James Cockcroft's Mexico's Revolution: Then and Now (Monthly Review Press) raises the question: "What are the U.S.'s Real motives for launching a drug war in Mexico?" and, in the words of the AlterNet reviewer, "exposes the thinking behind U.S. narcotrafficking policy and the militarization of Mexico and further south."

Prisoners: My heart goes out to my old friend and comrade Dana Beal, who's just suffered his third bust in three years for driving loads of marijuana and/or money across the United States, something he's done for about 40 years now. Beal claims in one case to have been delivering a vanload of medical marijuana to patients in Michigan, in another to have just collected a sizable cash donation towards the establishment of an ibogaine clinic just outside the U.S. borders. Beal runs Cures Not Wars, and organizes the Global Marijuana March each May.

Beal's in his 60s and still being persecuted. Two other close friends of mine from the same generation are currently serving federal time for large-scale marijuana violations, and just in case they let these guys read the newspapers, let's send a big Detroit shout-out to brother Eddy Lepp in California and Gorgeous George Kucewicz in New Jersey.

Finally, maybe you noticed the snide references to marijuana use in connection with the creep in Arizona who shot up all those people. "I was trying to tell him, you know, you need to get your life on the right track," a friend of his testified to The Washington Post, adding that he believed Loughner was using marijuana, saying, "I was telling him about God and all that. And he broke down crying, and he gave me a big ol' hug, and said, 'Thank you, you're one of the only ones that ever listened to me.'"

I hate to take a cheap shot, but maybe he should've stuck with marijuana.

—London, January 27-28, 2011

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