Chocolate and crime.

The case that is being heard currently at Carlisle, could well prove to be a test case for many thousands of people who use cannabis as a medicine.




Court told of cannabis couple's cottage industry (THC4MS) News & Star, Carlisle Monday 04 Dec 2006
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A COUPLE ran a cottage industry producing bars of chocolate containing cannabis for multiple sclerosis sufferers, a jury heard today.
Mark and Lezley Gibson distributed about 22,000 bars from their home in Alston, Cumbria over a six-year period before their arrest last January.
They were helped by Marcus Davies an old school pal of Mark Gibson who operated a Post Office Box address.
The Gibsons, both 42, and Davies, 36, are on trial at Carlisle Crown Court where all deny two counts of conspiring to supply cannabis in 2004 and 2005.
Davies lives in Cambridgeshire.
Prosecutor Jeremy Grout-Smith told the jury that police took action after receiving a complaint that 33 packets of Canna-biz chocolate had been discovered at the Royal Mail sorting office in Carlisle on January
A few days later officers entered the home of the Gibsons and discovered items including cannabis, chocolate bars, labels, mailing details and a coffee grinder.
A few months later Cambridgeshire police went to the home of Davies and discovered he was cultivating cannabis plants in two sheds. He was also running a PO Box number and had contact with the Gibsons.
Mr Grout-Smith said the Gibsons were in effect running a cottage industry making chocolate bars impregnated with cannabis. It was advertised as being for medical purposes.
They were not conventional drug dealers but believed their actions would be helping people alleviate the pain of a debilitating illness, however that was no defence to these charges.
He said: "To supply cannabis, even if you believe it is doing good, is not a defence."
He said Mark Gibson, during his police interview, had admitted sending about 22,000 bars to addresses around the world. They had always sought proof that the recipients were MS sufferers.
The jury heard this morning that Lezley Gibson was herself an MS sufferer and that the other two defendants had stood in the past as candidates of the Legalise Cannabis Alliance.
A juror made it know to Judge John Phillips this morning that they had a relative who suffered from MS. The judge made it clear that was no bar to them sitting on the case.
The trial continues.

http://www.cannabis-clubs.eu/Default.aspx?tabid=110

22,000 bars of chocolate, you couldn`t make it up, could you, best of luck to these guys, altruism is a rare and precious trait.

How This Old Brit Sees It ...: If They Hadn't Killed Bobby Kennedy, He'd Be 81 Today ...

How This Old Brit Sees It ...: If They Hadn't Killed Bobby Kennedy, He'd Be 81 Today ...

I`m linking in to another blog. An interesting piece about the "Death of the Kennedys"
There now seems to be another fairly well- substantiated allegation that the life and death of american politicians is not always as the mainstream media would have us believe.
Is America about to be purged? Will anyone step forward with a stout-handled broom and sweep clean the land of the inherently crooked and the murderously corrupt?

Or will America fall into another civil war? One thing is certain, its` time of empire is coming to the final act.
As a currency, the dollar is falling, the military is negotiating the terms of withdrawal from the M.E., house prices are falling, industrial output is falling, exports are falling.

I would not like to make any predictions, but the words chickens and roost seem about right.

(updated) Seize The Day Blockade - Faslane 365 Oct 06

I thought I Had better post this. It shows that a few hundred peaceful people can stop the war machine.
The group intends to disrupt or halt all activity at the submarine base where Britain keeps its` nuclear missiles, it`s very own weapons of mass destruction, which an be ready for use in just a few minutes....
One day peace will come. Waging war will not bring peace. Ignoring war will not bring peace. Voting for warmongers will not bring peace.
The media chooses not to tell the world that there is protest.
Well, the protest is growing, and support for the warmongerers is dwindling.
Peace.

A Message From The Iraq Resistance

This video brought tears to my eyes. Watch it. Please watch it. Get hold of all your logic, all your emotional strength, and refute the lying b*st*rd scumbags that currently inhabit the pentagon and the white house. F**k the twots, f**k these robbing lying psychopaths.

Some of the people some of the time.

A while back, I was "tagged", by another blogger, usa#1, who asked me to name, for separate purposes, 5 books.
A book that I propose to be essential reading to anyone concerned about the corporate psychopaths that have led this world to the brink of chaos would be one written by an American, Jack Herer, and entitled "The Emperor has no clothes".

