A government-sponsored study published recently in The Open Neurology Journal concludes that marijuana provides much-needed relief to some chronic pain sufferers and that more clinical trials are desperately needed, utterly destroying the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency’s (DEA) classification of the drug as having no medical uses.
While numerous prior studies have shown marijuana’s usefulness for a host of medical conditions, none have ever gone directly at the DEA’s placement of marijuana atop the schedule of controlled substances. This study, sponsored by the State of California and conducted at the University of California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research, does precisely that, driving a stake into the heart of America’s continued war on marijuana users by calling the Schedule I placement simply “not accurate” and “not tenable.”
This article by Vanity Fairraises dozens of questions about how Mitt Romney made his money and how he keeps it from being taxed. This is a clinic in non-transparency. It is a story about off-shore accounts and high-priced accounting gymnastics. It is not a story about investing in straightforward businesses here in America. It is a chapter in the story of how financial services have destroyed respectable businesses over the last few decades.
There is no way Romney would have a chance to win the presidency, except that winning high office these days rarely has much to do with facts. Mitt didn't earn his money anything like the way that an auto worker or a store clerk earns money. If each of us had an army of lawyer and accountants, maybe we would do what Mitt has done, but we don't. Mitt is not one of us. He is Exhibit A on how to play the game by taking advantage of tax loopholes set up only for people like him. Mitt will be spending much of his time in this campaign trying to make it look like he is one of us. Mitt will be pouring gasoline on the culture wars. Mitt will be doing everything in his power to distract us from questioning whether his money is honest money.
Let the circus begin!
We stand for a free and open Internet.We support transparent and participatory processes for making Internet policy and the establishment of five basic principles:
Expression: Don't censor the Internet.
Access: Promote universal access to fast and affordable networks.
Openness: Keep the Internet an open network where everyone is free to connect, communicate, write, read, watch, speak, listen, learn, create and innovate.
Innovation: Protect the freedom to innovate and create without permission. Don’t block new technologies, and don’t punish innovators for their users' actions.
Privacy: Protect privacy and defend everyone’s ability to control how their data and devices are used.
I invite you to join me in signing this Declaration. The sponsoring organization, Free Press, has long been on the right side of media/Internet/speech issues. This one-page declaration captures what is critically important about net neutrality.
Glenn Greenwald has talked with many people who tell him that they haven't done anything wrong, so why should they be concerned about America's surveillance state? Here are the reasons:
Those who wish to organize should have the right to do so away from the targets of the organization. If the government is listening in, this makes any type of activism "extremely difficult."
It is exclusively in the private realm that creativity, dissent and challenges to orthodoxy. Only when you know that you can explore "without external judgment where you can experiment" and "create new paths." Psychological experiments verify this need for privacy; without it, people speak more stiffly. When you assume that you are being watched, your speech will be chilled and you will be encouraged to act in a conformist way.
Third, surveillance creates a "pervasive climate of fear." It makes people afraid to speak candidly and meaningfully to other people in their same community. Greenwald (who admits that he has 11 dogs) draw on a dog example. Even when a fence is taken down, dogs are hesitant to go into a previously fenced-off area. The most insidious part of the surveillance state is that those who are being monitored are easily convinced that their limits, their conformity, is liberty and freedom.
What can be done about this situation in the United States. There are things you can do to remove yourself from the "surveillance matrix." Some people have limited their economic interactions to cash transactions. There are way to communicate on the Internet that maintain anonymity (e.g., The Tor Project). It is important to educate yourself and others "beyond the prying eye of the United States government. For instance, you can educate yourself as to your rights when you have direct interactions with government officials; sources include Center for Constitutional Rights, National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms and the ACLU. To this list, I would add the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Forcible radical transparency is a way to take the offensive. That is why Greenwald (and I) support Wikileaks and Anonymous. Greenwald states, "I want walls to be blown in the wall of secrecy."
Where do you go if you want to write a story using characters from existing books and TV shows, or even borrowing real people? My 13-year old daughter told me about two popular places: Fan Fiction and Archive of Our Own.
A quick tour of either of these sites will amaze you. You will find hundreds of thousands of stories written by regular folks based on pre-existing characters. Sometimes the store is 100 words long, and other times its 100,000 words. Varying quality, of course, and invitations for feedback.
I had no idea that there were such places.
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