Author Archive
Barclays Pays £113 Million Tax, £2800 Million Bonuses
Seeker After Truth
Congratulations to Labour MP Chuka Umunna, who has exposed the truth about the organised crime syndicate known as Barclays Bank. See here for the full story.
Far from contributing to the British economy, in 2009 the bosses of this criminal gang paid themselves nearly 25 times as much as they paid in tax on their ill gotten gains.
Barclays Boss = Liar & Cheat
Nothing better illustrates the deception, fraud and misrepresentation that this den of thieves has perpertrated on the British people. It also highlights the weakness and compromise of Dr Vince Cable, once held up as the champion of the people, now revealed as weak, ineffectual and useless in the face of Barclays’ corrupting influence. As for Cameron, his poodle and all the other cowardly members of our once honourable House of Commons, they are all two-faced, impotent and in shameful, sycophantic awe of the vast piles of shekels that the banker robbers accumulate.
Who Is Secretly Working To Keep Pot Illegal – Big Pharma?
This is an extract from an article by Steven Kotler, a science writer who lives in New Mexico. The full article can be read here.
In 2009, the global pharmaceutical market was worth $837 billion—and it’s on track to top $1 trillion by 2014. This is a lot of money to spread around, so when it comes to lobbying efforts, very few have this group’s clout. Mostly, Big Pharma gets what Big Pharma wants. And one thing it wants is for marijuana to remain illegal.
It’s not hard to figure out why. You can’t patent a plant—and that’s a big problem for pharmaceutical companies when it comes to medical marijuana.
Why?
Imagine a wonder drug able to provide much-needed relief from dozens and dozens of conditions. Imagine it’s cheap, easy to grow, easy to dispense, easy to ingest and, over millennia of “product testing,” has produced no fatalities and few side effects—except for the fact that it “reportedly” makes you feel really, really good. That would be quite a drug. Knowing all this, it’s easy to see why the pharmaceutical industry worries about competition from marijuana.
And besides its palliative prowess, researchers consistently find that patients prefer smoking marijuana to taking prescription drugs. In another study run by Reiman, 66 percent of her patients used cannabis as a substitute for prescription drugs; 68 percent used it instead of prescription drugs to treat a chronic condition and 85 percent reported that cannabis had fewer side effects than other medicines.
Miracle Medicine
Early on, the pharmaceutical industry fought back by spending money on anti-pot efforts, but the same NORML investigation that fingered the alcohol and tobacco industries as heavy backers of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America found that Big Pharma was doing so as well. “They were so embarrassed by that revelation” says MAPS founder Rick Doblin, “that they mostly stopped spending money on anti-marijuana lobbying efforts.”
Since then, the pharmaceutical industry has shifted its focus to developing alternatives to medical cannabis, often taking the traditional reductionist approach. Specifically, these days, if a pharmaceutical company wants to turn a plant into a medicine they isolate the most active ingredient and make what’s known as a “single-compound drug.” Morphine, for example, is really just the chemical core of the poppy plant. This too has been tried with marijuana. Out of the 400 chemicals in marijuana, 80 of them belong to a class called “cannabinoids.” Out of those 80 cannabinoids, a number of pharmaceutical companies have tried reducing marijuana to only one: THC. But the results have been unsatisfactory.
“There are certain cases,” says Doblin, “where the single-compound formula works wonders. But it’s just not true in every case. The pharmaceutical industry keeps claiming they’re not worried about medical marijuana because they make a better product, but when you reduce cannabis to just THC, you lose efficacy and gain side effects.”
This Man Isn’t A Scientist. He’s A Prohibition Propagandist.
Sitting alongside him at his press conference “Cannabis Can Hasten Psychosis”, who did Dr Large have to lend him support?
Cannabis Preventer
Jan Copeland, the director of the Australian National Cannabis Prevention and Information Centre.
What does that tell you?
This isn’t anything to do with science. It’s about advancing the prohibitionist agenda – and, of course, is closely connected to Dr Large’s future funding and career path. See here for the unedited rushes from this little conspiracy.
His big pitch was “The results of this study confirm the need for a renewed public health warning about the potential for cannabis use to bring on psychotic illness.”
Absolute rot. The study confirmed nothing of the sort. All it consisted of was a recalculation of data from 83 previous studies. It’s all correlation and association. There’s no evidence of causation whatsoever. There was absolutely nothing new in it at all and to claim there is, is simply a lie. Of course, the mindless, desperate and eager comics like the Daily Mail have almost wet themselves with excitement over it.
This is a very typical example of the misinformation, propaganda and distortion of science put out by the prohibitionists. It is important to understand the way they work. They have been doing this now for nearly 100 years, using the latest propaganda techniques every time.
