Category Archives: Uncategorized

Dr. Joseph Mercola on cannabis and tumors

Posted on May 17, 2018 | 1 comment

Cannabis has its medicinal virtues, many of them, in fact. From Dr. Joseph Mercola at lewrockwell.com:

Medical cannabis has a long history as a natural analgesic,1 and is now legal in 30 U.S. states,2,3 the majority of which allow limited use of medical marijuana under certain medical circumstances. The medicinal qualities of marijuana are primarily due to high amounts (about 10 to 20 percent) of cannabidiol (CBD), medicinal terpenes and flavonoids.

Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the psychoactive component of marijuana that makes you feel “stoned,” but it too has valuable medical benefits, so depending on your problem, you may want higher or lower levels of THC. Cannabinoids interact with your body by way of naturally occurring cannabinoid receptors embedded in cell membranes throughout your body.

There are cannabinoid receptors in your brain, lungs, liver, kidneys, immune system and more. Both the therapeutic and psychoactive properties of marijuana occur when a cannabinoid activates these cannabinoid receptors.

Cannabis Has Long History of Use for Pain, Seizures and More

The U.S. government, through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), actually holds a patent on CBD as an antioxidant and neuroprotectant — an ironic and paradoxical situation considering the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has classified cannabis as a Schedule 1 controlled substance, which by definition has no accepted medical use.

This federal classification also makes it very difficult, time consuming and expensive to study the health effects of marijuana. Labs have to jump through a lot of legal hoops before being granted permission to study Schedule 1 drugs. Despite such difficulties, a number of studies have found a wide range of uses for the herb. For example, The Journal of Pain,4 a publication by the American Pain Society, has a long list of studies on the pain-relieving effects of cannabis.

Cannabis also has been used for over 80 years for drug-resistant seizure disorders. In January 2015, the American Academy of Pediatrics updated its policy statement on marijuana,5 acknowledging that cannabinoids “may currently be an option for … children with life-limiting or severely debilitating conditions and for whom current therapies are inadequate.”

To continue reading: Dr. Joseph Mercola on cannabis and tumors

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FBI Refuses To Pursue Personal Strzok-Page Texts; Grassley Goes Nuclear, by Tyler Durden

Posted on May 7, 2018 | Leave a comment

Yet another attempt by the FBI to cover up potentially damaging information. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

The FBI is refusing to pursue work-related text messages and emails sent on the personal devices of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page – the FBI “lovebirds” discovered to harbor extreme political bias for Hillary Clinton and against Donald Trump while actively involved in cases against each candidate during the 2016 US election. Clinton was of course exonerated by the FBI despite overwhelming evidence of criminal conduct, while Trump’s entire presidency has been tainted by the spectre of unproven Russian collusion.

Over 50,000 text messages between Strzok and Page were discovered by the Department of Justice’s internal watchdog, the Office of Inspector General (OIG), leading to their removal from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation – which has since devolved into trying to embarrass the President over allegedly paying a porn star not to discuss consensual sex. Of note, Page tendered her resignation on Friday.

In a Wednesday letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that the FBI was not “obligated” to collect all communications between employees, and would not be pursuing communications Strzok and Page sent to each other on their personal devices.

In response, Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) went nuclear – reminding Wray in a Friday letter cc’d to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) that “Although, as your letter notes, the FBI is not “obligated” to collect all communications between employees, it is obligated to collect and preserve federal records.”

Grassley goes on to note that previously released text messages between Strzok and Page “show substantial reason to believe government work was performed on non-government systems during the course of a high-profile investigation,” and that those communications could prove vital to the Committee’s investigation.

The work-related communications on nongovernment systems could shed more light on how the FBI handled the Clinton investigation and would constitute federal records that the FBI would be obligated to retrieve and preserve under the Federal Records Act. –Sen. Grassley to FBI Director Wray

To continue reading: FBI Refuses To Pursue Personal Strzok-Page Texts; Grassley Goes Nuclear

 

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Why This Is About To Get Far Worse…by Chris Hamilton

Posted on May 6, 2018 | Leave a comment

Demographically, across the developed world robust growth is not in the cards . From Chris Hamilton at economica.com:

Once upon a time, skeptical analysts cross checked stated growth versus energy consumption…looking for discrepancies as fluctuations in energy consumption are a good proxy for the changes in real economic activity.

Nowadays, the model of printing highly politicized and/or skewed economic data has gone very global.  So, today I offer a couple broad variables to gauge global economic activity; 1) total primary energy consumption data by region, cross checked against 2) their consumer bases (the 0-65yr/old populations).  I break the world down into four different regions to gain a better vantage of the purported global recovery, as follows:

  • OECD (List of 35 nations) representing 17% of global population & 43% of total energy consumption
  • Combined Africa / S. Asia (S. Asia = India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Maldives) representing 41% of global population & 9% of total energy consumption
  • China, representing 19% of global population & 22% of energy consumption
  • “RoW” or Rest of the World, representing 23% of global population & 26% of global energy consumption

The first chart below shows total global primary energy consumption in quadrillion BTU’s from 1980 through 2015 according to the EIA (US Energy Information Administration).  The flattening in consumption since 2012 is plainly visible in the upper right and clearly detailed in the year over year columns in the lower right.  The arrows highlight minimal growth or outright energy consumption declines that were associated with recessionary periods.  The weakness of the current period since 2012 is unparalleled from 1980 on…and even more significant than the sharp but brief downturn of 2009.

