Less than an hour after President Donald Trump said he would withdraw the US from the Paris climate pact and seek to renegotiate better terms for American workers, Italy, German and France have issued a joint statement saying the pact cannot be renegotiated.
"We deem the momentum generated in Paris in December 2015 irreversible and we firmly believe that the Paris Agreement cannot be renegotiated, since it is a vital instrument for our planet, societies and economies," the leaders of the three countries said in a joint statement as reported by Reuters.
The three urged other world leaders to do more about climate change, and pledged to do more to help developing countries adapt, Reuters said.
The European Union’s top official for climate change, Miguel Arias Canete, called it a “sad day for the global community” and said the EU “deeply regrets the unilateral decision by the Trump administration," Bloomberg reported. Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris and head of an informal network of more than 90 major world cities, said America is making a “dramatic mistake” just two years after playing a key role in securing the deal.
In a story about what will happen to the Paris agreement without the US, Bloomberg reported that “like the wedding reception of a runaway bride, the Paris agreement is free to go on, just minus a pretty important player.”
US withdrawal doesn’t necessarily kill the agreement, since participation is voluntary. But without America's involvement, the global effort to cut emissions is even less likely to reach its targets. The US was also supposed to provide financial help to poorer nations to help them invest in renewable energy.
Trump said Thursday in a speech from the Rose Garden that he would withdraw the US from the accord while seeking a way to renegotiate a deal that's more fair to American workers.
French President Emanuel Macron tweeted that he will make a statement Thursday night about the US’s decision to withdraw from the climate pact.
Je m'exprimerai en direct à 23h à propos de la décision du Président Trump de retirer les États-Unis des accords de Paris sur le climat.
Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said that Italy remained committed to reducing emissions and fulfilling all its obligations under the agreement.
#Clima Non facciamo passi indietro da Accordo Parigi. Italia Impegnata per riduzione emissioni, energie rinnovabili, sviluppo sostenibile
RNC Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel took Hillary Clinton to task for again refusing to take responsibility for her embarrassing election loss, telling Fox & Friends that the former secretary of state “seems to be totally unaware” of how her excuses remind the public of why it rejected her in the first place, as the Hill reports.
"She seems to be totally unaware. She has no self-awareness. Maybe she needs a class or something that we can send her to," McDaniel said on "Fox & Friends." "Because there’s no accountability and it reinforces why she lost every time she goes out and does these interviews.”
McDaniel was blasting Clinton for a laughable interview she gave on Wednesday at Recode’s “Code” conference, where Clinton blamed everything and everyone, from the FBI, to the DNC, to the Russians to internalized misogyny.
“I take responsibility for every decision that I make, but that’s not why I lost.”
Last week, Clinton burnished her credentials as a leader of the “resistance” movement that she inadvertently birthed by losing the election by attacking president Trump in between coughing fits during a commencement speech at her alma mater, Wellesley College. Later that day, she said during an interview with New York Magazine that the American right, which she criticized for continuing to attack her after the election, is afraid of her because “I don’t die.”
But if she truly wants Republicans to stop attacking her, she should take HBO “Real Time” Host Bill Mahar's advice and return to the woods of Chappaqua, and stay there.
Climatefags just got choked the fuck out with a plume of coal dust. You know what to do with your thermometers global warming shills — stick them way up your ass and enjoy the scenery — as America mines for coal in your fucking front yard.
The President announced today that he’s pulling out of the multilateral climate treaty — due to its onerous and deleterious impositions on the American people. It’s worth noting, pulling out of the deal doesn’t equate to free license to dump medical waste into reservoirs — but releases us from a vast, global, bureaucracy of inferior sub-humans who errantly punish the greatest people to ever walk the planet, in favor of third world shit-heaps.
In other words, the government will no longer impose rules and regulations on American businesses that people in Nigeria or China are free to ignore.
#MAGA
As a result of this bold, “America first” declaration of war on science, globalist libshits have lost their mind. Former President of Mexico and professional drug smuggler, Vincente Fox, said the United States has declared war on the planet itself.
Withdrawal from #ParisAgreement, @realDonaldTrump condemns this generation and those to come. He's declaring war on the planet itself.
— Vicente Fox Quesada (@VicenteFoxQue) June 1, 2017
CNN Fake News points out that by pulling out of the deal, the United States aligns itself with only two other countries, Syria and Nicaragua.
That talking point is completely meaningless, however, since most countries around the world have barely moved past the invention of the wheel. The Paris Climate Treaty was designed to punish the United States, helping to ‘equal the playing field’ by permitting third world cesspools to grow their economies, ‘by any means necessary’ while America shut down industry in the name of carbon emissions.
Between last week’s bombing in Manchester, the patriotic three-day weekend in the United States, comedian Kathy Griffin’s mock beheading of President Trump on Tuesday, and the president’s recent ‘covfefe’ tweet, the media and public have been busy.
But as the mainstream media and left-wing faction of the country obsess over what covfefe means, and right-wing snowflakes clutch their pearls at Griffin’s politically incorrect, if not ill-advised and distasteful stunt, stories that actually affect the American people are falling through the cracks.
This is not to say the corporate media apparatus has not covered any of the stories we’re about to detail. It is to say that they’ve misplaced their outrage and focus on superficial, topical stories that do little to speak truth to power and expose the machinations of openly corrupt ruling institutions.
