

thunder bay

toronto

tokyo

traverse city

trondheim

tucson

tupelo

turku

upper lake

vancouver

ventura

vienna

washington, d.c.

wellington

wichita

wilmington

yuba city

zurich

Help us reach our goal of 300 cities worldwide!

To get on the poster for 2004--"Mayday is Jay Day"--check yr contact info and email me back telling me to add yr city to the List at the top of this email. By the way, I lost about three weeks email not long after last year's event, and have had intermittent email service since that time.. Did anything happen on the first Saturday of May in your area? Numbers? Arrests? Media? Anything of interest happen, etc?

You can also call me at 212-677-4899--or leave a message on 212-677-7180.

Dana/cnw

P.S.: We are also interested in adding to our list of prestigious endorsers, which consists of pot activists well-known in their city or country. We need a name and phone number for each. Any suggestions?

P.P.S: We need on average $100 for each affiliate to print  and ship this year's poster.  If you can't send it, we have to raise it somewhere else.

 

HELP RAISE MONEY FOR THE MILLION MARIJUANA MARCH--BOOK A YIPPIE SPEAKER!

Recently we wrote you that we need on average $100 for each affiliate to print  and ship this year's poster--and that if you can't send it, we have to raise it somewhere else.

You can help. Go to http://www.yippiespeakers.com  Here's the good news: 20% of all speaker fees go to printing and operating expenses for the MMM 2004. (If you can get me booked personally it's 100%.)

Some of these speakers like Grace Slick and Hunter Thompson get $25,000 just for appearing at yr local university! (Some like Dennis Peron are available for a few thousand) Your local group gets 4% finders' fee.

What we need you to do is contact yr local on-campus activists and have them agitate their student affairs folks in charge of outside speakers  (or equivalent) to book some of our speakers. It's important to clarify that we are NOT  asking them to get this from the budget of their NORML or SSDP chapter, but from the campus office that books outside speakers. (At Kent State they call it the Office of Student Life, and they paid me $4,000 for a three hour appearance, which went straight to the printer.)

It's a good year for it. Things have come full-circle for Yippie! We have all the elements--an illegitimate  Republican President everyone hates at home, a quagmire war abroad--for the first time  since the '70's. And best of all, even though all our speakers support cannabis and oppose the drug war, they are Yippie, not legalization speakers, so you won't have to deal with demands from the university administration that you find some anti-drug speaker for "Balance" or you don't get the booking. (Since we are moving toward protests against the Republican Convention in NYC next August, to be fair they'd have to demand an opponent of protests, period, which is absurd.)

If you have a hot prospect,  email me right back; but since  about half of everything sent to this address "bounces", be sure to also put in a call to the speakers bureau at 212-677-7180, and leave a message if no one picks up.

Dana/cnw

*****!!!Cannabis Liberation Day--Mayday Weekend 2004:  Updates,  Reports!!!*****

From: gica@...

Hi Dana, I am Mefisto from Rome.

>> Though our city was in the list you sent us by e-mail, there is only a

blank space after Rome in www.cures-not-wars.org and no Rome at all in the
list of cities www.millionmarijuanamarch.org .

>> On May 2° we are holding a no-oil march starting from Gianicolo hill and

crossing the heart of old Rome (Trastevere, Campo de'Fiori...), as we do
every first sunday monthly since last year, to end at Bocca della Verità/

Circo Massimo with a free concert and various performances.

>> Last year on MMM date we held a two-days creative-artistic exhibition in a

large public space in central Rome, without a march, and there were no
arrests.

>> Please note that this year italian govt. is proposing a law stating that:
>> 1- there is no difference between joints and needles, all drugs are

related and equally illegal as drugs are dangerous to health in the same way.

>> 2- penal sanctions would be related only to the amount possessed, -heavy

for >150mg. in case of thc but anyway more than 2yrs. till 25yrs.- no
difference if you are a pusher or a cannabis smoker.

>> 3- the bare use is a crime in itself.  And more.
>> This would be a shock for Italy where since the 1993 referendum  the use

of substances brings no penal consequences.

>> Now you know the importance of MMM, a planetary event, this year for Italy.
>> We will send 100$ as soon as possible. At the moment we are pennyless but

initiatives are being prepared to finance our activities.

>> 
>> PLEASE ADD ROME IN THE LIST OF CITIES ON BOTH WEB-SITES SOON as we need it

to expand the event, for our requests to artists and foreign musicians of
free performances at the free-concert.

>> We are contacting artists THESE DAYS, and it's already late.
>> Thanks for collaboration.  Ciao
>> Mefisto
>> 

>> INFO LINE:  0039 3393393589 Mefisto

>>                   gica@...
>> 
>> Postal address for sending posters (not to be published):
>> Alessandro Buccolieri - Via Cristoforo Numai n°61 - 00168 Roma -
>> Italy
>> 
>>
>>

>> auamahal2000@...
>>
>>

>>

-----

From: tents444@...

Dana,
 
I pulled this together from several locations. I think it is correct. Since I don't speak German maybe Joe Wein can verify or adapt this info pulled from German webpages:
 

Rostock, Germany. Tel: 0381 4920016. Contact: Info@... ~ http://www.rostocker-hanffest.de ~ Cooperation of ['solid] Rostock and the association for drug politics e.V. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (Verein für Drogenpolitik e.V. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern). Hemp info meeting at the university. May 9, 2004 from 14:00 to 18:00. http://www.drogenpolitik.org/termine/termine_61.html

http://www.cannabislegal.de/aktionen/mmm2004.htm#rostock
 
eco man
 

----------

Excerpted: Pot Advocate Soon To Get Out Of Prison
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v04/n379/a03.html?999
Michael Patriquen, a sickly marijuana advocate simply "doing time" in prison for
conspiring to possess and traffic marijuana, will be released to a Dartmouth halfway
house within days.
"He's got pneumonia now, the third week in a row," Ms.  Stephen Patriquen said.  "(
Prison officials are ) giving him absolutely nothing for it.  He's developed hepatitis
C, he's got rheumatoid arthritis, his foot is completely deformed.  "They put him on a
liquid protein because he was just deteriorating so bad." Ms.  Patriquen claims her
husband contracted hepatitis C in Springhill while awaiting his transfer to
Westmorland.  In an interview last year, Ms.  Stephen Patriquen said her husband had
lost more than 50 pounds from his 202-pound frame.  But on Wednesday she said he's
regained five or six pounds."
-------

From: NORMLFNDTN@...

