Today we need to address the unjust incarceration of millions of non-violent cannabis offenders (CA & US points east) and question the claims of certainty that resulted in Mumia Abu-Jamal's guilty verdict..
original article "Inside/Out" @;
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/05/16/18417345.php Sue Olsen points out the great number of non-violent cannabis prisoners held in CDC state prisons. Others throughout the US have also noticed this and are organizing protest vigils..
"Forty-three VIGILizing cities! Over 30 states! Thousands of people involved nationally, and this is just the beginning. Imagine where we can be next year by building now on this success.
Our efforts to put a public face on opposition to the drug war's reliance on prisons as a method of drug control will be a key deciding factor in ending our government's insane and destructive drug strategy. The fact that people are willing to stand in public and protest a policy that results in 25% of the world's incarcerated population confined in the USA-land of the free-is a bold public statement."
http://www.november.org/razorwire/rzold/17/twomilliontoomany.html What leads the US federal government to make war on non-violent cannabis consumers by sending so many of these young people to CDC prisons? How did both the timber barons (Hearst) and petrochemical corporations (DuPont) influence the government to make hemp, the sister plant of cannabis illegal? How to the pharmacuetical corporations of today attempt to discredit holistic nutrition as cure for human diseases? Do these same pharmacuetical corporations also not attempt to monopolize cannabis compounds like THC with their patented Marinol? Are the side effects of pharma products not more dangerous than cannabis? Pharma pills don't grow in people's yards like medical cannabis, pills cost way more money and PHARMA profits!!
"The possibility for the natural control of the AIDS epidemic triggered by the public debate between Dr. Rath and “The New Yorker” magazine has generated global interest. “The New Yorker” had planned to publish an article by its staff writer Michael Specter that was – as we have reason to believe - trying to discredit:
Micronutrients in the battle against AIDS;
Basic knowledge of biological science about vitamins and immune function;
The research conducted in this field by Dr. Rath and his team of scientists;
Those governments who take advantage of nutritional health approaches for their national health care policies, namely South Africa."
article cont's @;
http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/ The US government enforced cannabis prohibition is directly responsible for the massive incarceration in CA's rural prison systems. Rural communities themselves are exploited by CDC as sources of labor for prison guards. Instead of jobs in salmon fishing, residents of coastal Crescent City now resign themselves to the depressing job of working for the CDC depriving economically disadvantaged people of their freedom..
"Rural Prison as Colonial Master
By Christian Parenti
In 1964 a tsunami swept over Crescent City, California completely destroying the downtown. Only nine people died, but the town—nestled just below the Oregon border—never recovered. It was rebuilt as a shabby imitation of Southern California’s worst planning examples; empty parking spaces and box-like buildings dominate the landscape.
In 1989 another tsunami hit—this time the tidal wave was political. The California Department of Corrections (CDC) rolled in, and with little opposition, built the sprawling, $277.5 million Pelican Bay State Prison, one of the newest, meanest super-max prisons in the system. Pelican Bay is now an international model of sensory deprivation and isolation; half the inmates are deemed incorrigible and locked in their cells 23 hours-a-day. The prison is also Crescent City and Del Norte county’s largest employer—and, some say, its new colonial master.
The new prison has political and economic clout which is all the more exaggerated due to Crescent City’s extreme isolation and poverty. Only 4 of the area’s 17 sawmills were still in operation when the prison arrived, commercial salmon fishing was dead, and during the mid-1980s, 164 businesses had gone under. By the time the CDC came scouting for a new prison site, unemployment had reached 20 percent. Del Norte County, with Crescent City at its heart, was in a seemingly terminal economic torpor—the prison was its only hope."
article cont's @;
http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/june97parenti.htm BTW, why is salmon fishing dead? Look no further than the four outdated Klamath river dams for your answer..
"Chum and pink salmon, once abundant in the Klamath, are long gone and totally extinct. Coho salmon are listed as a threatened species, the Lost River Sucker, and the Short Nosed Sucker are listed as Endangered Species. Today, the Karuk no longer hold a First Salmon Ceremony for there are virtually no spring run salmon to harvest.
Many factors can be blamed for the Klamath's decline, but none are more outstanding or timely to address than the dams which stand between salmon and there home spawning grounds in the Upper Basin."
article cont's @;
http://www.pelicannetwork.net/klamath.bringhome.htm So there's concrete Pacificorp (owned by giant energy corporation Berkshire Hathaway, too faraway in Omaha to hear us!!) dam walls blocking the passage of salmon on the Klamath River and concrete CDC prison walls blocking non-violent cannabis offenders from their families and loved ones! Sounds like from a logical scientific perspective too many concrete walls is the problem!!
The CDC needs to release all non-violent cannabis prisoners ASAP! We certainly don't want any accidents whereby holes in the concrete walls result in all prisoners leaving??
My desire is to phase out large CDC state prisons like Pelican Bay and replace them with community staffed safe houses for the truly violent offenders. No more arrests or incarcerations of non-violent drug offenders of ANY ethnicity. Eventually with enough education and prevention of poverty in our affluent consumer capitalist society we can reduce violent behavior in our society to negligible..
On that note we also need to remove Mumia Abu Jamal from PA's death row as there is considerable doubt of his guilt, let alone the certainty of guilt required for his incarceration. For example, the Philadelphia police & Mumia's prosecuters have never provided ANY scientific evidence to the coroner's questions about how the bullet could have entered Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner's body at an angle from such great heights? Mumia was indeed standing with his feet on the ground and for the bullet to ricochet off the rooftop and enter Faulkner would clearly be an improbable possibility. Seems like the Philadelphia police want to throw physics and logic out the window in their attempts to nail Mumia. So who could have been the sniper on the roof (FBI) and why is Mumia serving time for his crime? That Daniel Faulkner was a pawn sacrificed by government goons too much for the trusting minds of police officers? Did the coroner eventually give in due to overwhelming police pressures??
There are many other inconsistencies that resulted in Mumia's sentence;
"5. THE EVIDENCE An entry in the original coroner’s report that stated that a .44 caliber bullet killed the policeman is now considered a “clerical error”. Mumia’s gun, a .38 caliber pistol, could not have fired such a bullet. A medical examiner testified that the bullet was smashed, but a defense expert asserts that the bullet remained intact. A ballistics expert told the defense that switching bullets was done all the time."
other reasons to mach for Mumia @;
http://www.labournet.net/docks2/9904/mumia1.htm