November 30, 2008 by Bill Gould, Publisher.

Temecula, California - On Wednesday, November 27, 2008, a Riverside County Sheriff’s Deputy was patrolling the 45000 block of Pechanga Parkway when he checked the license plate number of a car driving in that area. The check revealed that the car was displaying a valid 2009 registration tab, while the car’s registration was actually expired as of August 2008. The deputy stopped the car and spoke with the driver, Todd C. Zenk, 41, of Lake Elsinore.


The deputy soon learned that Zenk’s driver license was suspended and searched his car. During the search, various pieces of U.S. mail were found addressed to people other than Zenk. Deputies kept investigating and contacted residents at at least one address where they learned that the mail in Zenk’s car was stolen.

The completed investigation resulted in Zenk’s arrest for possessing stolen property, falsifying vehicle registration, and driving on a suspended license. He was booked at the Southwest Detention Center.

Anyone with information about this case should call Deputy Castaneda of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department at (951) 696-3000.

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November 30, 2008 by Bill Gould, Publisher.

On Wednesday, November 26, 2008, patrol officers from the Temecula Police Department conducted a probation compliance search in the 30000 block of Colina Verde Drive in Temecula at the home of probationer Robert L. Madden, 21.


During the search of Madden’s home, officer’s located 3.8 grams of cocaine packaged for sale, methamphetamine, prescription drugs, drug paraphernalia, and other items which led them to believe Madden was involved in the sale of drugs - including $400.00 of U.S. Currency in small denominations commonly used in street-level drug transactions. All of these items were seized and Madden was arrested for possessing a controlled substance for sale, possessing drug paraphernalia, and for violating the terms of his probation.

At the conclusion of the investigation, Madden was booked at the Southwest Detention Center. Anyone with information about illegal drug activity anywhere in Temecula is encouraged to call the Temecula Police Department at 1-951-696-3000.

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November 30, 2008 by Bill Gould, Publisher.

On Saturday, 11/29/08 at 1223pm Officer David Lawlor, working the Safe Shopper Detail, spotted an older model Honda Accord in the parking lot of Wal-Mart at 41200 Murrieta Hot Springs Road in Murrieta. The vehicle was occupied by a single passenger, who was watching customers as they were walking by. This subject appeared suspicious, which prompted Officer Lawlor to run the license plate on the vehicle.


The vehicle returned as a stolen vehicle from the City of Moreno Valley. Officers detained the passenger and decided to wait for the driver of the vehicle to return. A short time later an adult female, later identified as Sherri Rangel, returned to the vehicle and was detained by officers. Rangel was the named suspect in the original vehicle theft report, and was also identified by witnesses as the driver of the stolen vehicle.

The passenger was not charged with a crime and was released at the scene. Rangel was arrested and charged with: CVC 10851 - Auto Theft, an outstanding felony warrant for PC 666 - Theft w/priors, and an outstanding misdemeanor warrant for PC 490.5 - Shoplifting. Rangel was later transported to the Southwest Detention Center where she was booked for the above listed charges.

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November 28, 2008 by PT Rothschild.

WILL MEDICAL MARY JANE BE FOOLED AGAIN, THIS TIME BY ‘HANDKERCHIEF HEAD’ POLITICS?

Temecula, CA – As a tip ‘o the hat to the old Who tune lyric, the medical marijuana folks are wondering the same thing following the new appointments by the Obama Transition team, as voiced in the following news article printed in the Capital Weekly (Sacramento, CA, November 20^th issue) and reposted here. The term ‘handkerchief head’ is a derogatory slang that refers to a house slave who has taken on the same mindset as the master of the house, and is the equivalent, when referring it to a black person as referring to a white as a ‘nigger lover’. At the end of the article there is a link to President-elect Obama’s Transition Team website where you can object to these possible appointments and ask for a more reasoned appointee. If you don’t want to wait until the end of the article, just click here to get to the website.

