Pubdate: Wed, 06 Jun 2012
Source: Anderson Valley Advertiser (CA)
Copyright: 2012 Anderson Valley Advertiser
Contact:  http://www.theava.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2667
Author: Fred Gardner

WHAT CASSIE SEES

The corporados have their deadly Predators and Reapers, but declassed 
workers in the East Bay are developing a Cassandra drone that is 
capable - at least in theory - of sending back images from days to 
come. On June 3 we visited the hangar in Richmond to which one of 
their prototypes was transmitting grainy, intermittent video and even 
some faint audio to a MacBook Pro. If the new drone technology works, 
these transmissions will turn out to be accurate images of the period ahead.

As spring turns to summer, polls show that unambiguous support for 
marijuana legalization by the Libertarian candidate for president, 
Gary Johnson, has made him very popular.

Johnson, a former governor of New Mexico, and running mate Jim Gray, 
a retired Superior Court judge from Southern California, are lifelong 
Republicans who don't smoke pot. Their campaign events are drawing 
overflow crowds.

Media coverage is shifting in tone from bemused to respectful.

Romney faults Obama for not cracking down all the way on so-called 
medical marijuana, for allowing dispensaries to exist, for turning 
this great country into Sodom and Gomorrah. He reassures the American 
people that scientists in the pharmaceutical industry can and will 
create medicines that provide the good chemicals in marijuana without 
the bad ones. His corporate backers are spending without limit to get 
him elected.

The barrage of TV ads is relentless, sophisticated, utterly deceitful.

Fear that a smarmy Puritan who thinks corporations are people will 
get to appoint two US Supreme Court justices inclines many thoughtful 
marijuana users to vote for Obama. But the morale of these pro-pot 
Dem voters is low, while the pro-pot Libertarians are righteously and 
energetically campaigning - ringing doorbells and passing out 
leaflets - for Johnson-Gray. By late August polls show the 
Libertarians gaining momentum with voters under age 35, and drawing 
many more voters away from the Dems than from the Repugs. Pundits 
ponder whether "the pot vote" could tilt the election.

Johnson and Gray say, "We're in it to win it."

Barack Obama announces that as a first order of business following 
his re-election, he will appoint a special Presidential Commission to 
review "the entire medical marijuana issue." The pro-pot Libertarians 
lead the scoffing: "Don't expect us to fall for that one again." 
(Which is what Dennis Peron politely told the Institute of Medicine 
back in 1999, citing the many formal reviews and studies concerning 
marijuana that the feds have conducted over the years, all adding up 
to one big, endless stall.)

But the pro-pot Dems respond: "This Commission will be different 
because the science is so much more advanced now, and because Barack 
Obama isn't Richard Nixon. He won't ignore the findings of doctors. 
He wants to reschedule but he needs the cover of recommendations from 
a Commission..." Obama's Cannabis Commission will reportedly include 
not only experts in medicine, pharmacology and addiction treatment, 
but a leading advocate of drug policy reform.

Electromagnetic interference emanating from San Francisco on the last 
night of October prevented our friends' drone from determining the 
success of Obama's ploy/promise of another Commission to study "the 
entire marijuana issue." When I left the hangar they were animatedly 
discussing "spectrum-spreading" and "frequency-hopping" strategies 
that might enable her (they call the thing "Cassie") to provide 
images into November.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom