A federal appeals court ruled against the thousands of people who have experienced the life-saving effects of CBD oil by upholding the decision that the substance is a Schedule 1 drug.
The post Federal Court Proves Gov’t Loyalty to Big Pharma, Rules CBD Has No Medical Value appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,
Politico published an explosive investigative report which alleges that the Obama Administration politically interfered to obstruct a far-reaching criminal justice operation against Hezbollah in order to facilitate the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
The exposé is extensive and covers a wide array of purported activities over a ten-year period all across the US, Latin America, West Africa, Europe, and the Mideast, though the point of this analysis isn’t to summarize what’s contained in the report or to judge its veracity, but to interpret the significance of it being made public at this point in time. The codename given to the investigation into Hezbollah’s global economic network was “Operation Cassandra”, and it alleges to have discovered the mechanics behind the group’s self-sustaining financial ecosystem, some of which supposedly dealt with organized criminal activities such as drug trafficking and money laundering.
Politico’s bombshell wasn’t just the alleged facts that it uncovered, but the claims from some of the operation’s participants that the Obama Administration was undermining their work because it feared that taking action against Hezbollah would endanger Washington’s efforts to clinch the 2015 nuclear deal with the group’s patrons in Tehran. If true, then this would represent a major split within the American “deep state”, or permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies, because it suggests that the State Department and possibly even the CIA were conspiring to subvert the law enforcement duties of the FBI and DEA on behalf of the President.
The implications behind this revelation could be enormous, and at the very least they seem to confirm Republican accusations that the Obama Administration was selling out domestic security interests in order to pursue the risky and now-failed foreign policy gambit of co-opting Iran through a tacit alliance with its ruling “moderate” elites. Seeing as how some of Obama-era “deep state” figures involved in this scandal might still be working with the government, the Trump Administration could use Politico’s report as the pretext for “cleaning house” and removing or professionally neutralizing some of its institutional opponents. It’s speculated that this is what Tillerson has been trying to do for months now, but the latest findings could add a renewed sense of impetus to his efforts.
In addition, apart from the obvious consequences that this revelation could have in further worsening American-Iranian relations and reversing the Obama-era trend towards a rapprochement, there’s another international aspect that needs to be looked at, and that’s the effect that the report will have on the US’ policy towards Latin America.
Politico alleges that “Operation Cassandra” uncovered a diverse criminal network stretching all across the hemisphere, and whether fully true or partially exaggerated, this news could be used to tighten the US’ security arrangements with its regional partners in complementing the theater-wide asymmetrical counteroffensive of “Operation Condor 2.0” that’s been ongoing ever since the 2009 coup against leftist Honduran President Manuel Zelaya.
Relatedly, the allegations of Venezuelan government complicity in Hezbollah’s trans-hemispheric conspiracy could form the basis for new sanctions against the Bolivarian Republic.
All told, this developing scandal might take a while to fully unfold, but it can still be expected to influence the course of the “deep state’s” War on Trump and the US’ policy towards Latin America to one extent or another by the time that it’s all said and done with.
A Wyoming musician had his entire life savings stolen from him in a civil asset forfeiture scheme involving the state and the Wyoming Highway Patrol.
A company whose founder, CEO, and 6 executives have all been arrested for bribing doctors to prescribe opioids, was approved by DEA to sell synthetic THC.
The FDA is now pushing to ban the highly beneficial plant kratom, which is curing opioid addiction. If we look deeper, we can see why they want it illegal.
After keeping a video secret for five years, the world is now finally seeing how the DEA can kill innocent people and get away with it.
Whistleblower Joe Rannazzisi is telling all when it comes to placing blame for the nation’s opioid crisis. He says drug distributors pumped opioids into communities in the United States knowing that people were dying and that the US government is helping.
Joe Rannazzisi is a tough and blunt former DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) deputy assistant administrator with a law degree, a pharmacy degree, and a growing rage at the unrelenting death toll from opioids. Congress has often been complicit in atrocities, especially when a politician profits off of the removal of the rights of others. So it should not come as a surprise that Rannazzisi is blaming Congress and the drug industry for the opioid epidemic gripping the nation.
Rannazzisi ran the DEA’s Office of Diversion Control, the division that regulates and investigates the pharmaceutical industry. Now in a joint investigation by 60 Minutes and The Washington Post, Rannazzisi tells the inside story of how, he says, the opioid crisis was allowed to spread. Its quick spread was also aided by Congress, lobbyists, and a drug distribution industry that shipped, almost unchecked, hundreds of millions of pills to rogue pharmacies and pain clinics providing the rocket fuel for a crisis that, over the last two decades, has claimed 200,000 lives.
The DEA responded to the explosive report that the government is helping keep Americans addicted to opioids so that pharmaceutical companies can continue to boast big profits. The DEA says it has taken actions against far fewer opioid distributors under a new law. A Justice Department memo shows 65 doctors, pharmacies, and drug companies received suspension orders in 2011. Only six of them have gotten them this year. “During the past seven years, we have removed approximately 900 registrations annually, preventing reckless doctors and rogue businesses from making an already troubling problem worse,” the DEA said in a written statement. “Increasingly, our investigators initiated more than 10,000 cases and averaged more than 2,000 arrests per year.”
But Rannazzisi says this is an industry that is out of control and the DEA isn’t making a dent in this crisis. “What they [big pharma] wanna do, is do what they wanna do, and not worry about what the law is. And if they don’t follow the law in drug supply, people die. That’s just it. People die.” The harsh reality is that the burgeoning issue of the opioid epidemic is lining the pockets of the pharmaceutical industry and the politicians who help fuel it, so there’s no real rush to stem the bleeding of this crisis.
“This is an industry that allowed millions and millions of drugs to go into bad pharmacies and doctors’ offices, that distributed them out to people who had no legitimate need for those drugs,” Rannazzisi said.
Most of his anger is reserved for the distributors of opioid drugs. Some of them are actually multibillion-dollar, Fortune 500 companies. They are the middlemen that ship the pain pills from manufacturers, like Purdue Pharma and Johnson & Johnson to drug stores all over the country. Rannazzisi accuses the distributors of fueling the opioid epidemic by turning a blind eye to pain pills being diverted to illicit use.