Dear NORML Supporter:

We are writing to remind you that the 2004 NORML Conference and

Congressional Lobby Day will be held at the Hamilton Crowne Plaza Hotel in
Washington, DC on April 22-24, 2004. Please mark your calendar now and
plan to join us in DC this spring.

Our annual NORML conference brings together grassroots supporters and
political activists to analyze strategy and review developments over the
past year; plan strategy for the coming year, and hear from leaders in the
drug law reform movement. At this year's conference, we have set aside the
first day for our supporters to lobby Congress on marijuana law reform
issues, with the final two days reserved for speeches, panel discussions
and similar activities.

-- Conference Program --
The conference program is now available on the NORML web site
(www.norml.org), and features panel presentations on such topics as The
Federal Assault on Marijuana Smokers and Medical Use Patients; A Patients'
Panel: The Struggle Continues; Thinking Globally, Acting Locally: The Near
Future for Marijuana Law Reform; Marijuana and Your Health; What You Need
To Know That the Government Won't Tell You; Don't  Become Another
Statistic: How Not To Get Busted; and Where Do We Go From Here: Strategy
for the Next Five Years.

Featured speakers at the conference this year will include best selling
author Eric Schlosser; Constitutional law expert Professor Randy Barnett
from Boston University Law School; drug education expert Marsha Rosenbaum,
Ph.D; and others not yet confirmed, including a possible surprise or two.

We are especially excited about the Congressional lobby day, to be held on
Thursday, April 22. This will be the first time we have asked supporters
to come to town and spend a day lobbying their elected officials on
Capitol Hill, and we expect it will become an important annual event. We
plan to hold a short training session in the morning where attendees will
be briefed on the issues, and on Congressional etiquette, before leaving
for the Hill.

-- Hotel --
The conference hotel is the Hamilton Crowne Plaza Hotel, at 14th and K
Streets, NW, Washington, DC 20005. Located in the heart of downtown
Washington, the Crowne Plaza is the ultimate in convenience. By day, the
worlds of government, finance, business and retail are at hand. By night,
many of the finest restaurants, galleries and clubs in the city are within
walking distance.

The Crowne Plaza was built by Paris born architect Jules Henri de Sibour
in 1921. A recent $20 million renovation has reclaimed and renewed the
best of this fine hotel's storied past while incorporating the latest
technological innovations. An extraordinary level of taste, service and
personal comfort has earned the Crowne Plaza its designation as a city
landmark.

Please join us in Washington, DC for the 2004 NORML Conference and
Congressional Lobby Day, a great opportunity to send a powerful message to
Congress, and a great place to network with drug law reform advocates from
across the country.

Online registration is available on the frontpage of www.norml.org.

Please reserve your reduced rate room at the Crowne Plaza now.

Sincerely,

Keith Stroup
Executive Director
NORML

-------

From: RichRawlings@...

We are planning on holding a Million Marijuana March in Peoria, Illinois.

www.ilmjp.com/mmm

Richard J. Rawlings
US Marijuana Party of Illinois
www.ilmjp.com

RichRawlings@...

1022 Collins Ct.
Bartonville, Illinois 61607-1714
Voice and Fax:

309-633-1023

_________________________

*******
State Suspends 'Marijuana Doctor' Leveque By Tim Christie
Source: Register-Guard March 05, 2004
The state Board of Medical Examiners suspended the medical license of Dr. Phillip
Leveque on Thursday, marking the second time in three years the state has come down on
Oregon's most prolific endorser of medical marijuana applications. Leveque said he and
his attorneys met with the board's investigative committee for nearly two hours in the

morning. At 1:15 p.m., he was notified that his license had been placed on emergency

suspension pending an investigation by the full board, he said.
Read More...  http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread18450.shtml

*******

********************

*****BUSHWHACKED!!*****

***********************

Rove Admits Smear Campaign Against Wilson

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/031004A.shtml

-------

"You can fool some of the people all of the time,
and those are the ones you have to focus on" - GW  Bush
-------
2001 Bush Administration Appointees (Excerpted)
PDF:  http://raenergy.igc.org/EnronFamilyBush.pdf
HTML:  http://makeashorterlink.com/?Y2B2158A7
* Year: 1999: - Republican activist Ralph Reed throws his support to G.W.. Bush after
Bush top advisor, Karl Rove, secures Reed a $20,000 a month job with Enron.
* Florida Governor, Jeb Bush, appoints James Garner III to his Everglades Commission.
Garner headed an Enron subsidiary in the state that was seeking water rights for its
operations.
Gov. Jeb Bush appoints Walter Revell to his Florida Energy 2020 Commission . Revell and
Ken Lay had been friends for 25 years. Enron had contributed over $325,000 to Florida
state candidates.
* Year: 2001: Enronites on the Bush Transition Team
- Kenneth Lay- CEO Enron - Bush Energy Team
- Ed Gillespie - Enron lobbyist
- Cynthia Sanderr - Enron lobbyist - Bush Commerce Team
- Tom Marinis - Vinson & Elkins attorney - Bush Justice Team
- Joe Berardino - Arthur Andersen CEO - Bush Treasury Team
*Bush Administration Appointees
- John Aschroft - Attorney General. $61,000 from Enron for Senate race.
- Lawrence Thompson/Deputy Attorney General - Enron lawyer with King & Spaulding.
- Thomas White - Secretary of the Army. Headed Enron Energy Services. $25/$50 million
stock.
- Karl Rove - Advisor to the President Large Enron shareholder.
- Cynthia DeLay - Enron lobbyist - Wife of GOP Whip, Tom DeLay. Pesticides...
-------
Enron Owns the GOP: http://www.EnronOwnsTheGOP.com
Enron En-fluence: http://www.EnronOwnsTheGOP.com/enfluence/index.htm

******************************************

If US Plays Global Prison Ratings Game,
it Ought to Play by its Own Rules by Alan Elsner
From: Chilli 6 Mar 2004 Christian Science Monitor
The US State Department issued its annual review of human rights around the world last
week - grading each nation on its performances in a number of categories. Only one
country escaped scrutiny: the US itself.  While monitoring human rights and holding
other countries accountable is a valid and valuable exercise, there is something
disquieting about the US earnestly preaching to countries like Iceland and New Zealand
while completely ignoring its own practices.  One of the areas the report monitors is
the functioning of prison systems.  So we had the bizarre spectacle of a nation that
incarcerates 2.2 million people - one-quarter of all the world's prisoners - casting a
baleful eye over Iceland, which has a grand total of 110 people incarcerated. Sixteen
prison cells in Iceland have no toilets, the report noted with stern disapproval.
continued...
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0304/p09s01-cogn.html
-------
Rolling Stone Magazine: David Crosby -- Musician
When I was in prison, probably eighty-five percent of the people were there for drugs
in one way or another. Either they got caught with drugs, or they got caught selling
drugs, or they got caught doing something while they were on drugs, or they got caught
doing something terrible for the money to get drugs. So I don't think prison is a valid
solution for any kind of drug use or addiction - either one. Addiction is a very tough
thing; I've been addicted, and I know what it's like. It requires a lot of treatment -
long-term treatment - a lot more treatment than the insurance providers are willing to
offer.

