Britain has passed what everyone calls the “snooper’s charter” otherwise known as the Investigatory Powers Bill.
This new legislation establishes the legal framework authorizing the government to hack into devices, networks and services in bulk and to create vast databases of personal information on all UK citizens. This is a preliminary step for a movement to impose worldwide taxation on Brits.
This is really to hunt money, not terrorism.
The “snooper’s charter” requires internet, phone and communication app companies to store records for 12 months and allow authorities to access them whenever they demand. That data will include anything you look at or search on the internet as well as all your telephone calls and text messages. Meanwhile, security agencies will be able to force companies to decrypt data avoiding the Apple confrontation in the USA. They are also imposing limitations on the use of end-to-end encryption.
They want EVERYTHING you do. This has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with terrorism.
This is the hunt for taxes coming to a head in 2017.
For the first time, security services will be able to hack into computers, networks, mobile devices, servers and more under the proposed plans. The practice is known as equipment interference and is set out in part 5, chapter 2, of the IP Bill.
This could include downloading data from a mobile phone that is stolen or left unattended, or software that tracks every keyboard letter pressed being installed on a laptop.
"More complex equipment interference operations may involve exploiting existing vulnerabilities in software in order to gain control of devices or networks to remotely extract material or monitor the user of the device," a draft code of conduct says.
The power will be available to police forces and intelligence services. Warrants must be issued for the hacking to take place.
Bulk hacking
For those not living in the UK, but who have come to the attention of the security agencies, the potential to be hacked increases. Bulk equipment interference (chapter 3 of the IP Bill) allows for large scale hacks in "large operations".
Data can be gathered from "a large number of devices in the specified location". A draft code of practice says a foreign region (although it does not give a size) where terrorism is suspected could be targeted, for instance. As a result, it is likely the data of innocent people would be gathered.
Security and intelligence agencies must apply for a warrant from the Secretary of State and these groups are the only people who can complete bulk hacks.
Commissioners
To help oversee the new powers, the Home Office is introducing new roles to approve warrants and handle issues that arise from the new powers. The Investigatory Powers Commissioner (IPC) and judicial commissioners (part 8, chapter 1 of the IP Bill) will be appointed by Theresa May, or whoever the serving prime minister is at the time.
The IPC will be a senior judge and be supported by other high court judges. "The IPC will audit compliance and undertake investigations," the government says.
"The Commissioner will report publicly and make recommendations on what he finds in the course of his work," guidance on the original bill says (page 6). "He will also publish guidance when it is required on the proper use of investigatory powers."
Web records
Under the IP Bill, security services and police forces will be able to access communications data when it is needed to help their investigations. This means internet history data (Internet Connection Records, in official speak) will have to be stored for 12 months.
Communications service providers, which include everything from internet companies and messenger services to postal services, will have to store meta data about the communications made through their services.
The who, what, when, and where will have to be stored. This will mean your internet service provider stores that you visited WIRED.co.uk to read this article, on this day, at this time and where from (i.e. a mobile device). This will be done for every website visited for a year.
Web records and communications data is detailed under chapter 3, part 3 of the law and warrants are required for the data to be accessed. A draft code of practice details more information on communications data.
Bulk data sets
As well as communications data being stored, intelligence agencies will also be able to obtain and use "bulk personal datasets". These mass data sets mostly include a "majority of individuals" that aren't suspected in any wrongdoing but have been swept-up in the data collection.
These (detailed under part 7 of the IP Bill and in a code of practice), as well as warrants for their creation and retention must be obtained.
"Typically these datasets are very large, and of a size which means they cannot be processed manually," the draft code of practice describes the data sets as. These types of databases can be created from a variety of sources.
Finally, we leave it to Edward Snowden to summarize just how insane this bill is…
The UK has just legalized the most extreme surveillance in the history of western democracy. It goes farther than many autocracies. https://t.co/yvmv8CoHrj
After dashing the hopes and dreams of millions of millennial snowflakes across the country with her stunning defeat, Hillary would like for you to give her just a little bit more of your hard-earned money before she officially bows out of public life. As such, “Madam President” has implemented a fire sale on all Clinton/Kaine swag sold on HillaryClinton.com. Personally, we think the “woman card” and “stronger together” bumper stickers would make fantastic stocking stuffers though we would warn parents of the potential “triggering” effect of these gifts.
Per the Daily Caller, team Clinton announced the swag fire sale via an email sent to supporters with the subject line, “Last chance: Own your piece of this campaign and support Democrats across the country.”
As an added bonus, you get free shipping when you spend $25 or more.
Moreover, with buttons and stickers only $1-$2, you could supply gear to your entire protest group for just a couple hundred bucks…it’s really a fantastic opportunity.
“As one who celebrates and strives for diversity, individual freedom, and respect for all lifestyles, I will not participate in dressing or associating in any way with the next First Lady,” wrote fashion designer Sophie Theallet in an open letter this week.
People magazine reports Theallet, who has designed and donated clothes for outgoing First Lady Michelle Obama numerous times over the last eight years, may not be alone: “A source tells People, ‘This has already been going on for months. Designers wouldn’t lend to Melania, Ivanka or Tiffany, so they either bought the items themselves or wore Ivanka’s brand. … There was a lot of shopping their own closets.'”
Personally, I applaud Theallet’s design to disassociate herself with the next occupant of the White House. I see Donald Trump as a shameful human being with few redeeming qualities as a leader and even fewer as a person, and if I were a business owner, I too would decline to serve his administration.
Likewise, I support Bruce Springsteen’s right to cancel his concerts in North Carolina in protest of the state’s transgender-bathroom policies.
Both are examples of associational freedom—the right to make decisions for yourself about how and with whom you spend your time and energy. This includes the right not to take on a client or project that elevates, in your view, a value you disagree with.
The problem is not that Theallet was willing to dress Michelle Obama and isn’t willing to dress Melania Trump (which is, like it or not, a form of discrimination). The problem is just how many people don’t seem to think that same freedom should be extended to bakery owners, photographers, and other wedding vendors who object to same-sex marriage on religious grounds.
As Theallet put it, “we consider our voice an expression of our artistic and philosophical ideals.” I suspect Barronelle Stutzman, the white-haired grandmother who owns Arlene’s Flowers, feels the same way about her craft. But instead of assuming a live-and-let-live attitude on the matter, Washington state has systematically worked to destroy Stutzman’s business unless she agrees to take part in a celebration to which she is morally opposed.
There’s been a lot of discussion since Trump’s victory last week of the apparent disconnect between rural and urban America—between wealthy elites and those who live in what has become less-than-affectionately known as “flyover country.” This is a vivid example of that chasm.
Rights cannot be just for those who will use them to uphold the values you agree with. They must also be for those who will take positions you can’t fathom for reasons you can’t stomach. Free association, and the freedom to live out your convictions expressively in how your make a living, cannot be reserved for rock stars and fashion designers and other powerful liberals, while being denied to regular Americans.
“As a family owned company, our bottom line is not just about money,” Theallet writes in her open letter. “We value our artistic freedom.” Hear, hear.
The explosion of emotions triggered by the recent presidential election caught many off guard. Across the country, friendships have been lost, family members estranged, and hostility has boiled over in many communities.
In our consumer culture we're sold lots of things. Two weeks ago it might have been jeans and a TV, but last week it was fear. And Loathing. People were sold fear and loathing, and now it is ruining friendships, making people miserable, and driving the country apart.
I’m not going to spend a lot of time on the “why” of this story. The “why” is a mix of competing interests including simple commerce (fear sells), political gain, and creating divisiveness within the population for other purposes.
So, what’s going on?
Sadly, in many cases, I think people have simply been manipulated in traumatic fashion and we're now dealing with the emotional and social repercussions.
What do I mean by that?
In response to another comment on this site from a teacher whose students were expressing severe emotional distress over the Trump win, contributor Dave Fairtex offered these insights (emphasis mine):
(…) His students' reaction is NOT about losing an election. It's because these people watch media, and the (Clinton-controlled) media spent the last four months working overtime to program everyone in the country that Trump is a soulless monster come to eat them and their families, roasting their babies on a spit while laughing, and so on.
This emotional programming has been extremely effective. That's why people are rioting now. Not because they aren't good losers, but because they've been successfully emotionally programmed by the Clinton Campaign's media arm (CNN, CNBC, and millions of scary social media posts), who are very good at what they do.