Here are five ongoing stories that should have received the same feeding frenzy as covfefe and Kathy Griffin — but didn’t and probably won’t:
1. Human Rights Watch issues urgent warning over a new “Back the Blue” law in Congress — Last week, the human rights organization penned a letter to Sens. Chuck Grassley and Dianne Feinstein condemning the pro-law enforcement legislation, which is currently making its way through both the House and Senate. Human Rights Watch (HRW) says H.R. 2437 and S.B. 1134 “[a]mend civil rights laws to severely limit private citizens’ ability to hold police accountable for their violations of the law.”
It also removes incentives for officers to refrain from abusive behavior against citizens. Additionally, it imposes mandatory minimum sentences for those convicted of causing “bodily injury” to officers, “defined to include injuries as minimal as a cut, an abrasion, a bruise or even just the temporary feeling of physical pain.” The letter claims “The ‘Back the Blue Act,’ which purports to protect law enforcement officers from violence, does not propose any meaningful measures to advance this important goal of keeping officers safe. Instead, it would weaken police accountability and do serious damage to existing tools for the protection of civil rights.”
The bill is currently in a judiciary committee, and HRW concluded its letter by urging lawmakers to reject it. Considering the continued police violence that plagues the United States — officers have already claimed nearly 400 lives so far this year, with few facing appropriate ramifications for their violence — the legislation appears to be a step in the wrong direction. Read Human Rights Watch’s full statement here.
2. Suicide bombing kills 90, injured 400 in Afghanistan — A terrorist attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Wednesday, believed to be one of the worst in the country’s history, is being drowned out by the media’s incessant focus on covfefe and a fake bloody head. Though Westerners fumed at the attack in Manchester last week, which killed 22, the attack in the war-torn Middle Eastern nation is failing to attract the same indignation and outrage. The Taliban (a terror group empowered by U.S. policy) is denying responsibility for the attack, making it possible the Islamic State (another terror group empowered by U.S. policy) may take credit in the next few days, the Independentreports. Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry says the death toll is expected to rise, which is nothing new for the country, which has been subject to the United States’ invasion and violence for sixteen years. In February, a U.S. airstrike killed 18 civilians in Afghanistan, and the American military has killed hundreds, if not thousands of innocents in Iraq and Syria in the last several months.
3. U.S. considers trillion-dollar military budget — Though the U.S. strategy of perpetual war has failed to quell terrorism or create stability in the Middle East, Antiwar.com reported this week that the Trump administration’s 2018 budget proposal seeks to allocate over a trillion dollars toward military spending. As Antiwar.comnotes, it is “particularly shocking just how money is disappearing not just into the general war-fighting budget, but into related costs of having such a massive military for so long.” Over $183 billion would go toward Veterans Affairs amid the ongoing crisis veterans face in the United States. Still, if the United States government stopped waging so many wars and creating so many veterans, that figure would not be necessary.
According to the Straus Military Reform Project, the discretionary base military budget would increase over $20 billion with the new proposal. They note that “The ‘base’ budget purportedly contains all routine, peacetime expenses; however, DOD and Congress have loaded tens of billions of such ‘base’ spending into the Overseas Contingency Operations fund for declared wartime expenses.” Further, Antiwar.com points out that while spending on the U.S. nuclear program would be increased by over $1 billion according to the budget, the cost of updating the entire arsenal will likely increase many times over as the policy is implemented.
4. The warfare state has come home to roost, according to documents detailing counterterrorism strategies used at Standing Rock — Over the holiday weekend, the Intercept reported that according to leaked documents, law enforcement worked with private defense contractor TigerSwan to impose counterterrorism tactics on protesters at the site of the Dakota Access Pipeline. According to the Intercept, they were hired by Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the project: “Internal TigerSwan communications describe the movement as ‘an ideologically driven insurgency with a strong religious component’ and compare the anti-pipeline water protectors to jihadist fighters. One report, dated February 27, 2017, states that since the movement ‘generally followed the jihadist insurgency model while active, we can expect the individuals who fought for and supported it to follow a post-insurgency model after its collapse.’ Drawing comparisons with post-Soviet Afghanistan, the report warns, ‘While we can expect to see the continued spread of the anti-DAPL diaspora…aggressive intelligence preparation of the battlefield and active coordination between intelligence and security elements are now a proven method of defeating pipeline insurgencies.’”
The vast majority of demonstrators at Standing Rock were peaceful, making it all the more concerning that a military-industrial profiteering company was deployed to silence free speech as militarized law enforcement used aggressive tactics to steamroll opposition — not to mention the fact that the pipeline has already sprung two leaks before even becoming operational.
5. Opposition to Trump’s $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia grows in Congress — Lawmakers like Rep. Justin Amash and Sen. Rand Paul have crafted legislation to nullify the president’s recent deal with the extremist Saudi regime, which received widespread coverage when Trump visited the Arab nation, sword-dancing with the monarchs and touching a glowing orb.
In an email sent out to constituents and followers Wednesday, Amash discussed the transfer of “tanks, ships, anti-aircraft missiles, and possibly precision-guided bombs,” which was sealed during the president’s trip to Saudi Arabia. Amash warned that “all those weapons are going to a questionable partner… in an unstable region… without so much as a debate.” Highlighting the fact that Saudi Arabia has inserted itself into a civil war in Yemen, attempting to prop up a leader previously ousted from power, he said “thousands of civilians, including more than a thousand children, have died in the conflict — some of them at the hands of the Saudi government, using American weapons.”