“This is an industry that allowed millions and millions of drugs to go into bad pharmacies and doctors’ offices, that distributed them out to people who had no legitimate need for those drugs,” Rannazzisi said. “The three largest distributors are Cardinal Health, McKesson, and AmerisourceBergen. They control probably 85 or 90 percent of the drugs going downstream,” he added when prompted. Rannazzisi said it’s a “fact” that the big pharmaceutical companies knew they were pumping drugs into people unnecessarily for profits and that people were dying.
In the late 1990s, opioids like oxycodone and hydrocodone became a routine medical treatment for chronic pain. Drug companies assured doctors and congressional investigators that the pain medications were effective and safe. With many doctors convinced the drugs posed few risks, prescriptions skyrocketed and so did addiction.
Big pharma had a plan. It was solely a business plan. Their plan was to sell a lotta pills and make a lot of money. And they did both of those very well.
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Author: Mac Slavo
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Date: October 16th, 2017
Website: www.SHTFplan.com
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Authored by Carey Wedler via TheAntiMedia.org,
The government fought cannabis - and cannabis won.
This Wednesday is the eightieth anniversary of the first major action the federal government took against cannabis in the United States, and eight decades later, that same federal government has still failed to reduce Americans’ consumption of the plant. In fact, it’s on the rise.
Long before the era of prohibition, druggists used cannabis as a medicine. According to Origins, a joint publication by the Ohio State University and Miami University history departments:
“Cannabis, like opiates and cocaine, was freely available at drug stores in liquid form and as a refined product, hashish. Cannabis was also a common ingredient in turn-of-the-century patent medicines, over-the-counter concoctions brewed to proprietary formulas.”
Then, like today, it helped people relax:
“The hashish candy advertised in an 1862 issue of Vanity Fair as a treatment for nervousness and melancholy, for example, was also ‘a pleasurable and harmless stimulant.’ ‘Under its influence all classes seem to gather new inspiration and energy,’ the advertisement explained.”
Though in 1906 the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act required patent medicine companies to list cannabis as an ingredient in products where it was present – and between 1914 and 1925 26 states passed laws prohibiting it — it wasn’t until 1937 federal authorities took substantial action.
On August 2, 1937, Congress passed the “Marihuana Tax Act,” which was largely the result of anti-narcotic crusader Henry Anslinger’s mission to ban the plant. As Time has explained, creating a “tax” on the substance effectively outlawed it:
“As with the Harrison Narcotic Act in 1914, Congress deemed an act taxing and regulating drugs, rather than prohibiting them, less susceptible to legal challenge. As a result, the 1937 legislation was ostensibly a revenue measure. Just as the Harrison Act used taxation and regulation to, in effect, prohibit morphine, heroin and other drugs, the Marijuana Tax Act essentially outlawed the possession or sale of marijuana.”
There are a variety of documented reasons for this ban. For one, Henry Anslinger was hysterically opposed to drugs. According to Origins, Anslinger, a “former assistant commissioner of the Prohibition Bureau who headed the U.S. Treasury Department’s Narcotics Bureau from 1930 to 1962,” had previously advocated against a ban on cannabis because he believed it would be difficult to enforce (you don’t say!).
Origins explained:
“However, Anslinger began to capitalize on fears about marijuana while pressing a public relations campaign to encourage the passage of uniform anti-narcotics legislation in all 48 states. He later lobbied in favor of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937.”
Many of these fears were the result of calculated campaigns in the 1920s by prohibition activists, who were inspired by their “success” in banning alcohol. Further, William Randolph Hearst, the infamous publishing magnate, launched a campaign to associate cannabis with violence and the degradation of society.
“The association of murder, torture, and mindless violence with marijuana was not borne out by evidence or actual events but blossomed thanks to the vivid imaginations of the journalists charged with sensationalizing the tired story of drug use and addiction,” Origins noted.
Similarly, Anslinger sounded the alarm on the alleged murders and rapes people committed while under the influence of the devil’s lettuce. In 1936, the film Reefer Madness, which now plays like a comedy, warned of the psychosis, violence, and dangers cannabis could bring about. The film warned of “marijuana, the burning weed with its roots in hell.” Much of the testimony advocating the 1937 tax act focused on these unfounded fears, and Anslinger led the way.
“How many murders, suicides, robberies, criminal assaults, holdups, burglaries and deeds of maniacal insanity it causes each year can only be conjectured,” he wrote in a 1937 article titled “Marijuana, Assassin of Youth.” (Today, some research suggests cannabis is not linked to increases in violent crime).
The only witness who testified against the proposed ban was a representative from the American Medical Association, who congressmen dismissed (Anslinger also made an effort throughout his career to discredit research suggesting cannabis was not dangerous). The bill easily passed, undermining legal cannabis and also outlawed the production of hemp. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it into law.
Another related driver behind the ban stemmed from racism within American society. Though cannabis had been used in medicines and hemp was used in industry to produce materials like rope (in the 1600s, colonists were actually required to grow it), Mexican immigrants introduced the practice of smoking the plant, which, “in turn, generated a reaction in the U.S., tinged perhaps with anti-Mexican xenophobia.” This fear spurred the 1906 regulation in the Pure Food and Drug Act and persisted into the 1930s.
As Rolling Stone noted, there had been conversations in the United States not just about cannabis use, but other drugs, since the late 19th century.
“But in the next 50 years, concerns about inebriation only translated into law if the substance wasn’t already controlled by a powerful industry, and if there was a perception, accurate or not, that a given drug was being used by poor people, immigrants, and people of color.”
As fears surrounding substance use grew, Rolling Stone observed, they dovetailed with racist stereotypes about the poor and minorities that assumed these groups were more likely to commit crimes, be lazy, and lack self-control when it came to “sex, violence, and intoxication.”
By 1952, Congress had passed the Boggs Act, which imposed strict mandatory sentences for various drugs, including cannabis. In the 1970s, the Controlled Substances Act was passed, placing drugs into “schedules” as we know them today.
