Tag Archives: Government

Faced with legalization, pot growers mull new marketing tactics

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The foodies get it. Pot-laced products bear interesting labels. Photo: Bob With/Flickr CC

More mainstream focus on the impending pot legalization story. In this case, Village Voice Media’s Toke of the Town picks up on an NPR report. — MB

I interviewed a California medical marijuana producer a year ago, and he was already stressing about legalization. (Like many licensed to grow medical marijuana in the state, he also sells pot to non-medical clients.)

“I want to get out of the business before it becomes fully legal,” he said.

But since then, the same grower has started mulling new angles for his business. One is branding: He and a close relative hope to become the Mondavi brothers of weed. He noted in a subsequent interview the allure of small batch beers, and reckoned that pot growers can take a similar approach to marketing their product.

Marijuana growers could compete against the likes of Altria by emphasizing their organic growing methods, for example, or that they are local producers.

The context:

“Greater supply, more competition, and especially the prospect of legalized marijuana — with the issue enjoying majority support and slated to appear on November’s ballot in California — is exerting downward pressure on pot prices…”

via Toke of the Town – Low Pot Prices Create Panic; We Should All Have Such Problems.

Obama's Emancipation Proclamation: Kill your PlayStation

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Photo: Emily and Alex/Flickr CC

That, and your iPod and iPad, and Xbox:

“‘With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation,’ Obama said. He bemoaned the fact that “some of the craziest claims can quickly claim traction,” in the clamor of certain blogs and talk radio outlets.”

The president is, of course, onto something. These media are already having unanticipated consequences.

via AFP: Obama bemoans ‘diversions’ of IPod, Xbox era.

Intel aircraft over NYC tapped cell phone calls

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SIGINT (Signal Intelligence) aircraft such as this one, bristling with antennae, swirled above New York after this week's failed bombing attempt. Photo: US Navy

That’s how officials caught up with the stumblebum Times Square terrorist:

“In the end, it was secret Army intelligence planes that did him in. Armed with his cell phone number, they circled the skies over the New York area, intercepting a call to Emirates Airlines reservations, before scrambling to catch him at John F. Kennedy International Airport.”

via Army Intelligence Planes Led To Suspect’s Arrest – wcbstv.com.

Copycat killers use knives, where guns are scarce

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Consumerism doesn't work for everyone. Photo: Ernie/Flickr CC

The latest attacks suggest that middle-aged men are struggling to cope in capitalist China. — MB

Loren Coleman suspects the wave of school killings by older males that horrified the Chinese in April, hasn’t ended:

“I have pointed out that in China and Japan, due to their strict firearms laws, such countries tend to manifest their ‘copycat school violence’ in terms of ‘stabbing’ series. Will this current stabbing spree spread to Japan or other Asian nations?”

The attacks, as Coleman suggests (noting what precipitated the attacks, and how they ended), probably reflect an increase suicidal behavior amongst Chinese men, many of whom are struggling to get ahead within their new, ruthless, economy.

Japan and South Korea already lead much of the world in suicides.

Alas, the most recent World Health Organization data for China is 11 years old.

In 1999, the suicide rate for men over 65 was four-to-five times higher than for their middle-aged cohorts. My bet is that the 40-something set has been closing that gap.

via Twilight Language: 3 Days, 3 Attacks.

US Government to Scrutinize Patriot Radio

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Alan Watt makes the MSM, again, this time for hosting his show on RBN. Also, a prediction: By 2011, the federal government will confirm that it is directly investigating RBN, or another underground radio network. — MB

Photo: Kyle May/Flickr CC

John Stadtmiller’s Republic Broadcasting Network is taking heat in the Christian Science Monitor, for broadcasting a show hosted by the head of the Guardians of the Free Republics.

Stadtmiller, a competent broadcaster, appears to be getting out in front of this week’s story, about the Guardians’ apparently clumsy attempt to get dozens of US governors to step-down. (The word “investigation” alone is enough to make a broadcaster’s heart skip a beat.)

RBN also broadcasts Alan Watt’s Cutting Through the Matrix. The weeknight show features excellent insights — often on science and technology news stories — from Watt, one of the underground’s best-known conspiracy historians. (Watt’s commentary has informed my MSM reporting on RFID technologies, for example.)

But the network also airs a show by one, rabid anti-Semite, along with other voices that might not otherwise find a significant audience. And it runs ads from Holocaust-denying publishers:

“Republican Broadcasting Network is a satellite, shortwave, and Internet radio station that features 31 shows with names like ‘Cutting Through the Matrix, ‘Govern America,’ and ‘Road Warrior Radio.’ It has loose ties to the American Free Press newspaper, which Michael calls “the most important newspaper of the radical right.’”

Watt receives no money from RBN for his show, which is supported by direct book sales and donations to his website.

via Guardians of the free Republics tied to Texas radio station / The Christian Science Monitor – CSMonitor.com.

