City of Berkeley stands up to the Feds and Tells Them to Back Off Their Gestapo Tactics.

AlterNet / By Kristen Gwynne
City of Berkeley Fights Back Against Federal, Anti-Medical-Marijuana Bullies
The feds won't close Berkeley's largest medical marijuana dispensary without a fight.

July 3, 2013 |

The City of Berkeley has filed a claim aiming to protect the city's largest medical marijuana dispensary, Berkeley Patients Group, from closure prompted by the federal government. In May, US Attorney Melinda Haag targeted the dispensary's landlord for asset forfeiture, a bullying tactic that has been used regularly in the feds' war on state-sanctioned, legal medical pot programs. Now, Berkeley is fighting back.

“It is time for the federal government to wake up and stop these asset forfeiture actions," Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates said in a press release. "Berkeley Patients Group has complied with the rules and caused no problems in the City. The federal government should not use its scarce resources to harass local law-abiding businesses."

The Berkeley Patients Group has been legally providing marijuana to patients in the city since 1999, complying with local laws. Nonetheless, Haag said in a statement this May that, "The marijuana industry has caused significant public health and safety problems in rural communities, urban centers and schools in the Northern District of California. Because some believe marijuana has medicinal value, however, we continue to take a measured approach and have only pursued asset forfeiture actions with respect to marijuana retail sales operations very near schools, parks or playgrounds, at the request of local law enforcement, or in one case, because of the sheer size of its distribution operations."

"There are no schools around there," Bates struck back. "It seems to me Attorney General [Eric Holder] has really messed up [going after BPG]...He needs to say 'stop this.'"

On May 21st, the city adopted a resolution opposing the forfeiture on the grounds that Berkeley Patient Group has “contributed significantly to our community, providing good jobs and paying millions of dollars in taxes. They have improved the lives and assisted the end-of-life transitions of thousands of patients. They have been active supporters of dozens of Berkeley community organizations.”

On Wednesday, the City filed a claim in US District Court asserting that the closure of Berkeley Patients Group will hurt the city via loss of revenue (including taxes paid by the dispensary), while subverting the City's hard work and resources invested in the control and regulation of medical marijuana, a program intended to treat ailing Berkeley residents.

“Medical marijuana is legal under California law. The federal government, against the wishes of the community, is undermining Berkeley’s concerted efforts to control and regulate medical marijuana distribution within its borders. The U.S Attorney’s action harms patients, the community, and the City -- and benefits no one. It is pure folly; sadly, it is also deeply destructive folly," Senior Staff Attorney at Drug Policy Alliance, the group representing the City of Berkeley, Tamar Todd said in a press release.

The Berkeley case could be a sign of growing pushback from the localities against whom the federal government has waged marijuana wars. Just over a week ago, the US Conference of Mayors unanimously passed a resolution urging the federal government to leave local marijuana laws alone.

"THE NAKED EMPIRE"

BY Robert C. Koehler, Published by Common Dreams, June 28th 2013

Certainly Edward Snowden’s crime is one of public relations. In this day and age, power ain’t just jackboots, tanks and missiles. What he did by outing the NSA and its gargantuan surveillance operation was mess hugely with the American image — the American brand — with its irresistible combination of might and right.

That’s the nature of his “treason.” The secret he gave away was pretty much the same one the little boy blurted out in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale: “The emperor has no clothes!” That is, the government’s security industry isn’t devoted, with benevolent righteousness, to protecting the American public. Instead, it’s obsessively irrational, bent on accumulating data on every phone call we make. It’s a berserk spy machine, seemingly to no sane end. How awkward.

For instance, the government of Hong Kong, in refusing to extradite Snowden as per the Obama administration’s request, explained in its refusal letter that it has “formally written to the U.S. Government requesting clarification on reports about the hacking of computer systems in Hong Kong by U.S. government agencies. It will follow up on the matter, to protect the legal rights of people of Hong Kong.”

In other words, sorry, Naked Empire. We’re not going to do what you ask, and by the way, we have some issues with your behavior we’d like to discuss.

This is not the sort of insolence the world’s only superpower wants to hear, and it’s Snowden’s fault, along with other whistleblowers who preceded him, some of whom, such as Bradley Manning, are enduring harsh consequences for their truth-telling. Traitors, all of them — at least as far as the government is concerned, because, when you strip away the public relations mask, the primary interest of government is the perpetuation of power. And anyone who interferes with that perpetuation, even, or especially, in the name of principle, is a “security risk.”

Incredibly, so much of the Fourth Estate goes along with this, aligning itself with the raw, unarticulated interests of power — with the idea that security equals the status quo. Mainstream coverage of the Snowden affair assumes that a crime has been committed and has no further interest in that aspect of the story: a crime is a crime. The unspoken assumption is that the government protects us by doing whatever it does, and we don’t really need to know the details. We just need to round up the transgressors and bring them to justice, because this, rather than the upholding of some sort of principle independent of raw power, is what constitutes the “national interest.”

