Western Elites Doubling Down On Censorship

NC  |  The goal of the political leadership in the US, the EU, the UK, and other ostensibly liberal democracies is simple: to gain much greater, more granular control over the information being shared on the internet. As Matt Taibbi told Russell Brand in an interview last year, both the EUçs Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Biden Administration’s proposed RESTRICT Act  (which Yves dissected in April, 2023) are essentially a “wish list that has been passed around” by the transatlantic elite “for some time,” including at a 2021 gathering at the Aspen Institute.

The same goes for the UK’s Online Safety Bill, which Kier Starmer would like nothing better than to beef up. Likewise, Canada has introduced sweeping new internet regulation through its Online News Act, which includes, among other things, a link tax, and Online Streaming Act. So, too, has Australia through a censorship bill that is strikingly similar to the EU’s DSA and even includes a punitive fine of up to 2% of global profits for social media companies that do not comply.

It’s not hard to see why. With economic conditions deteriorating rapidly across the West, after decades of rampant financialisation, kakistocracy, and corporatisation, to the extent that even the United Nations is now one giant private-public partnership, the social contract is, to all intents and purposes, worthless. Even the WEF admits that corporations, its main constituency, have turbocharged inequality. Populism is on the rise just about everywhere and angry and fragmented protest movements have been growing since at least 2019.

Thanks largely to the countervailing information still available on the internet, governments are rapidly losing control of the narrative on key issues, including the war in Ukraine and Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. Their stock response has been to clamp down on the ability of citizens to use the internet to generate, consume and share important news, dissenting views and uncomfortable truths.

 

So This Is Why Kamala's Collard Greens Tasted Like Garnier Fructis And ASS!!!

 

What Happens When You Try To Be Someone That You're Not?

Kamala “code switching” again by using an accent to be more relatable to predominantly black audience

Seriously, how low will she go for votes? pic.twitter.com/4uVNmIVNff

— Myrna 💋💄🍺 𝕏 (@GigaBeers) September 3, 2024

 

Legal Weed Has Destroyed More Lives Than Mandated Jabs

theatlantic  |  strange thing has happened on the path to marijuana legalization. Users across all ages and experience levels are noticing that a drug they once turned to for fun and relaxation now triggers existential dread and paranoia. “The density of the nugs is crazy, they’re so sticky,” a friend from college texted me recently. “I solo’d a joint from the dispensary recently and was tweaking just walking around.” (Translation for the non-pot-savvy: This strain of marijuana is not for amateurs.)

In 2022, the federal government reported that, in samples seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration, average levels of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC—the psychoactive compound in weed that makes you feel high—had more than tripled compared with 25 years earlier, from 5 to 16 percent. That may understate how strong weed has gotten. Walk into any dispensary in the country, legal or not, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a single product advertising such a low THC level. Most strains claim to be at least 20 to 30 percent THC by weight; concentrated weed products designed for vaping can be labeled as up to 90 percent.

For the average weed smoker who wants to take a few hits without getting absolutely blitzed, this is frustrating. For some, it can be dangerous. In the past few years, reports have swelled of people, especially teens, experiencing short- and long-term “marijuana-induced psychosis,” with consequences including hospitalizations for chronic vomiting and auditory hallucinations of talking birds. Multiple studies have drawn a link between heavy use of high-potency marijuana, in particular, and the development of psychological disorders, including schizophrenia, although a causal connection hasn’t been proved.

Read: Marijuana’s health effects are about to get a whole lot clearer

“It’s entirely possible that this new kind of cannabis—very strong, used in these very intensive patterns—could do permanent brain damage to teenagers because that’s when the brain is developing a lot,” Keith Humphreys, a Stanford psychiatry professor and a former drug-policy adviser to the Obama administration, told me. Humphreys stressed that the share of people who have isolated psychotic episodes on weed will be “much larger” than the number of people who end up permanently altered. But even a temporary bout of psychosis is pretty bad.

One of the basic premises of the legalization movement is that marijuana, if not harmless, is pretty close to it—arguably much less dangerous than alcohol. But much of the weed being sold today is not the same stuff that people were getting locked up for selling in the 1990s and 2000s. You don’t have to be a War on Drugs apologist to be worried about the consequences of unleashing so much super-high-potency weed into the world.

