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Dana Beal <dana@...> wrote:
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 21:34:36 -0500
From: Dana Beal
Subject: MMM 2004 #57: Super-Coca Threat to "Plan Colombia?"; Oulu, Rome,
Wilkes-Barre Make 88 Cities on the Global Marijuana March Website/Poster!
Important: get your city on the list for the Global Marijuana March, May 7, 2005!So far we have confirmed 88 cities:AlbanyAlbuquerqueAthensAshevilleAucklandBergenBerlinBooneBoulderBuenos AiresBurlingtonCapetownChicagoChicoChristchurchCincinnatiColorado SpringsColumbiaDarwinDes MoinesDetroitDoverDublinDunedinEast LansingEugeneFayettevilleFrankfurtFt. SmithHartfordHachitaHoustonKansas CityKristiansandLethbridgeLexingtonLondonLos AngelesMexico CityMissoulaMontrealMoscowNashvilleNewarkNew PaltzNew YorkNimbinOgdenOuluOsloParisPeoriaPhiladelphiaPhoenixPortlandPotsdamPragueRaleighRapid CityRenoRichmondRoanokeRomeRosarioRostockSan FranciscoSarasotaSavannahSpokaneStavangerStevens PointSt. LouisStockholmTallahasseeTampaThunder BayTorontoTraverse CityTromsoeTrondheimTucsonTupeloUpper LakeVancouverWarsawWashington, D.C.Wilkes-BarreWilmingtonThere is also some international MMM networking going on at
this CannabisCulture.com message forum:http://www.cannabisculture.com/forums/postlist.php?Cat=&Board=current-------------------------*****!!!Global Marijuana March--May 7, 2005: Updates, Reports!!!*****From: ylik@...The march in Oulu, Finland is now comfirmed! Our contact info isvmieli@..., but maybe if it is mentioned on some webpage or such
online publication the email should be changed to for example
vmieli@... because our last email address stopped working
because of the amount of spam we got. The organizer is called
"Vapaamieli".
Could you also change the address your send these mails to tovmieli@... , that way all of us here can be reached at the same
time. Thank you!
--KyostiFrom: gica@...> Right now your previous contact info is --> Rome: 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 Postal address for sending posters (not to be published): Alessandro Buccolieri - Via Cristoforo Numai n°61 - 00168 Roma - Italy
>
> Thank you for you support,
> Dana/cnw
Contact still correct, though we received more than 2000 spam and it's hard to dig out the real mail, so we don't check it often.
We'll tell you about any change------------------------Steve Baldwin steve_baldwin@... 646-361-2879
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1342103,00.htmlIn the war on drugs, Europe must make a separate peace
Give addicts a prescription and end the crime wave destroying our cities
Polly Toynbee
Wednesday November 3, 2004
The Guardian
Waiting to see who has won the most important US election for decades, the world has been an anguished bystander, pressing up against the window of the superpower. So much depends on America - from climate change to terms of global trade and haphazard forays into global policing.
But one policy on which the US has always had an iron grip was not mentioned at all - because both candidates would agree on it. Both would say the global "war on drugs" must go on. Since 1961 the US has strong-armed most countries into signing UN conventions to join this futile and destructive battle. Drug prohibition has torn apart poor drug-producing countries and wreaked drug-fuelled terror on the streets of every city in the world. It has created crazed addicts lurking in dark streets everywhere from Rio to Russia.
"A drugs-free world - we can do it!" is the slogan of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. It is, it says daftly, "on target to reach its goals". What goals? To eradicate drug abuse and the cultivation of coca, cannabis and opium by the year 2008. Yes, in just four years.
Prohibition not only hasn't worked, it makes things ever worse. If ever there was a good example of a policy where Europe needs to make its own way, this is it. The former Interpol chief (and now its honorary secretary general) Raymond Kendall has broken official silence in Europe over this.
Writing in Le Monde, in a preview of a key lecture later this month, he declared the drugs war lost and said that enforcement policies had failed to protect the world from drugs. It was time for "harm reduction" instead of the UN's "obsolete international conventions". He called for Europe to take the lead in an international movement to reform policy when the UN's drug conventions come up for renewal in 2008.Under the conventions, all countries are obliged to pursue growers, dealers and users in an expensive attempt to hold back an unstoppable tide. Prohibition has bred crime on an unimaginable global scale. Bravely, most countries have to pretend that they are winning - when it is painfully obvious there are only losers.
Look at the absurdity of our own Home Office's five-year plan, published this summer. Here are its drug targets: "We aim to increase the proportion of heroin seized from 10% in 2003 to 16% in 2006 and cocaine from 12% to 26%. We will make the UK a more hostile environment for organised drugs trafficking."
These figures are almost touchingly barmy. The Home Office has no idea what proportion of any drug it is seizing. If it does seize more, it may only be a bad sign that there is more on the streets.
The Home Office appears not to have read the prime minister's strategy unit report (unpublished), which found that UK police enforcement had failed to have any meaningful impact on illegal drug supply. Sadly, this report took fright at the logic of its own findings, and ended up calling for mandatory treatment for heroin addicts - now expected in the Queen's Speech. Evidence suggests forced treatment rarely works: even the results for voluntary treatment are not always brilliant.Meanwhile, out there in the real world far from UN or Home Office fantasy targets, Time magazine reports that the revenue from opium grown in Afghanistan this year is $30bn already; 95% of the crop is destined for Europe, and it is the source of most of the heroin arriving in Britain. But how is Hamid Karzai supposed to prevent it? Who can stop the poorest country on earth from growing the only crop that brings in wealth? In the chaos of the Iraq war and its aftermath, the Jordanian anti-narcotics department is alarmed, the BBC reports, to find a new and unfamiliar sea of drugs from Afghanistan pouring across its borders and out across the region.
Look at other opium-growing regions, and it's the same story. Their governments are obliged to crack down as best they can or risk US revenge in loss of aid, trade and other penalties. Drugs harm individuals, but it is not drugs that cause social calamity. It is their prohibition that brings a wave of criminality and corruption, chasing profits of up to 3,000%.
What the former head of Interpol is saying echoes the excellent new report by the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, setting out a step-by-step route map towards controlled legalisation. There is now a free market in the most dangerous drugs - absurdly known as "controlled drugs" when the opposite is the case. Their availability is in the hands of the worst people on any street corner on the globe. A rational, evidence-based policy would seek to kill the market, put dealers out of business and put control of these drugs into the safe hands of pharmacists.
Raymond Kendall calls for Europe to "medicalise" drugs, instead of criminalising them. He cites British research that finds every £1 spent on treatment saves £3 in the criminal justice system. By prescribing pharmaceutical opiates, he says there is an 80% cut in addict deaths, a drop in the spread of disease and, above all, a "sharp cut in the delinquency rates of drug addicts".
He has spent his working life trying to cut off supply, only to see it soar, prices drop and the number of addicts rise. Now he comes to the only sensible conclusion: the war on drugs doesn't work. Give all addicts a prescription, and they can lead reasonably normal lives, with no need to commit crime. The £300bn global market would grind to a stop with an end to its violence, corruption, fraud, money laundering and financing of terrorism.
In Britain, drugs are cheaper than ever. The lowest estimate suggests half of all prisoners are jailed for offences related to their need to sustain a habit of, on average, £50 a day. The government spends far more on enforcement than on treatment. But treatment is not the whole answer: sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. For many addicts, maintenance is the best option. Most citizens only care about stopping addicts committing crimes and rescuing inner-city zones that have become battlegrounds for drug gangs and pimps running drug-addicted prostitutes. No one is suggesting selling the stuff in corner shops, but destroying the market by making it easy to register for controlled drug use is the only hope left.
No American politician would find it easy to start a revolutionary rethink on the drugs war. But Europe can and should; Holland began and now has a shrinking, ageing number of addicts. Together the EU could move step by step to rationalise drug policy; it is just one example of what Europe could do together to offer another, non-US, liberal model of democracy.
· After the War on Drugs: Options for Control is available on Transform's website: www.tdpf.org.uk
polly.toynbee@...----------------------From: Taylor, John (JH) (Solvents)To: Millegan, Kris
Sent: Monday, November 08, 2004 1:45 AM
Subject: "Supercoca"
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.11/columbia.html?tw=wn_tophead_6
The Mystery of the Coca Plant That Wouldn't Die
The war on Colombia's drug lords is losing ground to an herbicide-resistant supershrub. Is it a freak of nature - or a genetically modified secret weapon?
By Joshua Davis
I've got 23 ziplock bags filled with coca leaves laid out on the rickety table in front of me. It's been seven hours since the leaves were picked, and they're already secreting the raw alkaloid that gives cocaine its kick. The smell is pungently woody, but that may just be the mold growing on the walls of this dingy hotel room in the southern Colombian jungle. Somewhere down the hall, a woman is moaning with increasing urgency. I've barricaded the door in case the paramilitaries arrive.
I drop half a milliliter of water into a plastic test tube and mash a piece of a leaf inside. As the water tints green, I notice that my hands are shaking. I haven't slept for two days, and the Marxist guerrillas have this town encircled. But what's really making me nervous is the green liquid in the tube.
