Duty to Warn

I cannot watch enough videos of the people in Wisconsin as you bold, brave, most decent Wisconsonites are out in the streets – resisting, doing non-violent civil disobedience/direct action, dissenting, protesting, rising up, standing up to and speaking and singing truth to power in the face of Walker and his cronies.

What is happening in Wisconsin now is a model for the whole country. Not only your honorable actions, but also what Walker and the thugs behind him are trying to do in Wisconsin.

I am writing to tell you not only how much I respect and admire you, but also how very concerned I am about the recalls, scheduled as of this writing to start on July 12. They are to be done on the same electronic voting machines that could have rigged the elections in the first place as well as the Supreme Court recount. See here for information on hacking of all electronic voting machines by geeks, professors and students – both optical scammers (not a typo) and DRE’s/touchscreens – to say nothing of all the fraud and error of the electronic voting machines in real time – some lowlights: FL 2000, GA 2002, OH 2004, the list goes on and on.

It is peculiar how the smallest, most innocent, observation can become the “straw that breaks the camel’s back.” Barb With was volunteering as an observer at the Waukesha recount when she made a glaring discovery. The poll tape that was being counted and matched for votes cast in the April 5 election for Supreme Court Justice was dated March 30, 2011. When she brought the suspicious date to the attention of election officials, they could not come up with any reason for the mis-dated poll tape.

Weeks later Barb appeared before the Assembly Committee for Election and Campaign Reform. This is a portion of her testimony:

An observer of the Waukesha County recount noticed such a small, innocent piece of paper that was spit out of a voting machine in Pewaukee. It was a poll tape from a voting machine on which is recorded your vote. But what caught her eye was the date at the top of the tape: 03-30-2011 or March 30. That was six days before the Supreme Court election of April 5!

I recall the Facebook messages in the group Election Integrity as she communicated the finding to the group. “Get a picture!” -- and she did.

On Wednesday in federal court, 10 members of the U.S. Congress sued President Obama in an attempt to end U.S. involvement in a war in Libya.

These are the plaintiffs: Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Walter Jones (R-NC), Howard Coble (R-NC), John Duncan (R-TN), Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD), John Conyers (D-MI), Ron Paul (R-TX), Michael Capuano (D-MA), Tim Johnson (R-IL), and Dan Burton (R-IN).

According to a statement from Congressman Kucinich:

There are twenty thousand nuclear weapons on the planet, a quarter of them ready for launch at a moment’s suicidal impulse, aimed at countries that stopped being enemies two decades ago. It’s six minutes to midnight. “Disarmament” has as much cachet in America’s corridors of power as “socialism.”

And the U.S. House, bless its evil heart, has just sliced the Achilles tendon of peace. It recently passed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011, which has many seriously worrisome provisions, two of which stand in stark, grinning contrast to one another.

One part of the bill, which now heads to the Senate, would give the president unilateral authority to pursue the “war on terror” anywhere in the world. Anywhere evil resides, the president could go after it, no congressional approval needed. It’s kind of like that already, but this would legalize the streamlining of war and help push the United States, in its role as global superpower, completely beyond the constraints of democracy.

The use of peyote has been at the core of Native quest for spiritual guidance and community for thousands of years in MesoAmerica. In North America, some 300,000 members belong to the Native American church, which also holds peyote at its core.

But the epic struggle to win legal acceptance in a nation that prides itself on "freedom of religion" has been noble, complex, largely successful, and extremely instructive to those who would finally end the "war on drugs."

In fact, practitioners of the practice insist peyote is NOT a drug at all. As of 1994, the sacramental use of peyote for members of federally recognized tribes is totally legal. But the route to that reality comprises one of the most fascinating chapters in all US history.

The following is the text of a speech by Lester Greenspoon, M.D. recently delivered to the 2011 NORML conference.

I just learned that one of my favorite musicians, Gil Scot Heron has died.
Gil. and his band performed on the 7th episode of Saturday Night Live ( the one with Richard Pryor), and their music so moved me that I ran out the next day and bought their album, "From South Africa to South Carolina" -- the first LP I ever owned. A student of African master drummer Babatunje Olatunde and a prodigy of the New Harlem Renaissance movement in music, Gil brought traditional African Rythms and instruments of a new contemporary style of soulful, folksy jazz, infused with both African and American history in a way that politically pulled no punches. Gil took a bold stand against Nuclear Power with his ("alternative") hit, "Shut 'em Down."