MardiGrass 2011


MARDIGRASS - MARDIGRASS 2011 - ORIGINS - PAST YEARS - PROGRAM '11


NSW Cannabis Laws - Nimbin Accommodation & Transport - Ganja Faeries
MardiGrass Weekend Passes and Camping - Nimbin HEMP Embassy
HEMP Party - Hemp Embassy Online Shop

Photos

E-mail nimbinmardigrass@hempembassy.net

Last Update: May 4, 2011 0:14 AM

 

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

Brutus, "Julius Caesar" , Act IV, scene iii.

MARDIGRASS 2011 APRIL 30 AND MAY 1 "BRING BACK RESPECT"

The MardiGrass Organising Body has met with Lismore Council and everything is on track officially for the 2011 annual weekend of cannabis law reform activities. The MOB meets every friday from 5pm at the Embassy (enter thru the HEMP Bar) and everyone is welcome.
We are always keen for new ideas and input and especially local volunteers.
We plan on being better organised with volunteers this year and we may even have 'Team Leaders', or perhaps, 'Top Buds'. Local knowledge is critical to guide the hordes of often non English speaking backpackers who want to help out and locals wanting to be part of this please register early at the Embassy. Same with Jungle Patrollers.
Recycling at least the cans must happen this year and we are looking for a club or non profit local group who will help take this on and get the profits.
We also want to hear from creative souls who want to do street theatre over the weekend. And remember the Happy High Herbs Float Awards are on again.
A Mardigrass Comedy Cabaret on Saturday night is planned for the Town Hall. We are hopeful Bob Dylan will judge the Buskers Comp but he is not confirmed. The Bluesfest and Easter is the weekend before Mardigrass this year so we expect quite a few people to attend both.
Pot Art entries can be brought into the HEMP Bar (if they fit!) and will be displayed in cafes around the village.
The Big Question? We inspected Peace Park, the Home of the Hemp Olympix, and expect no dramas fitting in with the new skatepark which should be well and truly finished by then. It looks like a MardiGrass Skatecomp will in fact become a new Hemp Olympix Gold Medal event though we havn't quite worked out the details! Is there a Nimbin Skaters Club? Please come to a MOB meeting!

The Peace Park Main Stage will be repositioned closer to Sibley Street we expect. So far the music line up is: OKA, Anarchist Duck, King Farook, CC The Cat, Nathan Kaye, elseWhere, Bertha Control, The 50 bags, Irie Knights, Pagan Love Cult, Kaptan Reefer, Nigel Mctrustry, A French Butler Called Smith, Fyah Walk, John dourvis, Johny Ganja and a few more to throw in the mix bowl..


MardiGrass 2011 has been inspired by Proposition 19 in California. Even though the vote was lost, cannabis law reform got a lot of attention and we will be doing our best this year to bring Australia up to date with what's happening in North America.
Dr Bob Melamede will be at MardiGrass again with new evidence on cannabis eradicating cancer and another director from Cannabis Science Inc.
Activists Alison Myrden, Lisa “Mamakind” Kirkman from Skunk Magazine and Englishman Frank Kirk are booked in as is Sandra Kanck, former leader of the Democrats in SA Parliament. Regular supporters Dr's Alex Wodak, Paul Wilson and Andrew Katelaris are all coming and we hope to have some local industrial hemp crops to play with and hear about now NSW farmers can plant hemp seed.

Ganja Faeries are the light spirit of the herb, the essential humour of indulging in it, the cheeky and naughty side, if you like. They're the ones who tickle your funnybone and make you laugh, and dance with you awhile along your way, then appear again in your dreams. They share a collective wisdom of living with cannabis. They help you to remember that the herb is healing in many wonderful ways and that the drug laws are very stupid. If you like, YOU can be a Ganja Faerie too. To be a dancing Ganja Faerie tho' you need to come to rehearsals...

Ganja Faerie rehearsals in April at the Community Centre Market Stage 5:30pm each Friday until MardiGrass

 

The MOB wishes to extend a welcome and many thanks for those who donate their time and finances during this event, without you it could not happen. All volunteers should register with the Hemp Embassy leaving a contact phone or email in the shop. MOB meetings have sort of started and you will find key organizers in the Hemp Bar from 4.20pm on Fridays.

Event tickets including a campsite are already for sale for the weekend of April 30th and May 1st, 2011………. Not so far away now.

BUY A 2011 MardiGrass WEEKEND PASS with CAMPING Online


MardiGrass music enquiries: essie-thomas@hotmail.com


Hello Australia and the fine folks at Nimbin Hemp Embassy

Greetings from Canada’s 2nd Annual Treating Yourself Expo!

Treating Yourself magazine is excited to host the upcoming 2nd annual Treating Yourself Expo in June of 2011 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. We want you to be a part of it. Mark June 3rd - 5th, 2011 on your calendar and join patients, their friends and loved ones, professionals, distributors, manufacturers from the Alternative Medicine , Hemp , and the Medical Cannabis industries from across North America, Europe and other parts of the World. Showcase, demonstrate, educate you about their products.

Counting patients, vendors, medical and professionals from the alternative medicine and hemp industries among it’s expected attendance of 20,000+. Treating Yourself Magazine’s 2nd annual Expo promises to be a world stage like no other seen before in Canada, offering three days of networking, learning, advertising, and vending in an interactive, inclusive environment.

Don’t miss your chance to be a part of this extraordinary event!