Over the past three years, rumors of a new strain of coca have circulated in the Colombian military. The new plant, samples of which are spread out on this table, goes by different names: supercoca, la millonaria. Here in the southern region it's known as Boliviana negra. The most impressive characteristic is not that it produces more leaves - though it does - but that it is resistant to glyphosate. The herbicide, known by its brand name, Roundup, is the key ingredient in the US-financed, billion-dollar aerial coca fumigation campaign that is a cornerstone of America's war on drugs.
One possible explanation: The farmers of the region may have used selective breeding to develop a hardier strain of coca. If a plant happened to demonstrate herbicide resistance, it would be more widely cultivated, and clippings would be either sold or, in many cases, given away or even stolen by other farmers. Such a peer-to-peer network could, over time, result in a coca crop that can withstand large-scale aerial spraying campaigns.
But experts in herbicide resistance suspect that there is another, more intriguing possibility: The coca plant may have been genetically modified in a lab. The technology is fairly trivial. In 1996, Monsanto commercialized its patented Roundup Ready soybean - a genetically modified plant impervious to glyphosate. The innovation ushered in an era of hyperefficient soybean production: Farmers were able to spray entire fields, killing all the weeds and leaving behind a thriving soybean crop. The arrival of Roundup Ready coca would have a similar effect - except that in this case, it would be the US doing the weed killing for the drug lords.
Whether its resistance came from selective breeding or genetic modification, the new strain poses a significant foreign-policy challenge to the US. How Washington responds depends on how the plant became glyphosate resistant. That's why I'm here in the jungle - to test for the new coca. I've brought along a mobile kit used to detect the presence of the Roundup Ready gene in soybean samples. If the tests are inconclusive, my backup plan is to smuggle the leaves to Colombia's capital, Bogotá, and have their DNA sequenced in a lab.
In my hotel room, I put the swizzle stick-sized test strip into the tube filled with mashed Boliviana negra. The green water snakes up the strip. If the midsection turns red, I'll know that the drug lords have genetically engineered the plant and beaten the US at its own game. If it doesn't, it'll mean that Colombia's farmers have outwitted 21st-century technology with an agricultural technique that's been around for 10,000 years.I first learned about the possibility of herbicide-resistant cocaine eight weeks before I arrived in South America. I was having a quiet Sunday brunch at home in California with a few friends and their Colombian guest. It was a beautiful day; we sat on the deck and chatted about upcoming vacation plans over waffles and grapefruit juice.
The conversation changed when the guest began talking about how he'd spent three years working in the military intelligence branch of the Colombian army, which has been waging a civil war against the guerrillas for four decades. His main assignment was to prevent insurgents from importing weapons and military technology.
After the US helped the Colombian military dismantle the Medellín and Cali cocaine cartels in the '90s, the guerrillas moved in and took over much of the drug trade. By the late '90s, rebels controlled more than a third of the country and had the financial clout to intensify the war and protect their newfound position as narcotraffickers. It's an extremely lucrative business. The coke habit in the US alone was worth $35 billion in 2000 - about $10 billion more than Microsoft brought in that year.
But the most intriguing development he mentioned was regular reports of Roundup Ready coca. "We started to hear about this plant three years ago," he said. "We understood then that the spraying was not killing it, but nobody wants to talk about it because it might put an end to American aid money."
US aid to Colombia totaled more than $750 million last year and has been flooding in since 2000, when Congress approved the Clinton administration's Plan Colombia, a regional anti-narcotics package. About 20 percent of the money was devoted to maintaining a fleet of crop dusters and support planes that make almost daily sorties over the Colombian countryside. (The rest of the money went to economic support, military aid, and police training.) The crop dusters fly high, out of artillery range, until they reach a designated coca field, and then descend to spray the plants with a coating of Roundup. The concept is simple: Kill the coca and there will be no cocaine.
The day after our brunch, I looked up the Herbicide Resistance Action Committee and spoke with Ian Heap, the committee's chair. Heap is a global herbicide watchdog. If a farmer in Thailand notes that a certain weed is surviving repeated herbicide applications, local scientists will collect a sample and ship it to Corvallis, Oregon, where Heap runs a private laboratory. He is funded primarily by herbicide manufacturers who want to know how effective their products are. I figured he would know something about the reported resistance in coca. "So they've finally done it," he said with a breezy Australian accent. "I've been waiting for a call like this for a long time."
Heap explained that few people knew how to genetically manipulate plants until the early '90s. Then suddenly, even undergraduates were learning the techniques. At the same time, scientific papers were published that identified CP4, a gene responsible for glyphosate resistance. By the late '90s, it's easy to imagine the narcos hiring one unscrupulous scientist to tinker with coca. "Cocaine dealers have a lot of money to do the convincing," Heap said. "Genetically modifying the coca plant is the most obvious defense against fumigation. If I were a drug lord, it's what I would do."
Heap suspects that the US government might keep such a development quiet. The herbicide would still be effective against older, more widely planted coca strains, and, for a while at least, Colombia's eradication campaign would continue to show impressive results. But eventually, as the modified strain spread, coca cultivation would rise again, and spraying would have no effect. In the interim, farmers growing the new strain would get free weeding. "It's critical for the war on drugs that this gets independently checked out," Heap concluded. "But I'm sure as hell not going down there."
To get another view, I called Jonathan Gressel, one of the world's foremost experts on herbicide resistance and a professor of plant science at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. "The only surprise is that the drug mafia didn't do it sooner," Gressel said when I told him about reports of glyphosate-resistant coca. "Privately, my colleagues and I have been predicting this for years."Another way to explain the reported resistance, he said, was that over time the plants developed it naturally after repeated exposure. But in the case of coca, he estimated that it would take 20 years of constant spraying before a naturally resistant strain of the plant would establish itself. It was possible that farmers beat the odds and got lucky in the four years of intensive spraying. "But the most reasonable explanation," Gressel told me, "is that the illicit narcotics world has genetically engineered the coca plant to be resistant to glyphosate."
The only way to know for sure was to find the plant and test it.
The early evening air at the El Dorado Airport in Bogotá is thin and rain-scrubbed fresh. Outside, at the curb along the arrivals exit, throngs of people silently hold signs with names on them, but in the murky light it's hard to see. I file quickly past, heading for a line of taxis, until one sign makes me stop. It has my name on it.
Three days earlier, I'd placed a call to a Colombian geneticist. I explained that I was going to be arriving in Colombia in a few days and would like to talk to him about possible alterations to coca DNA. He cut the conversation short and asked for my flight information, saying he would meet me at the airport. I told him that wasn't necessary, figuring I'd call him when I got settled in my hotel.
Now he steps out of the shadows and introduces himself. "In Colombia, it is always better to talk in person," he says. He is a bookish, bespectacled man and seems distracted. "I'll drive you into town and we can talk."
We head for the city's central district in his old, messy car. The streets are narrow, and some of the once-grand stuccoed buildings are graffitied over with guerrilla slogans. He's either nervous or doesn't know how to drive, because he keeps stalling at stop signs. The flak-jacketed police that stand on almost every corner swivel their automatic rifles toward us as we lurch past.
We come to a stop in a historic section of Bogotá, and the scientist leads me into an empty, cavelike bar. He chooses a table in the farthest corner. A soccer game plays on a small TV by the entrance. We get two beers, and the scientist waits for the barkeep to go back to the other end of the bar.
"I would prefer it if you don't mention that we met," he begins.
He then asks me what I know. I tell him I'm just trying to figure out if this resistant strain exists, and if so, how it came into being. The scientist pauses.
"Nine years ago," he says, "a friend came to me. He told me that the traffickers wanted someone to modify the DNA. They wanted a glyphosate-resistant plant. The offer was 10 billion pesos. About $10 million."
"That's a lot of money," I say. "Did you do it?"
He smiles wanly. "No, I did not do it. I didn't want to invite that trouble into my life. These are not people you want to know. They are not good people. And if this fumigation benefits only them, I think that should be known."
He takes a sip of his beer. "So listen to me. If you can get me samples of the plant, I will extract the DNA and tell you if they have gotten inside the genetic code. If there are no signs of manipulation, then we will know that the farmers have done it on their own."
We look at each other for a second. It crosses my mind that he might be working for traffickers and will simply destroy the samples and lie about having done tests. If the local kingpins have created a Roundup Ready coca plant, they have a real interest in keeping that quiet. After all, they would be getting a guarantee that farmers will have no choice but to grow their new plant. The scientist's eagerness to help me and his surprising appearance at the airport make me consider this possibility.
But my guess is that he's genuinely curious to know the answer himself. I decide to trust him. I stick out my hand and we shake. Five minutes later, we leave the bar separately.
