Dying to Get High: Marijuana as Medicine is an important and accessible book--not heavy on academic jargon, but rather lively and engaging, like a true detective novel--with a broad appeal to those interested in the medical potential of cannabis, an end to the drug war and grass roots activism. I asked the co-authors how working on the book changed them[:]

Links to stories and video by Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, SD on the tragic suicide epidemic involving Lakota youth and young adults

by Susan Lazaruk - Friday, September 26, 2008

Vancouver police are standing behind officers who used a Taser against a 16-year-old mentally ill mother because they feared she would harm her one-month-old baby...After three hours of trying to persuade the five-foot-one, 110-lb. teen to give up her baby, officers warned her she would be Tasered before touching her arm and upper back with the stun gun...The mom, Misha Peterson, had told The Province earlier three or four officers held her down on the bed and zapped her twice on the neck until she let go of her baby...Peterson has marks on her neck.

By FRANKLIN LAMB - September 23, 2008

The fundamental consequences of the 1982 Massacre at Sabra-Shatila and the founding of Hezbollah are two seismic events from the same time and place which some argue are locked in an embrace that will return Palestine to the Palestinians.

September 23, 2008 - Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

OTTAWA — Today the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) released The Harper Record, the most comprehensive analysis of the Conservative minority government’s record to date..."Contrary to the general perception that this has been a moderate government, this book reveals that it, in fact, has taken significant steps to transform Canada in a very short time. Harper's very conservative vision has been advanced across a broad range of policies. It is a deeply troubling prelude of things to come"...

By JONATHAN COOK - September 12, 2008

[There have been]...a trickle of reports indicating the extent of Israel’s use of collaborators and the unwholesome techniques it uses to recruit them. “Co-operation”, it has become clearer, is the very backbone of Israel’s success in maintaining its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip...[T]he foundation of the collaboration system is the low-level informant, who passes on the tidbits of information about neighbours and community leaders on which Israel’s system of control depends.

The famous Hollywood movie Dead Man Walking made common parlance of the term for a person on death row leaving his cell for the last time, heading for execution. The person about to be executed will walk towards where they will take their last breath, and “dead man walking” is a term about those last steps.

The truly perverse thing about the situation is that the individuals being executed would otherwise likely live many more years, and have nothing physically wrong with them. The same can be said of a huge forested area in the middle portion of Alberta’s vast Athabasca Region, south of the small Métis and First Nations community of Anzac.

Harry Shannon - Aug 14, 2008

As a Jew, I...am ashamed and disgusted at what is happening...Israel's actions amount to collective punishment, forbidden under international law...I am ashamed that the Harper government has tilted toward unconditional support for Israel against the Palestinians...The current policy is unconscionable, as anyone who visits Gaza can see only too well.

[...T]he government [of India] has committed itself to economically rehabilitate Bhopal’s chemical disaster survivors, remediate the disaster site, and pursue legal action against Union Carbide and Dow Chemical.

by Noel K. Gallagher | Portland Press Herald

PORTLAND, Maine - Oakhurst Dairy owner Stanley Bennett welcomed the news that Monsanto was divesting itself of its controversial dairy hormone business, after taking on the agribusiness giant in an expensive David-and-Goliath legal battle five years ago.

by Dan Glaister | The Guardian UK

Facing five charges of distributing illegal drugs, [Charles Lynch, the proprietor of Central Coast Compassionate Caregivers] was found guilty in a Los Angeles courtroom of selling 100kg (220lb) of marijuana. He faces between five and 85 years in prison; his lawyers intend to appeal.

"...it is, I think, fairly clear that in future a human body, from the moment of conception, will not be regarded merely as something which must be left to grow in accordance with natural forces, with no human interference beyond what is required for the preservation of health. The tendency of scientific technique is to cause everything to be regarded as not just a brute datum, but raw material for the carrying out of some human purpose." - Bertrand Russell, 1931

By Barbara Ehrenreich - July, 31 2008

Suicide is becoming an increasingly popular response to debt...Death is an effective remedy for debt, along with anything else that may be bothering you...And try to think of it too from a lofty, corner-office, perspective: If you can't pay your debts or afford to play your role as a consumer, and if, in addition -- like an ever-rising number of Americans -- you're no longer needed at the workplace, then there's no further point to your existence...The alternative is to value yourself more than any amount of money and turn the guns...in the other direction. It wasn't God, or some abstract economic climate change, that caused the credit crisis. Actual humans...did that...

Ahni

In recent years, the Peguis First Nation, a community of 7,200 in northern Manitoba, has been faced with a drug abuse epidemic. Last fall, [...t]he northern community opted to enact a bylaw that stipulates banishment as a penalty for anyone caught dealing drugs, and that requires all band members to pass a drug-screening test.

Northern and Indian Affairs Canada (INAC) is not impressed.

Jack Woodward and the Beaver Lake Cree aim to change Canadian law -- and their success likely would throw a huge wrench into Alberta's tar-sands oil production.

The suit pits the Beaver Lake Cree band against the governments of Canada and Alberta, asking the court to rule invalid the government authorization for thousands of petroleum projects on the band's core territory.