Citing extremism coming out of Saudi Arabia — indeed, the country spends billions exporting its radical Wahhabist ideology and has also funded ISIS — Amash asked for support for his bipartisan joint resolution, H.J. Res. 102, to halt the sale. Sen. Paul has also introduced companion legislation in the Senate.
Also deserving of honorable mention are the statements made in court on Tuesday by violent racist Jeremy Christian, who killed two Americans when they attempted to stop him from harassing two teenage girls, one African-American and one Muslim, in Oregon last week. Though that story received widespread coverage, Christian’s hyper-nationalistic statements have been somewhat drowned out by the Kathy Griffin-covfefe fervor. “Death to America’s enemies,” he said in the courtroom, also claiming, “Free speech or die, Portland. You got no safe place. This is America,” as he faced the judge, displaying no remorse for his murder of two men, including one Army veteran.
This extreme form of American “patriotism” is just one symptom of perpetual jingoism, militarism, and American exceptionalism, which are also represented in the five underreported stories highlighted in this list.
The study of psychedelics is “bringing psychotherapy and medicine together,” says David Nutt, a neuropsychopharmacologist at Imperial College London and a co-author of the first imaging study looking at the effects of LSD on the human brain. “Drug-assisted psychotherapy is going to be the great advance in the [field in the] next 20 years.”
In 2009, Nutt was fired from his job as a drug adviser to the British government after he made comments about ecstasy and other illegal drugs being less dangerous than alcohol and even horseback riding.
Reason’s Zach Weissmueller sat down with Nutt at the Psychedelic Science 2017 conference in Oakland to talk about the results of his groundbreaking imaging study, what he learned about drug policy while working as a science adviser for the English government, and what he sees for the future of psychedelics and mental health treatment.
Produced by Zach Weissmueller
Camera by Alex Manning. Additional graphics by Meredith Bragg.
This is a rush transcript—check all quotes against the audio for accuracy.
Zach: Hi I’m Zach Weissmueller for Reason. We’re here at the Psychedelic Science 2017 conference in Oakland. I’m here with David Nutt. He is the Edmond J. Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology at the Imperial College of London. Thank you very much for joining us Dr. Nutt.
Dr. Nutt: Good to be here.
Zach: You were the chief drug advisor in England. Something happened, could you just tell us that story?
Dr. Nutt: For nine years I was the head of the group that assessed drug harms for the government and over that time we did an enormous amount of research into the comparative harms of drugs. As a result of that I discovered, somewhat to my surprise, that alcohol was actually the most harmful drug in the UK. The drugs that politicians like to get hysterical about like cannabis and MDMA, Ecstasy, are comparably much less harmful. So then I started explaining that to the government saying, “Well, our drug laws are wrong. Actually putting people in prison for cannabis possession is not fair because alcohol is more dangerous.” They did not want to hear that. They said, “Stop saying that.”
Zach: They sacked you for looking at the data and giving your analysis. Isn’t that your job as the Drug Advisor of the government?
Dr. Nutt: Well, I thought it was my job, yeah. I thought my job was to evaluate evidence and make recommendations, but they said, “Oh no, no, he’s doing more than that. He’s trying to change government policy.” I said, “I thought that’s what all scientists did.” If the evidence suggests the policy’s wrong then we want to change the policy, once you been sacked you’ve got no comeback. Although, of course, what did happen was that it brought the whole issue of drug harms and comparative harms in the public domain. There was an enormous outcry and a lot of scientists wrote petitions saying they should reinstate me. I became famous and the whole drug debate went viral. So for the first time we actually had a proper debate. The government shot itself in the head really because it went from drugs being something you didn’t talk about to drugs being something everyone wanted to talk about.
Zach: Why was that such a taboo thing to say?
Dr. Nutt: There are some things which you can’t have what you might call a balanced debate because everyone has a strong view. Drugs are bad, drugs are bad, War on Drugs, we’ve got to get rid of drugs. That was our policy the same way it’s been American policy. Anyone challenging that was actually really cutting to the heart of the prejudices which underpin the British establishment. And it went right through government. It went certainly through both the right wing and the left wing parties.
Zach: It’s my understanding that the US drug policy really drives a lot of policy in other countries. Could you speak to that as someone involved in the European drug policy?
Dr. Nutt: Absolutely. US policy on drugs was basically rolled out across the world through the United Nations. The US said “Jump”, we said, “How high sir?” Every single drug policy in Britain was driven to comply with American policy. And I know that, I know there were drugs which were not controlled in Britain, like khat and I know that the US government pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed our government to eventually get khat bound. I managed to hold that back actually until I was sacked. We didn’t make it illegal, but eventually they gave in.
Zach: Is the pressure coming through trade deals? Is it the UN? How does that work exactly?
Dr. Nutt: Yeah, well that’s a good question because of course there’s no pressure. There’s nothing public. It’s all behind the scenes. A few weeks later you’ll hear from the Department of Health, “We don’t like the policy on cannabis.” “What’s changed? Was it the fact that our Prime Minster was talking to George Bush?” It was those sorts of things. It’s all off the record. It’s just back story political pressure.