I think they should just legalize marijuana. Put it this way - they sell liquor in
every corner store in the United States. And booze is much worse for you than
marijuana. Much worse. Drastically worse. Orders of magnitude worse. So it doesn't make
any sense - they should just legalize it.

Personally, I think we should send some very serious lads from the Army down to the
fields where coca is being grown. You've got to understand that we know where all the
coca plants are in the Western Hemisphere because all plants have different infrared

signatures, and our satellites can locate exactly where they are. We also know, in the
four countries where these plants are, what soil and what altitude they're in. We know
all that. So send somebody down, take it out of the ground and say, "Look: Plant
coffee; we'll buy it directly from you, we'll pay you three times as much because we
won't go through a middleman, and you'll be fine. Plant coca again, and we'll be back
again next year and somebody will get hurt. This is not all right anymore. Game over.
Too many lives ruined, too many families shredded, too much wreckage. We're going to

take it seriously now."
-------
Crosby on America's War on Drugs from Rolling Stone
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/newsarticle.asp?nid=14338

-------

Posted March 4, 2004-The Nation Online

You Gotta Love Her
by Tom Hayden

I was digging into the batter's box one Saturday morning in San Pedro a couple of years ago when the catcher behind me muttered, "I'm a Vietnam vet, and I've been waiting for twenty years to say you should be dead or in jail for being a traitor." The umpire said nothing. I flied out to center. Later we talked. Then we became friends.

It turned out that his hatred was toward my ex-wife, not me, because he believed certain website fabrications about Jane Fonda that circulate among veterans. Twice the Republicans in the California legislature tried to block my seating because of my trips to Hanoi. But I was never a target of opportunity like my ex--more like collateral damage.

While most Americans, perhaps including that former Yale cheerleader and elusive National Guardsman George W. Bush and, I suspect, most Vietnam veterans, would like to forget the past, the Vietnam War is about to be relived this election season.

Senator John Kerry, a veteran of both the war and the antiwar movement, is causing this national Vietnam flashback. The right-wing attack dogs are on the hunt. Newt Gingrich calls Kerry an "antiwar Jane Fonda liberal," while Internet warriors post fabricated images of Kerry and Fonda at a 1971 antiwar rally. Welcome to dirty tricks in the age of Photoshop.

The attempted smearing of Kerry through the Fonda "connection" is a Republican attempt to suppress an honest reopening of our unfinished exploration of the Vietnam era.

Neoconservatives and the Pentagon have good reason to fear the return of the Vietnam Syndrome. The label intentionally suggests a disease, a weakening of the martial will, but the syndrome was actually a healthy American reaction to false White House promises of victory, the propping up of corrupt regimes, crony contracting and cover-ups of civilian casualties during the Vietnam War that are echoed today in the news from Baghdad. Young John Kerry's 1971 question--"How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a mistake?"--is more relevant than ever.

Rather than give these reopened wounds the serious treatment they deserve, the Republicans substitute the politics of scapegoating and sheer fantasy. Most centrist Democrats, in turn, try to distance themselves from controversies that recall the 1960s. There are journalistic centrists as well, who avoid hard truths for the sake of acceptance and legitimacy. Such amnesia, whether unconscious or not, lends a wide respectability to the feeble confessions of those like Robert McNamara, who took twenty-five years to admit that Vietnam was a "mistake" and then, when asked by filmmaker Errol Morris why he didn't speak out earlier, answered, "I don't want to go any further.... It just opens up more controversies."

The case of Jane Fonda reveals the double standards and hypocrisies afflicting our memories. In Tour of Duty, the Kerry historian Douglas Brinkley describes the 1971 winter soldier investigation, which Fonda supported and Kerry attended, where Vietnam veterans spilled their guts about "killing gooks for sport, sadistically torturing captured VC by cutting off ears and heads, raping women and burning villages." Brinkley then recounts how Kerry later told Meet the Press that "I committed the same kinds of atrocities as thousands of others," specifically taking responsibility for shooting in free-fire zones, search-and-destroy missions, and burning villages. Brinkley describes these testimonies in tepid and judicious terms, calling them "quite unsettling." By contrast, Brinkley condemns Fonda's 1972 visit to Hanoi as "unconscionable," without feeling any need for further explanation.

Why should American atrocities be merely unsettling, but a trip to Hanoi unconscionable?

In fact, Fonda was neither wrong nor unconscionable in what she said and did in North Vietnam. She told the New York Times in 1973, "I'm quite sure that there were incidents of torture...but the pilots who were saying it was the policy of the Vietnamese and that it was systematic, I believe that's a lie." Research by John Hubbell, as well as 1973 interviews with POWs, shows that Vietnamese behavior meeting any recognized definition of torture had ceased by 1969, three years before the Fonda visit. James Stockdale, the POW who emerged as Ross Perot's running mate in 1992, wrote that no more than 10 percent of the US pilots received at least 90 percent of the Vietnamese punishment, often for deliberate acts of resistance. Yet the legends of widespread, sinister Oriental torture have been accepted as fact by millions of Americans.

Erased from public memory is the fact that Fonda's purpose was to use her celebrity to put a spotlight on the possible bombing of Vietnam's system of dikes. Her charges were dismissed at the time by George H.W. Bush, then America's ambassador to the United Nations, who complained of a "carefully planned campaign by the North Vietnamese and their supporters to give worldwide circulation to this falsehood." But Fonda was right and Bush was lying, as revealed by the April-May 1972 White House transcripts of Richard Nixon talking to Henry Kissinger about "this shit-ass little country":

NIXON: We've got to be thinking in terms of an all-out bombing attack.... I'm thinking of the dikes.

KISSINGER: I agree with you.

NIXON: ...Will that drown people?