CA MEDICAL MARIJUANA ADVOCATES CONCERNED ABOUT OBAMA APPOINTMENTS

In this year’s presidential election, medical marijuana advocates in California were pretty clear on which candidate they were rooting for.  On multiple occasions, Democrat Barack Obama has pledged to end the federal raids that have bedeviled the state’s dispensaries for years under the Bush administration. But some of their relief has turned into concern as the incoming president has begun to consider appointments to key posts.  Obama will reportedly appoint two men who have been fierce critics of medical marijuana: Eric Holder, rumored to be Obama’s pick for attorney general, and Donald Vereen as transitional co-chair of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). If confirmed to run the Justice Department, Holder would have wide authority to set policy and priorities for the Drug Enforcement Administration.  Under President George W.  Bush, the DEA has conducted dozens of high profile raids on medical marijuana dispensaries that are allowed to operate openly under California law. Officials have frequently referred to their operators as “criminals” and “drug dealers.” Holder has a long history of past positions that appear to be closer to current policy than to Obama’s campaign pledge.  According to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, he proposed stiffening federal marijuana penalties in 1997 while serving as Deputy Attorney General under President Bill Clinton. He was criticized by NORML again the next year for failing to take action against the Washington State Lieutenant Governor’s office for using federal funds earmarked for drug enforcement to create a website about the “dangers” of medical marijuana while voters of that state were deciding on a medical marijuana initiative.  Holder has been acceptable enough to conservatives that he was nominated to a Washington, D.C., judgeship by Ronald Reagan, widely considered the biggest proponent of the drug war among U.S.  Presidents. “He certainly does not appear to have the best drug policy stances,” Kris Hermes, media relations at Americans for Safe Access, said of Holder.  “But it’s fairly difficult to tell what positions he will take if confirmed.”


Vereen appears to have taken even stronger anti-medical marijuana positions.  He served as the deputy director of ONDCP from 1998 to 2001.  In the April, 1999 issues of Psychiatric News, the Journal of the American Psychiatric Association, he called doctors who prescribed marijuana “irresponsible” and advocated arresting medical marijuana patients. He has also frequently gone on record essentially claiming that marijuana can’t be thought of as a treatment because it’s usually smoked and because dosages are difficult to control.  This position has just as frequently been mocked by advocates, who note that there is not a single documented case of a person dying from a marijuana overdose. Of most concern to advocates may be Vereen’s opposition to a medical marijuana initiative which passed in Michigan this year.  Speaking in his role as the director of Community Based Public Health at the University of Michigan, he said the initiative “puts young people at risk.” But Bruce Mirken, director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project, noted that public opinion polls and votes are trending his group’s way. “In Michigan, I can’t help but notice that medical marijuana outpolled Obama by six points,” Mirken said. Obama got 57 percent of the vote in the key Midwestern swing state.

But Proposal 1, which will allow patients or caregivers to possess up to 12 plants and 2.5 ounces of dried marijuana, got 63 percent. Pre-election polls suggested the outcome was never really in doubt. Mirken went on to note that the three western states Obama flipped to the blue column from 2004-Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico-are all medical marijuana states.  There are now 13 such states, the others being Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and Vermont.  These states cover one-quarter of the US population, and represent 124 of Obama 365 electoral votes. Both Hermes and Mirken said that any relaxation of federal enforcement is likely to be a done without much fanfare, at least in the short term.  Obama is unlikely to step into the kind of public relations scandals that plagued the first two years of the Clinton administration, such as the gays in the military brouhaha. But Hermes said his group will be using medical marijuana’s growing clout to make sure “Obama keeps his word.” A pair of other early presidential candidates-Republican Ron Paul and Democrat Dennis Kucinich-have been very supportive of medical marijuana, he said, and even Hillary Clinton took more liberal positions than Obama on the issue. Hermes went on to say his group will participate in a “grassroots campaign” to break the federal government’s “monopoly” on medical marijuana research and push for a national policy on the issue. “We’ll certainly be holding his feet to the fire,” Hermes said.

