Central and South America

Pot Smuggled by the Ton

karlis — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0700

Westmoreland Province, Jamaica, 1978. Pot plants as far as the eye can see.In smuggling, I?ve learned three hard and fast rules. #1: Run it slick when you can ? keep under the radar. #2: Pay it off when you have to ? buy protection from authorities.

Big-time Smuggler's Blues

karlis — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0700

I organized the cultivation of 40-100 acres of pot on 29 farms.American Michael Hooks, who once ran a fleet of 28 airplanes out of Sonora, Mexico into the US, from Texas to California, says he?s being jobbed by the Federal government after cooperating with them to help nail one of Mexico?s biggest drug barons, Miguel Caro-Quintero.

Bubbleman's steampipe journey

karlis — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 00:00:00 -0700

On Jerusalem Mountain, inland from Negril, marijuana plants grow as far as I & I can see. After the drying and curing, my Rastafarian friend Red shows me the secret of the original Jamaican steam pipe vaporizer.

Ganja is not entirely safe

karlis — Wed, 18 May 2005 00:00:00 -0700

The national Commission on Ganja accepts that ganja is not entirely safe. Despite its proven folk medicinal qualities, its use can be injurious to health. There is evidence that for those who smoke it, the inhalation of tar and other compounds can affect the lungs; that users can experience short term memory loss and delayed reaction time; and that among young people it can retard the learning process.

Jamaican ganja tour

karlis — Mon, 17 Jan 2005 00:00:00 -0800

The road to the jungle rose up from the azure Caribbean, through shanty towns and bustling way stations, past vast sugarcane fields green with life or black from post-harvest burning.
Our ganja garden guides sat in our rental car smoking torpedo-shaped Jamaican spliffs as the road twisted and turned, their mahogany-toned fingers stained by cannabis resins.

Varieties for the equator

karlis — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 00:00:00 -0800

What are the best strains for growing in a region of the world where the photoperiod is 12/12 ? Can you use a strain outdoors that is mostly Sativa but is 25% Indica? What percentage Sativa is needed to grow and flower in a 12/12 photoperiod near the equator?
Peter D,
Sri Lanka

A tradition of terror

karlis — Wed, 20 Oct 2004 00:00:00 -0700

PART ONE: THE DEATH MERCHANT AND THE NAZI BANKER
"If the people were to ever find out what we have done, we would be chased down the streets and lynched." ? George H W Bush, cited in the June 1992 Sarah McClendon Newsletter.

1907-1918: Merchant of death

Slaughter of the innocents

karlis — Mon, 13 Sep 2004 00:00:00 -0700

Brazilian child-killers
On April 17, 2003, four unarmed male teens begged for their lives after being caught in a drug sting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Police shot them all in the back of the head, execution style. At their funerals, unrepentant officers harassed and intimidated the family members of their victims, hoping to scare them from pressing charges.

Tropical choices

karlis — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 00:00:00 -0700

I live in the middle of Brazil. I'm trying to decide what kind of seeds to buy that will work well in this climate. The sun is very hot down here. Summers are humid but it is dryer and rains less in the winter.

Ganja decrim sweeps the globe!

karlis — Thu, 19 Aug 2004 00:00:00 -0700

Russian tokers holding Putin`s photo while celebrating his new decrim law.Over-policed streets, overbooked courts, overstuffed prisons and overtaxed citizens has made the drug war a miserable failure. Governments can see little choice but to decriminalize marijuana, and several have recently changed their country's laws.

Hemp Conspiracy

karlis — Wed, 30 Jun 2004 00:00:00 -0700

Hemp Conspiracy should shake the foundations of the war on hemp, and change the world forever.
The 417-page book, currently available only online as an e-book, details Canadian author Paul Wylie's year-long imprisonment in a horrific Nicaraguan prison. Wylie's crime? Growing industrial hemp, with the written permission of the Nicaraguan government (CC#27, Nicaraguan hemp nightmare).

Mexican conference pans drug war

karlis — Tue, 09 Sep 2003 00:00:00 -0700

Ecuadorian President Lucio Gutierrez.For 10 days in April, the UN held a special meeting to discuss the progress of their ongoing 10-year plan to annihilate every marijuana, coca, and poppy plant from the face of the earth. Yet the UN's Commission on Narcotic Drugs' 46th session in Vienna revealed dissent in the ranks of the world's drug warriors.