Emotional programming… This is something that we need to discuss because it is very real. It is happening right now and will continue to bombard us. And humans are highly susceptible to it.
Not because they're weak; but because they're unaware of it. If you aren't aware of the tricks and devices used to persuade, lead, and sometime mislead your emotions and actions, then you cannot protect yourself from these efforts.
The Peak Prosperity Value Proposition
Before we dive into the topic of persuasion, subliminal nudging, and emotional manipulation I want to review the value proposition here at PeakProsperity.com.
Why do so many people read our articles? Why do a number of them subscribe to premium content and Insider reports? Because they find value in them. We’ve heard it said, many times, that our readers value our work Because it makes them feel smarter.
Of course, we don't think we're actually making these folks any more intelligent than they already are. However, we do strive to engage their minds in ways that challenge and expand their perspective.
So how about this instead? What I am going to provide here today, as always, is essential context that will (1) help you see the world in a new and expanded way that will (2) lead you to make different decisions in the future. After all, "smarter" is no good if it doesn’t lead you to be more connected to and alive within the world.
The more context you have, the more intelligent you become.
Knowledge is a bunch of facts. Someone who can list every national capitol through all of history has a lot of knowledge. But possessing a lot of knowledge is not the same thing as being intelligent.
Intelligence comes from connecting ideas and having the context, or framework, into which one can plug one’s accumulated knowledge.
A favorite Leonardo Da Vinci quote of mine is:
“Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else”
With this view ‘intelligent’ is not something you are; it is something you become.
Let me also say, right up front, that I'm not going to try to convince you of anything. I will lay out a series of dots that I hope might sway your thinking, because they swayed mine. If you don’t agree with me, that’s fine. But you should have a solid argument for why.
Your mental landscape is certainly different from mine. Quite possibly so entirely different that what persuades me has zero impact on you, or even may solidify an entirely opposite view you hold.
That’s entirely fine by me. We can be intelligent in entirely different ways, and that diversity of thinking is really important to the pursuit of truth.
This distinction is pretty much lost on a lot of people at present. And that’s creating a lot of resentment in our society right now.
The Persuasion Continuum
There’s nothing inherently bad with being persuasive. In fact, it’s a great talent to have. We cover this in depth in our weekend seminar series.
While it’s too much to go into here, the art of persuasion that we preach involves being calm, centered and collected. Have your facts at the ready, be free of any emotional charges (such as anger or depression), and approach your audience gently, always ready to back away if you see signs that they're not emotionally ready to listen to you now. Plant seeds in these cases. Be patient.
Pressing or cajoling doesn't change someone's opinion. Nobody has ever been persuaded by being bullied. Or insulted. Or belittled. Or shamed. Or shouted down. They may retreat from the argument, but they're not swayed.
People will listen to hear a new line of thinking when they're ready, and not a moment sooner. Well, as long as you're playing fair and coming through the front door, that is.
Because the human mind has back doors as well, a fact that such techniques as Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), hypnosis, mirroring, and subliminal advertising take advantage of.
Furthermore, when humans are traumatized, their front and back doors are ripped open. In this state, people are open to all kinds of manipulation and implanted suggestions. Trauma programming gives us the Stockholm Syndrome — where a kidnapping or hostage victim develops feelings of trust or affection towards their captor(s) — as well as buys years, decades and sometimes a lifetime of silence from sexual assault victims.
Here’s a straightforward diagram for the visually minded folks (like me) out there:
Before we get to harder material around the sort of propaganda and emotional manipulation that has accompanied this election cycle, let’s spend some time on the relatively safe and agreed-upon territory of manipulation in traditional sales and marketing campaigns.
Manipulative Marketing & Subliminal Advertising
If you haven’t noticed, performing a Google search for something like ‘best kiddie swim pools’ will usually cause you to later notice that ads for kids' swim wear begin showing up on your favorite news sites.
This is old news, and creepy as it is, it’s quite effective. If it didn’t work, it wouldn't be used. It’s used because it works great, and it’s getting more sophisticated all the time as the algorithms become better and better at figuring out how to understand someone well enough to divine their shopping preferences.
But all of that is pretty straightforward and overt, at for those paying even mild attention. Most of us know by now that the ads that show up on the internet sites we visit are anything but random. They're meant for us based on our recent on-line searches and behavior.
