QUOTE OF THE WEEK-Roundup Researcher: “If I know something, I will not shut my mouth.”
Dr. Andrés Carrasco, an embryologist who works in Argentina’s Ministry of Science’s Conicet (National Council of Scientific and Technical Investigations) responding to criticism over his research which found that Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide caused brain, intestinal and heart defects in amphibian fetuses.
GRAIN: Seeds of Information, July 2009
Moderate Lifetime Marijuana Use Associated With Reduced Risk Of Head And Neck Cancer, Study Says
Providence, RI: The moderate long-term use of marijuana is associated with a reduced risk of head and neck cancers, according to the results of a population-based case-control study published online by the journal Cancer Prevention Research.
Investigators at Rhode Island’s Brown University, along with researchers at Boston University, Louisiana State University, and the University of Minnesota assessed the lifetime marijuana use habits of 434 cases (patients diagnosed with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma from nine medical facilities) compared to 547 matched controls.
Authors reported, “After adjusting for potential confounders (including smoking and alcohol drinking), 10 to 20 years of marijuana use was associated with a significantly reduced risk of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma … [as was] moderate weekly use.”
Subjects who smoked marijuana and consumed alcohol and tobacco (two known high risk factors for head and neck cancers) also experienced a reduced risk of cancer, the study found.
“Our study suggests that moderate marijuana use is associated with reduced risk of HNSCC,” investigators concluded. “This association was consistent across different measures of marijuana use (marijuana use status, duration, and frequency of use). … Further, we observed that marijuana use modified the interaction between alcohol and cigarette smoking, resulting in a decreased HNSCC risk among moderate smokers and light drinkers, and attenuated risk among the heaviest smokers and drinkers. … Despite our results being consistent with the point estimates from other studies, there remains a need for this inverse association to be confirmed by further work, especially in studies with large sample sizes.”
A separate 2006 population case-control study also reported that lifetime use of cannabis was not positively associated with cancers of the lung or aerodigestive tract, and noted that certain moderate users of the drug experienced a reduced cancer risk compared to non-using controls.
By contrast, a study published earlier this week in the journal Cancer Epidemiology reports that even the moderate use of alcohol (six drinks or less per week) is associated with an elevated risk of various cancers – including stomach cancer, rectal cancer, and bladder cancer.
For more information, please contact Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director, at: paul@norml.org. Full text of the study, “A population-based case control study of marijuana use and head and neck squamous cell carcinoma,” will appear in Cancer Prevention Research.
Startling New Evidence That The ‘Swine Flu’ Pandemic Is Man-Made!
Wake up people! Wake up! In the 1917 Russian Bolshevik revolution, something like 40 million people (mainly Christians) died. In the 1966-69 Chinese Cultural revolution, an estimated 60 million people lost their lives. This coming pogrom of the sheeple will be no less severe. The Illuminati mass culling, depopulation plan is going into overdrive. Don’t be surprise if 50 million people lose their lives. This is about Satanic blood sacrifice. Please wake up and spread the news! See also :
History of Bird Flu and the Illuminati Depopulation Agenda by Dr. True Ott
Flashback: Homeless People Die After Bird Flu Vaccine Trial in Poland
Plans for Mass Graves Confirmed: Government Surveying Cemetery Readiness for Flu Outbreak
Top Epidemiologist Slams Swine Flu Fear-Mongering
Maj. Gen. Albert Stubblebine III & Dr. Rima E. Laibow: Dangerous Vaccines, Corrupt Big Pharma, Eugenics Depopulation and the Coming Forced/Mandatory Vaccination!
Baxter Files Swine Flu Vaccine Patent A Year Ahead Of Outbreak
Live Avian Flu Virus Placed in Baxter Vaccine Materials Sent to 18 Countries
US government gives Baxter, Novartis legal immunity in advance for any injury and death caused by H1N1 vaccine this autumn
Belgium Health Minister passes law allowing use of police for forced mass vaccination
The Pentagon’s Alarming Project: Avian Flu Biowar Vaccine!
Startling New Evidence That The ‘Swine Flu’ Pandemic Is Man-Made!
Draw your own conclusions! Dr A. True Ott writes :
PRIMARY MOTIVE
The Primary Motive behind this alleged criminal activity is also the primary cause of most murders in the world today, and that motivation is simply: BIG MONEY. Billions of Dollars of windfall profits from government contracts worldwide, as a matter of fact.
I will provide evidence that will show that Novartis Pharmaceuticals of Basel, Switzerland has conspired with corrupt “scientists” at the U.S. Army Institute of Pathology Ft. Detrick, Maryland, to create a “novel” strain of weaponized “influenza” virus by means of “reverse engineering” the deadly 1918 killer strain which strain was maliciously and surreptitiously released upon the world in March and April of 2009 for the primary purpose of creating a panic-stricken world-wide demand for Novartis vaccine material.