The book lays out in detail the story of the hemp plant. How it used to be, until the 1930`s, practically the most important crop on the planet.
It gave us paper, food, oil, textiles, medicines, and so much more. He tells the story of how the oil cartels realised that crude oil could replae the hemp plant, and set out to fabricate a set of lies to destroy the hemp farmers.

How cannabis was one the major component much of the worlds` medicines, only to be replaced by synthetic versions made from crude oil.
George Washington farmed hemp, and asked every american to plant seeds of this important plant.

A quote, ""If all fossil fuels and their derivatives, as well as trees for paper and construction were banned in order to save the planet, reverse the Greenhouse Effect and stop deforestation; Then there is only one known annually renewable natural resource that is capable of providing the overall majority of the world's paper and textiles; meet all of the world's transportation, industrial and home energy needs, while simultaneously reducing pollution, rebuilding the soil, and cleaning the atmosphere all at the same time...And that substance is - the same one that did it all before - Cannabis Hemp...Marijuana!!""

And, "In 1850, 80% of all paper, fiber, fuel, and oil was made out of CANNABIS/HEMP in America and the rest of the world. This was before the discovery of coal and petroleum for energy in the late 1850s...before the start of the worst permanent pollution ever experienced on Earth... fossil fuel pollution (coal and petroleum)!!"

Of all the 300,000 species of plants on Earth, no other plant source can compare with the nutritional value of CANNABIS/HEMP/MARIJUANA seeds. It is the only plant on Earth that provides us with the NUMBER ONE source, and the perfect balance of essential amino acids, essential fatty acids, globulin edestin protein, and essential oils."



One of the leading opponents of the cultivation of hemp has been the american oil industry, as well as the pharmeceutical industry, and the cotton famers.

Country Joe McDonald - I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die

What are you fighting for?

What the world needs now. Weed sweet weed

QUOTE
Dr. Raphael Mechoulam, NORML, High Times and Omni magazines (September 1982) all indicate that if marijuana were legal it would immediately replace 10-20% of all pharmaceutical prescription medicines (based on research through 1976). And probably, Mechoulam estimates, 40-50% of all medicines, including patent medicines, could contain some extract from the cannabis plant when fully researched.

"The Newtonian God."

William Blake,[1757– 1827].
Heretic or Prophetic?

It has been said that Blake "invented his God", he apparently saw a "Newtonian God", as a process of industrialisation that he disliked, but could not change.
In his paintings, as with his writings, he seems at times, to join the theological visions with the realities of his time.

How would Blake see life now? How would he depict his vision of God? Would his God hold a mono-fuselaged missile, or the would the dual-pointed compass still sit supreme? Or would Blakes` God choose a new instrument with which to measure and shape this world?



Just a few thoughts for a Sunday morning, which incidentally, here in the West of Britain, has started as a fine and sun-filled day, with just a few whispers of a breeze that are sending an early mist inwards from the coast. No doubt, as the sun rises and warms, the heat will sweep them aside, to show the blueness of space.

From Blakes` "Auguries Of Innocence".

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

The laws of men.

Islands.

Across the world, most people believe that the british live on an island near Europe.
Apparently, they are for the most part, English, and are polite and non-confrontational.
Then there are the Irish, who live nearby on another island, and are not completely like the British.

Now, of course, in reality, there are the Scottish, Irish and Welsh and English. Not forgetting that only a minority of the Irish are british, most of the Scots prefer independence, as do most of the Welsh.
The Welsh have no nuclear bombs or plans to build them, neither, as far as I know, do the the Irish , but the Sots do give home to a fleet of submarines. The English are anglo-saxon, the Scots are no... enough already!
Or in other words, even we brits don`t completely understand each other!

The fact that we are all islanders means we share the ocean, and its` ever present perils.

Between Arklow (Ireland), and Aberystwyth (Wales) there lies 90 or so miles of the Irish sea, a fast running and often stormy expanse of water.
So being Celts, the Irish and Welsh decided to have a race. We used to have wars, you know, but that was long ago. Now Ireland and Wales have a long tradition of trade and custom. So instead of a clash of warships, they decided on a row of a different kind.
Rowing boats! Small open craft of about 25 feet in length. Being Celts, the race is open to both men and women, some boats have male crews, and some have female crews. Some boats, and I`m told these are the most fun, carry both men and women.

This year the race was won by an Irish team, from Bantry Bay, in around 16 hours.

16 hours, it must however be said, of sweat, blister and ache. Of faith and wonder, belief, trust, spirit and endeavour.

The prizes are limited to a few bottles of champagne, and it really is just one of those events in which taking part is bigger than winning.