The high that most adult weed smokers remember from their teenage years is most likely one produced by “mids,” as in, middle-tier weed. In the pre-legalization era, unless you had a connection with access to top-shelf strains such as Purple Haze and Sour Diesel, you probably had to settle for mids (or, one step down, “reggie,” as in regular weed) most of the time. Today, mids are hard to come by.

The simplest explanation for this is that the casual smokers who pine for the mids and reggies of their youth aren’t the industry’s top customers. Serious stoners are. According to research by Jonathan P. Caulkins, a public-policy professor at Carnegie Mellon, people who report smoking more than 25 times a month make up about a third of marijuana users but account for about two-thirds of all marijuana consumption. Such regular users tend to develop a high tolerance, and their tastes drive the industry’s cultivation decisions.

The industry is not shy about this fact. In May, I attended the National Cannabis Investment Summit in Washington D.C., where investors used the terms high-quality and potent almost interchangeably. They told me that high THC percentages do well with heavy users—the dedicated wake-and-bakers and the joint-before-bed crowd. “Thirty percent THC is the new 20 percent,” Ryan Cohen, a Michigan-based cultivator, told me. “Our target buyer is the guy who just worked 40 hours a week and wants to get high as fuck on a budget.”

Smaller producers might conceivably carve out a niche catering to those of us who prefer a milder high. But because of the way the legal weed market has developed, they’re struggling just to exist. As states have been left alone to determine what their legal weed markets will look like, limited licensing has emerged as the favored apparatus. That approach has led to legal weed markets becoming dominated by large, well-financed “multistate operators,” in industry jargon.

Across the country, MSOs are buying up licenses, acquiring smaller brands, and lobbying politicians to stick prohibitions on home-growing into their legalization bills. The result is an illusion of endless choice and a difficult climate for the little guy. Minnesota’s 15 medical dispensaries are owned by two MSOs. All 23 of Virginia’s are owned by three different MSOs. Some states have tried to lower barriers to entry, but the big chains still tend to overpower the market. (Notable exceptions are California and Colorado, which have a longer history with legal marijuana licensing, and where the markets are less dominated by mega-chains.) Despite the profusion of stores in some states and the apparent variety of strains on the shelf, most people who walk into a dispensary will choose from a limited number of suppliers that maximize for THC percentage.

The Democratic Party Is The Gold Digger's Ball

 LATimes  |  Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, continuing his rush to hand out patronage jobs while he retains his powerful post, has given high-paying appointments to his former law associate and a former Alameda County prosecutor who is Brown’s frequent companion.

Brown, exercising his power even as his speakership seems near an end, named attorney Kamala Harris to the California Medical Assistance Commission, a job that pays $72,000 a year.

Harris, a former deputy district attorney in Alameda County, was described by several people at the Capitol as Brown’s girlfriend. In March, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen called her “the Speaker’s new steady.” Harris declined to be interviewed Monday and Brown’s spokeswoman did not return phone calls.

Harris accepted the appointment last week after serving six months as Brown’s appointee to the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, which pays $97,088 a year. After Harris resigned from the unemployment board last week, Brown replaced her with Philip S. Ryan, a lawyer and longtime friend and business associate.

Last week, Brown also appointed Janet Gotch, wife of retiring Assemblyman Mike Gotch of San Diego, to the $95,000-a-year Integrated Waste Management Board, which oversees garbage disposal in California.

“It’s politics as usual,” said Robert M. Stern, co-director of the Center for Governmental Studies, a nonprofit group in Los Angeles. “Governors have done this in the past. This is a tradition the Speaker is carrying on. There are always outcries. People say it is wrong, and when they get in power they do the same thing.”

Brown is making the appointments at a time when his 14-year hold on the speakership is tenuous at best. The Assembly will reconvene Monday with Republicans holding 41 seats to the Democrats’ 39, making it likely the GOP will oust Democrat Brown as Speaker and replace him with a Republican.

“It’s safe to say that these are not appointments we would necessarily make,” said Phil Perry, spokesman for Assembly Republican Leader Jim Brulte, the front-runner to replace Brown as Speaker.

Assembly Republicans were muted in their criticism of Brown--perhaps because Assemblyman Bill Morrow (R-Oceanside) acknowledged Monday that he hired Faye Hill, wife of imprisoned former state Sen. Frank Hill, as a $60,000-a-year aide.