The next morning, I board a DeHavilland twin-engine plane for the two-hour flight into Putumayo province, the country's main coca-growing region. Colombia produces two-thirds of the world's cocaine, and most of it has historically come from this southern jungle. Over the past decade, tens of thousands of spraying missions have been flown here. US and Colombian officials insist that 92 percent of the plants sprayed in the region last year have now died. As a result, they say, the guerrillas have been weakened and will soon have to negotiate a surrender.But the guerrillas aren't ready to be counted out yet. Just before we board the plane, they announce a paro armado - an armed shutdown of the southern region. If anybody travels, they will likely be shot. It's meant to be a show of force, a sign the guerrillas can still go on the offensive whenever they choose.
Our pilots don't think much of it. Puerto Asís, the region's capital, is heavily guarded by the military. Two years ago, the guerrillas laid siege to the town for nine months - everything had to be airlifted in, and the pilots became accustomed to running the blockade. Now, with the rebels pushed back into the jungle, our pilots calmly throttle up, and 90 minutes later we bounce to a stop on a jungle tarmac. A phalanx of heavily armed soldiers guards the perimeter, and two men with sawed-off shotguns stand beside a cagelike room that serves as the arrivals lounge.
The soldiers don't hassle me; one of them unlocks the far side of the cage and lets me out onto a partially paved road. A group of men across the street stop talking and watch me until a stocky man with a lazy eye introduces himself as Campo, the driver I had arranged in Bogotá. We get into his bright-red Toyota pickup, and before accelerating out of town he touches a picture of the Virgin Mary glued to a shiny blank CD dangling from the rearview mirror. On the map at the Bogotá airport, Puerto Asís was the last dot at the end of the last road. I watch the town fade behind us as we enter the jungle.
We drive for an hour before we come across the first evidence of violence. An oil pipeline alongside the road has been bombed, and flaming black sludge oozes out of a twisted metal pipe, sending swirling cumulus clouds of smoke half a mile above the forest. The grass below sizzles loudly. Campo keeps the car in the middle of the road. The guerrillas may have booby-trapped the far side with mines - better to stay closer to the flames, which sting my face like a sunburn.
Our destination, La Hormiga, is a jungle outpost of 15,000. It was carved out of the forest 40 years ago to house oil workers but in the '80s was transformed into a coca-farming boomtown. As we crest a ridge, the town appears below, bounded by a sharply defined line of trees that tower over ramshackle two-story cinder block and concrete buildings.
As we drive down the main drag, I see that one of those shoddy roofs covers a faux marble-floored, air-conditioned shopping palace selling imitation Versace jeans. A lady in red hot pants and a halter top window-shops pulling a pet lamb on a pink leash. A casino with rows of slot machines stands next to a dentist's office that doubles as a jewelry shop. Over the din from a half-dozen roadside discos, a man with a 3-foot-long megaphone meanders down the middle of the road reading the local news - an amplified town crier.
I spend a sleepless night at the inappropriately named 5-Stars Hotel and rise early to meet Miguel Lucero (aka Don Miguel), the local leader of the National Association of Peasant Land Users, a large farmers union. Don Miguel is a short, quiet man with a distinguished, furrowed face. Before he became a peasant leader he farmed coca, and he knows the region's farms well. I ask him if he has heard of Roundup-resistant coca.
"Yes," he says simply. "It is called Boliviana negra."
"Can you show me some?"
"Yes."
"Right now?"
"Yes."
We are hiking through the jungle. The path is narrow, overgrown, and muddy. The knee-high rubber boots I just bought keep getting stuck in the muck, and I have to pull them out with my hands. Don Miguel walks fast and confidently. He has assured me that we are well within the government-controlled territory. The guerrillas, he says, haven't been here during daylight hours for at least a couple of years.
We come to a makeshift bridge. Two slender tree trunks are suspended over a flooding river the color of milky tea. Thin steel cables run above them to give you something to hold on to. Miguel says that the land on the far side belongs to a coca farmer who now grows Boliviana negra. "Everybody is planting negra now," he says and steps catlike over the bridge.I follow, trying not to slip into the river 5 feet below. After climbing a small incline, we come upon an arresting sight: 300 yards of devastation. An entire slope of hillside vegetation has disappeared. There's only brown-gray dirt, a half-dead tree, and withered coca plants, which I recognize from photographs. "Peruviana blanca," Don Miguel says, pointing at the dead plants. "Not resistant. This slope was sprayed last year."
We hike up the ridge, and suddenly there are healthy coca plants stretching to the horizon. On one side of an imaginary line, devastation. On the other, billowing, neck-high coca plants dotting hillsides that are denuded of all other vegetation. "Boliviana negra," Don Miguel says, pointing at the large bushes. "They were sprayed as well."
Over a lunch of pounded chicken and french fries back in La Hormiga, Don Miguel tells me that Boliviana negra appeared in the region three years ago and is now spreading rapidly across the countryside - just as the herbicide experts told me it might. The new strain is disseminated via cuttings; farmers cut off stems and sell them. Some farmers, looking to make more money, travel with their cuttings and peddle them around the region. And once a farmer grows a new plant, he can sell his own cuttings. It's file-swapping brought to the jungle - a highly efficient decentralized distribution chain.
Don Miguel doesn't know where the strain originated. He has heard rumors of a group of mysterious agronomists who develop better coca plants for the traffickers, but he doesn't know where they are or anything about them.
He does have a clear sense of how the new plant is affecting his region. At first, he says, the aerial spraying was successful, but now, with the arrival of Boliviana negra, it's affecting only those who are growing lawful crops. "The truth is that the fumigation drives us to the one thing that will survive - and that is Boliviana negra," he says. "Not bananas, not yucca, not maize."
The Colombian and US governments want farmers to grow legal crops, he explains, and in the past have paid them to eradicate coca. But though American embassy officials insist that the spraying campaign is more than 99 percent accurate, Don Miguel says that almost all the farmers he knows and represents report that legal crops are sprayed as well. He says that his own tree farm was sprayed, pushing him to the edge of bankruptcy. If Boliviana negra will guarantee income for farmers, Don Miguel says, they will grow it and have less incentive to discuss eradication with the government.
Not to mention the financial benefits. One hectare of land in Putumayo will produce $100 of corn. The same plot will produce $1,000 of coca. Plus you don't have to transport the coca - the guerrillas will come to your farm and collect it. So why would anyone grow corn? "Because if you grow coca," Don Miguel says, "you deal with the guerrillas or the paramilitaries or both, and they kill whenever they want."
Don Miguel has another fear. He doesn't believe that the US will tolerate the existence of glyphosate-resistant coca. When the authorities find out that farmers are growing the new coca, he fears it will be only a matter of time before they switch to a new herbicide.
He has reason for concern. Last summer, documents show, anti-narcotics officials at the US embassy in Bogotá quietly approached Colombia's president, Álvaro Uribe, and asked him if he'd consider switching from Roundup to Fusarium oxysporum, a plant-killing fungus classified as a mycoherbicide. Some species are known to attack coca; in the early '90s, a natural Fusarium outbreak decimated the Peruvian coca crop.
But Fusarium is not a chemical - it's a fungus, and it can live on in the soil. A proposal to consider using it in Florida in 1999 was rejected after the head of the state's Department of Environmental Protection found that it was "difficult, if not impossible, to control [Fusarium's] spread" and that the "mutated fungi can cause disease in a large number of crops, including tomatoes, peppers, flowers, corn, and vines." A switch to Fusarium would, at the least, be an escalation in the herbicide war and a tacit acknowledgment of glyphosate's failure. It could also turn out to be the A-bomb of herbicides.Still, according to a letter sent from the State Department to Colombia's US ambassador, Uribe was "ready to learn more." The letter, dated October 3, 2003, laid out steps for moving this plan forward, but when I spoke to officials at the embassy, they vehemently denied they are considering a herbicide switch. They stated that they are thrilled with the success of Roundup.
Don Miguel admits that on one level, the spraying has been highly effective. Almost all the old strains of coca have been eradicated. What's left are small plots of Boliviana negra, but these have become more productive, in part because the spraying has killed all the other plants competing for nutrients.
US officials point to the eradication results of the past three years and argue that the plant could not possibly be resistant. A high-ranking US anti-narcotics official who declined to be identified told me that she had never heard of Boliviana negra, la millonaria, or any Roundup Ready coca plant. Another American official began our conversation by saying, "So you're here to talk about the nonexistent glyphosate-resistant coca?" And then, more forcefully, "These campesinos have zero education. They can't be trusted to know whether a plant is resistant to glyphosate." Nonetheless, I was assured that a helicopter would be dispatched to Putumayo to search for samples. Even amid increasing reports of resistant superstrains, officials have yet to find any evidence of them.
Perhaps they haven't been to La Hormiga. Everyone I talk to here knows about the resistant plant. Three hours after leaving the coca fields, I attend a meeting of two dozen heads of local farmer cooperatives - they represent more than 5,000 farmers in Putumayo - and they nod knowingly when asked about the new breed. "Nobody listens to us because they think we are dumb farmers," says one man. "The Americans are arrogant. They don't talk to the people who live here. We are the ones who are sprayed. We are the ones who live with the plants."