Zach: Your first and foremost a drug researcher. You’ve just completed some very interesting research in conjunction with the Beckley Foundation. It was a brain imaging study in relation to LSD. Could you tell me how that study was structured?
Dr. Nutt: LSD, a fascinating drug. In the 1950’s and 60’s it was going to solve the world’s problems. The National Institute of Health in America funded 140 separate studies on LSD. A thousand papers were published, 40,000 patients, it was the revolutionary drug. Then as soon as it started being used recreationally, it suddenly became the evil drug and it got banned. Since then there’s never been a single study of LSD in America and there’s never been an imaging study of LSD. As a scientist, as a psychiatrist, a drug that has such profound opportunities to change the way, for instance, people are addicted, seemed to me we must study it. So having done studies with a sort of simpler, less threatening psychedelic, Psilocybin, mushroom juice, we decided it was time to bite the bullet and do the first brain imaging study of LSD.
Zach: So you were quite literally looking at, “This is your brain on drugs” and what is our brain on this particular drug?
Dr. Nutt: Well the good news is no one’s brain got fried, but what we saw, we saw effects which were somewhat similar to what we’d seen with Psilocybin, but more profound, which you might expect because LSD has a very profound effect on many aspects of brain function. The key messages are that LSD breaks down the normal structure of brain integration. Our brains are trained over decades to do things exactly the same way as everyone else and exactly the same way everyday, every hour, every minute, every second. Those structures we thought were hardwired, but it turns out they’re not hardwired. They can be disrupted by LSD. LSD basically makes the brain much more connected.
Parts of the brain which haven’t been allowed to talk to each other for 30, 40 years can talk to each other again, huge amount of crosstalk. We call this the entropic brain or the much more flexible brain. We think that’s what underlies the experiences that people have during the trip, even got good evidence for that, but also explains why afterwards people often feel different and better because they’ve been allowed to … actually the brain’s been allowed to work in a slightly different way for the first time, perhaps ever.
Zach: My understanding is that when people were closing their eyes the part of the brain that’s associated with vision was actually still active. Could you tell me what you take away from that?
Dr. Nutt: Yeah, so what we showed was that the so-called … the complex visual hallucinations that people say under psychedelics. They close their eyes and they say it’s like films going on in front of their eyes even though their eyes are closed. We discovered why that is, it’s because normally I close my eyes and there’s very little activity in my visual cortex and there’s not activity linking the visual cortex to the rest of my brain, but under LSD the visual cortex was connected to every part of the brain. So there was crosstalk and, of course, crosstalk for the visual system is visual talk so that’s why you have these fascinating, complex, interesting images.
Zach: If one of the big takeaways from this is that on LSD different parts of the brain that don’t usually work together are suddenly somehow connected, what does that mean in practicality, in application? Where does that take us? What questions should we now be asking that we have that information?
Zach: Hi I’m Zach Weissmueller for Reason. We’re here at the Psychedelic Science 2017 conference in Oakland. I’m here with David Nutt. He is the Edmond J. Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology at the Imperial College of London. Thank you very much for joining us Dr. Nutt.
Dr. Nutt: Good to be here.
Zach: You were the chief drug advisor in England. Something happened, could you just tell us that story?
Dr. Nutt: For nine years I was the head of the group that assessed drug harms for the government and over that time we did an enormous amount of research into the comparative harms of drugs. As a result of that I discovered, somewhat to my surprise, that alcohol was actually the most harmful drug in the UK. The drugs that politicians like to get hysterical about like cannabis and MDMA, Ecstasy, are comparably much less harmful. So then I started explaining that to the government saying, “Well, our drug laws are wrong. Actually putting people in prison for cannabis possession is not fair because alcohol is more dangerous.” They did not want to hear that. They said, “Stop saying that.”
Zach: They sacked you for looking at the data and giving your analysis. Isn’t that your job as the Drug Advisor of the government?
Dr. Nutt: Well, I thought it was my job, yeah. I thought my job was to evaluate evidence and make recommendations, but they said, “Oh no, no, he’s doing more than that. He’s trying to change government policy.” I said, “I thought that’s what all scientists did.” If the evidence suggests the policy’s wrong then we want to change the policy, once you been sacked you’ve got no comeback. Although, of course, what did happen was that it brought the whole issue of drug harms and comparative harms in the public domain. There was an enormous outcry and a lot of scientists wrote petitions saying they should reinstate me. I became famous and the whole drug debate went viral. So for the first time we actually had a proper debate. The government shot itself in the head really because it went from drugs being something you didn’t talk about to drugs being something everyone wanted to talk about.
Zach: Why was that such a taboo thing to say?
Dr. Nutt: There are some things which you can’t have what you might call a balanced debate because everyone has a strong view. Drugs are bad, drugs are bad, War on Drugs, we’ve got to get rid of drugs. That was our policy the same way it’s been American policy. Anyone challenging that was actually really cutting to the heart of the prejudices which underpin the British establishment. And it went right through government. It went certainly through both the right wing and the left wing parties.
Zach: It’s my understanding that the US drug policy really drives a lot of policy in other countries. Could you speak to that as someone involved in the European drug policy?
