Free Republic

Marijuana Party debates joining the NDP by Reverend Damuzi (30 Nov, 2003) Emery and St Maurice face off at BC party headquarters Canadian Marijuana Party President Boris St Maurice During a live debate on POT TV on Saturday, Canadian Marijuana Party Leader St Maurice and BC Marijuana Party President Marc Emery discussed merging with the NDP for the upcoming federal election. Cannabis Culture Editor Dana Larsen recently resigned his leadership of the BC Marijuana Party and joined the federal NDP, followed by federal med-pot exemptee Alison Myrden of Ontario. Larsen has won the support of the former NDP candidate in...

The Vision Thing: U.S. War Aims in Iraq Rael Jean Isaac President Bush has identified our aim in Iraq as more than regime change: the U.S. seeks to transform Iraq into a liberal democracy respecting freedom of religion and individual rights that will in turn serve as an example to a region where despotisms are the norm. In a recent speech at the Heritage Foundation, the president went further, indicating that he had the entire region more directly in his sights. "Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accomodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to...

The future of High Times by Bianca Sind (21 Nov, 2003) World's best known marijuana magazine announces change to non-pot format. High Times magazine, the voice of America's pot culture since 1974, has announced that they will be changing their format, and not covering so much marijuana news. "We're trying to get away from just being a pot magazine," said new executive editor John Mailer, in a November 16 interview with the New York Times. The newest issue, which hits newsstands November 25, is the first under Mailer's new direction. The cover features no pot references, and there is less...

Landlords battling city over utility bills They're challenging a plan to make them foot the bill for tenants who don't pay their tabs. JONATHAN SHER, Free Press Reporter 2003-11-30 London landlords have hired a lawyer to challenge plans by city council to put them on the hook for tenants who don't pay utility bills. "They'll go forward with guns blazing," said lawyer Joseph Hoffer, who has been retained by the London Property Management Association, which represents more than 350 landlords and related businesses. "It's fundamentally unfair. It's not right to make one person responsible for the debts of another," said...

Teen dead after racial slurs escalate into beating at high school Canadian Press Sunday, November 30, 2003 VANCOUVER (CP) -- A 17-year-old youth has died as a result of a beating at a Vancouver high school Friday after racial slurs were exchanged between two groups of youths. The incident began as a group of four Filipino youths and 10 Indo-Canadians traded taunts, said Vancouver police spokeswoman Anne Drennan. The Filipinos had begun to walk away from the confrontation but several of the others followed and caught the trailing youth. It's believed more than just fists were used as weapons. "We...

NEWS STORY Police crash marijuana cafe's opening Two arrested at Montreal's Chez Marijane EILIS QUINN Canadian Press Sunday, November 30, 2003 Francois Gourd smokes a marijuana joint at the opening of Chez Marijane, a cafe and gathering place catering to marijuana users, in Montreal on Saturday. Gourd is also a well-known Quebec prankster. (CP/Ian Barrett) CREDIT: (CP/Ian Barrett) MONTREAL (CP) -- Police arrested two people on Saturday as dozens of people celebrated the opening of a pot cafe by passing around joints and breathing in air thick with marijuana smoke. Several police officers from a station less than a block...

Canada's most dysfunctional power system by Tom Adams Dear Friend: Hydro-Quebec's mismanagement has created a legacy of environmental damage, unneeded dams, and squandered resources through giveaways to metal smelters. NB Power's public utility regulator has just declared that Crown utility to be "insolvent." Manitoba Hydro has also served its citizens ill by supplying artificially cheap power to dirty, old economy paper mills and mines. But no power system in Canada, and possibly in the western world, is more dysfunctional than Ontario's. Ontario taxpayers are being gouged as never before, and the skies above Toronto may soon suffer unprecedented soot levels....

Newfoundland has biggest rally, shortest bust by Dana Larsen (27 Jul, 2003) Marc Emery held for only 4 hours, police unsure whether to lay charges The "Summer of Legalization" tour had the biggest rally so far in St John's, Newfoundland, on Saturday, July 26. Over 200 people attended to support Cannabis Culture publisher Marc Emery as he went through the now familiar routine of speaking, toking and then being arrested for possession. The smoke-in was held at the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary HQ on Parade Street in St John's. This is the local St John's police, not the RCMP. "A large...

A Cold War chill hangs in the New World Order air By DOUG SAUNDERS Saturday, August 2, 2003 It was yet another rainy summer day, so I picked up the big commemorative umbrella this newspaper had issued in the early 1990s. As I walked along dreary Bloor Street, my anachronistic pastiche of old front pages shouted at the sky: Tide of Joy Overwhelms Berlin Wall; Soviet Union to be dissolved Jan. 1; Cold War Era Finally Dead, Leaders Say. The sky laughed back. Dead, you say? Where have you been? Look at the big stories of our age: American Marines...

Liberals look to enliven convention By JANE TABER From Saturday's Globe and Mail Ottawa — The anticipated Paul Martin cakewalk to the Liberal leadership is creating all sorts of challenges for convention organizers, who are now struggling with ways of creating excitement from a foregone conclusion. The recent departure of Deputy Prime Minister John Manley from the race has put increased pressure on Liberal Party president Stephen LeDrew and organizers to make the event interesting. There are suggestions of having United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan address the November convention in Toronto. Another idea is showcasing a series of Liberal leaders...