Subliminal advertising is far more covert than simple ad placement as it is designed to operate sub-liminally meaning 'beneath your conscious awareness'. This is different from operating on the un-conscious level because, generally speaking, you cannot access your unconscious mind. But you can elevate a subliminal message into your conscious frame.
Subliminal things are often right there in front of you, but they're not really noticed unless your attention is drawn to them for other reasons.
There’s a whole subculture of people who like to discover and expose the subliminal messages that are used every day to try and influence people’s purchasing habits. Most often subliminal messages revolve around sex.
Why? Because evoking a connection to sex has proven to be extremely effective at motivating people to action, specifically towards buying your product. Again: it’s used because it works.
If you want to amuse yourself, Google "subliminal advertising" and scroll through the image results.
Here are a few examples to give you an idea of the trove of examples that your search will find:
And so on. Some of the examples I dared not reproduce for fear of offending folks, as they were so sexually graphic. But for those interested, there’s a big world of subliminal advertising to explore…
The point of subliminal advertising is to link a mass product to consumer’s unconscious desires. While used extensively by corporations to move their products, the initial logic that underlies subliminal advertising, and even advertising more generally, was based on the works of Sigmund Freud and developed into a workable framework for social control and programming by his nephew Edward Bernays.
Here’s a fascinating documentary on how all this came to be (~ 1 hour):
Which brings us to propaganda.
Propaganda
When I write “propaganda” many people will reflexively think of the crude cartoons of WW II that depicted various fascist leaders of enemy countries as evil caricatures.
Once one knows what to look for, the efforts are really not at all difficult to spot. And once elevated to the conscious mind, they lose nearly all of their effectiveness.
What’s important to realize is that the science of propaganda was born a long time ago, and it has not remained fossilized ever since. It's been evolving along with our increasingly sophisticated understanding of the brain and its functions and wiring.
Here’s what the grandfather of propaganda, Freud's nephew Edward Bernays, wrote in chapter 1 of his book Propaganda back in 1928:
The true ruling powers of any country are those who most successfully manipulate the “organized habits and opinions of the masses” as Bernays says. Once you understand the rules for rulers, you know that they can do nothing without keeping those who hold the keys to power on their side. And they in turn can do nothing without the consent and agreement of those below them. And propaganda plays a critical role in securing and maintaining that loyalty and consent.
While generally not talked about in polite company, the art and science of social control has been faithfully advanced and deployed to sell you a lot more than shoes and soda.
The science of social control, especially what the crowds are thinking and doing, while still imperfect, has come a very long way over the past 90 years.
Here’s an example picked up very recently by member mememonkey that I thought fascinating:
While playing a video feed of Ronald Reagan being shot by Hinkley, CNN was displaying text below that reads “TRUMP FACES BACKLASH…” Blunt. Crude. Effective.
Now, by this time it hopefully does not take a genius to see what sort of message is being sold here. What exactly the Reagan assassination attempt has to do with Trump ditching reporters is entirely unclear from the image and text placement. Heck, it’s not even clear once they try and explain it. But the inference is crystal clear: assassination might just be 'fair game' as a form of backlash?
A traumatic event is being used to reinforce a message. That’s a covert-traumatic ploy that’s a proven winner. If it didn’t work, then it wouldn’t be used. But here it is, and you need to be aware that such scripts are running nearly all the time in the marketplace not just of products, but of ideas.
Now this isn’t some tin-foil hat wearing theory. It's the very essence of advertising and propaganda. Once you notice it, you’ll see it everywhere and if you are like me, it will annoy you with its brazen obviousness. “How can this work?” you will wonder.
As greater advances have been made in the fields of social control, cognitive processing, and neurology the ‘tools of the trade’ have become ever more sophisticated.
You need to be aware of the idea that not only are these subtle influences bombarding us all the time, but they are increasingly effective. If you are not aware, then you run the risk of having your ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and emotions essentially provided for you by someone else.
In Part 2: How To Protect Yourself From Persuasion & Propaganda, we explain how once you become aware of the constant ‘programming’ efforts that are being aimed at you on a daily basis, you have the chance to become mindful of these efforts and prevent them from swaying your emotions and decisions (at least, not more than you allow them to).