Treating Yourself .Com was founded in May 2002 by Marco Renda. In 2005 we started our publication and is now distributed in countries world-wide, Treating Yourself is a journal written for patients, by patients. Our mission is to build awareness, generate interest, educate and provide our readers (which include medical cannabis, alternative medicine users, members of the hemp community, their caregivers, professionals in this and related industries) with conscientious, ethical, and reliable information to assist them with the management of their wide and varied health needs and provide them with access to safe and reliable products.

To help us achieve this goal, the 2011 Expo will be hosting a series of workshops, seminars, documentaries and short films on subjects like alternative medicine , medical cannabis, activism, security and safety, nutrition, hemp, cooking, and more.

This one-of-a-kind event will also have a government-approved 4000 square foot vapor lounge to accommodate medical cannabis patients who can feel comfortable and relaxed medicating. While there is absolutely no selling or distributing of cannabis permitted at the Expo, we encourage patients to bring their own medicine along with them, as vaporizers of all makes and models will be available for use. These include, but are not limited to the HerbalAire, and the De-Verdamper. Our hope is to give patients an opportunity to determine which type is most suitable for their individual needs.

Go to our event website for more information or to purchase tickets.
http://www.treatingyourselfexpo.com/

Take Care and Peace
Marco Renda
Federal Exemptee
Publisher
Treating Yourself
The Alternative Medicine Journal


Drug Policy...

PROBABLY the least significant of the issues raised by the arrest of Matthew Chesher for allegedly possessing a single ecstasy tablet is its political effect.

More important is the way the case highlights society's attitude to drugs. Recreational drug use is now so common that any who do indulge themselves are only reflecting the contemporary attitudes of a wide section of the public.

Experience should have taught us by now that existing drug policies are deeply flawed. We have argued previously that the war-on-drugs approach is counterproductive - in creating a lucrative and corrupting black market - and also essentially hypocritical - in that it divides recreational drugs with more or less dangerous side effects into two groups, legal and illegal, and permits and encourages use of some while condemning the rest. There is little basis besides custom and tradition for the distinction. Legal alcohol is notorious for the violence it fuels; legal tobacco is often lethal over time; the main drawback to illegal ecstasy is dehydration, though its long-term effects are unclear and may indeed be just as bad.

That drug laws are often flouted by otherwise law-abiding people is not evidence of widespread wickedness taking root, but of the contempt felt by many ordinary citizens at the double standard involved over what they believe is essentially a private matter. It is time for a calm and reasoned debate on how drug policy might be changed to reflect contemporary behaviour, to preserve a safe community, and to ensure the law does not fall into contempt.

In the August 2010 federal election, for perhaps the first time in Australia, the two candidates for prime minister had admitted previous cannabis use. The US President has admitted previous use of cannabis and cocaine. His predecessor denied cannabis use but was caught on tape admitting it. The previous US president claimed to have smoked cannabis but not inhaled. In November, 46 per cent of Californians voted to tax and regulate cannabis. In Britain, it is estimated that about 50 million ecstasy tablets are consumed a year. Australia could not maintain police or military forces if all new recruits admitting previous illicit drug use were rejected.

It's high time we swept away our cant and hypocrisy on illicit drugs. Let's admit that most people taking illicit drugs do so because they enjoy the experience. Let's make low-level drug use a health and social issue and stop pretending it is a crime.


… and drug punishment

HINTS are appearing of welcome change in Asia's stern attitude to the death penalty. Of most immediate import to Australians is the opinion of a panel of three judges at the Denpasar District Court in Bali, as reported by the Herald yesterday, about the appeal by the two convicted ringleaders of the Bali nine heroin-smuggling operation against their death sentences.

Strikingly, they asserted that the right to life was ''the most basic of rights inherent to man and is universal and eternal'' and must not be taken away ''by anyone''. Their opinion will be considered by the Indonesian Supreme Court in its hearing of the appeals by Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. Despite this sweeping statement, the judges do not completely challenge the rights and morality of judicial execution, as they suggest it can be reserved for ''the most serious of crime''. But the opinion is a great divergence from the hitherto prevailing sentiment in Indonesia's political and judicial circles.

Should it be taken up by the Supreme Court, which is also hearing an appeal by the other Bali nine convict on death row, the drug courier Scott Rush, and result in commutation of the sentences, it would remove an issue causing anguish among many Australians. It would also mean the issue does not reach the desk of the President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who would have the final option of granting clemency if the appeal fails.

Or at least it would do so temporarily, as already at least one other Australian is in potential jeopardy of the death penalty. Preventing future flare-ups needs more formal alignment of the two neighbours' legal systems towards crime and punishment, particularly on illegal drugs. And it has to be said that Indonesia is by no means the harshest and least flexible in its region.

Asian countries, along with the United States and those in the Middle East, form most of the one-third of the world's nations still applying capital punishment. But shifts are occurring. In Japan, where hangings are mostly now saved for multiple murderers, the new Justice Minister, Satsuki Eda, is a vocal opponent of capital punishment and has ordered his department to prepare a review of policy about it. South Korea's top court ruled last year that capital punishment is constitutional, but executions stopped in 1997 and seem unlikely to resume. It is perhaps not coincidental that Japanese and South Koreans are now among the most prosperous, egalitarian and educated peoples in the region.


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MARDIGRASS - MARDIGRASS 2011 - ORIGINS - PAST YEARS - PROGRAM '11


NSW Cannabis Laws - Nimbin Accommodation & Transport - Ganja Faeries
Hempen Images - Cannabis World News - Hemp History - Nimbin HEMP Embassy
Poetry for the Head - HEMP Party - Photos
Hemp Embassy Online Shop

51 Cullen Street, Nimbin, NSW 2480.
http://www.nimbinmardigrass.com/
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