That evening, I meet Fabio Paz, the energetic mayor of La Hormiga, at his simple concrete house. Paz is 32 and excited to be mayor, despite the fact that in the past three years guerrillas have assassinated more than 30 mayors. He wears jeans and a baggy shirt and does not look like an important man. But two plainclothes guards stand outside while we talk, and his armor-plated SUV is parked in front of the window, presumably to deflect any gunfire or bomb blasts.
"Boliviana negra is like goaaaal for the coca farmers," the mayor shouts, jumping to his feet and yelling "goal" like a crazed Latin American soccer announcer. "Maybe the narcos bought someone off at Monsanto. There would be poetic justice in that."
Paz doesn't know where the strain came from, though he assumes Bolivia, because of the name. He also believes that once refined, it produces a different high than older strains. Either way, he says, farmers are now planting only Boliviana negra: "You can't give away the other types of coca now."
When I tell him that I am having trouble getting more than a handful of negra samples because of the guerrilla clampdown, he calls in Chucky, one of his bodyguards. Chucky is short and baby-faced, with an emotionless gaze and a handgun tucked in the waistband of his jeans. The mayor tells me that his name isn't really Chucky; they just started calling him that after they saw Child's Play, the horror movie about a child's doll possessed by a serial killer named Chucky. Paz pronounces it "Shooky."
"Chucky can collect samples for you," Paz offers.
Chucky stares at me blankly and nods. I ask if he can identify the strain, and he nods again. Chucky, the mayor explains, was a coca leaf picker before he became a bodyguard.
Twenty hours later, Chucky knocks on my hotel room door. From under his shirt, he pulls out a stack of ziplock bags filled with coca leaves. "Boliviana negra," he says and points at some of the leaves that have yellow blotches on them. He says those were sprayed a couple of weeks ago. In some cases, he says, the leaves fall off and then regrow after spraying. In other plants, the leaves stay on. This is an important piece of information. A genetically modified plant would be impervious to glyphosate.It takes me a few minutes to arrange a mobile laboratory on the simple wooden table in my room. When placed in water with macerated soybean and canola, a chemical in the plastic test strip will bond with CP4 ESPS, a protein produced by the Roundup Ready gene. If the protein is present, the chemical turns a section of the strip red.
The problem is, the strips were made specifically to test soybean and canola, not coca. I would rather not travel to Bogotá with a backpack full of coca leaves, but after a series of the tests fail to detect the gene, I realize I have no choice.
By the time I get back to the airport in Puerto Asís, the leaves are giving off a pungent odor of broken twigs even though they're wrapped in a combination of dirty socks and ziplock bags at the bottom of my backpack. Security at the airstrip is almost nonexistent. A stout, mustachioed woman in olive-green fatigues rifles through my bag. No x-rays, metal detector, or even a pat-down. But at the last minute, she demands that my bag be placed in the hold underneath the plane to better balance the plane's weight.
I am nervous about landing in Bogotá and dealing with internal customs agents. But before we reach the capital, the plane stops in a city called Neiva to pick up more passengers. While we're sitting on the runway, the hold is opened and a group of soldiers with a German shepherd approaches. A wave of nausea hits me.
The dog puts two paws up on a trolley carrying the new passengers' luggage. It sniffs around and then drops back down. I watch with terror as the soldiers stand around chatting for a few minutes. I imagine scenes from Midnight Express, where the dumb American drug smuggler wastes away in a Turkish prison. I promise myself that if I make it out of this, I'll never smuggle anything again. The dog casually sniffs the wheels of the trolley, and then the group turns and walks away. The hold is closed and we take off again.
We land in Bogotá. There are no internal customs officers at the arrivals terminal. I catch a cab and sink into the backseat. The ride into town is blissful.
The next morning, I take a taxi to the laboratory of the scientist I met on my first night in Colombia. The leaves spent the night jammed among tiny bottles of Chivas Regal in my hotel minibar, and some have turned black. But the scientist assures me that this is not a problem. He smells them and his eyebrows go up. "Very good," he says and locks the door to the lab. It will take him a month to complete the tests.
Four weeks later, the scientist sends me an email saying that he has completed the DNA analysis and found no evidence of modification. He tested specifically for the presence of CP4 - a telltale indicator of the Roundup Ready modification - as well as for the cauliflower mosaic virus, the gene most commonly used to insert foreign DNA into a plant. It is still possible that the plant has been genetically modified using other genes, but not likely. Discovering new methods of engineering glyphosate resistance would require the best scientific minds and years of organized research. And given that there is already a published methodology, there would be little reason to duplicate the effort.
Which points back to selective breeding. The implication is that the farmers' decentralized system of disseminating coca cuttings has been amazingly effective - more so than genetic engineering could hope to be. When one plant somewhere in the country demonstrated tolerance to glyphosate, cuttings were made and passed on to dealers and farmers, who could sell them quickly to farmers hoping to withstand the spraying. The best of the next generation was once again used for cuttings and distributed.
This technique - applied over four years - is now the most likely explanation for the arrival of Boliviana negra. By spraying so much territory, the US significantly increased the odds of generating beneficial mutations. There are numerous species of coca, further increasing the diversity of possible mutations. And in the Amazonian region, nature is particularly adaptive and resilient."I thought it was unlikely," says Gressel, the plant scientist at the Weizmann Institute. "But farmers aren't dumb. They obviously spotted a lucky mutation and propagated the hell out of it."
The effects of this are far-reaching for American policymakers: A new herbicide would work only for a limited time against such a simple but effective ad hoc network. The coca-growing community is clearly primed to take advantage of any mutations.
A genetic laboratory is not as nimble. A lab is limited by research that is publicly available. In the case of Fusarium, the coca-killing fungus and likely successor to glyphosate, there is no body of work discussing genetically induced resistance. If the government switched to Fusarium, a scientist would have to perform groundbreaking genetic research to fashion a Fusarium-resistant coca plant.
The reality is that a smoothly functioning selective-breeding system is a greater threat to US antidrug efforts. Certainly government agents can switch to Fusarium and enjoy some short-term results. But after a few years - during which legal crops could be devastated - a new strain of Fusarium-resistant coca would likely emerge, one just as robust as the glyphosate-resistant strain.
The drug war in Colombia presupposes that it's eventually possible to destroy cocaine at its source. But the facts on the ground suggest this is no longer possible. In this war, it's hard to beat technology developed 10,000 years ago.Contributing editor Joshua Davis (jd@...) wrote about wiring the apocalypse in issue 12.04.----------------------------From: Toooooooooooom@...Tom Ostrowski
21 Grove St.Wilkes-Barre, Pa 18702
(570) 262-7208
I'll be working on Wilkes-Barre, but i could probably get something going on in Scranton also. i was thinking flyers and word of mouth, and i was thinking of marching right down south main street onto center city*************************BUSHWHACKED!!****************************House Dems Seek Election Inquiry
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110704A.shtmlThom Hartmann | Evidence Mounts that the Vote Was Hacked
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110804Z.shtml
The New Republic | Bush Won No Mandatehttp://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110904W.shtml------------From: revtombrown@...WORLD TRADE CENTER RESCUE HERO
SUES BUSH AND OTHERS
UNDER RICO STATUTE,
ALLEGES WILLFUL COMPLICITY
IN ATTACKS THAT KILLED 3,000.
By Margaret Atheling Rowe
PHILADELPHIA, PA, OCTOBER 22, 2004.
On September 11, 2001, William Rodriguez, a maintenance worker at the World Trade Center in Manhattan, single-handedly rescued fifteen people. The only employee with the master key to the North Tower staircases, he led firefighters up the stairs, unlocking doors as he went, aiding in the evacuation of hundreds of additional people who, but for his efforts, might have perished. Although his job description did not include saving lives, Rodriguez re-entered the building three times after the first plane struck, and was the last person to exit the North Tower alive. He survived the collapse of the North Tower by diving beneath a fire truck to avoid the avalanche of concrete and steel. After onsite treatment for his injuries, Rodriguez plunged right back into rescue efforts at the site. At dawn the next morning, Rodriguez returned to Ground Zero from his home in Jersey City, to continue to aid in rescue efforts.
Later, Rodriguez became an unofficial spokesman for survivors, among other things helping to secure an amnesty for undocumented aliens, many of them Latinos, and in the creation of the World Trade Center Memorial Fund. Although he lost his job of 19 years and his means of livelihood - even falling into homelessness for a time - Rodriguez has continued in the three years since 9-11 to continue his work in honor of the heroes and the victims of that awful day, as president of the Hispanic Victims Group, Director of the 9/11 United Services Group, and member of the Family Advisory Council of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.
Now, this native of Puerto Rico and remarkable American hero is taking his 9-11 activism to an even higher level. He has commenced, as Plaintiff, a federal court lawsuit against George W. Bush, Richard B. Cheney, Donald H. Rumsfeld and others alleging that they and others were complicit in the 9-11 attacks, and either planned the attacks, or had foreknowledge of the attacks and permitted them to succeed, in order to exploit a "New Pearl Harbor" to launch wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.
(The phrase "New Pearl Harbor" comes from a declaration of principles by the neo-conservative "Project for the New American Century," in which it is proposed as an event needed to steel American public opinion to support the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and U.S. military domination of the Middle East.)