Hill, a longtime lawmaker from Whittier, resigned from the Senate earlier this year after being convicted of taking a $2,500 payoff from an undercover FBI agent.

Morrow hired Faye Hill in October and said she will work in his San Juan Capistrano office as well as in his offices in Oceanside and Sacramento.

“We haven’t been keeping it a secret,” Morrow said, adding that he has received “nothing but complimentary” comments about her work. Morrow called her “amply qualified,” but also said he “can’t divorce the fact that” she gained much of her experience in politics as a result of her marriage to Hill.

The Brown appointments of Harris and Ryan fill vacant slots once held by other Brown appointees, whose terms have not expired.

Harris’ term on the medical board continues until Jan. 1, 1998.

Salary for the California Medical Assistance Commission is tied to legislators’ pay. A government commission earlier this year voted to grant legislators a 37% pay increase, from the current $52,500 a year, to $72,000, effective when the new Legislature takes office Monday.

Trump's New Allies On Bioweapons Research Outside The Reach Of U.S. Law?

Trump's newest allies have something very specific in common.

Tulsi and RFK Jr. are the two most prominent US politicians to discuss the US-funded biolabs in Ukraine.

They have been extremely vocal about this subject, and Trump just brought them both onto his team. 👀

Perhaps… pic.twitter.com/xAxNT62iDk

— Clandestine (@WarClandestine) August 26, 2024

anti-spiegel  |  The Russian Defense Ministry has again released a statement on the US biological weapons programs, reporting on the US attempts to better conceal the programs and relocate them from Ukraine to Moldova and Romania.

I have been covering the Russian Defense Ministry's publications on the Pentagon's bioweapons programs in Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian military operation, and translating all Russian statements on the subject. For the average reader, this may be very dry and uninteresting reading, but for experts, this is important information, which is why I take the trouble to translate it all.

Even if the German media ignore these Russian statements or try to ridicule them as crazy conspiracy theories and Russian propaganda, they are being followed very closely by international (mostly non-Western) experts.

Here I translate the new statement from the Russian Ministry of Defense, the slides are taken from the original. After the translation you will find a chronology of the publications.

Start of translation:

The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation continues to analyze the activities of the United States and Ukraine in connection with violations of international treaties prohibiting chemical and biological weapons.

We have repeatedly noted that Washington has a significant interest in obtaining biomaterials from citizens of Russia, Ukraine and other post-Soviet states.

The Russian Ministry of Defense has already published information confirming the large-scale collection and transportation of biomaterials. Before the start of the military operation, the United States and its allies managed to remove at least 16,000 biosamples from Ukraine. Within the framework of the UP-8 project alone, blood samples were taken from 4,000 Ukrainian soldiers. Dangerous pathogens and their vectors were exported, more than 10,000 samples.

The biological material was transported directly, without the involvement of shell companies and intermediaries. Human blood and tissue samples were sent from the Ukrainian Public Health Center to Western research laboratories with links to the Pentagon. They were then used for military biological research, including the selection of biological agents dangerous to the population of a particular region.

According to reports, the United States is continuing to develop biological warfare agents that can specifically target different ethnic populations.

According to available information, the United States has begun to actively involve Moldova and Romania in logistical plans for the transportation of biomaterials, using organizations under its control.

This tactic helps to obscure the ultimate recipient and divert suspicion from U.S. authorities and the U.S. biological warfare program.

Note the movement pattern of the biomaterial. It has been established that the export of dangerous goods to Moldova from the Ukrainian side is carried out through the company "Biopartners", which is a subsidiary of an American company of the same name.

The company Q2 Solution, a subsidiary of one of the Pentagon's largest suppliers, is also involved in the logistics processes. We have information confirming the implementation of contracts by this company under the US Department of Defense Threat Reduction (DITRA) programs worth more than $22 million.

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the escort of biological cargoes coming from Ukraine is carried out by the logistics companies Gamma Logistics and AeroTransCargo, controlled by Moldovan President Maia Sandu, as well as by medical institutions in Chisinau and Western intermediary organizations.

In the period from August 2022 to May 2024, more than 2,000 transportations of biomaterial samples were officially carried out through the territory of the Republic of Moldova.

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