In this “meta-analysis”, as Dr Large pretentiously calls it, what he doesn’t tell you is that all the subjects already had a predisposition towards psychosis (usually by genetics) and included tobacco and “other psychoactive substance users”. That means any of the approximately 600 ingredients found in cigarettes such as ammonia, various ethyls, and any of dozens of acids and carcinogens could have distorted the findings. Similarly, and not addressed by the study’s authors, is the fact that the cannabis users, in many cases, were also cocaine, heroine, amphetamine or other drug users.
The study claims that “…schizophrenia caused by cannabis starts earlier than schizophrenia with other causes.” but it fails to consider how many of the subjects were in fact, self-medicating. The authors don’t even consider whether cannabis causes mental illness or if people with mental illness have a higher rate of using cannabis. Other evidence shows that self-medicating with cannabis is widespread and that over 90% of diagnosed schizophrenics smoke cigarettes – but nobody is claiming tobacco causes schizophrenia.
It’s hogwash.
Bringing Cannabis Back Into The Medicine Cabinet
Professor Les Iversen delivers the Inaugural President’s Public Lecture during the BPS Winter Meeting, London 2010.
Prof. Iversen is the current chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and a founder council member of the British Medicinal Cannabis Register. He is also the author of many publications and books on cannabis. He is famous for his article in The Times headlined “Cannabis. Why It’s Safe” and for saying that cannabis is “one of the safer recreational drugs”.
He walks a courageous and tricky tightrope between science and his ACMD role. He is the government’s chief drug adviser so at least we know they are getting good advice even if they don’t act on it.
You can watch the lecture here.
Professor Iversen has also provided me with a copy of his Powerpoint presentation from the lecture which you can download here.
This Vile Punk Needs To Be Stripped Of His Arrogance, His Dignity And His Title!
“Tory Peer: Bus Drivers And Waitresses ‘Unimportant'”, The Daily Telegraph, 9th February 2011
Oaf
A senior Government adviser employed to monitor former ministers working in business has claimed bus drivers, waitresses and people in other “unimportant” jobs would be unfit to join his panel.
Lord Lang, the Conservative peer, said people in ordinary jobs were not sufficiently qualified to pass judgement on the employment of former ministers in the private sector.
The Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Business appointments has come under pressure to dilute the “Establishment” make-up of his panel, which comprises four peers, two knights and a dame.
But he defended the composition of his committee, despite accusations the arrangement was too “cosy”.
Lord Lang told MPs he would be prepared to accept a “lay member”, but added that is should be someone “who had experience and proven success in a relatively important profession or trade – somebody who had achieved distinction – rather than a waitress or bus driver.”
The Commons Public Administration Committee, which is looking into the employment of former ministers in big business, did not receive his comments well.
Paul Flynn, a Labour MP who formerly worked as a bus driver, said: “Speaking as a bus driver of long standing who married a waitress, could you explain why neither I nor my wife have any contribution to make to your committee?”
Lord Lang, who was himself a trade secretary and now has sizeable business interests, said a committee made up of people who “knew nothing at all about the issues involved” would make the wrong decisions.
See the full story by Nick Collins here.
Banking Cancer
Rare Integrity
We need radical surgery. The corrupt and avaricious arrogance of the bankers is beyond belief. Project Merlin (see here) is a confidence trick and our weak, pathetic government is knowingly complicit in it.
Bob Diamond of Barclays, Stephen Hester of RBS and Eric Daniels of Lloyds are all rogues, thieves and charlatans. The excuse of “I was only following orders” was thrown out at Nuremberg. These men are even worse than the Nazi war criminals because their motivation is the most base and venal of all. They cannot even claim the excuse of some sort of perverted political philosophy. Their only concern is selfish greed. They are parasites and a scourge on our society. They should be rotting in jail rather than heaving their replusive, corpulent frames into another disgustingly expensive dinner or self-indulgent debauchery.
Banking is one of the greatest evils in our world. It takes over our society with insidious, insistent and poisonous infection. It produces corrupt and distorted growth that is entirely false, only a deception for the immediate and personal gain of the individuals in charge. These people are pirates and their adventures destroy decent people, honest businesses and the whole basis of our economy and society.
We must cut them out and we must cut deeply to ensure that every last vestige of the putrification is gone. It will hurt. It will even endanger our existence but there is no other option. To continue as we are is to buy into their corrupt plan, to feed them even more obscene amounts of money while the poor, vulnerable and needy in our society suffer.
There is no other option. We must inflict this huge damage on ourselves in order to be rid of the cancer. Recovery will be long and difficult but at least it will be honest and healthy.
The only man with any integrity left in parliament was Lord Oakeshott and he has now resigned. Cameron, his poodle, Dr Cable and babyface Georgy Porgy are carcinogenic agents. We must take the knife to them without mercy.
Peter Reynolds 