Attorney Berg acknowledges that Rodriguez's action will shock and offend many Americans. But he urges critics to read the detailed complaint, posted on the internet at http://www.911forthetruth.com, before forming conclusions. "The 'Official Story' of what actually took place on 9-11 is a lie," Berg flatly maintains. "We do not pretend to have put together a full and definitive account of how, and by whom, the attacks were carried out. But information reported in mainstream media, and viewed in the light of common sense and the laws of physics, demonstrate that the 'Official Story,' examined closely, is not credible. The 'Official Story' contains an alarming number of inconsistencies and implausibilities. The major media have reported many of the raw facts, but have studiously avoided analysis, because doing so would reveal that the government is lying to us. The 9-11 Commission, a suspect collection of government and intelligence insiders, restated without question or examination all essential elements of the 'Official Story' of the actual events of 9-11. It failed almost completely to refute, or even to mention, the great body of evidence that suggests the 'Official Story' cannot be true, and it failed completely to hold anyone accountable. From the foregoing facts, it ought to be obvious that a cover-up, or a "limited hang-out" admitting only bureaucratic mistakes for which no one is to be held accountable, has taken place and is continuing."
Berg maintains that many prominent figures in politics, the military and the mass media consider the 'Official Story' of 9-11 to be untrue. But while the truth is emerging bit by bit, thanks to anonymous whistleblowers and researchers posting on the internet, to date no one with the stake in being a Senator, a Presidential candidate, or a media celebrity has found the courage to risk being ridiculed as a "tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorist." Berg points out that the only Senator who has dared to publicly question even parts of the 'Official Story," Senator Mark Dayton of Minnesota, has received threats ominous enough to impel him to shut down his Washington, D.C. office until after the coming election.
"Some facts cannot be denied," says Berg. "Clearly, 9-11 was carried out by more than one person. Therefore, by definition there was a conspiracy. What we're arguing is that the true conspirators have abused their enormous power and the trust of the American people to concoct and to sell to the world a false conspiracy theory, to justify war and mass murder for economic and political gain. Since the neo-cons, allied with the President, said in almost so many words that they wished for a New Pearl Harbor, why dismiss out of hand an allegation that they used their undeniably sufficient power to actually bring it about? Why has there been no full and transparent investigation? Indeed, isn't it shocking that the federal government grabbed up all of the physical evidence, and that no police authority has conducted a true criminal investigation into 3,000 homicides? Instead of due process of law, government officials and the mass media convicted Osama bin Laden, and had names and photos of his 19 accomplices on the internet, literally within hours of the attacks. The truth is that there is no definitive evidence that there were any Arabs on those planes, and even less proof concerning the supposed identities of the alleged hijackers." Berg notes too that a poll taken by the respected Zogby organization in August 2004 disclosed that half the population of New York, including such unlikely "conspiracy theorists" as those who identify themselves as "very conservative" and as Evangelical Christians, believe the federal government had foreknowledge of the attacks, and knowingly failed to prevent them.
Asked why he decided to bring this controversial lawsuit, Rodriguez explains that, having survived the World Trade Center disaster when so many did not, he feels he must learn the truth of what happened on that day. "If what the government has told us about 9-11 is a lie," he says, "somebody has to take action to reveal the truth. Since that plane hit the North Tower on 9-11, like it or not my life's meaning has become to reduce the number of victims, and the amount of suffering from those attacks. If suing President Bush is what I have to do to accomplish that, so be it." Rodriguez notes that the events of 9-11 are directly related to the deaths of thousands of people in two ongoing wars, attacks on Constitutional liberties in the United States, the abuse and torture of detainees around the world, and the use by the United States of depleted uranium and other weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Admitting the obvious - that his client's legal fight against powerful government figures is of the "David versus Goliath" variety - Berg, a former deputy attorney general in Pennsylvania, invites both financial support for his efforts, as well as assistance from volunteer attorneys.
The action, filed in the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia on 10/22/04, is Rodriguez v. Bush, et al., Civil Action No. __________.
_____________________________________________________________
Read the Complaint in Rodriguez v. Bush on the Internet at:
http://www.911forthetruth.com
For further information contact:
Philip J. Berg, Esq.
706 Ridge Pike
Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania 19444 USA
Telephone: (610) 825-3134
Cell phone: (610) 662-3005
Telefax: (610) 834-7659
PJBLAW@...
--
Peter Phillips Ph.D.
Sociology Department/Project Censored
Sonoma State University
1801 East Cotati Ave.
Rohnert Park, CA 94928
707-664-2588
http://www.projectcensored.org/
-------------COURT SYSTEM GONE MAD,
Creating Political Prisoners on Crackdown on No Police State CoalitionKey members of the NO POLICE STATE COALITION are either in jail or under threat of imprisonment as of Wednesday, October 20, 2004, when Judge Ferrara imposed an involuntary psychiatric evaluation on Mr. Posr A. Posr and the next day illegally took control of another case against Geoffrey Blank by calling the case without notice for the morning of Friday, October 22, 2004.Mr. Posr A. Posr-a descendant of enslaved Africans who dared exercise his freedom of speech in Union Square Park-was grabbed by court officers in the hallway of the courthouse, right outside the court room, 15 minutes after the start of the afternoon court session, to which he had been ordered to return. Supposedly, a bench warrant had been issued within those 15 minutes. According to written records no available, the bench warrant may have actually been written after Mr. Posr was seized! Generally, warrants issued for non-appearance are vacated as long as the defendant does appear on the same day, and are generally not entered for enforcement until after the end of the court day.
Mr. Posr had been told to come back to the afternoon session after he served notice on the court of his intent to make a motion to the Supreme Court to have his case removed to the Supreme Court. According to New York criminal procedure, on being served such a notice, the criminal court is required to grant a mandatory adjournment of reasonable time to submit the motion.
After the court officers dragged Mr. Posr into the court, Assistant District Attorney David Cooper demanded that Judge Clott immediately imprison Mr. Posr without bail. Judge Clott informed Cooper that he had no authority to remand Mr. Posr, since he is only charged with misdemeanors, but at Cooper's repeated insistence, he ordered Mr. Posr remanded anyway.
The next day, Friday, Oct. 15, Mr. Posr was brought before Judge Stolz, who placed Mr. Posr under $12,502 bail, meaning virtual preventive detention. Stolz ignored Mr. Posr's protestations that the proceedings were unlawful because of the mandatory adjournment and the illegal remand on misdemeanors.
On Monday, Oct. 18, Mr. Posr was put on trial. He had been doubly charged with criminal contempt of court, that is, two Class A misdemeanors. These charges were then lowered to "attempted criminal contempt", Class B misdemeanors, in order to avoid giving Mr. Posr a jury trial. On Wednesday, Oct. 20, Ferrara simply pronounced Mr. Posr guilty.
The case arose from allegations that Mr. Posr, who had previously been arrested for speaking at a rally in Union Square, on his court date, sat in the front seat, which is marked as reserved for attorneys and cops. But Mr. Posr was his own attorney on the case, and points out that according to New York State law, "the word 'attorney' includes a party who is prosecuting or defending a case in person."
Attorneys, whether licensed or merely self-representing, are at a disadvantage if they cannot sit in the front row, not only because of prejudice to their status, but also because it encumbers their ability to hear what is going on in the well, to maintain extensive papers and law books, and to interact with court officials and personnel in the well of the court.
After pronouncing Mr. Posr "guilty", Ferrara ordered Mr. Posr's imprisonment to continue until sentencing November 5, two weeks later. Ferrara also ordered a full psychiatric evaluation, an ominous threat to all those whose ideas are targeted by the system as "crazy". Totalitarian regimes frequently resort to pinning psychiatric labels on political prisoners, to dismiss their criticism of the government or the forces the government represents. Psychiatric labels punch gigantic holes in constitutional law, and also can be used to justify forced drugging.
The maximum sentence for a class B misdemeanor is three months incarceration and $1,000 fine.
On Friday, November 5, 2004, sentencing had to be put off to Monday, Nov. 7, because on that day, Mr. Posr was mandated to be produced on a habeas corpus motion, which was signed by a New York State Supreme Court Judge ordering Mr. Posr to be released based on the unlawfulness of his imprisonment. Habeas Corpus is an emergency summary process to end unlawful imprisonment immediately. The writ orders a hearing at which the District Attorney must then and there either refute the allegations of unlawful imprisonment or have the prisoner immediately released.
The hearing was assigned to Judge Soloff of NYS Supreme Court. Instead of holding a hearing and reaching a decision then and there, she illegally adjourned the case for two weeks to give the District Attorney time to draft an answer, and two weeks more of unlawful imprisonment. Although NYS's habeas corpus law, in compliance with Federal standards which trace bach through centuries of British law, allows the prisoner to call, examine and cross-examine witnesses, Soloff unlawfully ordered that "there will be no oral argument."
Meanwhile, Geoffrey Blank had a similar case, which had been scheduled for some time after December 20, 2004, when he had been scheduled for trial over events in Union Square. After the Mr. Posr case ended with the Wed. Oct 20 verdict, Geoffrey Blank received a message marked Thursday, Oct. 21, at 3:30 pm, telling him, illegally, that his case had been advanced to be tried the next day, Friday, Oct. 22. Had he missed the message, it is certain that a bench warrant would have been issued.