Jailed generals

karlis — Mon, 03 Mar 2003 00:00:00 -0800

Two Mexican generals were found guilty in November of protecting drug smugglers and using military airplanes to transport shipments of cocaine and marijuana. They were accused of working for drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who died in 1997 after undergoing plastic surgery.
The pair were tried by a military court and sentenced to 15 and 16 years in prison. They were stripped of their rank and had cars and other goods confiscated.

Drug war pilot

karlis — Thu, 06 Feb 2003 00:00:00 -0800

Spraying herbicides: death from the air for plants, animals and humans.During a recent visit to Jamaica, I was standing on a hurricane-depleted beach in Negril when a middle-aged American man, who was holding a beer and smoking a cigarette, began a conv

Latin America rejecting US drug war

karlis — Thu, 16 Jan 2003 00:00:00 -0800

Peasant women pick coca leaves during the harvest in the Bolivian mountains near Chulumani.The multi-billion dollar US drug war in Latin America is foundering on the shoals of resurgent democracy and indigenous leaders in Peru, Bolivia, C

Truth drugs

karlis — Fri, 29 Nov 2002 00:00:00 -0800

Some US authorities are calling for the use of "truth serums" to get information on possible national security threats from al Qaeda and Taliban suspects held at Camp X-Ray, the prison at the US Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Ganja gardens

karlis — Fri, 25 Oct 2002 00:00:00 -0700

Jamaican ganja farmers have a wide variety of terrain and conditions to work with. Outdoor pot growers in other parts of the world can learn from techniques used by their colleagues on this ganjafied Caribbean island.

Ganja tourist

karlis — Thu, 24 Oct 2002 00:00:00 -0700

Keep da flies away from da ganja, mon!When I visited Jamaica in 1999, I spent most of my time interviewing members of the country's professional elite who were working to liberalize the island's ganja laws.

Suit against spraying

karlis — Mon, 21 Oct 2002 00:00:00 -0700

Residents of a small village in Ecuador have filed a class-action lawsuit against Dyncorp, the American company contracted to spray herbicides onto coca plantations in Colombia.
A report in the Dallas Morning News revealed that the Ecuador government is backing the lawsuit, filed in a Washington DC court. The lawsuit was launched by the small village of San Francisco 2, near the Colombian border.

Rasta religion

karlis — Sun, 08 Sep 2002 00:00:00 -0700

Bob Marley lives.According to Ganja Commission chairman Barry Chevannes, many Jamaicans use marijuana for spiritual purposes.

Drug war rebellion

karlis — Thu, 27 Jun 2002 00:00:00 -0700

Colombian riot police moving against a protest of 3500 coca-farmers who oppose fumigation.In Bolivia, coca growers are angry; they elect anti-prohibitionist congressmen and block main highways, touching off general strikes.

Hemp prisoner sues captors

karlis — Sat, 03 Nov 2001 00:00:00 -0800

Canadian hempster Paul Wylie, who spent most of 1999 in a squalid Nicaraguan prison after his government-approved Nicaraguan hemp crop was declared illegal, is back in Central America for the first time since he escaped his dungeon prison cell.
Wylie was working for the Canadian company Hemp-Agro in 1998, when armed government agents kidnapped him and threw him in prison, claiming that his low-THC outdoor hemp plantation was actually a marijuana grow operation.

Colombian Death-Spray

karlis — Fri, 21 Sep 2001 00:00:00 -0700

Is $1.6 billion in US drug-war aid intended to solve Colombia's problems, or make them worse? Human rights advocates believe that it will finance the world's largest aerial fumigation campaign, the mass slaughter of villagers, poisoning of Colombia's lands, and the creation of a South American Vietnam.
Blood for oil

Jamaican pot paradise

karlis — Wed, 12 Sep 2001 00:00:00 -0700

Jamaica has a well-deserved reputation as a ganja paradise. Potent, tasty varieties of outdoor weed have grown there for decades, and some Jamaicans are now running indoor grow rooms that cross-breed the best worldwide genetics with Jamaican originals.

Colombia: drug war Vietnam

karlis — Fri, 25 May 2001 00:00:00 -0700

The US is increasing its assault against the coca-farmers of Colombia, while avoiding direct US military presence by "outsourcing" the drug war to private mercenaries. The largest of these is a private Virginia company called DynCorp, which provides mechanics and pilots for aerial spraying and eradication missions.