Dr. Nutt: Absolutely. US policy on drugs was basically rolled out across the world through the United Nations. The US said “Jump”, we said, “How high sir?” Every single drug policy in Britain was driven to comply with American policy. And I know that, I know there were drugs which were not controlled in Britain, like khat and I know that the US government pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed our government to eventually get khat bound. I managed to hold that back actually until I was sacked. We didn’t make it illegal, but eventually they gave in.
Zach: Is the pressure coming through trade deals? Is it the UN? How does that work exactly?
Dr. Nutt: Yeah, well that’s a good question because of course there’s no pressure. There’s nothing public. It’s all behind the scenes. A few weeks later you’ll hear from the Department of Health, “We don’t like the policy on cannabis.” “What’s changed? Was it the fact that our Prime Minster was talking to George Bush?” It was those sorts of things. It’s all off the record. It’s just back story political pressure.
Zach: Your first and foremost a drug researcher. You’ve just completed some very interesting research in conjunction with the Beckley Foundation. It was a brain imaging study in relation to LSD. Could you tell me how that study was structured?
Dr. Nutt: LSD, a fascinating drug. In the 1950’s and 60’s it was going to solve the world’s problems. The National Institute of Health in America funded 140 separate studies on LSD. A thousand papers were published, 40,000 patients, it was the revolutionary drug. Then as soon as it started being used recreationally, it suddenly became the evil drug and it got banned. Since then there’s never been a single study of LSD in America and there’s never been an imaging study of LSD. As a scientist, as a psychiatrist, a drug that has such profound opportunities to change the way, for instance, people are addicted, seemed to me we must study it. So having done studies with a sort of simpler, less threatening psychedelic, Psilocybin, mushroom juice, we decided it was time to bite the bullet and do the first brain imaging study of LSD.
Zach: So you were quite literally looking at, “This is your brain on drugs” and what is our brain on this particular drug?
Dr. Nutt: Well the good news is no one’s brain got fried, but what we saw, we saw effects which were somewhat similar to what we’d seen with Psilocybin, but more profound, which you might expect because LSD has a very profound effect on many aspects of brain function. The key messages are that LSD breaks down the normal structure of brain integration. Our brains are trained over decades to do things exactly the same way as everyone else and exactly the same way everyday, every hour, every minute, every second. Those structures we thought were hardwired, but it turns out they’re not hardwired. They can be disrupted by LSD. LSD basically makes the brain much more connected.
Parts of the brain which haven’t been allowed to talk to each other for 30, 40 years can talk to each other again, huge amount of crosstalk. We call this the entropic brain or the much more flexible brain. We think that’s what underlies the experiences that people have during the trip, even got good evidence for that, but also explains why afterwards people often feel different and better because they’ve been allowed to … actually the brain’s been allowed to work in a slightly different way for the first time, perhaps ever.
Zach: My understanding is that when people were closing their eyes the part of the brain that’s associated with vision was actually still active. Could you tell me what you take away from that?
Dr. Nutt: Yeah, so what we showed was that the so-called … the complex visual hallucinations that people say under psychedelics. They close their eyes and they say it’s like films going on in front of their eyes even though their eyes are closed. We discovered why that is, it’s because normally I close my eyes and there’s very little activity in my visual cortex and there’s not activity linking the visual cortex to the rest of my brain, but under LSD the visual cortex was connected to every part of the brain. So there was crosstalk and, of course, crosstalk for the visual system is visual talk so that’s why you have these fascinating, complex, interesting images.
Zach: If one of the big takeaways from this is that on LSD different parts of the brain that don’t usually work together are suddenly somehow connected, what does that mean in practicality, in application? Where does that take us? What questions should we now be asking that we have that information?
Dr. Nutt: Well, I think what’s fascinating about it is it doesn’t just explain the psychedelic state, but it also helps us make sense of why drugs like LSD can change the way people behave in the long term. There were six trials in American for LSD to be used to treat alcoholism. In fact, the founder of AA, Bill Wilson, he got his liberation from his alcoholism, the chains that held him to his drink were broken by a psychedelic experience. He became a profound enthusiast for LSD. He pioneered these six trials of using LSD for alcoholism. It works, people are much less likely to relapse back to drinking after they’ve had a psychedelic experience because they can see there’s a world out there which isn’t all about the bottle.
Zach: How difficult or easy was it to study this in the first place?
Dr. Nutt: Well, it wasn’t easy, but because it was an experiment on normal volunteers it was a lot easier than doing it in patients. So the big challenge then, or now, is to go from these interesting studies in normal volunteers and take them into patients. That becomes a lot more complicated because an experiment is controlled by a different kind of ethics than a medicine.
Zach: At this conference we’ve heard researchers talk about some potentially promising results using psychedelics to treat things like PTSD, depression, anxiety. Do the brain scans that you did offer any clue as to why psychedelics seem to offer some relief to these kind of conditions?
Dr. Nutt: Psychiatric disorders, say like depression or PTSD, exist because people cannot disengage. They get locked into a form of thinking. Depressed people keep thinking negative thoughts. “I made a mistake. I was a bad mother.” “I made a mistake. I was a bad person.” They can’t disengage those thoughts. PTSD, people can’t disengage from the memory and over time those circuits in the brain become completely self-determining. They just go on and on and on, even if the person wants to stop them. And they can’t. I think the disruption of circuits, the breaking down of these regimented silos of function of the brain by psychedelics is one explanation as to why people can escape from those underlying disorders.