KISSINGER: About two hundred thousand people.

It was in order to try to avert this catastrophe that Fonda, whose popular "FTA" road show (either "Fun, Travel, Adventure" or "Fuck the Army") was blocked from access to military bases, gave interviews on Hanoi radio describing the human consequences of all-out bombing by B-52 pilots five miles above her. After her visit, the US bombing of the dike areas slowed down, "allowing the Vietnamese at last to repair damage and avert massive flooding," according to Mary Hershberger.

The now legendary Fonda photo shows her with diminutive Vietnamese women examining an antiaircraft weapon, implying in the rightist imagination that she relished the thought of killing those American pilots innocently flying overhead. To deconstruct this image and what it has come to represent, it might be helpful to look further back in our history.

Imagine a nineteenth-century Jane Fonda visiting the Oglala Sioux in the Black Hills before the battle at Little Big Horn. Imagine her examining Crazy Horse's arrows or climbing upon Sitting Bull's horse. Such behavior by a well-known actress no doubt would have infuriated Gen. George Armstrong Custer, but what would the rest of us feel today?

In Dances With Wolves, Kevin Costner played an American soldier who went "native" and, as a result, was attacked and brutalized as a traitor by his own men. But we in the modern audience are supposed to respect and idealize the Costner "traitor," perhaps because his heroism assuages our historical guilt. Will it take another century for certain Americans to see the Fonda trip to Hanoi in a similar light?

The popular delusions about Fonda are a window into many other dangerous hallucinations that pass for historical memory in this country. Among the most difficult to contest are claims that antiwar activists persistently spit on returning Vietnam veterans. So universal is the consensus on "spitting" that I once gave up trying to refute it, although I had never heard of a single episode in a decade of antiwar experiences. Then came the startling historical research of a Vietnam veteran named Jerry Lembcke, who demonstrated in The Spitting Image (1998) that not a single case of such abuse had ever been convincingly documented. In fact, Lembcke's search of the local press throughout the Vietnam decade revealed no reports of spitting at all. It was a mythical projection by those who felt "spat-upon," Lembcke concluded, and meant politically to discredit future antiwar activism.

The Rambo movies not only popularized the spitting image but also the equally incredible claim that hundreds of American soldiers missing in action were being held by the Vietnamese Communists for unspecified purposes. John Kerry's most noted achievement in the Senate was gaining bipartisan support, including that of all the Senate's Vietnam veterans, for a report declaring the MIA legend unfounded, which led to normalized relations. Yet millions of Americans remain captives of this legend.

It will be easier, I am afraid, for those Americans to believe that Jane Fonda helped torture our POWs than to accept the testimony by American GIs that they sliced ears, burned hooches, raped women and poisoned Vietnam's children with deadly chemicals. Just two years ago many of the same people in Georgia voted out of office a Vietnam War triple-amputee, Senator Max Cleland, for being "soft on national defense."

If there is any cure for this mouth-foaming mass pathology in a democracy, it may lie at the heart of John Kerry's campaign for the presidency. Rather than distance ourselves from the past, as the centrist amnesiacs would counsel, perhaps we should finally peel back the scabs and take a closer look at why all the wounds haven't healed. The most meaningful experience of John Kerry's life was the time he spent fighting and killing in Vietnam and then turning around to protest the insanity of it all. Instead of wrapping himself in fabrications, he threw his fantasies and delusions, and metaphorically his militarism, over the White House fence. That's what many more Americans need to do.

If I were George W. Bush, I would be terrorized by the eyes of those scruffy-looking veterans, the so-called band of brothers, volunteering for duty with the Kerry campaign. They look like men with scores to settle, with a palpable intolerance toward the types who sent them to war for a lie, then ignored their Agent Orange illness, cut their GI benefits, treated them like losers and still haven't explained what that war was about. They know Jane Fonda is a diversion from a larger battlefield. They are the sort who will keep a cerebral United States senator grounded, who have finally figured out who their real enemies are and who are determined that this generation hear their story anew. They are gearing up for one last battle. Chickenhawks better duck.

-------------------------------

----------------------------------------------

Join the Kerry Drug War Thread: http://forum.johnkerry.com//index.php?showtopic=8035&hl=drug+war+thread

January 26, 2004

The Toxic Career of Rand Beers
Kerry's Drug War Zealot
By SEAN DONAHUE

When Rand Beers quit his job as counter-terrorism advisor to President Bush, and signed up with John Kerry's presidential campaign, he quickly became a hero to Democratic Party loyalists and the "Anybody but Bush" crowd. But Beers, who has become Kerry's top national security advisor and would likely serve as National Security Advisor or Secretary of State in a Kerry administration, has a dark history. Under Presidents Clinton and Bush, he served as Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, and was one of the chief architects of and apologists for the United States' cruel policies in Colombia.

Beers was most closely associated with the disastrous aerial crop fumigation program the U.S. introduced in southern Colombia. The State Department hired DynCorp, a private military contractor, to fly crop dusters at high altitudes over the rainforests of southern Colombia, spraying a chemical cocktail that includes a stronger version of Monsanto's popular and controversial herbicide, Round-Up, over suspected coca fields. Beers was the public face of the fumigation program, defending and advocating for it in Congressional hearings and in the media.

Touted as a way of stopping cocaine from entering the U.S., the fumigation program targets the poorest people with the least involvement in international drug trafficking--the coca growers--while leaving the cocaine processors and exporters, who make the real profits in the drug trade, completely untouched. In a good year, a farmer planting 5 acres of coca can bring in $4,000. Once that coca is processed into cocaine and brought to the U.S. it has a street value of close to $800,000. During a visit to Putumayo, the main coca growing area in southern Colombia in 2001, a parish priest told me "We look on in great pain when we see how the farmers are trampled on like cockroaches while the big traffickers walk the streets of New York and L.A."

The processing and export of cocaine are largely controlled by wealthy landowners and the right-wing paramilitaries that support them, while coca growers are "taxed" by the Marxist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC.) The paramilitaries are technically considered terrorists by the U.S., but play a significant role in protecting U.S. economic interests by using massacres to clear off land for oil development, logging, hydro-electric dams, and cattle ranching, and by assassinating union organizers, indigenous leaders, and other critics of the political and economic order in Colombia, while the FARC keeps attacking oil pipelines and kidnapping wealthy people--and so the FARC is defined as a "narco-terrorist group," and U.S. policy is focused on weakening the FARC. Fumigating coca crops indirectly cuts into FARC revenues, and so the program is sold to the public as part of both the war on drugs and the war on terrorism. Beers played a central role in creating the myth of the "narco-terrorist" which has been used to justify both the fumigations and continued U.S. military aid to Colombia.