The privileged social position of the media is based on the idea that it’s beholden first and foremost to principle and speaks truth to power, not that it’s a glib collaborator with power, but that old saw has been on the wane for decades. It’s just one of many principles that consumer culture seems to have given up on. (Nobody, for instance, seems to worry that “Christmas has gotten too commercial” anymore, either.)

Outside the mainstream, there has, of course, been excellent critical analysis both of Snowden’s revelations and the mainstream media’s snarky dismissal of same, but one assumption strikes me as largely unexamined: that the U.S. government essentially has the power to do whatever it wants, independent of the citizenry living under its auspices, and that our choices are either to go along with it or rail angrily against it. But maybe we have other options as well.

Gene Sharp, the extraordinary historian and theorist of nonviolent power, writes in Power and Struggle: The Nature and Control of Political Power:

“Basically, there appear to be two views of the nature of power. One can see people as dependent upon the good will, the decisions and the support of their government or any other hierarchical system to which they belong. Or, conversely, one can see that government or system dependent on the people’s good will, decisions and support.

“One can see the power of a government as emitted from the few who stand at the pinnacle of command. Or one can see that power, in all governments, as continually rising from many parts of the society. One can also see power as self-perpetuating, durable, not easily or quickly controlled or destroyed. Or political power can be viewed as fragile, always dependent for its strength and existence upon replenishment of its sources, by the cooperation of a multitude of institutions and people — cooperation which may or may not continue.” (Emphasis added.)
Indeed, Snowden, Manning and other whistleblowers have demonstrated the fragility of governmental power with their very actions. Hence the government’s kneejerk response: They’re traitors! They disobeyed and must be punished, because any unofficial leakage of government policy is, by definition, bad for security. Of course the security in question is the security of those in power. The belief that their security is our security is the link that must be broken. As Sharp points out, we don’t automatically owe those in power our good will.

Tim Wise, in an excellent essay putting the NSA revelations into context, writes: “Maybe it is time to remind ourselves that the only things worse than what this government and its various law enforcement agencies do in secret, are the things they’ve been doing blatantly, openly, but only to some, for a long time now.”

From a genocidal war against the continent’s original inhabitants to the institution of slavery to Jim Crow . . . to Vietnam, Agent Orange, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, shock and awe bombing, torture, ecocide, drone warfare . . . to the millions of people trapped in our prison gulag . . . the agenda of empire has been going on, with unquestioning public support, for far too long. What the empire fears most is the day that it can no longer take this support for granted. That day is coming.

© 2013 Tribune Media Services

SOMETIMES YOU'VE JUST GOT TO SAY...... THIS GUY IS A TOTAL BANANA!

THE REALLY SCARY THING IS THE FACT THAT THIS GUY IS TRYING TO BE A LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR. REALLY?

FROM: NEWSMAX.COM

THIS IS A VERY SCARY GUY........ REALLY!!!

A friend of mine just came back from South Korea, where he had been a Peace Corp volunteer in the sixties. He was treated royally by the South Korean Government. He visited the North Korean Border. Not a fun place to go.

PYONGYANG (The Borowitz Report)—Kim Jong-un, Supreme Leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, has issued the following letter to the citizens of the world:

Dear World People:
For decades, North Korea was threatened by hostile foes with nuclear weapons. With our safety constantly at risk from violent intruders, we asked: How can we possibly defend ourselves? In the immortal words of my dad, the glorious Kim Jong-il: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke.”
I sleep safely at night knowing that a loaded nuclear silo is as close as the launch button on my nightstand. And now I understand what Dad, in his genius, instinctively knew: that the world will not be truly safe until every nation has nuclear weapons.
Perhaps because these weapons are so necessary to our defense, the U.S. government, with its lapdogs at the United Nations, is plotting to take them away from us. But as Dad used to say, “When they come for our nukes….”
That is why today I am founding the Nuclear Retaliation Association to defend the sovereign right of every nation on the planet to engulf that planet in a hellish inferno. If you join today, we will waive the initiation fee and send you this bumper sticker: “Nuclear weapons don’t kill people. People kill people who don’t have nuclear weapons.”
Peace out,
Kim Jong-un


Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/02/a-letter-from-kim-jong-un.html#ixzz2Ku7FZWn0

THE HUBRIS OF DRONE ATTACKS....... We Can't Believe We're Winning Allies With This Action.

IF MY FAMILY WAS KILLED BY INDISCRIMINATE MURDER BY DRONE, I WOULD SPEND THE REST OF MY LIFE SEEKING REVENGE. WHO WOULDN'T???

Published on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 by Common Dreams
The Hubris of the Drones
by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
Last week, The New York Times published a chilling account of how indiscriminate killing in war remains bad policy even today. This time, it’s done not by young GIs in the field but by anonymous puppeteers guiding drones that hover and attack by remote control against targets thousands of miles away, often killing the innocent and driving their enraged and grieving families and friends straight into the arms of the very terrorists we’re trying to eradicate.