When he came in on the appointed day, the court and the DA informed him that he was not to be tried on the issue that had been put off to December 20, but for a front-row sitting case parallel to Mr. Posr's.
Mr. Blank challenged the legality of being forced to stand trial on one day's notice, with no ability to collect witnesses, etc. Furthermore, new charges were added and reduced to "attempts" at contempt, and therefore Mr. Blank demanded 45 days to make motions, and challenged the Judge and the ADA, Cooper again, to at least follow their own law. Accusing the Judge Ferrara, along with Judges Clott and Stolz of violating their own laws, a criminal conspiracy, he demanded to know how his case had migrated from the all-purpose part to the jury part. Ferrara and Cooper both then identified the Administrative Judge, Murphy, as authorizing the highly unusual, not to mention illegal, transfer of the cases.At that point, Judge Ferrara ordered an adjournment until November 29. Geoffrey Blank, who is white, was not remanded to prison, placed under bail, or ordered given a psychiatric evaluation. Mr. Blank is now considering motions to grant at least the full 45-day period for motions, and to reverse the illegal transfers of his cases into the jury part.---------From:slowone@... Subject:Re: [Ibogaine] Carla, re: George Bush, the fascist capitalist dictator On Thu, 04 Nov 2004 16:02:48 -0800 Charliedog43@... wrote:
"They are intent on shredding the constitution and enriching
themselves."
You don't do much research yourself, do you? Just write down what
you believe to be true, and it is. How nice.
Here's some more info - I just don't always have it handy :)
I was frightened by Bush's emphasis on strength though unity in his
victory speech: he seemed to momentarily lose himself in the idea.
As you may know, Bush has said he feels he was chosen by God to
reorder the world:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1075950,
00.html
He already has achieved the power to remove a person's
constitutional protection by declaring them a terrorist. The Abu
Graib abuses were a direct result of the legal and policy efforts
that have been made in this direction. Bush nominated the person
who laid the legal foundation for stripping a person's human rights(William Haynes) as a lifetime federal appeals court judge:
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=15431
"But now it has emerged that Haynes, the Pentagon's top lawyer,
oversaw a working group that provided the Bush administration with
a report promoting unsettling policies on torture. Haynes' group
actually argues that President Bush, in exercising his powers as
commander in chief during times of war, is under no obligation to
adhere to any rule of law - international or domestic - that bars
the use of torture.
You read that correctly. Despite the U.S. Constitution's plain
language that laws passed by Congress and treaties ratified by the
United States are the "supreme law of the land" and that the
President is obligated under the Constitution to "take care that
the laws be faithfully executed," Haynes' group believes that such
laws and treaties - including the 1984 Convention Against Torture,
to which the U.S. was a party - in no way restrict George Bush's
right to order torture."
http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=15747
"Haynes has been an architect and defender of administration
policies that flout the rule of law, reject meaningful judicial
oversight for American enemy combatants, and reject any redress at
all for foreign detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. Someone whose
record reflects such disdain for constitutional principles and
American values should not be given the power to make decisions
about our constitutional rights and liberties for decades to come."
Here's an example of how, once there is a category of people you
can do anything to, there is a slippery slope towards designating
anyone who is in your way as being in that category:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/02/23/paige.terrorist.nea/
Today it is a slip of the tongue, tomorrow an implied threat? Whatis it they say about absolute power?****!!!IBOGAINE TREATMENT NOW $1500 IN HOLLAND--CALL SARA, 0113134-624-1770 !!!****From:jimhadey3@... Subject:RE: [Ibogaine] Re: IBO and Benzos Hi jon,
Yea, I would go along with that. Valium and Klonopin are long lasting and have a long half life compared with Restoril and Xanax.
Earlier, we talked about Zyprexa and Effexor. Both made me hallucinate and in a bad way. Also, they caused VERY bad dreams - VERY BAD. The Zyprexa was 10 mg and the Effexor was 37.5 mg. I was taking them for depression. Once a drug is approved they can use it for off the shelf use. In other words if a drug is approved for one thing they can use it for another. The kids who did the Columbine shootings were on some kind of SSRI drug, I think Celexia, but I'm not really sure. The lady in Houston who drownded her kids was also on SSRI drugs, if you read the whole story they were giving her many times the normal amount along with other drugs that should not of been taken with the ones they gave her. No, I am not sticking up for her, just giving you the facts.
England passed a law prohibiting SSRI drugs from being given to those under 18 years of age, the only exception is Prozac.
It was many months later that another doc gave me the Seroquel which knocked me on my ass and gave me a hang over. Guess I can not take SSRI or a SSRI antagonistic drugs. Also, these drugs can take a long time to leave the body completely. I would venture to guess a month or more. But that is just a guess. If you know about antidepressents you know it can take 6 weeks to start working. It is just my opinion, a Laymens opinion at that, that a person should wait a long time before taking undergoing Ibo treatment while taking SSRI drugs of any kind. Of course this is just my opinion. Also, unless you have VERY bad depression I would stay away from the SSRI drugs, they are finding out they are not as great as the drug companies make them out to be.
In a double blind study they found that a placebo can work just as good in many cases. I will admit that while taking the SSRI I was buzzed in a very uncomfortable way. I mean talking to people who were not there, bumping into walls. And the dreams were nightmares that you would never want to experience. But that is just me. Other people have been helped. I heard they are going to put a warning on them saying something on the order of "If this medication makes you feel like suciede check with your doctor or pharmacist." The doctors seem to give themout like candy. They won't give you a sleeping pill or Valium but they will give you Zolft and other SSRI's by the handful.
But I feel use whatever works for you. But before taking the Ibo while taking the SSRIs, I would STRONGLY suggest asking questions and mentioning it to the one who will be giving it to you as well as the sitter. For what it is worth - I am not a doc or nurse, just someone who likes to read.
Best to all,
- JIM
jon <jfreed1@...> wrote:
> I have been using benzos for years. Valium and Restoril. If one is
> taking a large amount of Valium and then quite abruptly they may
> experience seziures. It takes 10 days before withdrawal from benzos
> starts - my doc told me this.
How long it takes before benzo withdrawal kicks in depends on what
particular benzo you're talking about.
Longer acting ones like klonopin and valium could take that long, butshorter acting ones like xanax and ativan would only take a couple days.From:slowone@... Subject:RE: [Ibogaine] Re: IBO and Benzos
Jim, if you ever take ibogaine I would suggest a slow stepping of
doses, giving yourself time to assess how it is acting at each step,
since it apparently increases serotonin and your reaction to SSRI's
(which do the same) has been so negative. I am not a treater or
medical expert, just a person who has had some really rough
experiences on ibogaine (although no nightmares on Paxil, which is
an SSRI). Possibly very small doses could be useful if larger onesare too difficult.From:jfreed1@... Subject:RE: [Ibogaine] Re: IBO and Benzos
I think i said this, but just to be clear, neither Zyprexa, Effexor, nor
Seroquel are SSRIs.
Zyprexa and Seroquel are both atypical anti-psychotics. They act primarily
as selective dopamine antagonists; they reduce the transmission of
dopamine. They're called atypical because their action is more selective
than the older anti-psychotics, like thorazine and haldol. this means they
generally have less side effects; though serious reactions still do
happen, as with your experience.
Effexor is an SNRI, a serotonin norepinepherine reuptake inhibitor. It's
like an SSRI, in that it blocks the reuptake of serotonin, but it also
blocks the reuptake of norepinepherine. It would probably be a pretty bad
idea to take ibogaine on top of an SNRI, for the same reason as with
SSRIs.
Effexor would be considerably more dangerous to mix with ibogaine than
Zyprexa or Seroquel.
But, in general, it would probably be best to mix ibogaine with as few
other things as possible. There aren't really all that many people who've
ever done ibogaine, so there's not much data on interactions and such. If
you mix ibogaine with something, odds are pretty good that you'll be the
first one to try the combination, that is, you'll be playing guinea pig.From:slowone@... Subject:Re: [Ibogaine] need input: trying it on my own
I think it is very good and admirable to start work on oneself in
advance of iboga.
From my limited experience, the principle of Feldenkrais is to
gently (without pain) tense muscles that hold tension (in spasm),
then relax as slowly as possible to release both intentional and
unintentional tension. The more close attention paid to the process,
the better it works. It can be an interesting challenge to find
the edge between letting go and holding: what is your smallest
increment of relaxation? Like iboga, it helps release useless
patterns held in the body, however in a much gentler way. I suspect
Feldenkrais could be useful in relaxing out of the stress that
iboga can leave in the muscles of the gut. (Small amounts of
Peganum harmala extract taken before the iboga seem to help prevent
this as well.)
The techniques of Feldenkrais seem to have been adopted by the
physical therapy community over the last 10 years or so.
