Medical Marijuana Business Attracts Hedge Funds, Venture Capitalists

Marijuana has been a cash crop for many years in this country. The only problem is that most of that crop had been grown illegally. Now, that medical marijuana is legal in 15 states and the District of Columbia, legalized marijuana has quickly become so popular it is attracting attention from hedge fund managers and [...]

Four Queens men sue NYPD after being held for 30 hours, busted for laughing at cops

Four Queens men claim they were locked up for more than 30 hours by cops seeking revenge on a crowd of men who laughed at an officer who couldn’t catch a fleeing drug suspect. The men insist they didn’t even laugh, says their lawyer Gabriel P. Harvis, who filed suit against the NYPD and 10 [...]

Move over, Big Pharma and Big Oil, Big Marijuana is here

Legalization ‘looking inevitable,’ spokesman says If there’s one group of people who get their way in Washington, it’s lobbyists. Now, advocates of marijuana legalization may have a reason to cheer that political reality: They’re getting their own marijuana lobby group. And just Big Pharma and Big Oil lobby for greater leeway for their businesses, so [...]

Rep. Lewis passed over for powerful chairmanship

Republicans passed over  Rep. Jerry Lewis in favor of a veteran Kentucky lawmaker Wednesday to chair the powerful House Appropriations Committee. The party’s steering committee rejected Lewis’s request to waive term limits that bar him from reclaiming the post he held when Republicans last held the majority. The decision deprives Lewis of a position that [...]

Banned marijuana dispensary reopens in Wildomar

A medical marijuana collective engaged in a legal battle against Wildomar re-opened its storefront location Monday in defiance of a citywide ban on dispensaries. The move by the Wildomar Patients Compassionate Group comes a week after the collective filed a legal petition seeking to block the city from enforcing its ban. General Manager William Sump [...]

Anti-US governor wins Okinawa poll

The Japanese on the southern Island of Okinawa have re-elected incumbent governor Hirokazu Nakaima, who wants an end to the American military presence. Nakaima, who wants the US base off Okinawa altogether, beat his opponent who agreed to relocate the base to a less crowded area on the island. In May, Tokyo and Washington agreed [...]

Startups Backed By The CIA

The spy agency has a venture capital arm that is funding an array of companies developing bleeding-edge technologies. Tiny cameras. Hearing devices for the teeth. Wi-fi for refrigerators. These are some of the products made by companies that have caught the eye of In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Cuban Rum Steps Up in World Markets

Havana, Nov 26 (ACN-RHC) The worldwide prestige of Cuban rum is reaffirmed by the growing demand of Ron Legendario, whose sales show an annual 10 percent increase. The trademark’s deputy director of marketing, Carlos Sanchez, stated that Ron Legendario is currently available in more than 15 European countries. Ron Legendario is produced in six factories [...]

US contacts allies about WikiLeaks move

The United States has briefed its key allies, including Britain, France, Germany and Saudi Arabia ahead of the mass release of classified documents by WikiLeaks. Whistleblower website WikiLeaks plans to release around three million leaked documents, including cables sent to Washington from American embassies throughout the world. The website had previously posted online secret details [...]

Cops & Firemen

Calilfornia marijuana Legalization debate gets interesting

Two Norfolk teachers put on leave over material about police

Two Norview High School teachers were placed on paid administrative leave this week after a parent complained that they distributed classroom materials that gave advice on how to deal with police if stopped. The materials – a one-page handout and a video distributed and aired in a 12th-grade government class – are sponsored by two [...]

Gun Running, Drugs and Flamenco: US Army Human Terrain System Has It All

See also:  Nature: Shut Down Army’s Human Terrain Program A member of the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command management team in Afghanistan, according to sources, is a “gun runner.” That individual is allegedly listed in an “Federal Bureau of Investigation database” and has “ties to Ahmad Wali Khan Karzai and the drug business.” Another [...]

VicPD Officer Ordered to Stay Quiet

Snails on speed

Biologists turned snails into tweakers to learn more about how crystal meth seems to improve memory in humans. According to the Washington State University and University of Calgary researchers, memories formed while on methamphetamine may be more durable. (They ran another snail study in 2006 using cocaine instead of meth.) Their work could someday provide [...]

San Jose union begins organizing pot workers

A major California labor union is organizing medical cannabis workers in Oakland, a move that analysts say will help efforts to legalize marijuana and open the door for the union to organize thousands more workers if state voters pass a measure in November to allow recreational marijuana use by adults. The 26,000-member United Food and [...]