The program has had no measurable impact on the availability, price, or purity of cocaine in the U.S., let alone the rate of cocaine addiction in this country. Historically, whenever coca has been eradicated in one area of the Andes, production has spiked in other areas. The truly difficult materials for cocaine producers to procure are the chemicals used to process coca into cocaine. But the U.S. has made only minimal efforts to regulate the export of these chemicals.

The farmers who grow coca in southern Colombia are growing it not by choice, but out of necessity. Over 60% of Colombians live on less than $2 a day. As a result of economic globalization, the bottom has dropped out of markets for coffee, bananas, wheat, and other legal crops. The soil in Putumayo is poor, anyway, and won't support repeated plantings of most cash crops. And farmers growing legal crops have to transport them over dangerous, poorly maintained dirt roads, while coca buyers are willing to go into remote villages to buy coca leaves and coca paste. None of this means much to Rand Beers, who told ABC's John Stossel that:

"An illegal activity is an illegal activity. And one doesn't get a special pass for being poor. They have to recognize that every effort to grow coca will be challenged by the government. Every work effort, every dollar, every pound of sweat that goes in to growing that coca may be lost."

Besides being cruel, Beers' attitude ignores the fact that farmers who don't grow coca have been hurt just as badly by the fumigations as farmers who do grow coca. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the chemical cocktail used in the fumigation program, is a broad-spectrum herbicide that kills any and all green plants. The crop fumigation planes fly at high altitudes, and so their spraying is at best imprecise. As a result, many farmers growing only legal crops have lost everything.

In January of 2001, I visited a government-funded yucca cooperative that was intended to help farmers find an alternative to growing coca. The cooperative had been fumigated and the entire yucca crop had been destroyed. I met one woman who had invested everything she had in the co-op and now had no way to feed her children. She wanted to go to the city to beg, but couldn't leave town because the paramilitaries who had killed her brothers had a roadblock on the only road out of La Hormiga. Corn and plantain crops on surrounding farms had been destroyed as well. Many people were complaining of rashes, respiratory problems, and temporary blindness caused by the fumigations.

When confronted with these problem's, Beers' Colombian counterpart, Gonzalo de Francisco, National Security Advisor to Colombia's President, replied that "Fumigation is like chemotherapy, sometimes you end up killing the patient." Beers, for his part, consistently denied that there was any evidence that there was any evidence that the fumigations were causing health problems. The U.S. State Department and the Colombian government both claim that farmers whose legal crops are fumigated are compensated for their losses, but community organizers in Putumayo report that few if any farmers have actually been compensated, and the U.S. Embassy has been unable to provide any concrete evidence that the compensation program is working.

Beers went even further in defending the fumigation program when giving a sworn deposition in a lawsuit filed against DynCorp in a U.S. Federal District Court by indigenous tribes in Ecuador who claimed that their health and their crops had been damaged when herbicides sprayed in Colombia drifted over the border on the wind. Desperate to keep the suit from proceeding to trial, he argued that the fumigation program was vital to U.S. national security because it was an essential part of the war against terrorism in Colombia. He then went a step further, stating, under oath, that "It is believed that FARC terrorists have received training in Al Qaida terrorist caps in Afghanistan."

Beers' claim was, of course, absurd and unfounded. The idea that Islamic fundamentalists would align themselves with hardline Marxists halfway around the world doesn't meet the laugh test. An Associated Press story on Beers' testimony quoted three baffled Washington insiders:

"'There doesn't seem to be any evidence of FARC going to Afghanistan to train,' a U.S. intelligence official said. 'We have never briefed anyone on that and frankly, I doubt anyone has ever alleged that in a briefing to the State Department or anyone else.' [...] 'That statement is totally from left field,' said a top federal law enforcement official, who reviewed the proffer. 'I don't know where (Beers) is getting that. We have never had any indication that FARC guys have ever gone to Afghanistan.' [...] 'My first reaction was that Rand must have misspoke,' said a veteran congressional staffer with extensive experience in the Colombian drug war. 'But when I saw it was a proffer signed under oath, I couldn't believe he would do that. I have no idea why he would say that.'"

Beers later recanted his testimony, claiming that he had been misinformed. But his bizarre allegation reflects his fundamental belief that the war on terrorism and the war on drugs are inextricably linked, and that the coca farmers who are forced to make payments to the FARC are legitimate military targets, and their neighbors' legal crops are acceptable collateral damage. Rural Colombians pick up clearly on the message coming from the U.S.--last June a community organizer in Cauca told me: "Often we are mislabeled as drug traffickers or terrorists. Nowadays with Bush, we are all terrorists. It is not just those who plant bombs or fly planes into the Twin Towers. It is those of us who cultivate our land and believe in the dignity of our lives and of our country."

If John Kerry lets Rand Beers continue to guide his foreign policy, a Kerry administration will be no better for rural Colombians than a Bush administration. Democrats who believe that Senator Kerry offers a humane alternative to Bush should think long and hard about what Rand Beers would set loose on the world if he were allowed to run the State Department.

-------

From: Dana

I'm passing on the following to throw some light on this question of the path of political action versus the benefits of a more anonymous approach:


QUOTE

From: HSLotsof@...

I received the following email and thought some of you may wish to avail
yourself of this information in order to bring attention to your elected officials
concerning ibogaine and ibogaine-like drugs to treat chemical dependence. 
The original message is not ibogaine-related but, if you feel strongly that
ibogaine is a valuable medication then include that in your email or phone call to
your representative.

Howard Lotsof
Board Member, National Association of Methadone Advocates
Inventor, Ibogaine Procedure for the Interruption of Drug Dependency

----------------
ORIGINAL MESSAGE

March 4, 2004


Dear Colleague,

I am writing with news about an exciting new Congressional effort to raise
lawmaker awareness about addiction and build legislative support for expanding
treatment access. And, I'm inviting you to play a part in making it succeed.

Rep. Jim Ramstad (R-MN), a recovering alcoholic and a longtime leader in
Congress on addiction issues, has just launched the bipartisan Addiction,
Treatment and Recovery Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives. The

caucus is co-chaired by Rep. Patrick Kennedy, (D-RI), another ally of addiction
recovery and treatment.