James Lovelock to humans (again): "Go to Hell"

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Lovelock's solution. Photo: Nate Ritter/Flickr CC

Is a “false flag” eco-attack somewhere in the offing? — MB

The scientist who popularized the theory that the Earth is a single organism this week told the UK Guardian humans are too stupid to understand the threat of global warming.

He also said that only a very dramatic event — such as catastrophic flooding, which would surely take thousands of lives — may be necessary to get people’s attention:

“He thinks only a catastrophic event would now persuade humanity to take the threat of climate change seriously enough, such as the collapse of a giant glacier in Antarctica, such as the Pine Island glacier, which would immediately push up sea level.

‘That would be the sort of event that would change public opinion,” he said. “Or a return of the dust bowl in the mid-west.’”

via James Lovelock: Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change | Environment | The Guardian.

EM field, behind right ear, suspends morality

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Morally impaired? Photo: Eddie Van 3000/Flickr CC

This new finding, from MIT, should cause scientists to more closely examine the risks to human health posed by mobile phones and other wireless, personal technologies. — M.B.

MIT neuroscientists believe they have isolated the brain region — just behind the right ear — where moral judgements take place.

And they can suspend someone’s ability to judge right from wrong, simply by generating a magnetic field near the same spot where many of us hold our cellular phones and wireless, Bluetooth, headsets.

The researchers’ findings, announced today:

“In both experiments, the researchers found that when the right TPJ (right temporo-parietal junction) was disrupted, subjects were more likely to judge failed attempts to harm as morally permissible.”

The technique used by the MIT scientists, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), has been described as one that creates “virtual lesions” on the brain.

Neurostar makes a device that affects mood and behavior, from outside the head. Photo: Neuronetics

And although TMS’s long term effects on health are not well understood (similar amounts of electromagnetic radiation have been linked to increased cancer risk), the treatment is becoming increasingly popular for everything from tinnitus to depression.

The US military also hopes to use TMS to keep soldiers fighting, without the need to stop for sleep.

via Moral judgments can be altered.

See what else Hub scientists getting up to, by following my Boston Globe column, here.

Quelle horreur: CIA dosed, terrorized French town with LSD

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Beware the baguette. Photo: Jeremy Keith/Flickr CC

Imagine what hundreds of Frenchmen went through in 1951, when they were reported to have eaten bread contaminated with ergot.

Several died in the incident, which unfolded over several days.

Now, imagine how their families are feeling today, now that a reporter has reveals that the CIA was behind the whole thing. Rather than being sickened by bread contaminated with the hallucinogenic fungus, it appears the CIA somehow introduced LSD into one town’s food supply:

“H P Albarelli Jr., an investigative journalist, claims the outbreak resulted from a covert experiment directed by the CIA and the US Army’s top-secret Special Operations Division (SOD) at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

The scientists who produced both alternative explanations, he writes, worked for the Swiss-based Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company, which was then secretly supplying both the Army and CIA with LSD.”

via French bread spiked with LSD in CIA experiment – Telegraph.

More: Read conspiracies historian Alan Watt’s remarks about government LSD mind control experiments (subtitled, “Why your parents are really screwed up”), here.

Nanny State's next stop: your bum

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Whatever happened to, "I am honored to accept your waste?" Photo: Ingorrr/Flickr CC

And you thought recycling was a bitch: How long before they’ve got us sorting our poop and pee, Stateside?

Toilets that catch urine and feces, separately, are catching on with do-gooders throughout Europe, according to a recent study. Told that their waste could be sorted, and converted into fertilizer (yes for food, and yes, for human consumption), they were only too happy to oblige.

Men also say they are willing squat over the bowls to pee, in order to hit their marks in the so-called “NoMix” toilets — something that’s difficult to do, standing up.

More of the disgusting story:

“NoMix-toilets have drawbacks, most importantly phosphate precipitation (20) causing blockages, or the necessity to sit to urinate (practical issues reviewed in (21)). Nevertheless, NoMix-toilets are increasingly installed.”

via High Acceptance of Urine Source Separation in Seven European Countries: A Review – Environmental Science & Technology (ACS Publications).

Doc who gave vaccines "OK" vanishes with $2 million

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It's still good, right? Photo: UNICEF/Sverige

Crooked, CDC-backed vaccine doc, Poul Thorsen — he of the fudged resume — is in the wind, with $2 million that doesn’t belong to him.

This is the guy whose research slammed that of others finding possible links between preservatives in vaccines, and neurological damage to children:

“The results of the studies, that there was no link between vaccines containing mercury and autism, formed the foundation for the conclusions of several Institute of Medicine reports.

In a statement Aarhus University officials said Thorsen forged documents supposedly from the CDC to obtain the release of $2 million from the university.”

via NBC 11 Atlanta Reports: Vaccine Researcher Flees with $2M – AGE OF AUTISM.