Activist Who Helped Search For Mexico's Missing Students, Shot And Killed

At least fifteen people were killed during the weekend in the southwestern state of Guerrero, including an activist who helped lead efforts to find 43 students who disappeared and were presumed murdered last year, according to Mexican officials. Ten of the murders took place in the resort city of Acapulco, which is packed with tourists due to summer vacations, local police said.

Miguel Angel Jimenez, a leader of a community police organization, was found shot to death inside the taxi he drove on Saturday night in the rural outskirts of Acapulco, according to local police. Jimenez led a group that searched for approximately 300 people who have disappeared in the state, helping uncover mass graves found around the city of Iguala where 43 Mexican students went missing last year.

The government has said the students were abducted by police and handed over to drug traffickers who allegedly killed the students and burnt their bodies. Guerrero, which has one of the highest murder rates in the nation, saw 1,514 homicides in 2014 and 943 people who have been killed so far this year through June, according to federal statistics.

More at huffingtonpost.com

Couple Had Their 2-year-old Daughter Stolen from Them for “Smoking Pot.”

A little girl was confiscated from her loving parents because they smoked marijuana. Hill’s two-year-old daughter Alex,  short for Alexandria, was removed from her parent’s home last November for “neglectful supervision” following her parents’ admission that they smoked pot after she was put to bed, reported KVUE.

“We never hurt our daughter. She was never sick, she was never in the hospital, and she never had any issues until she went into state care,” Hill told KVUE. This is a truly heartbreaking example of the state’s atrocious ‘war on drugs.’ The war on drugs is nothing more than a license to destroy innocent lives. To all those who enforce such immoral and unjust laws against humanity, how can you sleep at night?

The Free Thought Project - End the drug war

Russell Brand about drugs laws

Dolphins ‘deliberately get high’ on puffer fish

Dolphins are thought of as one of the most intelligent species in the animal kingdom – and experts believe they have put their ingenuity to use in the pursuit of getting “high”. In extraordinary scenes filmed for a new documentary, young dolphins were seen carefully manipulating a certain kind of puffer fish which, if provoked, releases a nerve toxin.

Though large doses of the toxin can be deadly, in small amounts it is known to produce a narcotic effect, and the dolphins appeared to have worked out how to make the fish release just the right amount. Carefully chewing on the puffer and passing it between one another, the marine mammals then enter what seems to be a trance-like state.

The Independent

Uruguay votes to create world's first national legal marijuana market

Uruguay's unprecedented plan to create a legal marijuana market has taken its critical first step in the lower house of Congress. All 50 members of the ruling Broad Front coalition approved the proposal just before midnight on Wednesday in a party line vote, keeping a narrow majority of the 96 MPs present after more than 13 hours of passionate debate.

The measure now goes to the Senate, where passage is expected to make Uruguay the first country in the world to license and enforce rules for the production, distribution and sale of marijuana for adult consumers. Legislators in the ruling coalition said putting the government at the centre of a legal marijuana industry is worth trying because the global war on drugs had been a costly and bloody failure, and displacing illegal dealers through licensed pot sales could save money and lives. They also hope to eliminate a legal contradiction in Uruguay, where it has been legal to use pot but against the law to sell it, buy it, produce it or possess even one marijuana plant.

"Uruguay appears poised, in the weeks ahead, to become the first nation in modern times to create a legal, regulated framework for marijuana," said John Walsh, a drug policy expert at the Washington Office on Latin America. "In doing so, Uruguay will be bravely taking a leading role in establishing and testing a compelling alternative to the prohibitionist paradigm."

The Guardian

Mexico to reconsider joint policies with U.S. amid new state marijuana laws

A top aide to Mexico’s President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto says votes to legalize the recreational use of marijuana in Colorado and Washington state will force the Mexican government to rethink its efforts at trying to halt marijuana smuggling across the Southwest border.

Luis Videgaray, former general coordinator of Mr. Pena Nieto’s successful 2012 campaign who now heads the incoming president’s transition team, told Radio Formula 970 in Mexico City the new administration has consistently opposed the legalization of drugs, but the Colorado and Washington state votes are in conflict with his government’s longstanding and costly efforts to eradicate the cultivation and smuggling of marijuana.

“These important modifications change somewhat the rules of the game in the relationship with the United States,” Mr. Videgaray said. “I think we have to carry out a review of our joint policies in regard to drug trafficking and security in general.

“Obviously we can’t handle a product that is illegal in Mexico, trying to stop its transfer to the United States, when in the United States, at least in part of the United States, it now has a different status,” he said.