San Bernardino County Sheriff Candidates to Participate in June 1 Forum in Big Bear

The California Statewide Direct Primary Election will be held on Tuesday, June 8, and those voters who plan to request a vote-by-mail ballot have until June 1 to do so. In addition to five statewide measures on the June 8 ballot, San Bernardino County voters will have opportunity to vote for the San Bernardino County [...]

Radley Balko on the Militarization of Police

Stupid Drug Story of the Week: The Associated Press on the arrival of “deadly, ultra-pure heroin.”

Yesterday, the Associated Press moved a story completely devoid of historical context. The piece, titled “Deadly, Ultra-Pure Heroin Arrives in U.S.,” claims that in “recent years”—a time frame that goes undefined—Mexican dealers have started peddling “ultra-potent” black tar heroin and are selling it for as little as $10 a bag. In alarmist prose, the article [...]

2010 National Drug Control Strategy

President Obama’s 2010 National Drug Control Strategy uses a multifaceted approach to combat drug abuse and drug use in America’s communities. This Strategy “provides a collaborative and balanced approach that emphasizes community-based prevention, integration of evidence-based treatment into the health care system, innovations in the criminal justice system, and international partnerships to disrupt drug trafficking [...]

Columbia, Missouri Police Chief on Board With Legalizing Marijuana?

Oakland Lab Creates ‘Low Anxiety’ Pot

One of the nation’s most sophisticated cannabis testing labs has yielded powerful results this spring, isolating a “low-anxiety” strain of the plant by closely tracking the potency of local crops. The strain of medical marijuana from Oakland’s Harborside Health Center is based on findings from the dispensary’s new Steep Hill laboratory. The strain is a [...]

Medical marijuana stores firebombed in Montana

The Billings, Montana, City Council will take up the issue of regulating medical marijuana on Monday night in a meeting expected to be intense in the wake of the firebombings of two of the city’s medical marijuana storefronts in the last two days. The southern Montana city’s dispensaries legally provide marijuana to medical patients who [...]

Red Cross confirms ‘secret jail’ in Bagram, Afghanistan

The US airbase at Bagram in Afghanistan contains a facility for detainees that is distinct from its main prison, the Red Cross has confirmed to the BBC. Nine former prisoners have told the BBC that they were held in a separate building, and subjected to abuse. The US military says the main prison, now called [...]

Canada not to extend Afghan mission

Canada has rejected US calls for extending the presence of its troops in Afghanistan, standing opposed to Washington’s strategy in the war-torn country. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper reiterated that Canada would not keep the troops deployed in the country. During a Tuesday meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Ottawa, Harper stated [...]

War on drugs goes literal: biowarfare on poppies

US and British forces in Afghanistan have been accused of waging biological warfare on poppy fields to stymie opium crop production. Last week, the UK’s Daily Telegraph reported: Poppy plants have been suffering from a mysterious disease which leaves them yellow and withered and slashes the yield of opium resin which is sold on and [...]

Washington Finally Feeling Drone War Backlash

Back in early 2009, when guys like David Kilcullen and Andrew Exum warned that the American drone war in Pakistan could create more terrorists than they kill, they were pilloried by the national security establishment for their views. Since the failed Times Square bombing — a terror attack allegedly in response to the drone strikes [...]

California To Collect $100 million in Cannabis Taxes This Year

While the State of California begins to debate the consequences of taxing and regulating cannabis for personal use, it’s important to note the state is already taxing and regulating the agricultural product used by 2.9 million Californians monthly. California Board of Equalization official Anita Gore told the Express this week that the board estimates it [...]

Another fascist pig home invasion

Rim of the World News interviews Candidate Paul Schrader Sheriff/Coroner of San Bernardino County

May 1st in History

Superior Court Judge candidate Ed Montgomery endorses Paul Schrader for sheriff of San Bernardino County

It is my privilege and honor to endorse candidate Paul Schrader for the office of Sheriff in San Bernardino County. Our community will be well served by many of Paul’s proposals and recommendations once he takes office. San Bernardino has suffered too long without an election for sheriff. It is time to move forward in [...]

Wildomar moves to allow medical marijuana in its city

Once drafted, and if passed by council member vote, the new ordinance would establish Wildomar as the only Southwest Riverside city to allow medical marijuana within its borders. In front of a standing-room-only audience, and after more than two hours of discussion and heated debate, the Wildomar City Council passed a motion during its council [...]

Oklahoma Passes Bill Outlawing Militia Recruitment

Last week the Oklahoma House of Representatives passed a bill that equates recruiting militia members to recruiting gang members. “Recruiting membership in an unauthorized militia or the Ku Klux Klan would be a crime if legislation approved Thursday by the House of Representatives becomes law. ‘This is making unauthorized militias illegal,’ said Rep. Mike Shelton, [...]