The evidence will also clearly show that the Novartis vaccine material is in reality designed to facilitate the further mutation of the pandemic into more lethal waves of increasingly virulent and deadly disease, rather than to curtail and limit the existing outbreak. The evidence will show that Novartis is willingly being used, (and extremely well-paid) to facilitate the edicts of the global elite’s Club of Rome; which edicts clearly call for a massive and sudden depopulation of certain segments of the earth’s human population.
PRIMARY EVIDENCE
To realize such windfall profits on an engineered, global flu pandemic, detailed covert planning must take place of course. Patents protecting the proprietary flu vaccine must be applied for and secured before the pandemic virus is released in order to minimize the competition and maximize the profit potentials. In a biological attack of this nature, timing is extremely critical.
Indeed, the evidence is clear Novartis applied for just such a patent on Nov. 4, 2005, and the U.S. Patent Office accepted this application and granted US 20090047353A1 for a “Split Influenza Vaccine with Adjuvants” on February 19, 2009. …..
With this patent now secured, the conspirators were now free to create the demand for their “novel” split influenza vaccine by releasing a “novel” split-influenza (combining multiple viruses) pandemic virus from a weapons lab test-tube into unsuspecting human hosts. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/17/AR2009061703271.html
The so-called “Swine Flu” grabbing headlines today is actually a recombinant, or “split-influenza” virus consisting of A-strain Bird-Flu (H5N1), Swine Flu (H1N1) and multiple strains of human flu (H3N2). Likewise, the 1918 Killer Flu that killed untold millions of people was a recombinant or “split-influenza” virus composed of Bird flu, Swine Flu, and multiple strains of human flu.
CRIMINAL TIMELINE
The criminal timeline begins in 1997, when Dr. Jeffrey Taubenberger assembled a team of geneticists and microbiologists to analyze the genome structure, and then to REPRODUCE (i.e. reverse engineer) what is arguably one of the most deadly viral structures the world has ever been cursed with the 1918 killer flu virus. According to numerous published stories and reports, Taubenberger and his team utilized super-computers to map the complex RNA and DNA structures of the killer virus, then utilized human plasmids to successfully re-create the 1918 killer. Taubenberger completed his work in early 2005, then immediately left the employ of the U.S. Army at Ft. Detrick to take a much more lucrative position with the National Institutes of Health. His new focus was to create a VACCINE against the very same 1918 killer flu that he and his team had, just months earlier, successfully “reverse engineered” and created.
This researcher is very confident that a focused criminal investigation would likely reveal prima facia evidence that Taubenberger was in reality working for Novartis while employed with the N.I.H. and was quite likely the primary author of Novartis’ Nov. 6, 2005 “provisional” patent application. On page 2, paragraph 32 of the patent publication we read, quote: “The influenza virus [that the ‘invention vaccine’ is designed to protect against] may be a reassortant strain, and may have been obtained by reverse genetics techniques. Reverse genetics techniques allow influenza viruses with desired genome segments to be prepared in vitro using plasmids.” The remnant of the paragraph then goes into very specific detail as to the actual mechanics of how the pandemic virus was actually created by Taubenberger’s Ft. Detrick team. At the very least, the author of the patent application had to have studied Taubenberger’s various published reports on his work at Detrick, for the wording and science is virtually verbatim.
Furthermore, this paragraph is even more damning by the words “may have been obtained”. Who “obtained” this virus and for what reason was it “obtained”? Keep in mind the CDC and HHS would have Americans believe that the pandemic viral outbreak is totally a “natural” occurrence if so then how could Novartis have such an incredible advance knowledge to the point of developing a vaccine with such absolutely PERFECT TIMING???
WHO EXACTLY IS “NOVARTIS”??
Novartis International AG is simply the world’s largest, multi-national pharmaceutical company with over $53 Billion USD revenue generated in 2008. It’s headquarters is located in Basel, Switzerland, home of the vaunted “Swiss Guards” who provide all security measures for the Vatican and the Club of Rome. The company logo symbolizes the “eternal flame” of the Illuminati “enlightened ones”. Dig into Novartis International AG’s long history, and one finds that it began as a component of the infamous I.G. Farben combine, which in turn was primarily responsible for the rise of Adolph Hitler and the German/Austrian Third Reich.
Dig a bit deeper and you find that Novartis also wholly owns a company called Sandoz which was the inventor of LSD and other strong hallucinogenic “truth” drugs, and was the supplier of LSD to the CIA allowing them to scale new heights with their covert “MK ULTRA” mind control experiments. Documents released to U.S. Congressional investigators in 1977 show that Sandoz Labs had arranged for certain Nazi scientists to gain new identities in Allen Dulles’ CIA at the conclusion of WWII. This was accomplished under a secret extraction program called “Operation Paper Clip”.
