10
Apr 02

Get a Free NORML Button

Send an email to Mayor Bloomberg and get a free button from NORML. On the hemp front, Alex White Plume, who lives on a reservation in South Dakota, defies the DEA and keeps planting hemp. They come by around harvest time and bring their weedwhackers. He keeps on planting it. It costs him about fourteen dollars for the hemp seed.


    “Smoke industrial hemp, and all you’re going to get is a headache,” said Eric Steenstra, president of VoteHemp, a nonprofit advocacy group. A research facility in Hawaii is the only place in the United States where industrial hemp grows legally, he said. It’s grown elsewhere around the world, however, including in Canada. In January, a Canadian hemp grower announced intent to sue the U.S. government, claiming the proposed ban on hemp products violates provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

09
Apr 02

Bloomberg Aids Legalization Efforts

From NY Post article. This is great though it’s obvious Bloomberg didn’t mean to aid with decriminalization efforts. Good for NORML:


    A pro-marijuana group is using a pot-positive quote uttered by Mayor Bloomberg last year, in a new $500,000 ad campaign to be unveiled today.

    “Great. I’m thrilled,” Bloomberg quipped sarcastically yesterday when asked about the ad after a joint press conference with the Fire Department.

    Bloomberg bluntly admitted to New York magazine in April 2001 he had smoked marijuana in the past – and definitely inhaled.

    “You bet I did, and I enjoyed it,” Bloomberg said at the time.

    The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws plans to plaster the ads throughout the city, urging the NYPD to stop locking up pot smokers.

    “I’m not thrilled they’re using my name,” Bloomberg said yesterday. “I suppose it’s that First Amendment that gets in the way of me stopping it.”

Yeah, damn pesky First Ammendment. What a fucker.


09
Apr 02

Thought Crime – Denied!

Bookstore Cannot Be Forced to Divulge Buyers, Court Says from NY Times Article:


    DENVER, April 8 — A local bookstore does not have to turn over customer sales records to help police investigators determine who bought a book on how to make illegal drugs, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled today.

    In a unanimous decision, the state’s highest court found that both the First Amendment and the Colorado Constitution “protect an individual’s fundamental right to purchase books anonymously, free from governmental interference.”

Finally some good news!


07
Apr 02

Marijuana’s impact on intelligence

Peter Fried and colleagues report that light and former use of marijuana does not appear to have a long-term effect on intelligence, while heavy use appears to be detrimental.

Fried and colleagues followed 70 subjects in the Ottawa Prenatal Prospective Study, and compared intelligence quotient (IQ) scores of subjects at 9–12 years of age (before initiation of marijuana use) with their scores at 17-20 years. The authors grouped subjects as nonusers (n= 37), light users (less than 5 joints per week, n=9), former users of marijuana (no marijuana use in at least 3 months, n=9) or heavy users.

The authors found that among heavy users (more than 5 joints per week, n=15) IQ scores decreased by 4.1 points on average, while gains in IQ scores were seen among light users (mean 5.8 points), former users (mean 3.5 points), and nonusers (mean 2.6).

The authors state that while there was a significant decline in IQ scores, the scores of the subjects — at a mean of 109.1 — were still above average at the young adult assessment (mean 105.1). They add that if preteen IQ had not been assessed, the subjects would have appeared to be functioning normally. The authors suggest further investigation into the cognitive consequences of both current and previous marijuana use, particularly since the popularity of the drug has been increasing over the last 4 years.


07
Apr 02

Too Good to Serve

soldiers.jpg

Looking at this site it appears that most prominent Republicans were too good to serve their country in the military. That goes for our asshole-in-chief. Hypocrite assholes.


07
Apr 02

Shortchanged

From MSNBC:

Economists have known for a long time that it pays to be tall. Multiple studies have found that an extra inch of height can be worth an extra $1,000 a year or so in wages, after controlling for education and experience. If you’re 6 feet tall, you probably earn about $6,000 more than the equally qualified 5-foot-6-inch shrimp down the hall.


07
Apr 02

Israeli Dance

Israeli soldiers celebrated the recent revenge attacks against civilians with a couples-only dance. An estimated 100 Palestinians were killed by the Israelis. Many of them died bleeding to death because Palestinian ambulances were barred from entering the refugee camps.

dance.jpg

(Note: These soldiers aren’t really dancing. )


07
Apr 02

Streambox VCR

StreamBox VCR can be used to download Real Audio/Video streams. It’s a great program, but unfortunately the company got sued by Real and had to take it down. You can still find it on the net in a few dark corners, but I have a link to it in the forums.


07
Apr 02

Powell Meets and Greets With Elites

(Note: I fucking lost my previous version of this entry while I was working on it) Secretary of State, Colin Powell, found time in his busy schedule to stop by the annual meeting of the Trilateral Commission to give a private off-the-record talk.


    Delivering unprepared and off-the-record remarks, the secretary gave a review of the problems facing the Western world and discussed some details of the Mideast tour, the commission member said.

    However, several members who attended the secretary’s speech declined to provide specifics of Powell’s remarks. …

    In the commission’s 29-year-history, such discussions have remained closed to the public and all remarks made by speakers are off-the-record

So, essentially a bunch of unelected, unaccountable elitists get to meet privately with a senior member of our ‘elected’ government and we don’t get the privilege of knowing what exactly they’re discussing.

While I was at the Trilateral Commission’s official website I noticed that the former North American Chairman is Paul A. Volker. This is the same Paul A. Volker who is currently trying to help Arthur Andersen with their criminal problems having been caught cooking the books for Enron. Paul A. Volker, in addition to being a trilateralist, is also a former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Does that seem a little improper? You didn’t hear nothing, bub! Keep moving!

The Trilateral Commission has an interesting story behind it.


    The Trilateral Commission was established in 1973. Its founder and primary financial angel was international financier, David Rockefeller, longtime chairman of the Rockefeller family-controlled Chase Manhattan Bank and undisputed overlord of his family’s global corporate empire.

    Rockefeller’s idea for establishing the commission emerged after he had read a book entitled Between Two Ages written by an Establishment scholar, Prof. Zbigniew Brzezinski of Columbia University.

    In his book Brzezinski proposed a vast alliance between North America, Western Europe and Japan. According to Brzezinski, changes in the modern world required it.

    “Resist as it might,” Brzezinski wrote elsewhere, “the American system is compelled gradually to accommodate itself to this emerging international context, with the U.S. government called upon to negotiate, to guarantee, and, to some extent, to protect the various arrangements that have been contrived even by private business.”

    In other words, it was necessary for the international upper class to band together to protect its interests, and to ensure, in the developed nations, that political leaders were brought to power who would ensure that the global financial interests (of the Rockefellers and the other ruling elites) would be protected over those of the hoi polloi.

  • List of Members of Council on Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission: I’m not sure how up to date this is.
  • Trilateral Commission Books Yes, they have books. Might be worth a read to see what they’re advocating. Note: while I was checking out this book summary I noticed this passage which is interesting in relation to our government’s policy towards Afghanistan: The book includes chapters on energy policies in North America, Europe, and Japan; energy investment in Russia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus; and the energy dynamics of rapidly industrializing countries, particularly in Asia. Central Asia is exactly where the US has taken the ‘war against terror’. It is an area which western business would love to get their mitts on and there is a power vaccuum there which the US would like to fill. Look at who they’ve installed in Afghanistan, ex-Unocal employee Hamid Karzai. While else would they invade Afghanistan when all of the bombers of the WTC were Saudis?