Congressional caucuses are informal but organized groups of legislators that
exist to advocate for a shared interest. Caucuses play an important long-term
role in federal policymaking, focusing attention on their issues and gathering
upport for legislation.

Representatives Ramstad and Kennedy understand the magnitude of this national
health problem, and they know what needs to be done. "Last year alone, 3.5
million Americans were denied access to treatment," said Rep. Ramstad when
announcing the new caucus, "and this is totally unacceptable." He also called
on Congress to pass his treatment parity legislation "to end the
discrimination against alcoholics and addicts who need treatment."

I urge you to help ensure the success of this important bipartisan effort.
Please call or e-mail your member of the U.S. House of Representatives and ask

him or her to join the Addiction, Treatment and Recovery Caucus, and in so
doing help make this issue a priority for Congress.

Visit http://capwiz.com/jto/ to look up and contact your Representative. You 
can advise his or her staff to contact Karin Hope in Rep. Ramstad's office, at
(202) 225-0735, for more information.


Another point of view:


QUOTE

From: sara119@...

What I have noticed is that it is a tricky thing to get into a rehab.
It isn't so easy. You don't just call them and they have a place ready.
At least not here in the Netherlands. The rehab takes in only clean
people , after a detox., but insurance no longer pays detox. That's
for everyone own cost, (unless they want Methadone and any other
pharmaceutical drug which is fine forever.)

I find a great benefit in having an anonymous treatment and aftercare.
officially when a rehab has licences they have to keep
all records. Not many addicts can afford that.

Beside , when you are a functioning addict you rather go back to work
as soon as possible. as if nothing really happened.

Sara

****!!!IBOGAINE TREATMENT NOW $1500 IN HOLLAND--CALL SARA, 0113134-624-1770 !!!****

From: stevenanker@...

"Thou protesteth too much" Shakespeare.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." I forget whom.

"Bitch, shut the fuck up." N.W.A.

Dana,

Perhaps advocacy should stress quality over quantity.

What we are trying to do is convince people that it is good to take a very powerful and mysterious psychedelic as a tool in treating and healing addiction. A tough sell. Diplomacy and tact are perhaps in order.

I commend you on helping people. I also sense other motives...

Do you have any idea how foolish you made the ibogaine movement appear by your protests? It was embarrassing and you made us look like yahoos and wide-eyed crazed zealots. Everyone believes HST on Muskie now. Continual posting on the Kerry site helps no one other than Bush. Kerry could give a fuck, don't you think?  Is this the best way to raise his awareness?

Plastering my message of rage and dark humor at CSI (which I wrote in a wish to calm things down on the site) and Sara's musings on Kerry's site did exactly what good? It strikes me as a little kid screaming for attention. Please explain how that is good advocacy. Your best intentions may hurt more than help addicts, spiritual seekers and cyst removers.

You say iboga has spread due to your book. Gosh. Uhhmmm... thanks. I sense a very large ego and a wish to hold on to 9 Bleaker St.

I have often wondered where your interest in ibogaine comes from. History pass you by? That the NEWS insisted on picture of you I find dubious, just as they insisted on misquoting you. "It did immediately re-enforce my standing with elected officials, and people who are influenced by publicity."  Exactly how is that good? How did your actions in anyway improve the standing of ibogaine as an addiction treatment? One thing I have heard repeatedly is that you are a very poor advocate for ibogaineŠ a little "challenging." Now we have greater exposure as a crazed fringe element? Do you have any idea how easy it is for the establishment to discredit ibogaine and how much easier you make it?

It's not my position that only someone who has tried ibogaine should advocate it's use. I have great respect for Dr. Stan Glick and he has never taken it. You however "are the biggest network promoting Ibogaine." The loudest and most shrill advocate. I feel YOU should take it or shut-up. It's not aspirin you are recommending. An "old psychedelic veteran" like you should be able to handle a hearty dose.

Iboga is used not just for "bona fide medical reasons," it's also a spiritual quest - it can be a brutally honest view of one self. In some parts it's also a religion. God's way of saying "bitch you're mine." You want to take it for a cyst? Best wishes. To gallantly parade around screaming that you got the cure for addiction while refusing to take it yourself strikes me as false.

You were wrong on every nearly every aspect of the CSI show and completely misrepresented yourself to the NEWS. Why do I want you to either take it or shut-up? Because I don't think you will never will take it and I hope you shut up. My hope is that if you do take it perhaps you would become a better advocate.

I thought ibogaine would help someone close to me. I thought it would be this life-affirming experience. It wasn't. She was rather pissed. "God taking a big shit on me." Since then I never recommend ibogaine.

There has been this toleration of you within the community similar to that one bestows upon a kooky uncle. Why not shape up? People's lives are at stake.

Fix some of your cats while you are at it, it's irresponsible.

Do I think you will change your path? No.

Would I feel poorly if I were not to be honest? Yes.

Regards,

Steve Anker.

-------

From: dana@...

I have already replied to this. As unbelievable as it may seem, yes the photo was their idea. And newspapers use the wrong quote all the time. BTW, Dr. Alicia Salzer from Montel Williams Show called me at 8:30 AM Sunday morning about getting a treatment for a junkie who's a friend of a producer-- but lost interest when I told her the reason we held the protest is that we DON'T give it out in the U.S., as depicted in the CSI episode.

Was that a set-up?

We evidently have chosen different paths for our advocacy. Mine involves working elected officials to change the law.

I'm still waiting for my dose of Ibo.  Patrick can't just snap his fingers, you know. The surgery would cost $3,000, and I can't afford it due to the situation with the building. I'm meeting with City Councilman Charles Barron soon -- I hope--about saving the building. And yes, part of the rationale is that we do ibogaine advocacy out of here, and that they'll just have to give us another building if we lose this one.

Any other sensitive topic would have drawn protestors as well. Protests create publicity, and more publicity caused more people (at least in NYC) to watch the show. One ex-Panther I know stopped me on the street and told me he wouldn't have watched it if he hadn't read about it in the NEWS. Most people still don't know Ibogaine exists. It was a revelation to the Kerry list.

You'd rather have a lobotomy? (I am not implying that my surgery would involve lobotomization.)

Last night's phonecall was intended as a gesture of peace.

Dana/cnw
----

From: jfreed1@...

>Head op helps addict kick heroin habit
>> By Liu Weifeng (China Daily)
>> Updated: 2004-03-05 23:57
>>
>> Original:
>> http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-03/05/content_312251.htm
>>


So, we're not allowed to treat addiction with a drug that's been used
safely for hundreds of years; but drilling a hole in the head is cool and
dandy..