Though Nixon touted the war on drugs as an effort to save society, one of his advisers, John Ehrlichman, reportedly claimed in the 1990s that they pursued cannabis as an effort to criminalize black and anti-war activist. Other former advisers then claimed Ehrlichman was either joking or mistaken, but a cursory examination of arrests for cannabis shows the war on weed has disproportionately affected African-Americans though they use the substance at roughly the same rate as white Americans.
Overall, according to the ACLU, cannabis arrests accounted for over half of all drug arrests between 2000 and 2010, and 88% of those were for possession.
Though states across the country have begun to legalize cannabis both for medicinal and recreational use, the federal government continues to dig its heels in. The DEA recently insisted that even cannabidiol, a non-psychoactive cannabinoid, falls into the ominous Schedule I category, which also includes MDMA, LSD, and mushrooms but fails to cover highly dangerous and toxic legal drugs like alcohol and opioids.
Many industries also continue to oppose cannabis legalization. The alcohol industry, the private prison industry, and prison guard and police unions all lobby against legalization. Most notably, pharmaceutical companies fight to keep cannabis illegal, all while at least one opioid producer concocts its own synthetic cannabis with the approval of the same FDA and DEA that opted to keep cannabis a Schedule I drug.
But against all these odds, cannabis continues to beat the government and establishment’s decades-long fight against it.
Many Americans have outgrown the fears instilled in them through films like Reefer Madness and are beginning to accept a live-and-let-live mentality. Though more research on the plant is undoubtedly needed (and limited due to federal restrictions), preliminary scientific studies and anecdotal evidence suggest the plant has the potential to treat a variety of ailments, from epilepsy to nausea to Parkinson’s disease. Veterans are increasingly using it to treat PTSD.
The United States’ relationship with cannabis is coming full circle, returning to times when it was a common ingredient in everyday medications. Many Americans are opting to substitute opioids with cannabis for pain, and opioid overdose deaths are lower in states with legal medical cannabis. Cannabis also poses a threat to profits from other pharmaceuticals.
Beer company profits have fallen in states where cannabis is legal, and some states are even moving to legalize hemp.
Meanwhile, cannabis industry is expected to generate $20 billion annually by 2020, and police are frequently trolled for attempting to enforce cannabis laws that Americans increasingly perceive as petty and unproductive.
All the while, federal bureaucracies continue to lag behind, clinging to outdated myths and prohibitions that — over the course of the better half of a century — have been debunked and proven ineffective, which is unsurprising considering humans have been consuming the plant for well over 2,000 years.
The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) met with members of Congress this week to discuss multiple issues when a Republican congressman asked a question that would expose the state’s immoral and tyrannical war on drugs in an accidental stroke of logic.
Harold Watson “Trey” Gowdy III is a member of the Tea Party movement and the Republican Party and serves as a congressman from South Carolina. He is also the chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. During the meeting with the ONDCP this week, Gowdy asked why marijuana was a schedule I drug.
Schedule I “drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse,” the DEA claims. Given the mountains of evidence showing the beneficial nature of the cannabis plant, the DEA’s claims are nothing short of asinine and tyrannical.
However, marijuana continues to be categorized as such, paving the way for the police state to lay waste to rights and fill prisons for profit.
When Gowdy asks Richard Baum, the acting director of Trump’s ONDCP, why marijuana is a schedule one, Baum immediately skirts the question. He then digresses into support for big pharma’s version of synthetic marijuana by saying that the FDA-approved versions of marijuana components can help people.
While Gowdy didn’t go so far as to call for the legalization of cannabis — because it would likely mean political suicide among his staunchly conservative base — his line of questioning set off a conversation that would eventually expose the war on drugs.
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Cannabis has never killed anyone — ever. That being said, however, cocaine and meth kill thousands every year. Yet, as Baum concedes, the DEA considers them safer than this amazing plant.
READ MORE: Hero Cops Bust Elderly Man for Visiting His Dying Grandchild Because He Had an Illegal Plant
When Gowdy brings this up, Baum is unable to respond and uncomfortably squirms in his chair — likely knowing the real reason marijuana remains a schedule one drug.
Gowdy then turns over the floor to Gerald Connolly, who continued the accidental exposé of the American drug war.
“We’ve put people in jail…It’s had huge consequences based on little to no scientific evidence,” said congressman Gerald Connolly, who bluntly hit the nail on the head.
The reality of the war on drugs is that it is not based on scientific evidence. Instead, it is based on a dark history of oppression, racism, and political corruption.
In spite of some form of cannabis being legal in some fashion in 29 states and Washington D.C., the government still violently and with extreme prejudice continues to seek out those who dare possess it.
If the CDC calculated the number of deaths inflicted by police while enforcing marijuana laws, that number would certainly be shocking and could even be deemed a risk to public health. Marijuana is, indeed, dangerous, but only because of what can happen to you if the police catch you with it.
Nothing highlights the hypocrisy, immorality, and sheer idiocy of the drug war quite like marijuana prohibition. Here we have a medicine that kills cancer cells, saves the lives of countless epileptic children, heals broken bones, relieves pain, treats PTSD, is not dangerous, and exhibits a variety of other incredible benefits – yet the state will kill you over it.
So why do these tyrants keep it illegal?
If you want to know who profits from ruining lives and throwing marijuana users in cages, we need only look at who bribes (also known as lobbies) the politicians to keep the war on drugs alive.
READ MORE: Black Man Sought Refugee Status in Canada to Escape Police Brutality in Native Country - America
Below is a list of the top five industries who need you locked in a cage for possessing a plant in order to ensure their job security.
What does it say about a society who’s resolute in enacting violence against their fellow human so they can have a job to go to in the morning?
The person who wants to ingest a substance for medical or recreational reasons is not the criminal. However, the person that would kidnap, cage, or kill someone because they have a different lifestyle, is a villain on many fronts.
READ MORE: Pablo Escobar"s Son: Drug Cartels Will Die "The Day Drugs are Legalized"
The good news is that the drug war’s days are numbered. Evidence of this is everywhere. States are defying the federal government and refusing to lock people in cages for marijuana. A record number of law enforcement personnel are even quitting their jobs and joining the push to end the drug war.