Vice President-elect, Mike Pence, may have expected a simple night out with his family on Friday evening in New York when he arrived at the Broadway show, “Hamilton”. He didn’t get that. The New York crowd greeted him with “boos” as he took his seat on arrival and the cast delivered a shocking admonishment to the VP to cap off the night during the curtain call.
“Vice President-elect Pence, I see you’re walking out, but I hope you will hear just a few more minutes.”
“We are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our friends, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights. But we truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.”
“We truly thank you for sharing this show, this wonderful American story told by a diverse group of men, women of different colors, creeds and orientation.”
“We don’t have to agree, but we have to live here.”
Video of Pence arriving to boos from the New York crowd.
If that weren’t enough, apparently the show had to be stopped multiple times for the leftist crowd to gather their composure.
I’m at #Hamilton and so is Mike Pence. Crowd booed him like crazy, and gave a standing O at the line “immigrants we get the job done” 1/2
Then, this morning Donald Trump joined in the fray of what is shaping up the political scandal of the weekend, when he tweeted “our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing.This should not happen!” and added “The Theater must always be a safe and special place”, a statement Abraham Lincoln surely agrees with.
He concluded that “the cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!” And since we doubt anyone will apologize, this will merely serve as the latest news cycle focal point of “tolerance” tensions between Trump and an increasingly more vocal liberal subset.
Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing.This should not happen!
Since she first got involved in marijuana activism, Madeline Martinez has wanted to give cannabis consumers a place of their own—somewhere out of the way where they could smoke in peace and security.
Initially she tried to provide this through a series of small and short-lived “cannabis cafés” for Portland-area medical marijuana patients, the first of which was just a rented room in the back of a failing restaurant. When voters approved full-scale legalization in 2014, however—a campaign she was deeply involved in—Martinez saw an opportunity to go big.
In July of the following year, she opened the World Famous Cannabis Café in Southeast Portland. There, marijuana consumers of all stripes could come and—for a $10 daily membership fee—smoke weed, order food, and enjoy a range of pot-themed events, from ganja yoga to twice-weekly sessions of stoner bingo.
Almost immediately her café was a huge hit, quickly living up to its global name. “We had people coming from all over the world, straight from the airport, wheeling their carry-ons into the café,” Martinez says. A map on the wall soon became studded with pins marking visitors’ countries of origin—places as diverse as Australia and Iran.
And then, almost as quickly as it started, the World Famous Cannabis Café was forced to shut down. In December 2015, Martinez was informed by Multnomah County health officials that on-site cannabis consumption at the café was running afoul of post-legalization changes to Oregon’s Indoor Clean Air Act (ICAA), which banned marijuana smoke in public areas and places of employment.
Martinez protested that as a fee-charging private club staffed by volunteers, these rules did not apply to her establishment. County officials, though, acting on regulatory guidance from the Oregon Health Authority (OHA), were unmoved.
Facing massive fines, Martinez had no choice but to close the café down, hosting her last round of bingo on March 7, 2016.
Legalized But Not Normalized
The shuttering of Martinez’s World Famous Cannabis Café, sad though it was, was hardly unique. Indeed, her experience is emblematic of the struggle of many cannabusinesses in Oregon’s post-prohibition environment. Though their product is now legal, legislators and regulators have continually failed to treat the marijuana industry as normal. Instead, they’ve busied themselves with erecting an invasive and confusing regulatory structure that has stifled the growth of this infant industry.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Following the passage of Measure 91, which legalized marijuana for those 21 and over in 2014, voters were promised that the rollout of a legal recreational market in the state would be done quickly, efficiently, and without “excessive regulation.”
Measure 91 laid out a very clear path forward to accomplish that end. Recreational marijuana sales were to be legal statewide, localities were forbidden from taxing the stuff, and those that wanted to prohibit new cannabusinesses from opening in their jurisdictions would have to go through the ballot initiative process. Measure 91 also sought to streamline the regulatory burden by vesting rulemaking power in a single agency, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC). The OHA was to play merely an advisory role.
Crucially, however, Measure 91 left many of the practicalities of legalization to the State Legislature to determine. In June 2015—just as the World Famous Cannabis Café was getting ready to open its doors—lawmakers passed H.B. 3400, which represented a significant retreat from the liberal initiative passed by voters.