The Washington Times

Real World Facts vs. Drug Warrior Superstitions

Drug warriors often contend that drug use would skyrocket if we were to legalize or decriminalize drugs in the United States. Fortunately, we have a real-world example of the actual effects of ending the violent, expensive War on Drugs and replacing it with a system of treatment for problem users and addicts.
Ten years ago, Portugal decriminalized all drugs. One decade after this unprecedented experiment, drug abuse is down by half.

brasscheck tv

US DEA Head Leonhart Wins the 'Dumbest American' Award

American Drug War

The American President was on 'Late Night w/ Jimmy Fallon' once again admitting that he has used drugs recreationally in the past, but still refuses to end the War on Drug Users. The President admits to having smoked 'weed' and done "a little blow" (that's marijuana and cocaine, for anyone not hip to the lingo), but still wants to put people in jail for it.
One very articulate comedian has decided to call Obama out on his hypocrisy and declare that "...it's no joke!" "...if he had done time in prison, time in federal prison, time for his 'weed' and 'a little blow,' he would not be President of the United States of America."

Brasscheck tv

GlaxoSmithKline Fined for ‘Bad Paperwork’ After 14 Die in Illegal Vaccine Trial

GlaxoSmithKline, the world’s second largest drug maker was fined $93,000 for what the Associated Press and other Main Stream Media outlets in the United States are calling “paperwork errors” (here). Unfortunately, the paperwork in question had to do with the recruitment of poor children of illiterate parents into a vaccine trial that some say, claimed the lives of fourteen infants.

Judge Marcelo Aguinsky also fined two of the trials investigators $70,000 each for their role in the deception because the consent forms that are required by law in Argentina were signed by illiterate parents and in some cases by adults who had no custodial rights over the children.

GSK and Argentine Health Officials state that there are no links between the experimental vaccine and the death of the fourteen babies in the drug trial. A spokesperson for ANMAT, Argentina’s equivalent to the United State’s FDA, even went so far as to claim that “All of these patients had been given a placebo – that’s to say, something that appeared to be the vaccine but that had no active ingredients. The vaccine is safe.”

Infowars

Walnuts Are Drugs

Seen any walnuts in your medicine cabinet lately? According to the American Food and Drug Administration, that is precisely where you should find them. Because Diamond Foods made truthful claims about the health benefits of consuming walnuts that the FDA didn’t approve, it sent the company a letter declaring, “Your walnut products are drugs” — and “new drugs” at that — and, therefore, “they may not legally be marketed … in the United States without an approved new drug application.” The agency even threatened Diamond with “seizure” if it failed to comply.

The New American

CIA responsible for reinstating opium industry in Afghanistan

Prior to the tragic events of September 11, 2001, Afghanistan was hardly even a world player in growing poppy, which is used to produce both illegal heroin and pharmaceutical-grade morphine. In fact, the Taliban had been actively destroying poppy fields as part of an effort to rid the country of this harmful plant, as was reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on February 16, 2001, in a piece entitled Nation's opium production virtually wiped out (link).

But after 9/11, the US military-industrial complex quickly invaded Afghanistan and began facilitating the reinstatement of the country's poppy industry. According to the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP), opium cultivation increased by 657 percent in 2002 after the US military invaded the country under the direction of then-President George W. Bush (link).

Natural News

Ohio State Rep Introduces Law That Requires Politicians & Judges & Bankers To Be Drug Tested!

MOXNews.com

Iranian Terror Plot: Fake, Fake, Fake

Fake, fake, fake – I’m talking about the latest anti-Iranian propaganda coming out of Washington, which claims the Iranian Revolutionary Guards were involved in a “plot” to take out the Saudi ambassador to the US and blow up both the Saudi and Israeli embassies. The narrative reads like a formulaic melodrama: two Iranians, one a naturalized US citizen, purportedly approached someone they thought was a member of a Mexican drug cartel – according to the indictment [.pdf], it was a “sophisticated” drug cartel, not the plebeian sort – and proposed paying him $1.5 million to murder Adel al Jubeir, the Kingdom’s ambassador in Washington – oh, and by the way, the Iranians supposedly said, “Are you guys any good with explosives?”

The key to understanding just how fake this story is can be found in the New York Times report, which informs us:

“For the entire operation, the government’s confidential sources were monitored and guided by federal law enforcement agents, Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District, said in the news conference. ‘So no explosives were actually ever placed anywhere,’ he said, ‘and no one was actually in ever in any danger.’”