Colorado and Washington served as a catalyst in a seemingly exponential awakening to the government’s immoral war. Following suit were Oregon, D.C., and Alaska, and now Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada. Medical marijuana initiatives are becoming a constant part of legislative debates nationwide. We’ve even seen bills that would not only completely legalize marijuana but deregulate it entirely, like corn.
Also, while the idea of treating an addict with compassion instead of violence is a radical notion in this country, in other countries, such as Portugal, its effects have been realized for more than a decade. In 2001, the Portuguese government decriminalized all drugs.
14 years later, drug use, crime, and overdoses have drastically declined in Portugal exposing the cruel reality of prohibition. Eventually, more states will adopt this approach, and the drug war tyrants will finally be outnumbered.
As more and more states refuse to kidnap and cage marijuana users, the drug war will continue to implode. We must be resilient in this fight.
If doing drugs bothers you, don’t do drugs. When you transition from holding an opinion — to using government violence to enforce your personal preference, you become the bad guy. Please, for all that is good, don’t be the bad guy.
More than three years after the FBI shut down the Silk Road, the pioneering dark-web marketplace for drugs and illegal goods, the FBI and DEA – working with international law-enforcement agencies - have busted two more dark-web marketplaces that facilitated the sales of illicit items like drugs, weapons and stolen data, according to the Department of Justice.
AlphaBay and Hansa, two of the largest illegal marketplaces on the dark web, have been shut down and their operators arrested during a collaboration between US and European police agencies, according to the BBC. Investigations were led by the FBI and DEA in partnership with Europol.
The takedown has severely disrupted criminal enterprises around the world, has led to the arrest of key figures involved in online criminal activity, and yielded huge amounts of intelligence that will lead to further investigations, according to a Europol press release.
#BREAKING: @TheJusticeDept, #FBI, @DEA_HQ, and @Europol announce takedown of largest Darknet marketplace, #AlphaBay. https://t.co/JS9rG2stXX
— FBI (@FBI) July 20, 2017
US authorities became interested in the site after several fatalities, including the deaths of two 13-year-old boys in Park City, Utah, who overdosed on a powerful synthetic opioid known as “pinky,” were linked to AlphaBay, according to Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
"One victim was just 18 years old when in February she overdosed on a powerful synthetic opioid which she had bought on AlphaBay,” Sessions said, before warning criminals that “you cannot hide” from the DOJ. “We will find you," he said.
The takedown was part of a larger international effort to take down dark web sites, according to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
AlphaBay has been offline since early July, fueling suspicions among users that a law enforcement crackdown had taken place. Previously, the site had as many as 40,000 vendors and 200,000 members, according to figures from Europol ad the DOJ. Canadian Alexandre Cazes, a 26-year-old alleged administrator at Alpha Bay, was arrested in Thailand on July 5, allowing authorities to begin seizing assets belonging to him and his wife. Police also seized three properties, four Lamborghinis, and millions of dollars’ worth of bitcoin, which they said represented the proceeds from the site’s illegal activities.
According to DOJ, Cazes, known as Alpha02 and Admin on the site, was charged with one count of conspiracy to engage in racketeering, one count of conspiracy to distribute narcotics, six counts of distribution of narcotics, one count of conspiracy to commit identity theft, four counts of unlawful transfer of false identification documents, one count of conspiracy to commit access device fraud, one count of trafficking in device making equipment, and one count of money laundering conspiracy.
Cazes was later found dead in a Bangkok jail cell. A year ago, Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison without parole for his role in operating the Silk Road.
Police in other countries, including the UK, France and Lithuania, also contributed to the investigation.
The Dutch National Police took over the Hansa marketplace on 20 June after servers in the Netherlands, Germany and Lithuania were seized, according to the BBC.
This allowed for "the covert monitoring of criminal activities on the platform" until it was eventually shut down a month later.
Sessions applauded the DOJ’s work on the investigation and warned criminals that there’s “no place to hide” from law enforcement, even on the dark web, according to a DOJ press release.
“This is likely one of the most important criminal investigations of the year – taking down the largest dark net marketplace in history,” Sessions said. “Make no mistake, the forces of law and justice face a new challenge from the criminals and transnational criminal organizations who think they can commit their crimes with impunity using the dark net. The dark net is not a place to hide. The Department will continue to find, arrest, prosecute, convict, and incarcerate criminals, drug traffickers and their enablers wherever they are.”
Organized crime poses a “serious threat to our national and economic security,” said acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe.
“Whether they operate in broad daylight or on the dark net, we will never stop working to find and stop these criminal syndicates. We want to thank our international partners and those at the Department of Justice, the DEA and the IRS-CI for their hard work in demonstrating what we can do when we stand together.”
Europol Executive Director Rob Wainwright said the operation was "massively successful."
"Concerted action by law enforcement authorities in the United States and Europe, with the support of Europol, has delivered a massive blow to the underground criminal economy and sends a clear message that the dark web is not a safe area for criminals. I pay tribute to the excellent work of the United States and European authorities for the imaginative and resourceful way they combined their efforts in this case.”
While Sessions & Co. were taking questions, one reporter asked Sessions if he’d like to comment on rumors that he might resign, sparked by disparaging comments made about Sessions by President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times. Sessions said he plans to stay on at DOJ “as long as that is appropriate.”
Following its creation in December 2014, AlphaBay emerged as an heir to the Silk Road, according to the Wall Street Journal. Both sites were accessible via Tor, a network that takes steps to preserve the anonymity of its users.
While the Silk Road’s primary focus was drug sales, AlphaBay was more diverse, selling stolen credit-card numbers, drugs, online-fraud tutorials and guns, Andrei Barysevich, a director at Recorded Future Inc., which sells data about online threats and the Dark Web, told WSJ.
Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,
“Seventeen intelligence agencies”? - ?if you’ve been following the maniacal #TrumpRussia coverage to any extent, you’ve heard this phrase used uncritically, time and again, regardless of your ideological loyalties. Pundits, papers and rank-and-file establishment loyalists have been unquestioningly regurgitating the nonsensical line that 17 intelligence agencies confirmed Russian interference in the US elections ever since Hillary Clinton made that baseless assertion in a debate back in October.