From nose to brain: New route for chemical incapacitation?

HTML clipboard I first realized the power of intranasal drug delivery after reading a 2005 paper in Nature entitled “Oxytocin Increases Trust in Humans.” In it, the authors–several psychologists, neuroscientists, and economists–reported on a study based on a game that pitted two players against each other–an investor and a trustee. (You may be wondering what [...]

Military Wants to Super-Charge Troop Smarts

The Pentagon’s been trying to get ahead of the curve on neuroscience for years, toying with ideas like mind-reading lie detection and performance-degrading drugs for enemy combatants. Now, they’re launching a major effort to harness neuroscience in an effort to better prepare soldiers for the mental rigors of modern warfare. In a series of small [...]

Top 25 Psychiatric Prescriptions for 2009

These are the top 25 psychiatric medications by number of U.S. prescriptions dispensed in 2009, according to IMS Health. I’ve also provided their 2005 ranking. To put the percent change into perspective, the U.S. total population rose approximately 4 percent from 2005 to 2009. 2009 Rank 2005 Rank Brand name (generic name) Used for… U.S. [...]

Flintstones hawking cigarettes

Soldier faces 17 years for running brothel

BALTIMORE — A soldier formerly stationed at Fort George G. Meade has been sentenced to 17½ years in federal prison for running a brothel out of his Millersville apartment. Prosecutors say Craig Corey conspired with three other men from his hometown of Chillicothe, Ohio, to bring women to Maryland to work as prostitutes. He pleaded [...]

San Bernardino Deputy District Attorney Bruce Brown with marijuana activists

20-year La Verne police veteran subject of investigation

LA VERNE – A 20-year veteran of the La Verne Police Department is being investigated for suspected misappropriation of public funds, La Verne’s police chief said Tuesday. Former narcotics detective Steve DeLuca, 49, of Upland was fired recently when the department opened an investigation into whether he falsified overtime reports last year, La Verne police [...]

New Study: Drug law enforcement contributes to gun violence and high homicide rates and increasingly sophisticated methods of disrupting organizations involved in drug distribution could unintentionally increase violence

See also: Study links drug enforcement to more violence Today, the newly formed International Centre for Science in Drug Policy (ICSDP) released their first report: Effect of Drug Law Enforcement on Drug-Related Violence: Evidence from a Scientific Review. “Given the growing emphasis on evidence-based policy-making and the ongoing severe violence attributable to drug gangs in [...]

Ex-FBI Agent Gets 30 Years for Home-Invasion Plot

A former Federal Bureau Investigation agent was sentenced today in California to 30 years in prison for plotting a violent home invasion of a suspected drug stash house in Orange County in what turned out to be an FBI sting. Vo Duong Tran, 42, of New Orleans, was convicted in March 2009 of plotting the [...]

Who Will Hold America Accountable for Its Crimes?

The website WikiLeaks has been garnering attention recently due to its publication of sensitive material that many in government (and elsewhere) would rather be kept private. Information on the site includes secret intelligence documents and studies commissioned by the U.S. government, which does not seem to appreciate the disclosure of such information, for fear of [...]

US confronts its reputation abroad

US approves extradition of Panama’s Noriega to France

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday signed an order extraditing Panama‘s former strongman Manuel Noriega to France, where he is wanted for money laundering, a US official said. “The secretary signed the order of extradition,” a State Department official told AFP. CNN and CBS televisions aired video images that they said showed Noriega [...]

Memo to America: Stop murdering my people

Almost every day, the NATO occupation of our country continues to kill innocent people. Each time, it seems, military officials try to claim that only insurgents are killed, or they completely deny and cover up their crimes. The work of a few courageous journalists is the only thing that brings some of these atrocities to [...]

Army Wants Sensors to Nab Sweaty, Smelly Security Threats

No matter how well a terrorist covers their tracks, or how cool they are under pressure, the Pentagon wants to be able to detect, track, and even positively identify them from a distance. And they want to do it using nothing more than the heat and sweat that emanate from a person’s pores. The military’s [...]

Another Mexican Politician Wants Legalization

The state governor of Veracruz, Fidel Herrera Beltrán, has called for the legalization of marijuana as one tool to reduce the narco-violence that plagues Mexico. He acknowledges that it is not a “silver bullet” that would eliminate the cartels or related violence (the straw man argument that many against legalization use to support their gossamer [...]

Sheriff Hopeful Schrader Pushing Department Reform

Paul Schrader says he is running for San Bernardino County sheriff because he believes “I can do a better job than what is being done now.” In expanding on that point, Schrader said, “I am more qualified because I have a diverse background in law enforcement. I’ve worked as a supervisor in specialty positions in [...]