To continue reading: Why This Is About To Get Far Worse…

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NO POSTING 5/2-5/4

Posted on May 1, 2018 | Leave a comment

Another business trip will preclude me from posting from Wednesday, 5/2 through Friday, 5/4. Posting will resume Saturday, 5/5.

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Facebook’s Censorship in Germany, by Stefan Frank

Posted on April 30, 2018 | Leave a comment

Here is a freedom of speech case concerning Facebook with an unexpected outcome. From Stefan Frank at gatestoneinstitute.org:

  • Marlene Weise was banned from Facebook for 30 days, for posting a set of two pictures: One showed the Iranian women’s national volleyball team from the 1970s, wearing t-shirts and shorts; the other, the current Iranian team, wearing hijabs and clothes that cover arms and legs.
  • “Does a law- and contract-abiding user have to acquiesce to companies like Facebook or Twitter deleting his content or banning him for it? The ruling is an important stage victory for the freedom of speech.” — Joachim Nikolaus Steinhöfel, attorney and anti-censorship activist.

A court in Berlin has issued a temporary restraining order against Facebook. Under the threat of a fine of 250,000 euros (roughly $300,000 USD) or a jail term, Facebook was obliged to restore a user’s comment that it had deleted. Moreover, the ruling prohibited the company from banning the user because of this comment.

This is the first time a German court has dealt with the consequences of Germany’s internet censorship law, which came into effect on October 1, 2017. The law stipulates that social media companies have to delete or block “apparent” criminal offenses, such as libel, slander, defamation or incitement, within 24 hours of receipt of a user complaint.

As many critics pointed out, this state censorship makes freedom of speech subject to the arbitrary decisions of corporate entities that are likely to censor more than absolutely necessary, rather than risk a crushing fine of up to 50 million euros ($65 million USD). According to a newspaper report, Facebook’s censors have just ten seconds to decide whether to delete a comment or not.

The case with which the court in Berlin had to deal was that on January 8, 2018, the Swiss daily Basler Zeitung posted an article with the title “Viktor Orban speaks of Muslim ‘invasion'” on its Facebook site. The blurb read:

“Viktor Orban wonders how in a country like Germany… chaos, anarchy and illegal crossing of borders can be celebrated as something good.”

Facebook user Gabor B. posted a comment:

“Germans are becoming increasingly stupid. No wonder, since the left-wing media litters them every day with fake news about ‘skilled workers,’ declining unemployment figures or Trump.”

This comment quickly received the most “likes”, until Facebook deleted it, due to an alleged infringement of Facebook’s “community standards.” In addition, Gabor B. was banned from Facebook for 30 days.

To continue reading: Facebook’s Censorship in Germany

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The UK Government’s Skripal Conspiracy Theory – or The Art of Holding a Mass of Contradictory Thoughts in Your Head, by Rob Slane

Posted on April 30, 2018 | Leave a comment

The British government’s Skirpal story just doesn’t hang together, it’s loaded with contradictions. From Rob Slane at theblogmire.com:

The Official Narrative on the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal is a collection of illogical claims and assertions that cannot be made to fit together, that make no rational sense, and which would require us to hold a mass of contradictory thoughts in our head if we were to accept it. It is in short a conspiracy theory, and a particularly bad one at that.

As I have pointed out before, I am not attempting to counter this conspiracy theory with one of my own. I make no claims to know what happened in the Skripal incident. I am merely stating that the story that the UK Government and media have so far asked the public to believe cannot be true, since it is full of discrepancies and claims that are impossible to reconcile with the known facts.

They are, of course, welcome at any time to show how those contradictions and improbable assertions can be reconciled, but until such time as they advance a compelling and coherent explanation, rational and objective observers shall just have to assume that these contradictions exist for a reason – namely that the official narrative of what happened in the Skripal case is not in fact what really happened in the Skripal case.

So what exactly are those contradictory elements and improbable assertions in the Official Narrative, which place it firmly in the territory of a Very Bad Conspiracy Theory? There are many, but below are 10 of the most obvious:

1. A lethal nerve agent followed by a drink and a meal

The Official Narrative requires you to believe not only that Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned by the military grade nerve agent A-234, a substance which is said to be 5-8 ten times the toxicity of VX nerve agent (which itself has a median lethal dose of 10mg), and the effects of which are said to take place within 30 seconds to two minutes.

…But also that after coming into contact with this substance, they then spent the next four hours wining and dining in the City of Salisbury.

2. A deadly nerve agent without antidote, but where everyone is fine

The Official Narrative requires you not only to believe that Mr and Miss Skripal were poisoned by a deadly nerve agent with no known antidote (according to Gary Aitkenhead, Chief Executive of Porton Down), and for which treatment is “practically impossible”, according to The Handbook of Toxicology of Chemical Warfare Agents.

…But also that just a few weeks later, both were fine and one of them at least was fit to be discharged from hospital.

To continue reading: The UK Government’s Skripal Conspiracy Theory – or The Art of Holding a Mass of Contradictory Thoughts in Your Head

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She Said That? 4/24/18

Posted on April 24, 2018 | Leave a comment

From Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968), American journalist, travel writer, novelist, and political theorist:

H/t The Burning Platform

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2018/04/24/quote-of-the-day-905/

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