A little ironic, dontcha think?
---

From: dana@...

Callie wrote:

> In the episode of CSI the guy who wrecked the car had not taken Ibogaine. The dead guy was an Ibogaine advocate and was killed by the junkie chick who could not enjoy getting high anymore because Ibogaine cured her....correct?


Wrong. Burnell was killed by her landlord, who was giving her heroin for sex. I've now watched the show 40 times, since we down-loaded an HDTV version from somewhere, which is much better--no commercials. There's also the implication maybe Burnell was fooling around with her as well--clearly the apartment manager felt so, and was pissed off anyway just for losing control.

Callie wrote:

> Ibogaine deserves it's own thread. It does not need to be shoved down the throat of folks trying to discuss medical cannabis.


Who told you it was about medical cannabis? The main beef of others posting there seems to be that Kerry is insufficiently pro-recreational cannabis and pro-legalizing everything. I've been the one voice for treatment on demand. The name of the thread is http://forum.johnkerry.com//index.php?showtopic=8035&hl=drug+war+thread . drug+war+thread is clearly about the drug war as a whole.

I've already re-posted it all to the list--

> I hope that advocacy of medical use [ of banned substances] is not limited here just to drugs that are also popular recreationally--MDMA and cannabis.



And--

> We have to start the list with bio-medical research to acheive the goal of treatment on demand for drug dependency. Medical marijuana and sentencing reform can be on that list, but we have to demonstrate concern for the swing voters who are a bit more conservative on the addictions issue.

Maybe I missed this--

> I have been for MJ decrim for longer than anyone, almost, but what I've been saying all along is that making it THE litmus test for Kerry at this point is putting the cart before the horse. This election is about making medical use available to very sick people; so adding medical use of another scheduled drug to the mix--even at the risk of offending the moderators of this thread--is going to be much less offensive to moderate voters than decrim. Because it will be medical, controlled by doctors, without crossing the line into recreational territory. And especially a drug that gets addicts off drugs--which is consistent with the already-stated Kerry support for treatment on demand. It actuates a position that's already public, is all. Realistically, how are you going to be able to afford treatment on demand WITHOUT ibogaine?

The moderator seems upset about the existence of Ibogaine , (and it being disclosed on her list), but so are many conventional treatment people and drug war defenders.

Preston wrote:

> This might be an obvious question Dana- but did you tell her about the other

> countries that are only $500 away from here?


Yup. But she didn't stay on the phone long enough to get the phone numbers, and I didn't have them handy (except for Sara's, which I've memorized) cause I was still half asleep, and she really rang off once she found she couldn't take physical possession of ibo in NYC. I've now arranged to have some one call her back to do the treatment in eastern Canada, for as cheap as possible. We'll see if she answers his call.

Meanwhile, check her out at http://www.montelshow.com/aftercare/karen.htm  Interesting she's been active on HIV and TB.  Also http://www.gaycitynews.com/GCN16/herstory.html

Dana/cnw

-------

From: Patrick K. Kroupa <digital@...>

Kids, KidZ, ChildrenS ... I step out of the room for 5 minutes and alla
youz are beating each other over the heyd with sledgehammers.

All I'm gonna do, is step back a few paces and take a look at the Bigger
Picture.  Have Dana's recent actions been particularly helpful in
furthering the cause of ibogaine...?  Well, prolly not.  Would it be a
good idea to occasionally roll the dice, and try to get a sanity check...?
You bet!  Is anything that is being said here going to change anything?
Fuck no.  <Shrug>

Judging Dana within the context of nothing else besides his actions in the
near-past, is not going to paint a very positive picture.  Whoopsie, shit
happens.

<Taking a few steps back -- I said I was gonna do that, remember?> ... all
of ibogaine really is this very weird, sweeping, psychedelic soap opera;
with very strange connections where the most unlikely people intersect at
certain points in time, and synchronicity takes over.

My VERY FIRST exposure to ever hearing about this thing called "ibogaine,"
came in 1992 or early '93, when some person from Cures Not Wars/ACT-UP,
who was on MindVox, splattered the ICASH Treatment thing all over half the
conferences (most of which had absolutely nothing to do with the subject

matter ... 'course, if they had not done this, it wouldn't have caught my
attention, and I never would have read it, "Why the fuck, is this stupid
bullshit, plastered all over the 3l33t h4x0R conference!?!??!").  And, I
read it, thought it was really interesting, and then forgot about it;
because, I mean, who the hell would want to stop doing heroin?

A few years later, around '94/'95 I was hanging out in shooting galleries
on the Lower East Side with Fred Gotbetter.  And Fred was basically cool
people, and someone who had a really good heart.  He was also an absolute
fucking disaster area, "I'm rich and I have a trust fund!"  Then ... why
are you a homeless person who sleeps in a cardboard box in an alley?  "By
choice man!  Say, can I borrow $20 bucks!?!?!?!"

And, oddly enough, that was pretty much the truth.  He had a trust fund
which got shut down as soon as he was sprung again; he would clean up,
stay clean just long enough for his executor to release some cash, and get
resprung almost instantly.  Fred was actually IDEAL St. Kitts material,

and really would have thrived there!

But anyway, so there's this guy who I see sitting next to me, bangin' up a
bundle in one shot ... and then, every so often, he vanishes for a coupla
days, and returns ... without a habit.

By 94/95 my heroin use was well on it's way to being a PROBLEM, which I
was trying to cut loose, without much success.  I hadn't done URODs yet,
but I'd been through pretty much every other treatment modality that was
available.  And it just didn't make any sense.  Because NOTHING THAT
EXISTS -- which I knew about -- could accomplish what I was sitting there
and seeing right in front of me ... on a regular fucking basis.

I mean, it didn't do shit for Fred in the long-term.  I think the longest
I ever saw him stay clean was about 3 weeks; but what made a TREMENDOUS
fucking impact was seeing someone strung-out as fuck, going from that
state, into a TOTAL reset, in 'bout 72 hours.

THAT caught my attention.  Everything else was like, well, whatever.
"Ibogaine is an absolute miracle!  I've done it 27 times now and I JUST
KNOW it'll KEEP WORKING right around ibogaine 30 or 35, and
furthermore..." <ClunK!>  Uhm ... anybody got sum coke?  I think Fred OD'd
again ... if nobody is holding, he may, in fact, stay dead...  Eightball
anyone?