Clinton"s "17 US intelligence agencies" may be the biggest, most immediately disprovable wopper ever intentionally made during a debate.
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 20, 2016
Hillary Clinton"s "17 US intelligence agencies" include:
*Coast Guard
*DEA
*Navel Intelligence
*Department of Energy
*Air Force recon— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 20, 2016
The innate absurdity of the claim was immediately attacked by WikiLeaks and anti-establishment outlets who pointed out that this would necessarily need to involve full investigations from agencies like the Coast Guard, the DEA and the Energy Department in order to be true. Nevertheless, many high-profile pro-establishment outlets like Politifact and USA Today found Clinton’s claims to be 100 percent true on the grounds that James Clapper, then-Director of National Intelligence and notorious Russophobic racist, “speaks on behalf of” all 17 intelligence agencies. To this day Politifact stands by its false claim on the basis of that same spurious assertion.
3490 fake news stories that reported that "17 intelligence agencies" made US election hacking report when only 3 did https://t.co/QGaG47rzBL
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) May 8, 2017
New Cracks in Russia-gate ‘Assessment’ https://t.co/pEb9Nsdobq Can you say WMD"s in Iraq? Does this look like "17 intelligence agencies? pic.twitter.com/ZJkqTZtMmb
— Laughing Lefty (@laughingliberal) May 23, 2017
It turns out, however, that in addition to Clapper’s office there were only three intelligence agencies involved in that assessment, not 17, and that the conclusions were drawn not by the actual agencies in full, but by a mere two dozen loyalists from those agencies hand-selected by Russophobic eugenicist Clapper himself. The great Robert Parry notes in his Consortium News article about this point, “as any intelligence expert will tell you, if you ‘hand-pick’ the analysts, you are really hand-picking the conclusion. For instance, if the analysts were known to be hard-liners on Russia or supporters of Hillary Clinton, they could be expected to deliver the one-sided report that they did.”
As reported by Parry, we have known about these facts since they emerged from Clapper’s racist face hole on May 8, and they were confirmed by former CIA Director John Brennan on May 23. And yet at a California technology conference on May 31, Hillary Clinton repeated the same lie she’s been spouting since October:
“Seventeen agencies, all in agreement, which I know from my experience as a Senator and Secretary of State, is hard to get. They concluded with high confidence that the Russians ran an extensive information war campaign against my campaign, to influence voters in the election. They did it through paid advertising we think; they did it through false news sites; they did it through these thousand agents; they did it through machine learning, which you know, kept spewing out this stuff over and over again. The algorithms that they developed. So that was the conclusion.”
The “17 intelligence agencies” lie had been completely, thoroughly debunked for weeks, and yet not a soul called Clinton out on her brazen lie within the establishment press. Indeed, establishment pundits like Megyn Kelly continued to repeat the lie, and have continued to do so throughout the month of June.
NYT issues a correction repudiating the "17 intelligence agencies" canard that continues to get endlessly repeated https://t.co/lXDrPTPsHe pic.twitter.com/2gCuqjRBNM
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) June 29, 2017
All this changed when CNN was sent reeling by a 1–2–3-punch combination ensuing from its horrendously propagandistic Russia coverage, which has seen three of its journalists lose their jobs and sent the network into international disgrace. All of a sudden we are seeing establishment outlets getting a lot more conscientious about what they choose to publish about the Russian Federation, and today we saw none other than the New York Times posting the very first retraction of this long-debunked lie that we have seen in establishment media.
A White House Memo article on Monday about President Trump’s deflections and denials about Russia referred incorrectly to the source of an intelligence assessment that said Russia orchestrated hacking attacks during last year’s presidential election.
The assessment was made by four intelligence agencies — the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community.
You just know how that went down, too; the retraction tells a complete story with a beginning, middle and end. The article’s author repeated the “17 intelligence agencies” lie without so much as a second thought, because it’s something they’ve been saying for months and getting away with?—?hey, it’s only Russia, right? They’re the Official Bad Guys so we can print whatever we want about them. The Washington Post has been getting away with telling brazen lie after brazen lie about Russia and suffering no consequences for it whatsoever, so we’ve got plenty of wiggle room here. The article passed by the editors for the same reason, but then someone up top received a complaint about the false claim in the article and immediately pulled the author into his office, yelling, “You fool! What’s the matter with you? Are you trying to get us CNNed???”
As I never get tired of reminding the brainwashed consumers of mainstream media, Russiagate is bullshit, and we fucking told you so. The entire thing was sparked off by two dozen agents hand-selected by a racist man with a racist agenda, and only persists because the US deep state wants regime change in Moscow and Damascus. This moronic conspiracy theory has been permitted to march on for far too long, and in the meantime we’ve been goose stepped to the brink of World War 3 as a result of this administration’s idiotic behavior in Syria. That’s where a real resistance needs to happen; not a McResistance to imaginary threats fed to the masses by the lying corporate media, but a real resistance to a very real and tangible threat from actions by the Trump administration and the unelected power establishment with which he is unquestionably aligned in a nation that the United States has no business involving itself in whatsoever.
Come on, America. I know you can snap out of the trance they’ve got you in. I know you’ve got it in you. Slam the brakes on the course they’ve got you on. Protest US involvement in Syria. Don’t let them Iraq you again.
The DEA won"t let the possibility of mass murder stop it from carrying out the crusade of prohibition as a damning new report highlights.
Autism could now be added to the lengthy and perpetually-expanding list of afflictions and symptoms treatable with the one product of nature shamefully prohibited by the federal government — the “miracle” palliative, cannabis.
One in every 68 children in the United States is now affected by autism, and the number of kids coping with the developmental disorder has been increasing at an explosive rate in recent years. With onset most common during infancy and early childhood, autism can impact social and communication skills and may cause repetitive or compulsive behaviors, among other manifestations.
Now, fresh evidence again frowns upon U.S. federal prohibition of cannabis — listed as a Schedule I dangerous substance of no potential medical use, alongside heroin — which could be depriving ailing children the chance for treatment, and hope for a better-adjusted future.