The address listed on the Novartis Patent applications is a P.O. Box in Emeryville, California. Up until the summer of 2005, this Emeryville California address belonged to Chiron Inc. the world’s second-largest INFLUENZA VACCINE MANUFACTURER. Chiron was doing very well, with reported sales of $357 million in fiscal 2002. Chiron’s sales nearly doubled, peaking at a whopping $678 million in 2003 and it was mostly due to the marketing and sale of FLU VACCINE CONTRACTS to the federal government. Novartis, which owned much of Chiron’s stock, was very pleased, until disaster struck in 2004 — the entire year’s stock of flu vaccine was found to be contaminated and was condemned.
Stock values plummeted on the news. With the stock at a historic low, Novartis quickly purchased the remainder of Chiron’s stock and began immediately to work on the massive “novel pandemic flu” vaccine that they somehow knew would soon have worldwide demand especially if they controlled the exclusive patent they could effectively “corner the pandemic flu vaccine market”!!
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/09/02/BUGULEGTV61.DTL&type=business
OTHER CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES
I would submit that killing tens of thousands of innocent humans via the systemic creation of a “pandemic” in order to make billions of dollars is vile enough, but there is also evidence that there is an even more heinous hidden agenda at work here, and it is spelled GENOCIDE.
It is no mystery that Adolph Hitler advocated the elevation of a Nordic “Master Race” that would rule the world in a “New Order of the Ages” called the “Third Reich”. Sadly, not all of the EUGENIC/GENOCIDAL National Socialists were executed at Nuremburg.
In reality, the elite financiers that actually dictated the agenda to Hitler, merely went underground, willing to bide their time until their godless agenda to liquidate BILLIONS of people could be successfully implemented.
The evidence that the Novartis-controlled “Pandemic Vaccine” may well be a tool of mass genocide, is actually quite overwhelming. At this point, some readers may scoff and ask: “Why would any company want to kill off their customers?” The answer is that these “customers” control large blocks of assets and equity. As Kissinger’s “NSSM-200″ report outlines, the “spoils” of genocide include controlling large tracts of land and mineral assets. This is secondary, of course, to their warped dream of creating a Utopian World Order with only 500 million “worthy” humans allowed to share in it.
WHAT’S THE EVIDENCE?
While George H.W. Bush was busy saving the world from the evil dictator Saddam Hussein in 1991, pursuant to his U.N. speech to create a “new world order” an agenda for an “Initiative for Eco-92 Earth Charter” elitist meeting happened to fall into honest, Christian hands. This agenda basically reiterated the genocide outlined in Henry Kissinger’s infamous NSSM-200 report of 1974, and called for “the immediate reduction of world population.” The entire report can be downloaded at:
http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/cobden_club.htm
My extensive research shows that by 1992, the massive death rate of AIDS had simply not materialized to the Elite’s satisfaction, and a more efficient mass killer had to be engineered in order to fulfill the edicts cut into the “Georgia Guidestones”. Evidence shows that like the 2009 “Novel” Flu Virus the HIV virus was also engineered and manufactured in the labs of Ft. Detrick.
In 1969, during a House Appropriations Committee hearing, the Defense Department’s Biological Warfare (BW) division at Ft. Detrick requested funds to develop, through complex gene-splicing (i.e. genetic engineering) a “novel” new disease that would both be resistant to, and break down a victim’s immune system. The Congressional Record reads:
“Within the next 5 to 10 years it would probably be possible to make a new infective micro-organism which could differ in certain important respects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most important of these is that it might be refractory to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious diseases.”
The funds for this “Dr. Strangelove” project were somehow approved. AIDS “magically” appeared within the requested time frame, and of course, just happens to exhibit the exact characteristics specified by the Ft. Detrick scientists.
Three years later, in 1972, the fledgling World Health Organization (WHO) published a very similar proposal to the one submitted to the U.S. House Appropriations Committee in 1969. The WHO proposed that: “An attempt should be made to ascertain whether viruses can in fact exert selective effects on immune function, e.g., by …affecting T cell function as opposed to B cell function. The possibility should also be looked into that the immune response to the virus itself may be impaired if the infecting virus damages more or less selectively the immune cells responding to the viral antigens.” (Bulletin of the W.H.O., vol. 47, p 257- 274.) This is a “textbook” clinical description of the function of the HIV/AIDS virus.
The W.H.O. shortly thereafter begins a massive “smallpox vaccination” program in Africa in 1975. Within two years, millions of smallpox vaccines are provided by Novartis et. al, under U.N.I.C.E.F. funding. A decade later, it is determined by independent journalists in the U.K. that the incidence of AIDS infections’ MAPPED AND GRAPHED EPICENTERS in Africa coincided exactly with the locations of the W.H.O. smallpox vaccination program centers in the mid-1970’s (Source, The London Times, May 11, 1987). Some 14,000 Haitians then on UN ‘humanitarian missions’ to Central Africa were also vaccinated in this campaign, and soon contracted HIV. Personnel actually conducting the vaccinations of the Haitians maintain they had been completely unaware that the vaccine was anything other than a routine shot.