First of Measure 91’s provisions to go were the restrictions stopping local governments from re-enacting their own prohibitions. In a major concession to more conservative areas of the state, H.B. 3400 removed the requirement that recalcitrant prohibitionists work through the initiative process to ban cannabusinesses. Instead, it was decided that the recreational marijuana industry could be banned with a simple vote of a county commission or city council, so long as that locality had given Measure 91 less than 45 percent of its vote. About 100 local governments have since chosen to implement recreational bans in one form or another, meaning that for about half the state, prohibition remains very much in effect.
The legislature also chose to repeal the state pre-emption on local taxes on marijuana, instead allowing for a 3 percent levee on recreational sales on top of the 17 percent statewide fee. This November, voters in over 100 Oregon cities voted to impose such taxes. In one case, residents of Canby, Oregon, opted to both ban and tax recreational pot sales.
The patchwork of local rules and restrictions enabled by H.B. 3400 was then mirrored in the bill’s approach to statewide regulation. Under the bill, the OHA, the Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the Oregon Department of Agriculture—which were supposed to have merely advisory roles—were all given significant regulatory powers in their own right.
This has led to “too many hands in the pot,” says Amy Margolis, executive director of the Oregon Cannabis Association. Marijuana businesses face an almost impossible obstacle in the need to comply with rules from so many different agencies—rules, she says, that are often contradictory and poorly understood by the very regulators tasked with enforcing them.
Nowhere has this been more evident than in the ongoing debacle over marijuana product testing. According to H.B. 3400, all cannabusinesses are required to have their products tested for mold, mildew, potency, and pesticides. The bill tasked the OLCC and the OHA with determining the specifics of these tests, and also required that the OHA accredit the labs that would end up conducting them.
What the two agencies produced in the way of testing guidelines proved incredibly onerous. Businesses were required to have samples from every 10-pound batch of their product tested for 60 different pesticides. This substantially raises the cost of compliance, says Trista Okel, owner of the marijuana extract company Empower Oil.
Thanks to the new rules, Okel has seen her bill for pesticide testing—something the company was already doing prior to the bill’s passage—go up by $2,100 per test. A similar increase was reported by Burl Bryson of the edible company LunchBox Alchemy, who says the rule change has cost his business tens of thousands of dollars.
The cumbersome testing requirements also greatly outstripped OHA’s capacity to accredit the necessary number of labs and train lab technicians in the new regulatory requirements. Two weeks after the rules went into effect, OHA’s Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Program had approved a total of just four labs to test pesticides—nowhere near enough to meet industry demand.
The predictable result has been a major and ongoing bottleneck.
Okel says she was forced to shut down her operations for over a month for want of the OHA-approved marijuana her company needs to make its extracts. Bryson had to lay off 18 people due to an inability to get his edibles tested. Many more businesses are still sitting idle in the hope of more reasonable rules from the OLCC, and Okel and Bryson speculate that some of them will never reopen.
More Regulations Coming
Bad as this bottleneck is, things could be about to get even worse. Right now, Margolis notes, the recreational market is served by medical marijuana producers and retailers who, under temporary OLCC rules, are allowed to “sell forward” into the recreational market. This will come to an end on January 1, 2017, when new permanent rules say that only those businesses specifically licensed for the recreational market will be able to participate.
Applications for these licenses have been flooding into the OLCC, but of the nearly 1,700 requests that have been filed, only about 400 have been fully approved. Three-quarters of these are for marijuana growers, while only 90 wholesalers, processors, and retailers have received licenses from the state.
Despite the lack of progress, the OLCC and OHA have stood behind their regulatory approach. In a press release put out on September 30, the Liquor Commission acknowledged that its self-described “groundbreaking effort” at regulating the industry was still in a “developmental” stage, but claimed the regulations had been written in close consultation with the weed industry and were part of a “comprehensive effort to protect consumers.”
The press release also announced that some 20 marijuana strain names—including Jedi Kush and Smurf Pussy—were being prohibited because of their potential appeal to children.
Mark Pettinger of the OLCC says that his agency has worked hard to adapt to the needs of cannabusinesses as it crafts rules to govern the industry. The licensing system has been altered, for example.
When it comes to complaints about the pesticide testing requirements, Pettinger says his agency relies heavily on scientific guidance from the OHA to determine what safety standards are appropriate, but promises the commission is “trying to be flexible within the parameters we are given from other agencies.”
