Cannabis Decriminalization Bill Introduced In Alabama
The Joint Blog
Jan 11, 2014
A proposal to decriminalize the possession of up to an ounce of cannabis has been formally introduced in the Alabama House of Representatives.
The proposal, House Bill 76, was introduced by Representative Patricia Todd, and has been assigned to the House Judiciary Committee.
Under the proposed law, anyone 21 and older caught in possession of up to announce of cannabis will no longer be committing an arrestable offense, but instead can be given a ticket of roughly $100.
Under current Alabama law, the possession of any amount of cannabis can result in up to a year in prison, and a fine of $6,000.
– TheJointBlog
VIDEO — ‘Blaming Assad a red herring, West still intends to destabilize Syria’
RT
Jan 12, 2014
In Syria, the strengthening of Al-Qaeda-linked groups has led to growing in-fighting between once allied rebels. Fierce clashes between rival opposition factions have killed at least 700 people this week.The outbreak of a civil war within a civil war has prompted some Western politicians who previously rooted solely for Assad’s removal to change their stance. Infighting within the ranks of the Syrian rebels is threatening the Russia-US brokered peace conference that’s due in less than two weeks. To discuss what might come out of it with Michel Chussodovsky, Director of the Center for Research on Globalization, joins RT.
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Book by B.C. researcher says media, police not talking straight on pot
By James Keller, The Canadian Press
OttawaCitizen.com
Dec 25, 2013
A demonstrator smokes a marijuana joint on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on April 20, 2010. Police would have the option of ticketing people for a range of minor offences, instead of laying criminal charges, under a plan that could yield significant savings for the cash-strapped justice system. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Pawel Dwulit
VANCOUVER – As it turns out, Nov. 6, 2012, was a big day for marijuana laws.
Voters in Colorado and Washington state approved initiatives to legalize pot, setting the stage for the regulated production and sale of the drug. Several other jurisdictions in the U.S. have since followed suit.
In Canada, the same day two American states were effectively abandoning part of the war on drugs, provisions of a new federal law came into effect that imposed strict mandatory minimums for drug-related crimes, including marijuana production.
The contrast, says University of Victoria professor Susan Boyd, could not have been greater.
“This new law and our revived war on drugs in Canada is so contrary to what’s going on around the world,” says Boyd, who specializes in drug law and drug policy.
“It seemed like Canada was veering towards a very punitive model while the rest of the world was taking a closer look at mandatory minimums and abandoning them.”
But the revisions to Canada’s drug laws — contained in the Safe Streets and Communities Act, or Bill C-10, as it was previously known — did not happen in a vacuum, says Boyd.
Instead, Boyd argues in a forthcoming book that Canada’s recent tough-on-crime approach to drugs is, in part, the product of decades of skewed media coverage and police messaging that has routinely exaggerated the dangers of the marijuana industry and its connection to organized crime.
For the book, titled “Killer Weed: Marijuana Grow Ops, Media, and Justice,” Boyd examined 2,500 articles from four major daily newspapers in British Columbia from 1995 to 2009.
She found news coverage about cannabis enforcement in B.C. frequently contained inaccurate information or exaggerated claims about the size and scope of the underground marijuana industry, the sorts of people associated with grow-ops, and the industry’s connection to gangs.
Assertions by police – particularly the RCMP, which is responsible for policing in much of B.C. — were left unchallenged, she says, and politicians, in turn, relied on such misinformation to push for stricter drug laws.
For example, the news articles she examined repeatedly asserted marijuana grow-ops are inextricable linked to gangs and other criminal organizations. Police spokespeople were frequently quoted explaining that modern-day grow-ops are not “mom and pop” operations.
But Boyd says the federal government’s own research does not support that claim.
She cited a Justice Department study that was completed in 2011, obtained by a reporter through an access to information request, that examined a random sample of 500 marijuana grow operations. Of those, just five per cent had apparent links to gangs or organized crime.
“This study wasn’t released by our federal government, and you could see why,” says Boyd.
[h/t: Easton Ellis]
Employment Recovery? 1,600 Workers Apply For Just 36 Jobs At An Ice Cream Plant In Maryland
By Michael Snyder
TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com
Jan 7, 2014
The stock market may be soaring to unprecedented heights, but things just continue to get even tougher for the middle class. In this economic environment, there is intense competition for virtually all kinds of jobs. For example, more than 1,600 applications were recently submitted for just 36 jobs at an ice cream plant in Hagerstown, Maryland. That means that those applying have about a 2 percent chance of being hired. About 98 percent of the applicants will be turned away. That is how tough things are in many areas of the country today. It is now more than five years after the great financial crash of 2008, and the level of employment in the United States is still almost exactly where it was at during the worst moments of the last recession. And this is just the beginning. The next major financial crash is rapidly approaching, and once it strikes our employment crisis is going to get much, much worse.