Translation: the whole thing is phony from beginning to end.

Full article by Justin Raimondo on Antiwar.com

Iran Affairs is skeptical regarding Iran’s strange alleged plot to conduct a terrorist bombing and assassination on U.S. soil, announced by our Justice Department yesterday –disinfo.net

Amazon tribe feared 'massacred'

The head of Brazil's indigenous protection service is to make an emergency visit to a remote jungle outpost, amid fears that members of an isolated Amazon tribe may have been "massacred" by drug traffickers. Fears for the tribe's wellbeing have been escalating since late July when a group of heavily armed Peruvian traffickers reportedly invaded its land, triggering a crisis in the remote border region between Brazil and Peru.

On 5 August Brazilian federal police launched an operation in the region, arresting Joaquim Antônio Custódio Fadista, a Portuguese man alleged to have been operating as a cocaine trafficker. But after the police pulled out, officers with the indigenous protection service (Funai) decided to return fearing a "massacre". They claimed that groups of men with rifles and machine guns were still at large in the rainforest. Reports suggest the traffickers may have been attempting to set up new smuggling routes, running through the tribe's land.

"We decided to come back here because we believed that these guys may be massacring the isolated [tribe]," Carlos Travassos, the head of Brazil's department for isolated indigenous peoples, told the Brazilian news website IG. "We are more worried than ever. The situation could be one of the greatest blows we have seen to the work to protect isolated Indians in decades. A catastrophe … genocide!"

More on The Guardian

More on Altino Machado's Blog

Coca-Cola Exposed! Killer Cola

You will never look at a can of Coke the same way after seeing this documentary film.

Cops’ drug blitz at Royal Ascot

Cops have launched a massive anti-drug crackdown at Royal Ascot to stop racegoers getting high in front of The Queen.

Officers with sniffer dogs have been patrolling the grounds to ensure punters don't indulge in illegal substances at the Berkshire course.

And racecourse bosses have even installed a drugs HONESTY box for the first time - giving race-goers the chance to give up their narcotics before they enter the turnstiles.

The drugs blitz saw two arrests for suspected cocaine possession on day one of the five-day Royal meeting - a favourite with high society and big-name celebrities.

The Sun

World Leaders Call For Marijuana Legalization And End to War on Drugs

a report from a group of world leaders that includes former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, former U.S. secretary of state George Shultz, and former U.S. Fed chairman Paul Volcker will call for an end to the war on drugs and for a move toward legalization and regulation.

The Weekly was told Virgin's Richard Branson, former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former Swiss President Ruth Dreifuss, and former Columbian President César Gaviria would be on-hand in New York for the report's unveiling.

According to a statement from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) the report calls the war on drugs "a failure" and encourages "nations to pursue legalizing and regulating drugs as a way to put a stop the the violence inherent in the illegal drug market."

The Informer – Huffington Post

How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico's murderous drug gangs

As the violence spread, billions of dollars of cartel cash began to seep into the global financial system. But a special investigation by the Observer reveals how the increasingly frantic warnings of one London whistleblower were ignored

On 10 April 2006, a DC-9 jet landed in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, on the Gulf of Mexico, as the sun was setting. Mexican soldiers, waiting to intercept it, found 128 cases packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100m. But something else – more important and far-reaching – was discovered in the paper trail behind the purchase of the plane by the Sinaloa narco-trafficking cartel.

During a 22-month investigation by agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and others, it emerged that the cocaine smugglers had bought the plane with money they had laundered through one of the biggest banks in the United States: Wachovia, now part of the giant Wells Fargo.

The authorities uncovered billions of dollars in wire transfers, traveller's cheques and cash shipments through Mexican exchanges into Wachovia accounts. Wachovia was put under immediate investigation for failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering programme. Of special significance was that the period concerned began in 2004, which coincided with the first escalation of violence along the US-Mexico border that ignited the current drugs war.

Read the full story at The Observer

Australia proposes ban on 1000s of plants including national flower

Legislation being proposed in Australia would criminalize most permaculturists, farmers, gardeners, nurseries and bush regenerators by banning any plant that contains  DMT – a naturally-occurring hallucinogen.  Five plants are currently criminalized, but the new list will include hundreds (possibly thousands) of other species that are common garden plants and include a significant number of common native plants including the national flower, the wattle. 

Having any of these plants could get you charged with and convicted of a federal drugs violation. The list can be found here, comprising about four pages of the 41-page document.

Food Freedom