In contrast to its staunch U.S. ally, Israel has approached the cannabis plant as the medicinal healer it has more than proven to be — medical marijuana was first approved in Israel decades ago, in 1992, making it one of the first in the world to do so.
As USA Today notes, in a recent article titled, Marijuana may be a miracle treatment for children with autism, Israel and just two other countries — Canada and the Netherlands — have government-sponsored medical marijuana programs available to citizens.
As USA Today reports:
When Noa Shulman came home from school, her mother, Yael, sat her down to eat, then spoon-fed her mashed sweet potatoes — mixed with cannabis oil.
Noa, who has a severe form of autism, started to bite her own arm. “No sweetie,” Yael gently told her 17-year-old daughter. “Here, have another bite of this.”
Noa is part of the first clinical trial in the world to test the benefits of medicinal marijuana for young people with autism, a potential breakthrough that would offer relief for millions of afflicted children — and their anguished parents.
Because of the notorious, if not nefarious, American war on drugs irresponsibly focuses on the cannabis plant as a dangerous substance sans redeeming medical value, research here lags exponentially behind other nations — unnecessary red tape, regulations, laws, and restrictions make procuring clearance for scientific study a somewhat odious hurdle.
To wit, the Food and Drug Administration — which, incidentally, oversees the drug warriors of the DEA — has thus far only approved two antipsychotic pharmaceuticals for the treatment of symptoms of autism. Both of those come replete with a host of serious and untenable side effects — making the choice to treat a difficult one, at best.
Israeli researchers, unbound by the absurdities of the drug war, began a new study in January at the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, comprised of 120 children ranging in age from five to 29 years, who have been diagnosed with mild to severe autism.
Study participants are given one of two cannabis oil treatments or a placebo, drops of which can be mixed into a meal — none contain high levels of THC, the ingredient which gives users a ‘high.’
“Adi Aran, the pediatric neurologist leading the study, said nearly all the participants previously took antipsychotics and nearly half responded negatively. Yael desperately pushed Aran and other doctors to prescribe cannabis oil after a news report aired about a mother who illegally obtained it for her autistic son and said it was the only thing that helped him,” USA Today reports.
Myriad scientific studies and innumerable anecdotal cases have proven cannabis to treat everything from PTSD to ADHD, various cancers to the painful pressure of glaucoma — but the plant’s miraculous quality has been most apparent in treating severe seizures of childhood epilepsy.
Now, it appears, cannabis — specifically, the non-psychoactive compound, cannabidiol or CBD — may offer improved quality of life for children with autism, and the families providing their care.
“Many parents were asking for cannabis for their kids,” Aran told USA Today. “First I said, ‘No, there’s no data to support cannabis for autism, so we can’t give it to you.’”
Doubt quickly lifted, however, after multiple studies championed cannabis in the treatment of childhood epilepsy and in reducing the severity of symptoms of autism. Aran points out 30 percent of children with autism are also afflicted with epilepsy.
In an observational study, the doctor found 70 patients with autism experienced positive results from cannabis — so the clinical trial was launched for in-depth study.
Where Israel provides hope for families of children with various ailments with government-sponsored cannabis care, parents in the United States are forced to grapple with a patchwork of laws and regulations. Packing up a house of belongings to flee draconian marijuana laws for life-saving cannabis treatment has become commonplace to the point such families are now deemed, in all seriousness, medical refugees.
As long as cannabis prohibition remains in effect — an overwhelming likelihood, given the profiteering possible at every level of the system, from police departments to courts to for-profit prisons, and so on — children and adults will needlessly suffer without the healing powers of a substance that couldn’t get anyone high.
One-hundred-ten clinical trials of cannabis are currently underway in Israel — and although there may be many in the U.S., research primarily focuses on the treatment of addiction and related issues.
Should cannabis, specifically, CBD oil, prove its mettle in treating the symptoms of autism in children, it would behoove U.S. bureaucrats and drug warriors to pay attention and save lives — rather than standing tough on an anachronistic and harmful national policy.
(ANTIMEDIA) Before the heroin epidemic became a nationwide problem, claiming thousands of lives, Plano, Texas, was already entrenched. And like many of the places caught in the crosshairs of the continuing heroin crisis, Plano is the last place that one would expect to be swept into the opioid tidal wave.
Anti-Media recently interviewed Texas-native Belita Nelson, who has had an interesting few decades. For six years she termed herself the “chief propagandist” — or spokeswoman — for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Before that, as a Plano mother and teacher, Belita noticed what was happening in her community. She described Plano as an area rivaling Newtown, Connecticut, or Cape Cod — tight-knit regions where tragedy strikes hard and deep.
She explained that “[Plano] has the best school districts in the state of Texas…it’s a gated community. And in 1998, for heroin to be that prevalent in the community was stunning. Stunning. We got all the media attention because we were this upscale Texas neighborhood that nobody thought would be inundated with heroin.”
Nelson decided to take action, saying, “I decided I’d had it. I was going to organize my community and fight this thing at the grassroots level. But we were never grassroots because the first thing I did was go on the Oprah show for the DEA.”
Belita stresses that she was never officially employed by the DEA but traveled for six years as a sort of unofficial spokeswoman for the agency. The group recruited her because their goals aligned, and in many ways, she was perfect for the role. She was a mother who had witnessed the toll of heroin first-hand. She was passionate and knew what she was talking about. Belita spoke to schools and parent groups and appeared on television networks.
With the help of a former Dallas Cowboy, she founded the Starfish Foundation to tackle heroin addiction. That organization ran until 2004 when one of the employees pocketed the donation money and left the foundation scrambling in the dark.
In our interview, Belita was hesitant to speak too openly but mentioned that when she first went to work with the DEA (she was contacted and became familiar with agency’s goals), she was told “‘Marijuana is safe, we know it’s safe, but it’s our cash cow and we will never, ever, give it up.’” When the DEA seizes a car or makes a drug bust, it’s likely they’ll find wads of money. They turn in the pot (or other drugs) — and keep the cash. Civil asset forfeiture law essentially gives the police and feds free reign, and they have confiscated billions of dollars from Americans, a majority of whom have not been charged with a crime.