In 1987, Dr. Hilleman, head of all vaccine production of Merck Pharmaceuticals stunned the world with his public admissions that the mass vaccination campaigns of the 1950s and ’60s likely caused thousands of cancer deaths each year. This was due to the presence of a cancer-causing virus that contaminated the first polio vaccine, according to Dr. Hilleman. Known as SV40, the virus originated from dead monkeys whose kidney cells were used to culture the first Salk vaccines. Doctors estimate that the virus was injected into tens of millions during the vaccination campaigns, including several million in Canada, before being detected and screened out in 1963. Those born between 1941 and 1961 are thought to be most at risk of having been infected with SV40, and are estimated to have a 300% greater chance of developing cancer. According to Hilleman MERCK KNEW THE VACCINES WERE INFECTED WITH SV40, but distributed them anyway. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edikv0zbAlU
Furthermore, research doctors in New Orleans reported in 1963 that a percentage of the Salk polio vaccines were found to have attenuated, (live) viruses, which actually CAUSED tens of thousands of polio cases during the 1950’s.
Following the successful liberation of Kuwait in Operation Desert Storm, hundreds of thousands of victorious American troops are suddenly stricken with a wide variety of auto-immune disorders that doctors named the Gulf War Syndrome, (GWS). After a decade of medical investigation, the culprit is finally determined to be an ingredient in the anthrax vaccinations mandatorily given to the troops. This offending “adjuvant” is a synthetic material known as squalene aka, oil-in-water adjuvant. Writer and Gulf War correspondent Gary Matsumoto documents this entire, tragic saga in his seminal book, “Vaccine-A”. See www.vaccine-a.com.
Understanding these historical facts is very important for this reason: Those that ignore history are doomed to repeat it. This is doubly true when it comes to blindly accepting a “novel” mass vaccination for a weaponized, “reverse engineered” virus.
The historical record is very clear attenuated, live viruses in vaccines SPREAD the disease very effectively. When combined with SQUALENE ADJUVANT the virus becomes many times more potent and lethal. When given to CHILDREN IN SCHOOLS, millions of “typhoid Matts and Marys” will be spreading the disease exponentially.
Chillingly, the Novartis patent for the “novel pandemic flu” declares that “African green monkey kidney cells” will be used for the “viral growth substrate” i.e. the carrier medium. (Page 3, paragraph 0037) We also see that “oil-in-water” squalene-based adjuvants will also be included (page 8 0098) but most incredible of all, because this is a “recombinant” and “novel” split vaccine, it is deemed necessary to include fragments of attenuated viruses (i.e. live pathogens) in the vaccine medium.
On July 13, 2009, the W.H.O. sanctioned this lunacy by declaring: “In view of the anticipated limited vaccine availability at global level and the potential need to protect against “drifted” strains of virus, it is recommended that promoting production and use of vaccines such as those that are formulated with oil-in-water adjuvants and live attenuated influenza vaccines is important.”
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/notes/h1n1_vaccine_20090713/en/index.html
In conclusion and summation, it should be evident that the “2009 Swine Flu” could just as easily be called the “Bird Flu” because it is as much H5N1 (bird flu) as H1N1 (pig flu.) Novartis knew this in 2005 when it received hundreds of millions of dollars from Mike Leavitt’s HHS to develop and patent the “bird flu” vaccine. I publicly charge that Novartis had advance knowledge of this “combination” because they had been in consultation with Jeffrey Taubenberger for years.
It is further evident that Novartis’ patent provides for “influenza vaccine kits” to be provided to other pharmaceutical manufacturers as well. These “kits” are the basic raw ingredients needed for the other companies to build their own vaccines under their own label.
In 2005, this “jobbing” of separate ingredients by multiple companies would never have been allowed because of the legal liability issues involved. However, in 2009, all liabilities for death and disability from faulty or contaminated vaccines have been stripped away. Any wrongful death or disability lawsuits against Novartis or any other company will today be summarily dismissed.
Novartis today has carte blanche blanket immunity for their actions and any large pharmaceutical company who so desires, can join them at the feeding troughs just by paying millions for their “kits”. If this isn’t the pinnacle of criminality, then I don’t know what is.
Novartis, if this “novel split vaccine” is so wonderful and safe, why do you require such blanket protection from litigation?
California: Oakland Voters Approve Nation’s First Marijuana Business Tax
Oakland, CA: Municipal voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved the nation’s first ever business tax on retail marijuana sales.
Approximately 80 percent of Oakland voters approved the new tax (which appeared on the ballot as Measure F), which imposes an additional tax for “cannabis businesses” of $18 for every $1,000 of gross receipts beginning January 1, 2010.
Presently, Oakland’s medicinal cannabis dispensaries are taxed at the same rate as other retail sales businesses ($60 per year for the $50,000 of gross receipts, plus $1.20 for each additional $100,000).