The Times told of a Muslim cleric in Yemen named Salem Ahmed bin Ali Jaber, standing in a village mosque denouncing al Qaeda. It was a brave thing to do — a respected tribal figure, arguing against terrorism. But two days later, when he and a police officer cousin agreed to meet with three al Qaeda members to continue the argument, all five men — friend and foe — were incinerated by an American drone attack. The killings infuriated the village and prompted rumors of an upwelling of support in the town for al Qaeda, because, the Times reported, “such a move is seen as the only way to retaliate against the United States.”

Our blind faith in technology combined with a false sense of infallible righteousness continues unabated. Reuters correspondent David Rohde recently wrote:

“The Obama administration’s covert drone program is on the wrong side of history. With each strike, Washington presents itself as an opponent of the rule of law, not a supporter. Not surprisingly, a foreign power killing people with no public discussion, or review of who died and why, promotes anger among Pakistanis, Yemenis and many others.”
Rohde has firsthand knowledge of what a drone strike can do. He was kidnapped by the Taliban in 2008 and held for seven months. During his captivity, a drone struck nearby. “It was so close that shrapnel and mud showered down into the courtyard,” he told the BBC last year. “Just the force and size of the explosion amazed me. It comes with no warning and tremendous force… There’s sense that your sovereignty is being violated… It’s a serious military action. It is not this light precise pinprick that many Americans believe.”

“It’s a serious military action… not this light precise pinprick that many Americans believe.”
A special report from the Council on Foreign Relations last month, “Reforming U.S. Drone Strike Policies,” quotes “a former senior military official” saying, “Drone strikes are just a signal of arrogance that will boomerang against America.” The report notes that, “The current trajectory of U.S. drone strike policies is unsustainable… without any meaningful checks — imposed by domestic or international political pressure — or sustained oversight from other branches of government, U.S. drone strikes create a moral hazard because of the negligible risks from such strikes and the unprecedented disconnect between American officials and personnel and the actual effects on the ground.”

Negligible? Such hubris brought us to grief in Vietnam and Iraq and may do so again with President Obama’s cold-blooded use of drones and his indifference to so-called “collateral damage,” grossly referred to by some in the military as “bug splat,” and otherwise known as innocent bystanders.

Yet the ease with which drones are employed and the lower risk to our own forces makes the unmanned aircraft increasingly appealing to the military and the CIA. We’re using drones more and more; some 350 strikes since President Obama took office, seven times the number that were authorized by George W. Bush. And there’s a whole new generation of the weapons on the way — deadlier and with greater endurance.

According to the CFR report, “Of the estimated three thousand people killed by drones… the vast majority were neither al-Qaeda nor Taliban leaders. Instead, most were low-level, anonymous suspected militants who were predominantly engaged in insurgent or terrorist operations against their governments, rather than in active international terrorist plots.”

By the standards of slaughter in Vietnam, the deaths caused by drones are hardly a bleep on the consciousness of official Washington. But we have to wonder if each innocent killed — a young boy gathering wood at dawn, unsuspecting of his imminent annihilation; a student who picked up the wrong hitchhikers; that tribal elder arguing against fanatics — doesn’t give rise to second thoughts by those judges who prematurely handed our president the Nobel Prize for Peace. Better they had kept it on the shelf in hopeful waiting, untarnished.

A FASCIST GOVERNMENT OUT OF CONTROL

HEY, IF YOU CAN'T WIN BY THE RULES, JUST ELIMINATE THE RULES.

WASHINGTON - January 4 - (AS REPORTED IN COMMON DREAMS)

What: Pretrial hearing, U.S. vs PFC Bradley Manning
Where: Reece Rd. and Rt. 175, Fort Meade, MD
When: January 8-11, 2013

PFC Bradley Manning, the whistle-blower on trial for passing hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the transparency website WikiLeaks.org, returns to Ft. Meade, MD, from January 8-11, 2013, for another pretrial hearing. The government prosecutors will argue their motion to preclude discussion of PFC Manning’s motive from the merits portion of his trial. If granted by military judge Col. Denise Lind, this would undercut PFC Manning’s long-argued whistle-blower contention: that he released these documents to uncover crimes and abuse and to better inform the American public.

This hearing could also see a ruling from Judge Lind on the defense motion to dismiss charges based on the abusive treatment PFC Manning endured at the Quantico Marine brig prison. PFC Manning was kept in solitary confinement for over nine months, against the consistent recommendations of brig psychiatrists. If Judge Lind finds this treatment was punitive, she could throw out the charges against PFC Manning, or she could award him multiplied credit for sentencing.

PFC Manning’s court-martial trial is currently scheduled to begin March 6, 2013. Following next week’s hearing, PFC Manning is scheduled to return to Fort Meade on January 16 and 17, to conclude the defense’s motion to dismiss for lack of a speedy trial. When that motion is argued, PFC Manning will have been awaiting trial in prison for nearly 1,000 days.

Smokey's Comment ..... We Believed in you Mr. President, and you have betrayed us yet again. So much for freedom of speech and protection under the U.S. Constitution. President Obama has lied to the American people on so many occasions, it is becoming hard to track them all. Am I the only one who remembers his campaign speech that stated "Whistleblowers should be rewarded and protected"?