Belita, like many people, posits that the DEA is not willing to give up the long disproven idea that marijuana is a “gateway drug.” Unlike heroin, most people are open to trying marijuana. At high school or college parties, it’s much more likely that a joint is being passed around than a needle. While a joint conjures up images of Bob Weir or SOJA on stage, a needle brings to mind a lifeless Philip Seymour Hoffman or Basquiat.
Belita cut ties with the DEA in 2004 after becoming frustrated with the system and the government’s need to keep marijuana criminalized, despite knowledge that the drug was safe.
While at the Starfish Foundation, Belita heard time and time again the tale of pot-smoking teenagers who were pushed into heroin simply because marijuana carries harsh penalties. And it’s a story that’s been told repeatedly. Today Belita works for the Gridiron Cannabis Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting CTE, concussions, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, neuropathy, dementia, chronic inflammation, Leukemia, and brain and other cancers. But the group’s pockets that only stretch so far.
In contrast, her opposition — and the opposition of anyone fighting the heroin epidemic and hoping to legalize marijuana — are big pharma companies.
Recently, we’ve seen pharma companies hit the grassroots to secure influence. Anti-Media and a number of other news outlets recently reported on an opioid company pumping half a million dollars into Arizona anti-marijuana groups in an effort to keep the plant illegal. These sorts of campaigns do not serve the dead in Plano and the hundreds of thousands around the nation suffering from opioid addiction. Rather, they benefit CEOs and pharmaceutical groups who have invested millions in developing drugs that minimize pain. Unfortunately, they come with a dangerously high likelihood of addiction.
Big pharma corporations see dollar signs in every painkiller that moves across a counter, but some of which could easily be replaced by marijuana, which is increasingly proven to help decrease pain. So the American consumer, from Plano, Texas, to Portland, Maine, is faced with the dilemma — is it better to be a living Bob Weir or a dead Basquiat?
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When Richard Nixon decided to bring the War on Drugs into full force, he signed Reorganization Plan No. 2, in 1973, which established the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). For decades, the DEA has carried out a war on people as it enforces the senseless, unjust prohibition of arbitrary substances.
Government ruins countless lives – locking people in cages for years or life, tearing apart families – for victimless “crimes” such as possessing cannabis or other “illicit” drugs. In a glaring example of hypocirsy, however, the DEA is teaching Americans a telling lesson —you’re not supposed to sell or possess substances that are deemed illegal by the State – unless you work for the State.
In a recent House Judiciary Committee Hearing, the DEA’s acting director, Chuck Rosenberg, was caught off-guard by a question and tacitly admitted that his agency sells drugs and lets drugs flow into communities. The ostensible purpose is to catch bigger drug dealers, but Rosenberg could not even summon the typical bureaucratic doublespeak to address the issue.
Louisiana Rep. Cedric L. Richmond was questioning Rosenberg at the hearing.
RICHMOND: This committee held many hearings, and was furious about the Fast and Furious program. At least from my knowledge of DEA and other drug agencies, oftentimes part of a bigger sting is letting transactions and other things go through. Now, it’s a very specific question. In DEA’s past, present, future, any times do you let drugs hit communities to get the bigger fish?
ROSENBERG: We’re not supposed to – no, sir.
RICHMOND: Okay. Are you aware of any instances where it may happen?
ROSENBERG: I’ll have to check and get back to you on that.”
Rosenberg’s first answer is, “We’re not supposed to – no, sir.” However, this does not change the reality of the situation that DEA lets drugs flow into communities and actually sells drugs. Rosenberg didn’t deny it, because denying it would amount to lying.
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As the Washington Post notes, DEA trafficks drugs through undercover agents and they use of confidential informants.
DEA catches small-time drug users or sellers and threatens jail and other punishments, unless the subject agrees to work for the government to catch other people. The DEA then has the frightened subjects engage in “otherwise illegal activity,” having them pose as buyers or sellers of drugs.
DEA is “trafficking in what would be considered as large quantities of controlled substances,” as a 2015 Dept. of Justice Inspector General report noted. That report also stated: “These inadequate DEA policies and procedures related to OIA greatly increase the risk to the DEA, the U.S. government, and the public from the involvement of DEA confidential sources in OIA.”
Indeed, the threat to the public is well documented, as some of those coerced into becoming informants end up murdered. In one heartbreaking case, Rachel Hoffman – a young college graduate whose “crime” was smoking pot – was shot and killed after cops coerced her into going undercover for a large drug deal.
No one really knows the scale of DEA drug trafficking, as the agency does not release this information, but outside experts say the DEA sells drugs on a routine basis.
Even more infuriating is the fact that DEA and law enforcement lets drugs flow into communities for the sole purpose of seizing cash and assets under the insidious practice of civil asset forfeiture, or policing for profit. As we reported on March 30, the DEA has stolen $3.2 billion over the past decade – from people never charged with a crime. Drug task forces work the highways where they know cash travels, instead of the actual drug routes.
READ MORE: Govt Denies Hungry Families Thanksgiving Food Because a Pro-Cannabis Group Donated It
“We are deliberately letting the drugs get to their final destination, get sold, get used, and in some cases letting someone die of an overdose,” said Brady Henderson of the ACLU.
So let’s get this straight. The DEA, tasked with enforcing federal government’s prohibition on drugs, is actually trafficking large quantities of drugs for the ostensible purpose of catching bigger drug dealers, or just to steal cash from people. After decades of the miserable drug war, drugs and drug use are still as prevalent as ever, so the war on drugs clearly is not working.
But the DEA still funnels large quantities of drugs into communities, even though their success rate at combating drug use is ZERO as drug overdoses are at an all time high. What, then, could possibly be the rationale for continuing?
The thrill of exerting power over the populace is one answer. Continuing the oppression of minorities and dissenters is another. The billions of dollars stolen from innocent people is surely an incentive to continue. Protecting the profits of Big Pharma is another answer to this puzzling irrationality.
The DEA was recently caught deliberately slowing its investigations into the makers of prescription opioid manufacturers, which constitute the biggest and most deadly drug dealers in the nation. The DEA’s first case against an opioid maker faltered, resulting in a laughable $35 million fine against the company.