Four dispensaries are licensed by the Oakland City Council to sell and dispense medical marijuana.
According to a financial analysis by the Oakland City Auditor, Oakland’s new cannabis business tax will generate an estimated $300,000 in additional annual tax revenue. Other proponents have estimated that the new tax could yield up to a million dollars yearly.
Representatives from the Oakland City Council, the California Nurses Association, and the dispensary community publicly advocated for the new tax, which had no formal opposition.
“The passage of this first-in-the-nation tax further legitimizes cannabis-based enterprises in Oakland and elsewhere,” NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre said. These outlets are contributing to the health and welfare of their local communities, both socially and now economically. At a time when many municipalities are strapped for tax revenues and cutting public services it is likely that public officials in other cities will begin considering similar proposals.”
City officials in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Berkeley may also impose a cannabis-business tax on certain retail dispensaries.
For more information, please contact either Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director, at (202) 483-5500, or Dale Gieringer, California NORML Coordinator at: (415) 563-5858.
Thoughts on abuse as substitute for missing nutritional components
The paper that I wrote suggests that ALL chronic smoking of marijuana is a symptoms of malnutrition, that the cannabis plant is a ‘symbiote’ to the human being, similar to the way that bamboo is to the panda bear and the eucalyptus is to the koala. We evolved from a form that was more like a slothy bear. I would imagine that drinking and anything else is a substitution for trying to find what is missing- Cannabis.
Is the world ready for ORMAJI™ !?
With all of the talk about ORMUS surfacing lately in the Raw and Natural Foods Communities, I have my attention on an amazing gift from Nature that is being brought to the world by a company out of Nevada called Highest Good Inc. with a name like that, you know the stuff must be good… get it at http://www.ormaji.info
Marijuana and the Goddess
by Chris Bennet, illustrations by Ken Lee. Posted on Monday, August 31 1998 11:00:00 PM
http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/1374.html
Holy pot has been smoked by Goddess worshippers since before history, and was first banned by those who sought to subjugate feminine spirituality
Part 5 of “When Smoke Gets in my I” a series on the history of cannabis and human consciousness.
In most ancient hunter-gatherer societies, women balanced the males’ supply of game with their collected harvest from the surrounding wilderness. Women therefore became the first to learn the secrets of plants, and how they propagated themselves.
This knowledge led to the development of agriculture, and the evolution from the animal totems of the hunter-gatherers to images of the Great Mother, who with proper worship produced her abundant harvest in the same way that women produced children.
Cannabis is among humanity’s oldest and most useful cultivated crops, and so it is not surprising to find that cannabis, in all its forms, has been intricately associated with Goddess worship in many cultures, throughout history.
Kali-Ma
The most ancient goddess still worshiped in the world today is the Indian Kali-Ma, the Mother of Life and Death. Her worship stretches back into pre-history, and is believed to predate that of her more well-known consort Shiva, the longest continually worshiped god on earth. Both Shiva and Kali are strongly associated with marijuana.
Kali is generally depicted with a girdle of human arms and a necklace of skulls, and represents the dark aspect of the goddess trinity of virgin-mother-crone. Both ancient and modern devotees of Kali partake of marijuana in various forms as a part of their worship.
Devotional ceremonies to Kali involve cannabis ingestion and ritual sex, which is directed at raising the Kundalini energy from the base of the spine up into the higher centres of the brain.
Other pot-goddesses
The worship of Kali, under various names, extended into the ancient Near East, and cannabis was also used by many of the worshippers of Kali’s ancient world counterparts.
Kali is the Hindu counterpart of the ferocious and sensual Canaanite goddess Anath, (part of a similar trinity with Ashera and Astarte)who is also described with “attached heads to her back, girded hands to her waist.”
In ancient Germany, marijuana was used in association with Freya, the slightly tamer Kali-like goddess of Love and Death.
Scythian Hempsters
It is generally accepted that it was the horseback-riding Scythians who spread the combination of cannabis and goddess worship throughout much of the ancient world.
Readers of part two in this series (CC#2) will remember that the Amazon-like Scythian women fought alongside their warrior mates, and that these “Hell’s Angels” of the ancient world were known to have used cannabis in funeral rites, doing so in veneration of their own variation of the Goddess Mother of Life and Death, Rhea Krona.
Showing cannabis’ strong ties with Scythian mythology, Rhea Krona came to reap her children in death with the scythe, an agricultural tool named for its Scythian origin, and originally designed for harvesting cannabis. This scythe image has survived through patriarchal times and into our modern day, with both Father Time and the Grim Reaper still carrying Rhea Krona’s ancient hemp-harvesting tool.
The Tree of Life
In a cave where an ancient urn was found that had been used by the Scythians for burning marijuana, there was also a massive felt rug, which measured 5 by 7 metres. The carpet had a border frieze with a repeated pattern of a horseman approaching the Great Goddess, who holds the Tree of Life in one hand and raises the other in welcome.
