Note: In the spirit of the holidays, we are sending you a message of hope
and compassion for our future. Best wishes for a very liberating New Year!

THE YEAR ZERO -- Analysis By Richard Cowan

The coming year will hold the imagination in many ways, but there are
several points which are real and not symbolic.

2000 will see the first DEAland Presidential election in which the Internet
plays an important part, and the last Presidential election in which the
Internet is not the decisive medium.

One of the purposes of elections is to raise issues, and this will be the
first DEAland Presidential election in which medical marijuana is an issue.
It will be unavoidable for the candidates and the media, and the Internet
will be the dominant medium for this debate. This will require that the
candidates actually inform themselves and take and maintain coherent and
consistent positions.

The old mass media will use the Internet as reference sources for the
issue. We must use this leverage to force them to start using the term
"marijuana prohibition" and call it what it is.

Mapinc ( www.mapinc.org ) will increasingly be recognized as being more
than just "anti-prohibitionist" and will be seen as a model for future
social change in the Internet age.

It and other anti-prohibitionist sites will also be seen as models for ways
to disseminate news about -- and without -- the conventional media.

The Hatch-Feinstein Internet censorship bill will help bring attention to
the marijuana issue, and it will also bring the Internet industries and
communities into the struggle for freedom.

Cyber-fascism demands cyber-disobedience.

The prohibitionist establishment will be increasingly desperate and vicious
in its assaults on individual freedom and will also redouble its efforts ­
as reflected in the Hatch-Feinstein bill.

Prohibition in general will come under increasing attacks as a "failure"
which will draw in critics who cannot ­ for whatever reason ­ bring
themselves to deal with the specifics of the fraud of marijuana
prohibition. This will be of great help, in that the anti-prohibitionist
movement still has such limited resources. But it will have other dangers.

Already the prohibitionist establishment is trying to co-opt this movement
and convert it into a drive for the therapeutic state. Even the Drug Czar
is saying things like "We can¹t arrest our way out of this." He is also
advocating an increase in "treatment."

The "moderates" will advocate very limited access to medical marijuana to
buy off the middle-class, and will advocate "decriminalizing" personal
marijuana possession under conditions that will allow for the "re-education
and treatment" of marijuana users.

This may be accompanied by an increase in enforcement against the booming
marijuana growing industry. However, it is already much too large to be
suppressed.

Similarly, the DEA will completely abandon its efforts to suppress hemp
cultivation. The only question is how long they will try to stall, thereby
alienating more and more farmers.

We will also see the increasing anti-Canadian propaganda converted into
actions along the Canadian border, justified by genuine concerns about
terrorism.

Primarily, this will be implemented in such a way as to focus on marijuana
smuggling, which will divert resources away from dealing with terrorism.
There has always been a symbiotic relationship between anarchic terrorists
- -- under whatever banner -- and state terrorists, who use the former as an
excuse for more power.

Anarchic terrorists then use the state-terror as an excuse for more
violence. We will have the task of making sure that the people understand
that resources spent on suppressing marijuana would be much better spent on
going after killers.

Bombs or bongs, which is the greater threat?

It will also force a debate in Canada on the marijuana issues. It will
further identify marijuana prohibition with DEAland narco-imperialism. At
some point the Canadian politicians will have to start paying more
attention to the people of Canada, and less to DEAland and its agents in
the Canadian police. Canada will face the choice of sovereignty and freedom
or subservience to DEAland prohibitionism.

I have no doubt about the outcome.

From Australia and New Zealand to Europe, more and more countries are
trying to find their way out of this morass, so Canada will not be alone.

The marijuana resistance movement will continue to grow, supported by the
anger of the people as the deceit and brutality of marijuana prohibition
becomes better understood.

The greatest problem that the prohibitionists have is that anyone who pays
attention for very long discovers that marijuana prohibition is built on lies.

After the initial shock of this discovery wears off, people are empowered
to act by the Internet ­ the medium through which most have discovered the
fraud in the first place. That is the big difference between the Internet
and other media. In the past, learning the truth from a book or a program
still left the citizen without a way to act.

That is no longer the case.

The marijuana resistance movement exists both in cyberspace and in the real
world.

The San Francisco Bay Area is already moving away from marijuana
prohibition. The Feds simply do not have the resources for low-level
enforcement and have already admitted as much. George W. Bush's endorsement
of a states' rights approach to medical marijuana, will also be applied ­
de facto ­ to personal ­ non-medical ­ use in areas where the local
authorities choose to "de-emphasize" marijuana enforcement.

A commitment to non-violence does not mean passivity in the face of
violence. To witness a crime in silence is to commit it, and in the age of
the Internet silence is all the more inexcusable. The email that I get
reflects a sense of outrage that cannot be appeased by cosmetic changes.

On the campuses, organizing the most wired population in the world will be
the next test of the Internet as a tool for social change and activism. The
only question is when and how, not whether.

All of this will be played out against the symbolically loaded backdrop of
millenarianism, in several senses of the word. It is a time that is more
than ripe for change. It is a time that identifies itself with change.

We must take advantage of this unique ethos in the first decade and to use
it to advance the cause of freedom.

It is inevitable that marijuana prohibition will end, just as Communism
collapsed of its own weight and excesses. However, our task remains to be
sure that this happens sooner rather than later, so as to minimize the
number of extra victims it can take before it ends.

Marijuananews http://www.marijuananews.com will be both a chronicler of
and catalyst to this process. My objective in the coming year is for it to
be a better tool for you to use.

Best wishes for the holidays and a very liberating New Year!