I wonder - are any iboganauts doing yoga? I think it could bereally good, but I can't seem to get around to it :)From:BiscuitBoy714@... Subject:Re: [Ibogaine] list Well, I didn't want to bore anyone with triviata but here goes. I have a friend who came to Lexington KY and pulled me up and dusted me off and took me to his house in Erie Pa. He told me I didn't have to work, just keep an eye on the kids. At this point no one including my mother wanted anything to do with me. My brothers avoided me like the plague. I really don't remember much about the last couple of months I was in KY. This guy is going through some tough times so I went to Erie to try and help. Before anyone takes what I say out of context "AGAIN" I want to say I didn't use, I'm not going to use, I just got kinda depressed at the state of what used to be my best friend. I'm hooked into the recovery people in Erie so I went to get my old job back and set up therapy. I went to AA meetings and got out to see my clean friends. Well, people who knew me drugged don't seem comfortable with me clean. I feel like I'm not allowed to talk about Ibogaine or anything else for that matter till I jump through hoops and act subservient and let everyone kick me in the balls emotionally. Fuck that. I'm clean I'm going to stay clean and the longer people fuck with my program the more people die in KY from addiction or direct results therein. Some else goes to KY and I'll quit worrying about it. I think I know everyone in the underground and no one has any intent on going there. These people are committing crime against each other and dying by the day. Fuck a bunch of hillbillies huh. I'm angry. I'm real fucking angry. I have to let people who don't know me make decisions about my life and my recovery based on assumptions. It seems that when I'm fucked up I let people push me around and put me where I belong in the scheme of things. Clean I have no intentions of letting any one push me around or getting in way of my goals. I have tried to be clean for so long I get the feeling people around me are just waiting for everything to get back to normal and I'm nodding off at the supper table. If I act confident about anything people in recovery say I should just sit listen and not say anything. I talk too much. I sat in the rooms of AA for two fucking years and didn't say anything. I think it's all about ego. There's and mine. But since I just got clean 6 weeks ago I have nothing worthy to say. The people in the music scene are used to me playing and letting loud ass guitar players cut over my harp leads or sax or letting some dude sing who is a legend in his tone deaf mind. No fucking more. Stay in the mix and learn your parts like I did or get out of the fucking way. RandyFrom:ms_iboga@... Subject:[Ibogaine] Randy
Randy,
Maybe opiates were just filtering out aspects of
certain people's personalities. When I was strung
out, I could hang out with people who were clearly
incompatible with my personality, my beliefs...I could
also nod out in front of the tv for eight hours, notto mention partake in dubious activities to finance my
'needs'. Opiates made me more tolerant of situations,
more comfortable in my boredom and malaise. They made
me NUMB.
Now, I feel like my perceptions, senses, and emotions
are coming to life again. Do you feel the same way?
Perhaps opiates ARE the quintessential 'rose coloured
glasses'; I have heard that the poppy was referred to
as 'the joy plant' by a particular culture, that I
can't- for the life of me- remember.
We need to find natural ways to recreate opiate bliss.
Sorry I'm rambling on, but I can relate to what
you're saying. Try new things, new sensations; meet
new people...Start anew. And remember, your body is
re-regulating itself, so you might now feel/perceive
things the same way in a few months, weeks, daze.
Hugs,JulieFrom:BiscuitBoy714@... Subject:Re: [Ibogaine] Randy Julie, thanx so much. I was just pondering my situation and an old AA slogan came to mind. SOBER stands for Son Of a Bitch Everything is Real. It took at least a year for my mind to clear when I got clean of booze and Methadone in 94. Ibogaine gave me that instantaneously. Or as soon as the trails and buzz went away. I'm way grateful I didn't have to battle booze again. Its almost as bad as methadone. The fears they talk about in the big book are very real. I experienced them in detox. You and I are definitely on the same page. I had just sat and thought about all this and came to a lot of the same conclusions that you did. In retrospect going back there was a big mistake. I can't expect the rest of the world to change and react because I have changed. Its classic RET. All I can do is change my thoughts about the reality I perceive if I want to change my emotions about it. Because you cannot change objective reality. Looks good on paper. Its the period of cognitive dissonance that goes along with forcing yourself to change your thoughts that I don't like to deal with so therefore I ignore this tool. You are right. I need to try new things and change friends completely. This guy is like a brother to me. His kids are closer to me than they are him. Thats his fault. One things for sure. I can't stop playing music. Be it in bars or whatever. I tried to stop playing when I was battling alcohol on the advice of a sponsor and I never went for more than a month or so without drinking. When I found the sponsor I stayed with, (who was an awesome keyboard/singer dude) he taught me how to play sober and how cool it was to be in control of your licks I pretty much quit drinking for good. Won't make that mistake again. Thanx for your kind words of encouragement. RandyFrom:BiscuitBoy714@... Subject:Re: [Ibogaine] Howard Howard, I will try and be as objective as I can. I have never had such a clarity of mind so fast in recovery. It will take some getting used to. I'm afraid to trust my own intentions because everyone is telling me how sick I still am and have to do what this one or that one says to get anywhere. Now I'm told to get a counselor and get his opinion too. How am I to trust my own self talk if everyone is telling me how fucked up I am. There is plenty enough in my head without me second guessing every move I make. I'm a lot more adamant about what I say and do now. I don't think anyone really believes I'll stay clean to follow through on what I'm talking about. Its one of those if you have to ask, you'll never know things how Ibogaine has changed me. Except to you and the people on the list who have done the Ibogaine, its almost impossible to explain how much it has changed me. It takes first hand knowledge. I get angry now but I don't explode like I used to. I write tirades on the list but thats healthy for me. Better than sticking a needle in my arm or kicking someone ass or getting beat on myself. Thats what I used to do with anger. Mostly sticking needles in my arm. Also I feel like the people that know me are afraid to do anything to knock me off of my recovery, or I should say care about me. I had drugs stuck in my face by people I thought care about me, just to see how I would react. Or so they say. I'm still learning and I'm still positive about Ibogaine and recovery. I just don't like to be played with. RandyFrom:HSLotsof@... Subject:Re: [Ibogaine] list
OK Randy,
That all makes sense now. I couldn't understand what was going on with your
friends until you described them as having a philosophical construct where
their own existence is based on how they think you should be responding. Their
own well being is based on a different world view. What you say and represent
threatens their belief system and hence there existence.
I am not saying these people were not your friends but, they were your
friends based on a common belief system. Anything that threatens a belief system
frightens people. You threatened that belief system.HowardFrom:mafinman@... Subject:Re: [Ibogaine] Howard Randy,
My experience over the years is that anyone in the drug rehab community that feels you are not doing or accepting of their methods will tell you that you are in denial or not accepting responsibility. I laughed at them then in my drug fog and I dismiss all that bullshit from my ibogaine induced clarity. None of those people have had the advantage of the physical, neurological, spiritual, insightful head start we got on the process. People fear or are jealous of that which they don't have or don't understand. It rains on their parade, it shorts out their circuits, it won't compute, it fucks up their shit! You are one of the chosen few. The lost tribe of Iboga! Stand tall brother and let your heart and your gut instincts guide you. Intuition is that which you KNOW at an instant, before you factor in other peoples opinions and the fears they try to lay at your feet.
I understand you thought you would be accepted as a shining example (which you are) but....refer to above paragraph.
You're a musician. If all else fails, put it in a song.
With much love and admiration for how far you have come,MarteeFrom:nick227@... Subject:RE: [Ibogaine] list
Sounds like you need some new friends. If people can't handle you straight
then I don't think you need to be around those people anymore. Acceptance
can be really a gift.NickFrom:jfreed1@... Subject:Re: [Ibogaine] Howard
randy,
i'm sorry to hear people have been treating you this way.. i'm sure it's
very frustrating.
i've never bought into the NA mentality, but i do think there are some
pearls of wisdom that can be found among the rest of the BS. one of them
that i think is especially true is that, to make a succcessfull recovery,
you have to change people, places, and things.
when you're a junky, you're entire world is constructed around junk..
everything you do relates to junk, everyone you interact with related to
junk.. like burroughs said "junkies aren't interested in people, except as
suppliers of junk"..
if you want to move on from junk, you have to move on from that world. you
have to create yourself a new world, one that has nothing to do with
junk. and that means doing new things, going new places, and hanging out
with new people. it's a difficult thing to do, to be sure... it can be
hard to let go of people and things that were so important to you. but
it's important to remember that they were so important to the junk you...
not the new you, who can be whatever you want him to be... but the
decisions you make from now on into the future will determine who that new
you is.
putting dope in front of you is an incredibly dickish thing to do. i think
howard is right when he says that they feel threatened... it sounds like
they are acting out their own insecurities. it's a perfectly natural thing
for them to do... but not especially constructive for you, to say the
least.. and probably not something you should be around right now..
good luckjonFrom:BiscuitBoy714@... Subject:Re: [Ibogaine] after 5 weeks I've never felt so good about being clean. EVER. I'm old and I have tried to be clean a time or two.Is there any data on the effects of Ibogaine on the dopamine levels? Before and after. Does Ibogaine increase it in of itself or does it let the body produce it better. Or does it do nothing to the level? If so would it help people with ADHD? How long would the effects lasts? Are there any claims about Ibogaine helping people with ADHD? Any help welcomed. RandyFrom:jfreed1@... Subject:Re: [Ibogaine] Question about dopamine
ibogaine causes a decrease in extracellular dopamine in the nuclear
accumbens, presumably a result of increased dopaminergic activity, as it
increases concentrations of dopamine metabolites.
whether or not ibogaine has an effect on ADHD, it probably wouldn't be
related to its dopaminergic activity. stimulants are believed to reduce
ADHD symptoms by increasing activity in the prefrontal cortex. the
prefrontal cortex is mainly responsible for the executive functions of the
mind... controlling attention and things like that... and that part of the
brain tends to be less active in people with ADHD.
i'm not sure if any studies have been done on ibogaine's effect on
activity in the prefrontal cortex...From:JasenHappy@... Subject:Re: [Ibogaine] Blessed be Iboga Hello Dear Randy,
This is fantastic,go Randy go.