Imagery of the Goddess and the Tree of Life is also found amongst other cultures with whom the Scythians came into contact. Readers of part three in this series (CC#5) will remember that the ancient Canaanites and also Hebrews paid particular reverence to the Near Eastern Goddess Ashera, whose cult was particularly focussed around the use of marijuana.
According to the Bible itself, the ancient worshippers of Ashera included wise King Solomon and other biblical kings, as well as their wives and the daughters of Jerusalem. The Old Testament prophets often chastised them for “offering up incense” to the Queen of Heaven.
Like the imagery on the Scythian carpet, icons dedicated to Ashera also have depictions of a “sacred-tree”, most likely a reference to the cannabis that her followers grew and revered, using it as a sacrament, as a food and oil source, and also using the fibres in ritual weavings.
Eve: cultural hero
Among her other titles, Ashera was known as “the Goddess of the Tree of Life”, “the Divine Lady of Eden” and “the Lady of the Serpent”. Ashera was often depicted as a woman holding one or more serpents in her hands. It was Ashera’s serpent who advised Eve to disobey the male god’s command not to partake of the sacred tree.
The historical record shows that the Old Testament version of the myth of Eve, the serpent and the sacred tree was concocted as propaganda against pre-existing Goddess cults.
Originally, the outcome of the Eden myth was not tragic, but triumphant. The serpent brought wisdom, and after the magic fruit was eaten, Adam himself became a god. What was originally involved was probably a psychedelic sacrament, like the Elusian festival in Athens, in which the worshipper ate certain hallucinogenic foods and became one with the Mother Goddess Demeter.
Like the Tree of Life, the Tree of Knowledge was a symbol associated with the Goddess. The rites associated with her worship were designed to induce a consciousness open to the revelation of divine or mystical truths. In these rites cannabis and other magical plants were used, and women officiated as priestesses.
Roman Catholic Persecution
In early Christian times, the holy cannabis oil was ingested and used by many Gnostic Christian sects, in honour of the Queen of Heaven.
With the rise of one of the more harshly ascetic and anti-female Christian sects in Rome, and the subsequent development of the Roman Catholic Church, such groups were forced out of existence, along with most pagan religions and the cult of the Great Mother.
The new Church of Rome followed their Judaic predecessors in naming Eve (the representative of all women) the “Mother of Sin”, as well as demonizing magical plants.
Their violent purges of Goddess worship and magical plant use persisted into medieval times. It has been estimated that over a million female practitioners of the older Goddess religions were burned as “witches” for utilizing cannabis, mandrake, belladonna and other plants in their “flying ointments”.
Even medieval French heroine Joan of Arc was accused of using cannabis, mandrake and other plants in order to hear the voices which guided her, and this eventually led the church to commit her to the flames
Marrying your Goddess
Similar to its use in the spiritual techniques of India, medieval European occult and alchemical masters used cannabis to aid in the “Marriage of the Sun and Moon” in the individual. The Sun and Moon represent the masculine and feminine aspects of the self.
Tantrik, Zoroastrian, Gnostic, Alchemical and occult literature all refer to “marrying your Goddess”, which means connecting an individual’s feminine and masculine aspects together into a unified force. This theme appears over and over again in medieval occult literature. Even the Gnostic Jesus states “when you make the male and female one and the same? then you will enter the kingdom.” (Gospel of Thomas)
Much like the woman’s liberation movement which has been taking place in our modern world, individual self completion requires a similar process to take place in our minds. The feminine aspect, or right cortex, becomes a full partner with the masculine aspect, or left cortex.
Marijuana use can greatly assist in this process. Is it any wonder then, that Shiva, the Lord of Bhang, was known as the god who was both man and woman? Or that the hashish eating Sufis, and later the American hippies, were both accused of being too feminine?
Love your mother
From the collected evidence it is clear that cannabis has been associated with worship of the Goddess since antiquity. Now, as we stand on the verge of a new millennia, in what seem to be the death throes of the patriarchy, it is as if the Goddess is once again reaching out her hand and offering her sacred Tree of Life to us in our time of collective need.
Like so many disobedient Eves, numerous female figures such as Elvy Mussika, Hilary Black, Mary Kane, Mountain Woman, The Holy Sisters of Hemp, Mama Indica, Brownie Mary and many others have decided to challenge the commandments of the male authorities and once again tempt us with the forbidden fruits of cannabis.
Indeed, it is likely not until we are once again free to enjoy all the sacred fruits of Mother Earth that the liberation of the feminine will fully take place, and we can restore Gaia, our planetary matriarch, back to health.
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The androgynous nature of the human organism is re-emerging into consciousness in new ways that have evolved from past experience. We are learning to recognize and differentiate the opposites in our nature.
It makes no difference whether we call these opposites masculine and feminine, creative and receptive, knowledge and wisdom, competition and cooperation, explosion and implosion, or Logos and Eros. What is important, is that they be experienced in union as aspects of our own inner self. They are the self-renewing possibilities of our own individuality. Yoked together, they can fertilize each other to generate the creativity which is the potential of human beings.