Mirken said federal pressure has really prevented most medical marijuana states from fully implementing laws approved by voters-a situation that is particularly notable with California’s Prop.  215, passed with 56 percent of the vote in 1996.  California has been Ground Zero, he said, “because we have these openly-operating dispensaries that present ready targets for federal enforcement.” Other states have sidestepped this problem largely by not being directly involved in the administration of policies. “It’s hard to set up a system when any information you collect is potentially evidence in a federal trial,” Mirken said.  “There really isn’t anyone in charge.” (Seems someone also said the same thing about the free falling economy of late – ed.) Holder and Vereen are not the only appointees of concern to advocates.  Vice President-elect Joe Biden has been a strong supporter of the war on drugs in the Senate.  While he also opposes federal raids on dispensaries, at a May campaign stop in Connecticut he said of pain management that “There’s got to be a better answer than marijuana.” “He’s been a prominent figure in the war on drugs for several years,” said Zack Risner, media relations for the Cannabis Club Network, of Biden.  “That doesn’t mean it’s going to be a direct relation to Obama’s policies.” Obama’s new chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and another ONDCP appointee, Christopher Putala, have also been openly critical of medical marijuana.  But Mirken said that is would be difficult for Obama not be an improvement over Bush. “The way the Bush administration has operated, they just made stuff up,” Mirken said.  “It will be nice, if it happens, to have the federal government re-enter the reality-based community.”

Here’s information from the Drug Policy Alliance regarding Obama’s possible pick for drug czar. The media is reporting that Obama is considering nominating Republican Congressman James Ramstad (MN/3rd) to be his “drug czar”. It’s easy to understand why. Rep. Ramstad is in recovery from substance abuse (alcohol) and has a long track record in support of increasing access to drug treatment. Ramstad, however, is still mostly wedded to the failed punitive drug war policies of the last 30 thirty years. For instance, Ramstad has voted against medical marijuana five times. He has voted against making sterile syringes more available to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS three times. Even though his colleagues are increasingly supporting sentencing reform, including eliminating the crack/powder sentencing disparity, he hasn’t stood up on the issue. In other words, Rep. Ramstad does not appear to be committed to the kind of change President-elect Obama has said he will bring to our nation’s drug policies. However, Ben Morris of the MPP reported that Obama’s pick for drug czar may be Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton.  Bratton is, according to Morris, “totally supportive of the concept of medical marijuana.”  So the Obama Transition team needs to hear from YOU – if enough of us email in and write pick Bratton or someone with an understanding of medical marijuana and harm reduction, then maybe we will get a compassionate and sensible person for Drug Czar unlike the mad, frothing at the mouth drug warriors our nation has suffered under for the last several decades. Obama needs to hear from you about his picks for Attorney General and Drug Czar and it is easy for you to contact him through his website. To get directly to President-elect Obama’s Transition Team website, click here. Did you do it? If not, then click here now so that YOU can make a difference.

(Article source – MPP/Lanny Swerdlow)

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November 26, 2008 by PT Rothschild.

“I CRIED BECAUSE I HAD NO SHOES…”

Temecula, CA – As many of us sit down to eat a fine meal tomorrow, discussing the pros and cons of Barack Obama, the falling prices of gasoline, and what to get papa for Christmas, it is my call to let people know just how much of a ‘bubble’ we in this country live in. Even with the latest attacks coming out of India where armed terrorists separated US and British people from the scores of other tourists, one has but to read the following story to see how ‘thanksgiving’ is for the very few, and the very lucky. Also see the previous (archive) stories about Invisible Children for providing assistance, and write your Congressmen or women.

The deadly cult of Joseph Kony

While the world watches one conflict in Congo, another is raging – inspired by a sadistic rebel leader with a taste for black magic. Daniel Howden reports from Sakure. (ADAM PLETTS/GETTY- Photo Credit)

Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, in Uganda, is on the rampage again, this time in Congo. Sakure is on the front line of a war that is not supposed to exist. Perched on the rim of the Congo basin, it looks out from South Sudan and into the vastness of the rainforest beyond. The victims of this war are strewn over the floor of that forest, their bodies left to rot, while others have been left as ashes in the charred remains of their villages. Those that have survived are huddled among Sakure’s grass huts nervously eyeing the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo across which they fled. It is a war that is waged by heavily armed soldiers against unarmed villagers and its casualties both living and dead mark the rebirth of Africa’s most feared guerrilla group – the Lord’s Resistance Army. It was supposed to be a moribund force, a Ugandan rebellion which lost its support and its way after two decades of increasingly sickening violence, with seemingly little point.  A campaign launched in the 1980s claiming to defend the rights of the Acholi people in northern Uganda has become a byword for sadism. Years of abductions where children were forced to kill their own parents in a brutal initiation has left them feared but hated. Their leader and self-styled messiah Joseph Kony was supposed to be on the point of surrender, with his diminishing band of fighters contained in a transit camp awaiting the signing of a peace plan. Instead the terror has been transplanted, this time to the remote north of Congo. The bewildered victims of this campaign know nothing of the cause espoused by those that are hunting them – they have never been to neighboring Uganda. The rebel fighters moved into camps in Congo’s Garamba National Park in what was hoped would be the final staging post before peace. But those talks have collapsed after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Kony’s arrest. A deadline for the end of this month has been given to the guerrillas. They sign the deal or face the consequences, but in their hundreds they have already slipped the net.


All along the border with South Sudan scores of refugees are streaming out of the bush and across the border every day with horrifying accounts of the return of the LRA. Father Paul was on his way for an afternoon nap on 17 September in the Komboni mission in the Congolese village of Duru when he heard shouting. Looking outside he saw dozens of soldiers marching towards the mission. “They were dressed like soldiers but they were dirty. Some wore witch doctors’ hats and dreads in their hair.” Marching with them were the girls and boys of the village, women with babies, all carrying their meager possessions: mattresses, radios, sugar, mobile phones and soap. Pushing past Father Paul into the courtyard of the mission everyone was ordered to sit on the floor, while the building was ransacked. A frail man in his late 70s, Father Paul was taken to his room and tortured by soldiers who insisted the priests must have money in the mission. “I thought I was going to die so I got on my knees and prayed to the Lord. When they heard me say his name they screamed at me, ‘Don’t say that word!’ And then hit me with their guns.

“Such attacks have been replayed across an entire region in recent weeks driving tens of thousands of the Zande people to flee into South Sudan or deeper into the forests of Congo. The scene, says Father Paul, was straight out of the days of slavery. The children were divided, then bound together and made to march, he remembers.  Left by his attackers in the bush, the priest returned to Duru to see its thousands of shelters ablaze, with the village’s only permanent structure, the mission, black and charred. Not a shot had been fired. The group prefers to use machetes. Father Galdino Sakondo, a Catholic priest who has been working with victims of the terror on both sides of the border says the silent tactic is deliberate. “They don’t shoot, they are just chopping. You don’t know they are there until they reach your house.” That was the fate of 15-year-old Neima Kumbari in the village of Napopo. “They came in the morning but I didn’t see them at first.” When she did realize the soldiers had arrived it was already too late. Her parents were beaten with rifle butts, then, along with her uncle and a brother, burned alive in their own hut. The soldiers had “no mercy”, she says. Neima escaped by running into the bush while her village was torched, stepping over the fallen bodies of her dead neighbors as she ran. After two days she reached Sakure having lost everything, her whole family. In a flat, calm voice, Neima says she is still haunted by the bodies she stepped on.