Exhibit A of DEA’s astounding level of ignorance and injustice is their maintaining of cannabis as a Schedule 1 drug with “no accepted medical benefit.” Even as most U.S. states have recognized the amazing power of cannabis to heal a variety of ailments, DEA somehow remains in a state of total denial.
READ MORE: New Mexico Grand Jury Finds Police Shooting Unjustified- DA Refuses to Prosecute
The War on Drugs is a war on people. The DEA not only ruins lives by enforcing unjust prohibition, but it’s also neck deep in perpetuating the black market.
Image source: Flickr / Creative Commons / https://www.flickr.com/photos/pictures-of-money/
WASHINGTON — One single branch of the U.S. government, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), has collected more than $4 billion through civil forfeiture since 2007.
Disturbingly, most of that money — $3.2 billion — was seized in cash without criminal charges or convictions, a report from the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Justice found this week. The $3.2 billion figure does not include the value of cars, homes and other items the DEA took.
The report – dubbed “The Review of the Department’s Oversight of Cash Seizure and Forfeiture” – found that reasons for the seizures included “traveling to or from a known source city for drug trafficking, purchasing a ticket within 24 hours of travel, purchasing a ticket for a long flight with an immediate return, purchasing a one-way ticket, and traveling without checked luggage.”
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Darpana Sheth, senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, told The Washington Post that the report “raises serious concerns that maybe the real purpose here is not to fight crime, but to seize and forfeit property.”
Civil forfeiture is the controversial method whereby law enforcement officials can seize property they believe to be tied to drug trafficking, without going to trial or even pressing charges. (Listen to Off The Grid Radio’s in-depth report on it here.)
Sheth said a criminal conviction should be required to seize money.
“Nobody in America should lose their property without being convicted of a crime,” Sheth said. “If our goal is to curb crime, we should simply abolish civil forfeiture.”
Do you support or oppose civil forfeiture? Share your thoughts in the section below:
A bombshell report from the Inspector General (IG) at the Department of Justice has exposed the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for the colossal thieves they are. According to the report, DEA seized more than $4 billion in cash from people since 2007, but $3.2 billion of the seizures were never connected to any criminal charges. That figure does not even include the seizure of cars and electronics.
This thievery is possible through the insidious practice of civil asset forfeiture (CAF), where law enforcement can seize cash and property on the mere suspicion of being involved in criminal activity. Originally developed in the 1980s to go after organized crime, CAF has mushroomed into a source of revenue for cops across the country – from local to state to federal – in what’s become known as Policing for Profit.
When an innocent person’s cash is stolen by DEA, that person must petition to get it back, meaning the burden of proof (and the burden of time and expense) is on the unlucky victim who never did anything wrong in the first place. In fact, “forfeiture proceedings start from the presumption of guilt.”
It’s a clever scheme, and DEA knows it. The IG found that petitions were filed in only 20 percent of DEA cash seizures. As Reason Magazine points out, the IG report highlights just how arbitrary these seizures can be.
“We found that different task force officers made different decisions in similar situations when deciding whether to seize all of the cash discovered,” the Inspector General wrote. “These differences demonstrate how seizure decisions can appear arbitrary, which should be a concern for the Department, both because of potentially improper conduct and because even the appearance of arbitrary decision-making in asset seizure can fuel public perception that law enforcement is not using this authority legitimately, thereby undermining public confidence in law enforcement.”
The case of a man traveling at an airport with $27,000 is a prime example of how DEA can just take the cash on a whim, without even bothering to pretend it has to do with criminal activity.
“When a task force officer explained that the U.S. currency in the bag was going to be seized pending further investigation, the passenger asked whether he could keep some of the currency to travel home. The passenger asserted that all of the currency in the bag was his, and the task force officers allowed him to retain $1,000. This seizure resulted in an administrative forfeiture of $27,000 to the U.S. government, and the DEA explained to the OIG that, other than the events surrounding the seizure, there was no subsequent investigative activity or additional law enforcement benefit.”
Reason Magainze sums it up perfectly.
“If the DEA task force agents thought that man’s cash was connected to drug activity, why allow him to keep some of it? If they weren’t sure, why take it in the first place? The answer, of course, is there is no logical or legal rationale for this sequence of events.”
Indeed, most of the DEA’s cash seizures don’t relate to any criminal investigation, and 82 percent of the cases reviewed by the IG were settled without any judicial review. The DEA focuses on airports, train stations and bus terminals, relying on travel records and a host of confidential informants to target people they believe will have lots of cash.
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DEA gives itself wide latitude to pin you as a suspect for detainment and search. Woe to those “traveling to or from a known source city for drug trafficking, purchasing a ticket within 24 hours of travel, purchasing a ticket for a long flight with an immediate return, purchasing a one-way ticket, and traveling without checked luggage.”
The IG concludes that DEA is posing great risks to civil liberties by continuing the practices highlighted in its report.
‘‘When seizure and administrative forfeitures do not ultimately advance an investigation or prosecution, law enforcement creates the appearance, and risks the reality, that it is more interested in seizing and forfeiting cash than advancing an investigation or prosecution.’’
The IG states that “risks to civil liberties are particularly significant when seizures that do not advance or relate to an investigation are conducted without a court-issued seizure warrant, the presence of illicit narcotics, or subsequent judicial involvement prior to administrative forfeiture.”
The threat to civil liberties posed by CAF is being recognized more and more, as states continue to abolish the practice by requiring a criminal conviction before cash and assets can be seized. But the federal government is a primary reason why CAF still runs rampant, through the euphemistically named Equitable Sharing Fund where the stolen loot (amounting to $28 billion over the last decade) is shared by federal and state drug task forces.
“These findings fundamentally undercut law enforcement’s claim that civil forfeiture is a vital crime-fighting tool. Americans are already outraged at the Justice Department’s aggressive use of civil forfeiture, which has mushroomed into a multibillion dollar program in the last decade. This report only further confirms what we have been saying all along: Forfeiture laws create perverse financial incentives to seize property without judicial oversight and violate due process.
This report is one more illustration that the only solution to resolving these issues is to end the use of civil forfeiture once and for all. – The Institute for Justice“