The return of such female values as cooperation and forbearance is longed for in a world torn by war and threatened by nuclear disaster, poverty, disease and rape of the land. When the goddess of fertility is reunited with the god of consciousness, the renewed culture will have its conception.
? The Yoga of Androgyny, June Singer
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Hymn To The Plants ? Rig Veda X.97.
Plants which as receptacles of light were born three ages before the Gods, I honour your myriad colors and your seven hundred natures.
A hundred, oh Mothers, are your natures and a thousand are your growths. May you of a hundred powers make whole what has been hurt.
Plants, as Mothers, as Goddesses, I address you. May I gain the energy, the light, the sustenance, your soul, you who are the human being.
Where the herbs are gathered together like kings in an assembly, there the doctor is called a sage, who destroys evil, and averts disease.
As they fell from Heaven, the plants said, “The living soul we pervade, that man will suffer no harm.”
The Herbs which are in the kingdom of the Moon, manifold with a hundred eyes, I take you as the best of them, for the fulfillment of wishes, as peace to the heart.
The plants which are queens of the Soma, spread over all the Earth, generated by the Lord of Prayer, may your energies combine within this herb.
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How women are like pot.
There are some biological oddities which link cannabis with humans, especially the females of our species.
First, certain active compounds of marijuana have molecular resemblance to the female hormone estrogen. Possibly it is due to this aspect of cannabis’ genetic make-up that some growers have reported success with fertilizing their plants with birth control pills or menstrual fluid, the use of which as a ritual fertilizer goes back to the matriarchal period.
Of similar interest is that cannabis seeds contain rare gamma linoleic acid, found only in spirulina, two other rare seed oils, and human mother’s milk. As the tribal people of the world have always shown an incredible intuition when it comes to right use of plants, it is interesting to note that the Sotho women of South Africa make a mealy pap from hempseed to wean their babies off breast milk. 
Recommended Reading:
The Chalice & the Blade, by Riane Eisler
A History of Religious Ideas, by Mircea Eliade
Ishtar Rising, by Robert Anton Wilson
The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, by Barbara Walker
The Ritual Use of Cannabis Sativa: A Historical Ethnographic Survey, by WA Emboden (in Flesh of the Gods: The Ritual Use of Hallucinogens, Peter Furst, Ed)
Chris Bennet is the author of Green Gold: Marijuana in Magic and Religion, and the forthcoming Sex, Drugs and Violence in the Bible.
PARENTS: KEEP YOUR KIDS AWAY FROM FDA APPROVED DRUGS
Deaths from Marijuana v. 17 FDA-Approved Drugs
(Jan. 1, 1997 to June 30, 2005)
Much of the medical marijuana discussion has focused on the safety of marijuana compared to the safety of FDA-approved drugs. On June 24, 2005 ProCon.org sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to find the number of deaths caused by marijuana compared to the number of deaths caused by 17 FDA-approved drugs. Twelve of these FDA-approved drugs were chosen because they are commonly prescribed in place of medical marijuana, while the remaining five FDA-approved drugs were randomly selected because they are widely used and recognized by the general public.
We chose Jan. 1, 1997 as our starting date as it is the beginning of the first year following the Nov. 1996 approval of the first state medical marijuana laws (such as California’s Proposition 215). The FDA reports we read from Sep. 13, 2005 to Oct. 14, 2005 included drug deaths “to present”, which was the date each report was compiled for our request. We cut off the counting as of June 30, 2005 to provide a uniform end-date to the various reports.
On Aug. 25, 2005 the FDA sent us 12 CDs and five printed reports containing copies of their Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS) report on each drug requested. These reports included all adverse events reported to the FDA, only a portion of which included deaths. We manually counted the number of deaths reported on each drug from the FDA-supplied information.
A review of the FDA Adverse Events reports also revealed some deaths where marijuana was at least a concomitant drug (a drug also used at the time of death) in some cases. On Oct. 14, 2005 we used the Freedom of Information Act to request a copy of the adverse events reported deaths for marijuana/cannabis. We received those reports on Aug. 3, 2006 in the form of three additional CDs.
 II. Cause of Death Categories & Definitions |
The FDA AERS reports rely on health professionals to detect an “adverse event” and attribute that event to the drug, and then to voluntarily report that effect to either the FDA or the drug manufacturer. The drug firm, by law, must report that event to the FDA. The FDA states “ninety percent of the FDA’s reports are received from drug manufacturers” on page one of its “Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS) Brief Description with Caveats of System.”
(PDF 2.7 MB)
Select instructions on how to report adverse events, as per the FDA’s AERS Form Instructions
- Adverse Event: Any incident where the use of a medication (drug or biologic, including HCT/P), at any dose, a medical device (including in vitro diagnostics) or a special nutritional product (e.g., dietary supplement, infant formula or medical food) is suspected to have resulted in an adverse outcome in a patient.