Zach: Some critics might think why study psychedelics at all? We have pharmaceuticals that treat anxiety, depression, that are specifically designed to help with these disorders. Why open this can of worms and study psychedelics at all?
Dr. Nutt: Yeah, that’s a really important question. And the people who are against psychedelics often say that, “We don’t need it. We’ve got good treatments.” Well, the truth is we don’t have very good treatments. Half of all people who are treated with antidepressants don’t respond to the first dose. To get 90% to respond you usually have two or three trials. So there are people who don’t respond and never respond so there’s an opportunity for them. Disorders like alcoholism response rates are like 10% not 80%. So there’s a huge unmet need, that the first thing. Second thing is, these are fundamental states of ordered consciousness. I would argue the greatest goal for science is understanding the human brain. You can understand the human brain if you don’t understand how the human brain is different when it’s on a psychedelic. To me, this is one of the most fundamental questions.
Zach: Do you think psychedelics could offer a scientific glimpse into the phenomemon of consciousness itself?
Dr. Nutt: The conclusion I’ve come to from our work is there are at least two forms of consciousness. There’s a consciousness which most people talk about when they talk about consciousness, which is whether you’re awake or asleep, whether you actually know what you’re doing, whether you can actually remember what you’re saying, whether you’ve got self-awareness, that’s one consciousness. We know what drives that. That’s driven by neurotransmitters called glutamate and GABA. And there’s another form of consciousness and this is what psychedelics, psychedelics change the nature consciousness. Not the amount of it, but the content. It’s completely different access of brain function. That’s driven by serotonin, the serotonin receptors that psychedelics work on. That is fascinating to me. I think that access is actually an access that scientists don’t know about because that’s not the scientific access. That’s the access that artists, creative people work on, your poets, painters. Scientists think very linearly, but this is a nonlinear kind of experiential thinking. We’ve opened up, I think, the scientific study of things like creativity.
Zach: As you mentioned before, back in the 50s and 60s these were questions that started to be explored and then there was this long period that coincided with The War on Drugs where it was just not explored. Now people are starting to pick these questions back up and again and start asking them again. This conference we’re attending right now has been around since 2010. Back then there were only a few scientists actually running studies, you were one of them. Now it seems like it’s spread. There’s more people, the studies are getting bigger and bigger. Could you give us just a lay of the land? Where is psychedelic science at this moment?
Dr. Nutt: It’s entering the mainstream. It’s like going to college. It’s a freshman, jut getting there in the first term. People seeing it and saying “Well, it’s not killing people, it’s actually giving us interesting insights into the brain. It may be offering new treatments.” The next stage is getting what you might call the mainstream, scientists say. We can progress our science more if we use these drugs. That’s going to be the next big hike. Maybe in fours years time we’ll see another big expansion. The science here compared with four years ago is it’s five times more. Maybe in five years time it will 25 times more.
Zach: Are there any policy changes either here in the United States or in Europe that would enable us to proceed even more quickly?
Dr. Nutt: Oh yes, well, I mean it’s still very difficult. We’ve got to change the regulations. These drugs are all stuck in what’s called Schedule I under the UN Conventions under the USA law. We’ve got to get them out of Schedule I. We’ve got to get them in Schedule II or any other schedule with allows scientists to work with them without being treated as if they’re criminals.
Zach: How would you envision these types of drugs being integrated into society or the medical establishment?
Dr. Nutt: These are the drugs which bring together psychiatry and psychology. These drugs are not drugs you take every day to hold at bay your depression or your anxiety. These are drugs which you use with a psychotherapist to change the way you deal with life and that way you get mastery over your anxiety or depression. So I see these drugs as being enormously powerful ways of bringing psychotherapy and medicine together. That, I think, is going to be a huge element of psychotherapy in the future. It’s going to be drug-assisted psychotherapies. It’s going to be the great advance in the next 20 years.
Zach: David Nutt, thank you very much for your time.
Restoration Hardware almost made it two full quarters without imploding. Alas, it was not meant to be.
After reporting abysmal numbers in Q3 2016, Q1 2016, Q4 2015 – when the company went so far to blame its own crashing stock price for poor earnings – RH stock more than doubled after its better than expected Q4 2016 numbers as long-suffering investors (not to mentioned squeezed shorts) assumed that that was finally it: that the company has finally turned the corner.
Alas, it was not meant to be, and moments ago the volatile retailer reported non-GAA{ Q1 EPS and revenue of 5 cents and $562.1MM respectively (GAAP loss was $0.09) in line with what the company had previously guided.
However it was once again the company’s disturbing guidance that surprised investors, as the company slashed not only its Q2 byt also Full Year earnings far beyond what could be considered a simple revision.
Specifically, while RH sees Q2 net revenue of $595m to $610m, better than the estimated $581.26MM, the problem was Q2 earnings, which the company sees in the range of 0.38c to 0.43c, wildly missing estimates of 64.48c, and coming even below the lowest estimate in the range of 53c to 75c).
Furthermore, while RH sees full year revenues in line, at $2.4-$2.45, above the est. of $2.41, once again EPS surprised, as it is now expected to print in the range $1.67-$1.94, far below the consensus estimate $2.17, and below the low end of the range of $2.05 to $2.33.