I appreciate your raw honesty,it is rare.
People like you are influencing people like myself(for the good)
that are about to do the treatment or are thinking about it.
I see your point about the change in you,but when you go
home not much else has changed.A couple of other
people made some good points about others not handling
your new refreshed state.
I know someone,about the only one I know now days
if I wanted to get on.(If I wanted to.)
This person,to feel better about themselves using and
being stuck in that "not nice" lifestyle will purposely
make sure they are seen by me,and go out of there
way to make an excuse to knock on my door with
some f....d up excuse. As they know odds are if I had them at
my door,I would break and use.
These people, in my opinion, want to feel better about
themselves so they want to get you into trouble
so as to feel better.
I once said to this person, "listen,I can't see you any more",
and they would say, 'But we are friends, cant I come for a coffee
and chat sometimes. I would say,"you have to understand you
are the only person I know that can get on for me,and when
I see you,I might not be in a strong frame of mind,and use
you as an excuse to use.
I would say,"when I see you,you,..represent dope to me,
thats all.They are offended,but I think deep down they
understand.
Yes it all comes down to us and our decisions,however
I stand a better chance away from temptation.
5 days to go for treatment,well,...until I leave Australia.
I will stop in Hong Kong for a couple of days and check
out some of their buildings,then to Holland on the 15th.
Enough for now,I could write twice as much.
You are helping more than you know,Julie and the others.With Smiles Jasen.From:ptpeet@... Subject:Re: [Ibogaine] Blessed be Iboga I envy you your upcoming voyage Jasen. I've never been to Asia, nowhere near it (nor Australia for that matter), and I miss Holland fiercely at times. I know I'm personally going to need to go again through the ibogaine doorway, and would love to do it with Sara's guidance and vibration when I do. We'll see how that works out, no definite date in mind yet, but I do have this niggling little feeling that that might be a good idea for me next time. As much as I feel that doing it in my home is a good way to go, and might end up simply taking that route again anyway since it would be much, much, much cheaper for my extreme poverty lifestyle, I have a strong desire to visit with Sara and feel it might just be just enough different that it will click different ways in me and my mind, different and possibly substantial ways, ways that will be meaningful and needed and would be nice (or beneficial rather) to experience I think. Due to my physical troubles, home treatments are really best probably, but the change of location would be an important part of the session I do believe, even while feeling my location wasn't something I personally had/have a problem with, contrary to some who've recently done treatments, or at least, contrary to what one of my "angels" thought and suggested.
So Jasen, while I don't have any candles at the moment, I do have strong, positive, loving vibes being generated in my bright burning mind for you. Good luck and keep us updated.
Peace and love,
PrestonFrom:ms_iboga@... Subject:Re: [Ibogaine] http://ibogaine.org/methadone2.html Hi,
It's been 13 days since my treatment, and I am just now starting to feel much better. Melatonin has put a serious dent in my insomnia- I started taking it yesterday, and within 20-40 minutes I am usually sleeping/dreaming. It's been 3.5 weeks since my last dose of methadone.
Most of the physical symptoms are gone, with the exception of sneezing, minor lethargy and a few chills/aches. I have virtually NO cravings, which is brilliant, by my standards.
Thanks for asking,
JulieFrom:slowone@... Subject:Re: [Ibogaine] list
More on the apparent ability of P. harmala extract to lessen the
stress of iboga on the gut, which oddly no one responded to. If youtake such an extract (w/out iboga) and then make an effort to yak
it up an hour or so later, you'll notice that there is no acidity
in what comes up.
Anger is a tough one for me, still learning how to be with it.
A thought after sleeping on it - the goal seems to be to be able to
hold anger without burying it, choosing to display it when it can
help you achieve your goal. A therapist friend described properly-
used anger as a sword that you whip out and bring to the other
person's throat, and just knowing you have it at your side makes
for a different posture in the world. Maybe holding anger without
expressing it in the situation requires expressing it somewhere
else to someone who is equipped to hear it and understand.
One big subtlety I've noticed is that one can say "I'm angry about .
." and this is a whole different conversation from "You fucking
idiot ..." which is what I'd feel like saying and then shut down
because of inability to be impolite.
The other day someone said I just need to develop my adult self,
and when this is done my wounded child will feel safe enough to
come out and heal. This reminds me of something Nick wrote a while
ago:
Generally it's my opinion that the ego needs multiple "staging
posts" on it's long journey toward true self-recognition. Even
though ultimately it's merely a journey from here to here this
doesn't seem to lessen the impact of the experience.
In this context the ego would be the parental self. So just acting
as mature as possible, understanding that the reason is to build
oneself up rather than conform, choosing the right battles, biding
one's time as necessary, could be a program :-)
I'm also reminded of this from ibogaine@...:
I don't believe we have to polish our egos to the point of
getting
an "A". I think a C+ will do. The universe is not so fucking
relentless as to require any sembance of perfection. A C+ will do
and then "we" can get out of the way.
Relax at that point and the separate sense will automatically
burn.
By the way, I'm angry about the US election results. Probably thatis already obvious :-)From:mafinman@... Subject:Re: [Ibogaine] list p.harmala
Hi,
I'm assuming this is a homeopathic by the name. I'm also assuming that while you say gut ( usually refers to the intestine, which is located below or thereabouts the belly button.) your description seems to indicate you're referring to the stomach and the nausea associated with the ibogaine experience in some or the stress in the stomach area (solar plexus, below the sternum) otherwise. When you say yak it up do you mean talk without reflux type activity. I would consider it a great find to know of a homeopathic that helps with reflux type activity as a general resource.
I personally experienced a kind of anxiety in that solar plexus area. What worked for me and I used it for about a month was two homeopathics. Ignatia Amara which is indicated for hypersensitivity,nervousness due to everyday stress (what constitutes everyday stress is so individual). This one I've also seen in some sleep formulas. The other one isArgentum Nitrcum. It is indicated for apprehension,stage fright with aggitation. I first used these about 6 months ago when I had to take a puddle jumper to get to key west. They worked like a charm. I would take anywhere from 3-5 of the little pellets each. They're approx 1mm ea in size. The Bach flower Rescue Remedy also was useful.As far as not getting a response to your post I've noticed when some are caught up in the moment of a hot topic on this list, other not relevant to their moment info can be put off for later or not as pertinent. It may be that innate tendancy towards the rush that someone tried to explain to me about the human race!
I thank you for your reference. Almost all physical stuff has an emotional base. So I believe if you don't deal with the emotional aspect of why you are ill or disfunctional (physically and otherwise) it will just manifest again or elsewhere in the body. Any clarification would be appreciated.
Respectfully,MarteeFrom:skrupa20022002@... Subject:Re: [Ibogaine] list p.harmala Hi Yall ,Im enjoying reading about your progress, Im about 5 months post ibogaine treatment. What helped me alot was acupuncture treatments ,I fell in love with it so much so that Im now practising acupuncture myself ! Ibogaine opens alot of doors ,so glad yall are here to share it with me ,fondly -shellFrom:BiscuitBoy714@... Subject:Re: [Ibogaine] Huh? I went to Catskill to set up some counseling and got a look like a dog turning his head at something he doesn't understand when I told them I had gotten clean with Ibogaine treatments. Never heard of it. This is incomprehensible to me. I guess the recovery community will find out, be it too slowly for my taste. They had to ask me twice to make sure that I didn't have any court pressure or a wife who is forcing me to seek treatment. I had court pressure once, and a wife too but neither one kept me from getting high. 75 bucks for the intake. Looks like they should pay Howard for the information I am going to give them. RandyTo 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.-------------------------------------------------------------From: tents444@...http://www.corporatism.netfirms.com/mmmall.htm This page just created! Please forward and distribute widely.348 MMM cities worldwide since 1999!
MMM. All cities 1999 to date. Million Marijuana March. Global Cannabis Liberation in May. Worldwide since 1999. Cannabis events on the first Saturday in May, or that weekend, or thereabouts. Marches, meetings, rallies, raves, concerts, festivals, etc..******************************************************************************To get on the poster for 2005--update your contact details & add your city to this New List:[---snip---]
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