- Death: Check only if you suspect that the death was an outcome of the adverse event, and include the date if known. Do not check if:
- The patient died while using a medical product, but there was no suspected association between the death and
- A fetus is aborted because of a congenital anomaly (birth defect), or is miscarried
- Suspect Product(s): A suspect product is one that you suspect is associated with the adverse event.Up to two (2) suspect products may be reported on one form (#1=first suspect product, #2=second suspect product). Attach an additional form if there were more than two suspect products associated with the reported adverse event.
- To report: it is not necessary to be certain of a cause/effect relationship between the adverse event and the use of the medical product(s) in question. Suspicion of an association is sufficient reason to report. Submission of a report does not constitute an admission that medical personnel or the product caused or contributed to the event.
| III. FDA Disclaimer of Information |
Included in the 15 CDs and five printed reports from the FDA was the following disclosure:
“The information contained in the reports has not been scientifically or otherwise verified. For any given report there is no certainty that the suspected drug caused the reaction. This is because physicians are encouraged to report suspected reactions. The event may have been related to the underlying disease for which the drug was given to concurrent drugs being taken or may have occurred by chance at the same time the suspected drug was taken.
Numbers from these data must be carefully interpreted as reported rates and not occurrence rates. True incidence rates cannot be determined from this database. Comparisons of drugs cannot be made from these data.”
— July 18, 20/05 – FDA Office of Pharmacoepidemiology and Statistical Science, “Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS) Brief Description with Caveats of System”[Editor’s Note – ProCon.org makes no claim that the data below reflects occurrence rates. The information is presented for our readers’ benefit who may feel that the relative comparisons have value. ProCon.org attempted to find the total number of users of each of these drugs by contacting the FDA, pharmaceutical trade organizations, and the actual drug manufacturers. We either did not receive a response or were told the information was proprietary or otherwise unavailable]
|
DRUG CLASSIFICATION
|
Specific
Drugs per Category |
Primary
Suspect of the Death |
Secondary
Suspect (contributing to death) |
Total Deaths Reported
1/1/97 – 6/30/05 |
|
| A. MARIJUANA also known as: Cannabis sativa L |
0
|
279
|
279
|
||
| B. ANTI-EMETICS (used to treat vomiting) |
196
|
429
|
625
|
||
| C. ANTI-SPASMODICS (used to treat muscle spasms) |
118
|
56
|
174
|
||
| D. ANTI-PSYCHOTICS (used to treat psychosis) |
1,593
|
702
|
2,295
|
||
| E. OTHER POPULAR DRUGS (used to treat various conditions including ADD, depression, narcolepsy, erectile dysfunction, and pain) |
8,101
|
492
|
8,593
|
||
F. TOTALS of A-E |
Number
of Drugs in Total |
Primary
Suspect of the Death |
Secondary
Suspect (contributing to death) |
Total Deaths Reported
1/1/97 – 6/30/05 |
|
|
1
|
0
|
279
|
279
|
|
|
17
|
10,008
|
1,679
|
11,687
|
|
| V. Chart of Deaths from Marijuana and 17 FDA-Approved Drugs |
| F. TOTALS of A-E |
Primary Suspect
|
Secondary Suspect
|
Total Deaths Reported
1/1/97 – 6/30/05 |
|
|
0
|
279
|
279
|
|
|
10,008
|
1,679
|
11,687
|
|
|
Has marijuana caused any deaths?
|
|
|
General Reference (not clearly pro or con)
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) 2003 report Mortality Data from the Drug Abuse Warning Network, 2001 (1.5 MB)
|
|
|
PRO (Yes)
|
CON (No)
|
Thomas Geller, MD, Associate Professor of Child Neurology at the Saint Louis University Health Sciences Center, et al., wrote the following in their Apr. 4, 2004 article titled “Cerebellar Infarction in Adolescent Males Associated with Acute Marijuana Use,” (560 KB)  published in the journal Pediatrics:
Liliana Bachs, MD, Senior Medical Officer at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, et al., wrote the following in their Dec. 27, 2001 article titled “Acute Cardiovascular Fatalities Following Cannabis Use,” published in the journal Forensic Science International:
[Editor’s Note: Dr. Bachs clarified the findings from her Dec. 27, 2001 study reported above in a Nov. 28, 2005 email to ProCon.org, as quoted below.
|
Stephen Sidney, MD, Associate Director for Clinical Research at Kaiser Permanente, wrote the following in his Sep. 20, 2003 article titled “Comparing Cannabis with Tobacco — Again,” published in the British Medical Journal:
Joycelyn Elders, MD, former US Surgeon General, wrote the following in her Mar. 26, 2004 editorial published in the Providence Journal:
|
VII. Full Text of All 20 FDA “Adverse Event” Reports
[Please note that some of these PDF files exceed 5 megabytes and may take several minutes to load]
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