What prompted the sharp revision: the company’s announcement that it plans to shift to building cash flows, which means “reducing our new Gallery opening cadence… which is expected to drive high-quality sustainable growth, while lower capital requirements.” In other words, the company is admitting it seeks a slower growth rate.
Not only that, but in a piece of truly bizarre disclosure in the earnings release, the company CEO Gary Friedman said the following:
We understand that many of the strategies we are pursuing – opening the largest specialty retail experiences in our industry while most are shrinking the size of their retail footprint and closing stores; expanding our Source Book mailings while many are eliminating catalogs; moving from a promotional to a membership model, while others are increasing promotions, positioning their brands around price versus product; and refusing to follow the herd in self-promotion on social media platforms, instead allowing our brand to be defined by the taste, style, design and quality of the products and experiences we are creating – are all in direct conflict with conventional wisdom and the strategies being pursued by many in our industry.
Judging by the stock reaction, the market would rather stick with conventional wisdom. And then there was this:
Yet, our most valuable asset is not what we’ve done, but rather who we’ve become. We’ve become a team of people who don’t know what can’t be done. A team that is driven by our values and beliefs. A team that is willing to march into hell, as we did last year, for a heavenly cause.
Here is the full excerpt from the Q1 earnings announcement.
For fiscal 2017, we are increasing our revenue guidance to a range of $2.4 billion to $2.45 billion, reflecting a more aggressive approach to rationalizing our product offer, reducing inventories, and increasing free cash flow. While this approach will benefit revenues and cash flow for the year, it will have a negative impact on earnings. As a result, we are lowering our adjusted net income guidance from a range of $65 million to $80 million, to a range of $60 million to $70 million, which would translate to adjusted diluted earnings per share in a range of $1.67 to $1.94, assuming a weighted average diluted share count of 36.0 million.
As previously discussed, we believe there is an opportunity to improve returns by having a more disciplined approach to capital allocation. Accordingly, we plan to reduce our new Gallery opening cadence to a range of 3 to 5 per year, which is expected to drive high-quality sustainable growth, while lowering capital requirements and execution risk over the course of our real estate transformation. In fiscal 2017, we expect to open 3 next generation Design Galleries, all with integrated food and beverage. We remain confident in reaching our long-term goal of $4 to $5 billion in North American revenues, industry-leading operating margins, and significant free cash flow and returns on invested capital.
We understand that many of the strategies we are pursuing – opening the largest specialty retail experiences in our industry while most are shrinking the size of their retail footprint and closing stores; expanding our Source Book mailings while many are eliminating catalogs; moving from a promotional to a membership model, while others are increasing promotions, positioning their brands around price versus product; and refusing to follow the herd in self-promotion on social media platforms, instead allowing our brand to be defined by the taste, style, design and quality of the products and experiences we are creating – are all in direct conflict with conventional wisdom and the strategies being pursued by many in our industry.
We believe when you step back and consider we are – one, building a brand with no peer; two, creating a customer experience that cannot be replicated online; and three, have total control of our content from concept to customer – you realize what we are building is extremely rare in contrast to today’s retail landscape. Yet, our most valuable asset is not what we’ve done, but rather who we’ve become. We’ve become a team of people who don’t know what can’t be done. A team that is driven by our values and beliefs. A team that is willing to march into hell, as we did last year, for a heavenly cause. A team that has a bold vision for the future, and an organization that is demonstrating it can bring that vision to life.
Carpe Diem,
Gary
Gary Friedman Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Alas, the only thing the market has carped is the sell button, and the stock is crashing once again after hours.
President Donald Trump formally announced this afternoon the United States was pulling out of the Paris climate change agreement. He is open to negotiating terms to re-enter the agreement.
Witnesses report gunshots and explosions at a hotel and casino complex near Manila’s airport.
Mark your calendars! Fired FBI Director James Comey will indeed be testifying openly before a Senate committee next Thursday. Will he state on the record whether Trump tried to get him to stop investigating former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn? Stay tuned.
The Trump administration is working to return two diplomatic compounds in New York City and Maryland that had been seized by President Barack Obama’s administration over the allegations of Russian meddling in the presidential election.
As I discussed this past weekend, the current “bull market” seems unstoppable. Even on Twitter, investors have once again been lulled into the “complacency trap.”
For example, just last week I received an email exposing this problem exactly.
“Explain this to me. I have been listening to all of these people on television talking about how great the market is doing. However, my advisor convinced me back in 1998 to buy a bunch of blue chip stocks and just hold them. Well, almost 20-years later, I am not much better off than where I started and am still a long way from where I need to retire. I just don’t get it.”
This email goes to the very core of the fallacy that is continually espoused by the mainstream media with reference to “buy and hold,” “dollar cost averaging,” and “compounding.”
When you are invested in ANY asset that can lose principal value during your investment time horizon, you can NOT compound returns.Compound returns ONLY occur in investments that do not lose principal such bonds, money market accounts and CDs.
Furthermore, the major problem is the loss of “time” to achieve your investment goals. When a major correction occurs in the financial markets, which occur quite frequently, getting back to even is NOT the real problem. While capital can be recovered following a destructive event, the time to reach your investment goals is permanently lost.