Working at an ice cream plant does not pay very well. But at least it beats flipping burgers or stocking shelves at Wal-Mart. And in this economy, there is no shortage of desperate workers that are willing to take just about any job that they can find. The following is how a Breitbart article described the flood of applications that were received for just 36 positions at an ice cream plant owned by Shenandoah Family Farms in Hagerstown, Maryland…
Thanks to persistent unemployment and low availability of low-skill jobs, Shenandoah Family Farms’ ice cream plant in Hagerstown, Maryland has received over 1,600 applicants for a grand total of 36 jobs. Many of those applicants are former workers at the Good Humor plant that was bought by Shenandoah Family Farms. “You’d think that after 20-some-years working someplace at least somebody would think you area a good person, that you’d show up on time every day, and that would be worth something,” Luther Brooks, a 50-year-old former worker at the plant told the Washington Post. “I can’t get nothing. I’ve tried.”
Anyone that believes that the economic crisis is “over” is just being delusional. It may be “over” for the boys and girls that work on Wall Street, but even their good times are only temporary.
Of course most Americans are not fooled by the propaganda being put out by the mainstream media. According to a recent CNN poll, 70 percent of all Americans believe that “the economy is generally in poor shape”.
And according to another survey, the economy is still the #1 concern for American voters by a good margin and unemployment is still the #2 concern for American voters by a good margin.
In other words, “It’s the economy, stupid!”
The American people can see that mid-wage jobs are disappearing and that the middle class is being systematically eviscerated. The following is a short excerpt from a recent Business Insider article…
A startling number of middle-class jobs may be headed toward extinction.
More than any other job class, mid-level positions have struggled to recover from the recession, and only a quarter of jobs created in the past three years are categorized as mid-wage. There are high-skilled professional jobs that require college degrees and low-skilled service jobs for less educated workers, but the middle is getting squeezed.
As mid-wage jobs disappear, they are being replaced by low wage jobs. As I mentioned yesterday, one recent study found that about 60 percent of the jobs that have been “created” since the end of the last recession pay $13.83 or less an hour.
And this is just the beginning of the decline of the middle class. Another great financial crisis is rapidly approaching, and once it arrives things are going to get much worse than they are right now.
A number of very prominent experts believe that this next great financial crisis could begin in 2014. For example, in a recent article entitled “Top Ten Trends 2014: A Year of Extremes“, Gerald Celente warned that “an economic shock wave” could hit the United States by the middle of the year. Here are some excerpts from that article…
-“In 33 years of forecasting trends, the Trends Research Institute has never seen a new year that will witness severe economic hardship and social unrest on one hand, and deep philosophic enlightenment and personal enrichment on the other. A series of dynamic socioeconomic and transformative geopolitical trend points are aligning in 2014 to ring in the worst and best of times.”
[h/t: BeforeIt’sNews]
VIDEO — The Truthseeker: ‘Unequivocal’ cell phones cause cancer (E32)
RT
Jan 11, 2014
Mobiles ‘cooking the brain’; brain tumors become children’s number one killer illness; and leaked industry memo admits ‘wargaming’ the science. Seek truth from facts with former senior White House adviser Devra Davis, Storyleak editor Anthony Gucciardi, ‘cell phone survivor’ Bret Bocook, Microwave News editor Louis Slesin, top radiation biologist Dariusz Leszczynski, and Ellie Marks, whose husband Alan’s suing the industry for his brain tumor.
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CDC Not Required to Tell the Truth About Anything, Including Vaccines
by Christina Sarich
Natural Society
Jan 9, 2014
Since the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) aren’t legally required to tell the truth about anything, why should they? Maybe this is just one of many reasons the public is unaware of the many problems revolving around America’s health system.
The CDC is perhaps the most malicious in their information-twisting. Consider this recent upheaval about flu vaccinations. According to Dr. Peter Doshi in a British Medical Journal article review (BMJ 2013; 346:f3037):
“. . .perhaps the cleverest aspect of the influenza marketing strategy surrounds the claim that ‘flu’ and ‘influenza’ are the same. The distinction seems subtle, and purely semantic. But general lack of awareness of the difference might be the primary reason few people realize that even the ideal influenza vaccine, matched perfectly to circulating strains of wild influenza and capable of stopping all influenza viruses, can only deal with a small part of the ‘flu’ problem because most ‘flu’ appears to have nothing to do with influenza. Every year, hundreds of thousands of respiratory specimens are tested across the US. Of those tested, on average 16% are found to be influenza positive.”
VIDEO — The BFP Roundtable Dissects the “Alternative” Media
Boiling Frogs Post Roundtable
Jan 11, 2014
Alternative to what and independent of whom? These are the questions that are seldom asked of the pseudo-alternative, foundation-funded and establishment-dependent “alternative” media. Today on the BFP Roundtable, Sibel Edmonds, Peter B. Collins, Guillermo Jimenez and James Corbett discuss the meltdown of the dinosaur media paradigm and how the establishment is using the pseudo-alternatives to continue to forward their agenda. We also discuss ways of counteracting this and positing real solutions to the problems we are facing.
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