To compress what is an entire chapter, into a few paragraphs: Fred would
do ibogaine, and then ... NOTHING at all.  He wouldn't change his clothes,
take a shower, or actually do ANYTHING to move away from drug-dependence.
I mean, sorta obviously, 'cuz he was back in the shooting galleries three
days later.  Except he was only going to smoke pot and do nothing else...
Which -- to give him many props -- lasted a few days, sometimes a week or
two; but inevitably, he'd always get sprung again.

Was Fred Gotbetter -- who had a GREAT name! -- an effective spokesperson
for ibogaine...?  Well, in my case the answer is: fuck yeah.  If I hadn't
sat there and watched this surreal comedy routine happening right in front
of me, I dunno if I would have ever paid much attention to ibogaine, or
remembered it again.  And the only reason I knew what it was, is because
some fucking annoying lunatic splattered it all over our system.

I exited NYC, didn't follow through and pursue any of it, because I
realized I didn't actually have a drug problem -- I just had CASHFLOW
ISSUES, which I solved -- wandered the Earth, and landed back in NYC, with
a killer habit on top of 200mg of methadone.  I tried to find Fred, and
could not locate him.  Using hindsight, this was due to the fact that I
was searching in 1998, while he OD'd and stayed dead -- in Pieman's house
in fact!!! -- in 1997.  @#*$&@#$ Time Machine!  WRONG YEAR!

While I knew who Howard was, I didn't KNOW him back then; called up,
nothing much was happening, there was Panama if I wanted to wait; I didn't
think to ask Dana; and ... I wound up talking to Bob Sisko ... about 25
times.  Who talked to me, and kept talking to me, and kept talking to me,
and ... didn't have anything to sell me, yet kept talking to me, and in

fact gave me Deborah's phone number, and made me aware of her existence,
'cuz in 1998, I had never heard of her.

Which is, eventually, how I landed at St. Kitts in 1999.

So, my introduction to ibogaine: some dysfunctional lunatic from
CNW/Act-Up splatters it all over MindVox; Fred Gotbetter, quite possibly
the biggest ibogaine failure on the planet, keeps hitting a reset in front
of me; and then Bob Sisko introduces me to Deborah.

It's a strange world n' shit.  I've adapted to my environment and become a
strange person.  <Shrug>

  -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -

So anywaze ... Dana ... is, a Complete Fucking Lunatic.  So are most of my
friends.  This is okay.  The PROBLEM is, Dana lacks an [OFF] switch, and
usually has no outer awareness of the fact that he's being completely
fucking crazy.  But, if someone else is present, who Dana trusts, that
just says, "Dana, you're acting crazy again.  Just chill out."  HE DOES.

Dana HAS done a tremendous amount of good for a variety of causes.  At the
same time, he has also effectively had himself edited out of history,

because he CANNOT SHUT UP and lacks that [OFF] switch.  This is a bummer
and all.

Why does Iboga Therapy House exist...?  Because Dana never shuts up about
ibogaine, and Marc eventually listened to him, and followed through.  Why
have a large variety of events related to ibogaine seen the light of day.
Because of Dana.

Did Dana IRREPARABLY HARM and CAUSE DAMAGE TO "The Ibogaine Movement,
Mahn!"  Uhm ... I don't think such a thing is possible.  Look!  We have a
HALLUCINOGEN that CURES DRUG ADDICTION!@#!@#!!!!  And ... many of its
loudest proponents are Complete Fucking Lunatics.  No!  What're the
odds!?!?!?

Anywaze, when people call me up and dump all the, "Dana is RUINING
ibogaine!!!!" material into my headspace; they are sometimes disappointed
that I don't respond with a lotta fervor and passionately agree with 'em.
I mention I've already had all these conversations years ago, and I'm not
sure anyone listens to me, or believes it.  However, everything sticks to
something on that wunnerful InterneT thing.  This is ONE message -- that
survived -- in a thread containing roughly 50 of 'em, where I had the same
reaction to Dana, that people are having RIGHT NOW:

<Setting the Wayback Machine to 2000>

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/ibogaine/message/5152

Dana is less than perfect; he does a lotta damage, he does a lotta good.
There is a balance within all that.  At the end of the day, has he done
more good than harm...?  In my own opinion, that answer is: YES.  Which, I
think, is pretty much all you can ask for.  So, yeah, I guess he is the
koOky UnclE!  Why not.

And, uhm, Dana ... <Removing Armor, Ego, and Testosterone> ... dude.
C'mon.  You've been talking about the Bwiti for approximately 300 years
now.  Isn't it time to meet 'em...?  Philip K. Dick is hanging out, and
discussing philosophy with Fred Gotbetter.  Well, some of the time.  Fred
is sorta busy; this is Kali Yuga and he made it to minor Sainthood.  St.
Jude always needed an assistant.

Patrick

-----

From: ptpeet@...

Patrick in his wisdom scrawled to a close with >So, my introduction to
ibogaine: some dysfunctional lunatic from
CNW/Act-Up splatters it all over MindVox; Fred Gotbetter, quite possibly
the biggest ibogaine failure on the planet, keeps hitting a reset in front
of me; and then Bob Sisko introduces me to Deborah.<

To which I say, Fuck Yeah!
This is brilliant!
I've spoken with a number of people who complain bitterly about how ibogaine
did not help them, but I think this is the first time I've read that someone
else's repeated failing using ibogaine actually turned them on to the idea
of trying it.
    Whoda thunk it?
Peace,

Preston

To join the Mindvox ibogaine list just send an email to ibogaine-subscribe@... if you please.

Nothing more to it. You don't have to write anything in the subject or text area.

IF YOU WANT YR CONTACT ON THE NEW IBOGAINE POSTER, SET UP AN IBOGAINE DROP-IN CENTER TODAY!

********************************************************************

To get on the poster for 2004--"Mayday is Jay Day"--check yr contact info on the old list below, and add yr city to this New List

-------------

-----The MMM city lists are snipped off. See links below.-----

-----End of forwarded email-----

MMM 2004 city list:
http://www.geocities.com/tents444/mmm2004.htm
http://members.fortunecity.com/multi19/mmm2004.htm

MMM 2003 city list:
http://corporatism.tripod.com/mmm2003.htm and
http://members.fortunecity.com/multi19/mmm2003.htm

MMM 2002 city list:
http://corporatism.tripod.com/mmm2002.htm and
http://members.fortunecity.com/multi19/mmm2002.htm

---------------