Report from the Front: Mouse Droppings and Government Hypocrites By Edward Hudgins The other day the U.S. Department of Agriculture cafeteria was shut down by the Washington, D.C. Department of Health for health code violations. That’s right, the federal agency that oversees food safety, that inspects meat and poultry, couldn’t keep the mouse droppings out of its own eatery! But why should we be surprised? For example, various federal agencies have been raking WorldCom and Enron over the coals for not conforming to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Yet at a February 23, 2000 Capitol Hill hearing two senators thought nothing...

Shrinking from a fight for liberty RORY LEISHMAN, London Free Press Just when liberals in the media seemed poised to charge that Odai and Qusai Hussein were only figments of the CIA's imagination who never really existed, United States forces in Iraq finally tracked down and killed these two evil sons of Saddam Hussein. Let us hope that Saddam will also soon be found, but captured alive so he can be put on trial by a democratically elected government of Iraq for his many crimes against the Iraqi people. Who knows but that the testimony, day after day, of the...

2003-07-19 Rules, racism hamstring immigrant workers HELEN CONNELL, For the London Free Press We seem to like our cabbies well-educated in Canada, particularly ones born outside the country. During cab rides in this city and others, I've been chauffeured by doctors, engineers and one really nice guy with a postgraduate degree in agriculture. If I had the same opportunity to chat with waiters, dishwashers and just about every other low-paid worker, I'd turn up a disproportionate number of foreign-born individuals whose skills and education vastly outstrip their jobs. There's nothing new in seeing immigrants toiling away at jobs at which...

2003-07-23 3 women all died seeking freedom SALIM MANSUR, For the London Free Press In a world full of mayhem, the deaths of three Iranian women about the same time touched the hearts of millions everywhere in our global village. The 54-year old Zahra Kazemi, a Montrealer and a Canadian citizen of Iranian birth, died in a Tehran hospital. The 29-year old Bijani sisters, Laleh and Ladan, died on an operating table in a Singapore hospital, thousands of kilometres away from their home in Iran. A common thread binds these three women's lives in death with those around the world...

Smoking bylaw charges laid Four London bars and restaurants are the first city businesses to be issued tickets. ELAINE SMITH, Free Press Reporter 2003-07-26 03:50:25 Tobacco enforcement officers laid the first charges against businesses under the city's new smoking bylaws, issuing tickets this week to four bars and restaurants. Owners of the Last Drop on Talbot Street and the Paradise Cafe Bar and Grill on Adelaide Street were each charged early this week for allowing people to smoke, Mary Lou Albanese, manager of chronic disease and injury prevention for the Middlesex-London Health Unit, said yesterday. However, staff at both locations...

Marc Emery escapes arrest in Charlottetown by Reverend Damuzi (23 Jul, 2003) Police drive by repeatedly but do nothing Marc tokes freely for all cannabis Canadians Marc Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture Magazine, emerged unscathed and unarrested after smoking pot in front of the Charlottetown police station in public protest at 4:20 pm on July 23. The Charlottetown, PEI police station was the 6th stop on Emery's 16-city cross-Canada "Summer of Legalization Tour." "Whenever I don't get arrested it is a total, utter relief," said Emery after the protest. "It sends a signal that it's a worthwhile battle." Emery has...

Hubris Rael Jean Isaac I will not, I repeat will not, bring peace to the Middle East. I will not, repeat, will not, win the Nobel Peace Prize. These should be required first principles for any Presidential candidate seeking public support. And when he became president, George Bush seemed to be indeed what David Frum has called "the right man." He was modest, down to earth despite his silver spoon and elite education. He was tenacious, determined to achieve the goals he set for himself, but careful in the goals he selected. When he took office, the new President clearly...

U.S. Troops in Judea, Samaria & Gaza? Herbert Zweibon In recent weeks, former U.S. Mideast envoy Martin Indyk and Senator Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, among others, have raised the idea of sending American troops to enforce peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The Bush administration, while not yet publicly endorsing the idea, has not ruled it out, either--a sure sign that it has not dismissed it out of hand. A similar trial balloon was floated in 1994 in an attempt by the Clinton administration to sell the idea of an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan...

2003-07-19 Education, common sense best safety plan JIM CHAPMAN, London Free Press Toronto (and former London) police chief Julian Fantino offered what was certainly a reasonable -- but likely politically incorrect -- response to calls for the banning of pellet guns after a five-year-old boy was injured in a drive-by shooting. "The laws are in place to deal with these issues," Fantino told a Toronto news conference, continuing to note "it's not the weapon per se; it's what use is made of the weapon." Emile Therrien of the Canada Safety Council took a differing view. His group is, according to...

2003-07-13 No religious freedom in Arab world RORY LEISHMAN, London Free Press In a recent story, Missionaries Under Cover, Time magazine cited the growing number of evangelicals "trying to spread Christianity in Muslim lands" and asked: "Is this what the world needs now?" Charles Kimball, a former director of the Middle East office for the mainline National Council of Churches, had a ready response. He told Time: "The region is at a pivotal and volatile juncture, and it is arguably not the time for groups coming in, like someone with a lighted match into a room full of explosives, wearing...