Philip Charles didn’t get the chance to run. A shy, quiet 16-year-old, he was at home near the Congo border when the area was overrun by a raiding party from the LRA. The children were abducted, their families’ looted possessions strapped to them and then they were tied together in pairs and made to sit in silence. “If we made a sound they would beat us to death,” he was told.Later after the LRA fighters had been repelled in an attempted attack on Sakure they frog-marched “many” children into the forest. Philip remembers telling the girl he was tied to that they had to find a way to escape. “I was thinking I wouldn’t survive. They wanted to turn us into soldiers.” After a night in captivity he was able to untie himself, throw down his heavy load and run into the bush. She was not so lucky. The fate of the lost girl is as predictable as it is nightmarish. Amony Evelyn was 12 when she was taken under similar circumstances. Her life in the bush was a mixture of drudgery and torture. Part cook, part porter, part sex slave, to Joseph Kony himself. A man many believe to be clinically insane, he is said to see his mission as “purifying” the Acholi people and to encourage a quasi-religious cult involving black magic. She bore him two children, the first when she was still 13 and was pregnant with a third when she fled last year after 10 years in captivity. Today she is piecing her life back together with the help of a counsellor, Paul Rubangakena from the Catholic charity Caritas, in Gulu, across the border in Uganda. He says the girls and boys in his care “wake up screaming from their nightmares” – even the staff is traumatized by the litany of horrors they have had to hear. The UK-based arm of Caritas, Cafod, is also among the groups assisting the refugees in South Sudan. Raphael Wamae, the group’s humanitarian officer, has been part of an early assessment team who arrived on the scene to gauge the scale of the refugee crisis. “We cannot ignore what is happening here because of events in Goma. This is part of the same crisis. Armed factions are roaming Congo preying on defenseless people,” he says.Already more than 5,000 refugees have been counted, all in desperate need of food and shelter. Countless more are roaming the bush and some 60 more are arriving every day. Catholic church groups are calling for urgent assistance and warning that the area risks being ignored. “The same factors driving the humanitarian disaster in Eastern Congo are at play here: weak states, lack of law and order and the scale of mineral wealth in DRC leave ordinary people at the mercy of men with guns,” says Mr. Wamae. Just as in the crisis in the east of Congo, the national army does nothing to protect its people and the UN peacekeepers, Monuc, are powerless to help. At stake are a mesh of competing interests that stretch from Khartoum, through Darfur to the threatened Eastern Congolese city of Goma and the capital of Rwanda, Kigali. Rebel groups can be used to control the money generated by Congo’s fabulous mineral wealth but they also serve the dual purpose of helping to destabilize regional rivals. A recipe for proxy wars without end.

Lexon Bashir, the director of the South Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Committee, rails against the “so-called LRA”. “Why are they abducting children? Sudanese boys and girls as well. We have seen children burnt beyond recognition their bodies thrown into fires.” He sees an outside hand in the violent re-emergence of Mr. Kony’s cult but refuses to say whose. In private others are less reticent, pointing to helicopter drops of arms and ammunition to the LRA. They believe that the government of Khartoum led by President Omar al-Bashir – a fellow inductee the ICC – is helping Kony’s army with a view to destabilizing southern Sudan ahead of a possible resumption of that civil war. In the clearing of Sakure, thousands of miles from Khartoum, girls like Neima suffer the reality of these machinations. Despite nearly 400 soldiers from South Sudan stationed here to protect them and UN food aid finally reaching the refugees, she feels that she is still being hunted. “There is a war,” she says. “I don’t know what they want but I have heard they are called the LRA. I’m scared. They are coming to Sakure.”

From altar boy to sadistic killer

The altar boy who became a rebel leader (has now) turned into a psychopath. The self-styled prophet Joseph Kony has remained an elusive and terrifying figure casting a spell over first Uganda, then Sudan and the Central African Republic, and now the Democratic Republic of Congo. Born in 1961, he inherited his mantle as leader of the Acholi people from his aunt, Alice Lakwena, a mystic who started the Holy Spirit Movement against the government in Kampala. While initially enjoying strong public support, Kony’s group, the Lord’s Resistance Army, turned on its own supporters in an increasingly brutal and incoherent campaign, supposedly bent on “purifying” the Acholi people and turning Uganda into a theocracy ruled by the Ten Commandments. His army has been forcibly recruited from the Acholi, with as many as 20,000 children abducted and forced to commit atrocities that prevented them from returning home. He has nurtured a cult of personality, claiming he is visited by a multinational host of 13 spirits, including a Chinese phantom. Former abductees speak in awed terms of his “magical powers” and abrupt mood changes. He is said to have taken up to 60 wives and fathered countless children. A school dropout described as a “gentle boy” by classmates, he has become one of the most sadistic leaders in Africa. In 2005, the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest for crimes against humanity.

(Source: Daniel Howden, The Independent, UK)

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