The majority of mainstream commentators continue to suggest that “you can not manage” your money because if you sell, then you are going to “miss out” on some level of the bull market advance. The problem is they fail to tell you what happens when you lose a large chunk of your capital by chasing the bull market to its inevitable conclusion. (See “Math Of Loss”)
While investing money is easy, it is the management of the inherent “risks” that are critical to your long-term success. This is why every great investor in history is defined by the methods by which they manage their investments. When they “buy”, but most importantly when they “sell.”
The difference between a successful long-term investor, and an unsuccessful one, comes down to following very simple rules. Yes, I said simple rules, and they are – but they are the most difficult set of rules for any one individual to follow. Why? Because of the simple fact that they require you to do the exact OPPOSITE of what your basic human emotions tell you to do:
Buy stuff when it is being liquidated by everyone else, and;
Sell stuff when it is going to the moon.
The 7-Trading Rules
Here are the rules – they are not unique or new. They are time tested and successful investor approved. Like Mom’s chicken soup for a cold – the rules are the rules. If you follow them you succeed – if you don’t, you don’t.
1) Sell Losers Short: Let Winners Run:
It seems like a simple thing to do but when it comes down to it the average investor sells their winners and keeps their losers hoping they will come back to even.
2) Buy Cheap And Sell Expensive:
You haggle, negotiate and shop extensively for the best deals on cars and flat screen televisions. However, you will pay any price for a stock because someone on television told you too. Insist on making investments when you are getting a “good deal” on it. If it isn’t – it isn’t, don’t try and come up with an excuse to justify overpaying for an investment. In the long run – overpaying will end in misery.
3) This Time Is Never Different:
As much as our emotions and psychological makeup want to always hope and pray for the best – this time is never different than the past. History may not repeat exactly but it surely rhymes awfully well.
4) Be Patient:
As with item number 2; there is never a rush to make an investment and there is NOTHING WRONG with sitting on cash until a good deal, a real bargain, comes along. Being patient is not only a virtue – it is a good way to keep yourself out of trouble.
5) Turn Off The Television:
Any good investment is NEVER dictated by day to day movements of the market which is merely nothing more than noise. If you have done your homework, made a good investment at a good price and have confirmed your analysis to correct – then the day to day market actions will have little, if any, bearing on the longer-term success of your investment. The only thing you achieve by watching the television from one minute to the next is increasing your blood pressure.
6) Risk Is Not Equal To Your Return:
Taking RISK in an investment or strategy is not equivalent to how much money you will make. It only relates to the permanent loss of capital that will be incurred when you are wrong. Invest conservatively and grow your money over time with the LEAST amount of risk possible.
7) Go Against The Herd:
The populous is generally right in the middle of a move up in the markets but they are seldom right at major turning points. When everyone agrees on the direction of the market due to any given set of reasons – generally something else happens. However, this also cedes to points 2) and 4); in order to buy something cheap or sell something at the best price – you are generally buying when everyone is selling and selling when everyone else is buying.
These are the rules. They are simple and impossible to follow for most. However, if you can incorporate them you will succeed in your investment goals in the long run. You most likely WILL NOT outperform the markets on the way up but you will not lose as much on the way down. This is important because it is much easier to replace a lost opportunity in investing – it is impossible to replace lost capital.
As an investor, it is simply your job to step away from your “emotions” for a moment and look objectively at the market around you. Is it currently dominated by “greed” or “fear?” Your long-term returns will depend greatly not only on how you answer that question, but how you manage the inherent risk.
“The investor’s chief problem – and even his worst enemy – is likely to be himself.”– Benjamin Graham
Just as he threatened he would yesterday, moments ago Elon Musk confirmed that as a result of Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Treaty, he is departing the presidential councils, stating that “climate change is real” and “leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.”
Am departing presidential councils. Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.
Musk forgot to mention that “leaving Paris” is especially not good for taxpayer-subsidized, “green” companies with a nasty massive cash burn habit, but let’s ignore that. In any case, just like that, Ironman is officially the leader of the anti-Trump resistance.
Overnight saw China PMI slump back into contraction but ongoing squeeze efforts sent Yuan soaring…
S&P record highs as US Macro data slumps near 16-month lows…
As Bloomberg's Vincent Cignarella notes, U.S. equities rose, the S&P 500 index to an intraday record, the dollar strengthened and Treasuries fell as a spike in private hiring data bolstered optimism in the economy before Friday’s non-farms payroll report. Crude failed to hold gains from a larger inventory draw than expected. The shift in asset prices came after ADP reported more workers were added to U.S. payrolls in May than forecast. All eyes now on the jobs report Friday, with market assigning all but certain odds that the Fed will hike rates in two weeks.
After a big tumble at the open yesterday (into month-end), Small Caps were panic-bid today – the best day for Small Caps since the election)
Dow hit a new record high for first time since March 1st.
As shorts were squeezed notably over the last two days…
VIX was pressed lower once again (and fell below the Maginot Line of 10)…
Banks battled back from yesterday's bloodbath with only MS covering the losses…
Treasury yields rose marginally on the day but remain markedly lower on the week…
The Dollar Index rose most in 2 weeks (spike after ADP but faded)…
But remains unch on the week, with AUD and CAD weakness offsetting Yuan strength…
Gold and SIlver lost ground today but rallied back after early morning dumps…
WTI/RBOB saw a big pump'n'dump today, rallying after the inventory data, but reversing aggressively lower as the USD index turned up…