Despite their frustrations, many advocates and business owners are also hopeful they’ll be able to work with the commission to fix some of the regulatory problems. Anthony Johnson, chief petitioner for Measure 91 and a member of the OLCC Rules Advisory Committee, says that whatever difficulties cannabusinesses have encountered, he believes regulators at the Liquor Commission “really want the system to work and they are relatively willing to adapt and adjust as needed.”
Bryson likewise expressed the view that many of the disputes his business has had with the OLCC are mostly the result of “growing pains” that will be ironed out over time.
The industry seems far less optimistic about its dealings with the OHA, which Johnson says has “never been as willing to adapt to the needs of the cannabis community.” He points to the dismissive attitude that agency has long taken towards its own medical marijuana program, choosing not to promote it and even arguing against expanding it to patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. This hostility to the drug has, he says, biased its regulatory approach to the new recreational market.
Johnathan Modie, media contact for the OHA, did not return requests for comment.
This is all, of course, bad news for Martinez, who is seeking regulatory relief from the OHA in the form of a special carveout to the ICAA for her business. As she points out, the law already contains exceptions for the state’s cigar stores and hookah bars. That her marijuana café is not accorded the same level of protection clearly rankles her. “If someone chooses to use a hookah, or a cigar, please, by all means,” she says. “But don’t come looking for me when you are telling these people it’s OK to use a toxic substance, and yet my rights are being trampled.”
Martinez vows to keep fighting for the normalization of cannabis consumption. In the new post-legalization world, she says, marijuana users should no longer have to stand for their continued exclusion from normal life. “We’re not lepers,” she says. “We refuse to be now.”
Eight years of food and agricultural policy under President Barack Obama was mostly chaff. First Lady Michelle Obama planted an organic garden on the White House grounds and sought to work with the food industry to reduce calories, reformulate foods, and promote exercise in an unsuccessful attempt to reduce obesity rates in this country. Obama’s activist FDA banned trans fats, pushed for “added sugar” labeling on packaged foods, and adopted sweeping new food safety regulations under the Food Safety Modernization Act. The Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature legislation, contains requirements for nationwide calorie labeling on many restaurant menus.
Farm subsidies administered by the USDA ballooned to unprecedented levels during the Obama administration. The USDA co-published controversial new dietary guidelines. And the First Lady championed changes to the USDA National School Lunch Program that mandated the serving of more whole grains, fruits, and vegetables.
Given Trump’s putative status as the anti-Obama, how might a Trump administration differ from his predecessor when it comes to food and agricultural policy? We’ve gotten an early glimpse. Food police writer Baylen Linnekin reads the signs.
Let’s face it – investing is difficult! Gone are the days of saving for retirement. The average savings account in the USA pays less than 1%. Fortunately for most investors the stock market has been going up and up, but it’s going to correct (it always does). But it hasn’t been a good ride for all investors. Many retirees now living off their retirements are heavy into fixed income investments like annuities that pay a fixed monthly amount based on interest rates, which are at historic lows. Interest rates are so low, when these investors bought annuities, they are getting up to 90% less than what they expected. Quantitative Easing is killing retirees’ portfolios.
So what is the solution? Along with the bad comes good – like with any technology. Modern hospital techniques prolong life and save lives, but also with new medical technology comes many dangers. This is also true in financial services. For example, it’s now possible to trade and invest in algorithmic trading products called sometimes ‘robots’ which do investing for you. Just like human managers, all robots are different. Some are extremely risky, some are extremely conservative. With the advent of algorithmic trading, investors should be prepared to do due diligence on this new asset class, and be familiar with some of what such an investment entails.
Generally, robots are offered to investors as managed accounts or a fund product, such as a hedge fund, commodity pool, or structured product. Much of the due diligence is done by the managers of the robot and explained in a document such as a prospectus, disclosure document, or other offering memorandum. Be sure to work only with licensed managers!
There’s other benefits to algorithmic investing. The US election produced huge volatility which negatively impacted stock investments and many others. Take a look at a EUR/USD hourly chart, around the time of the US election (right).
Now take a look at the results from that night from Magic FX, one of Fortress Capital’s algorithmic managed accounts for QEP/ECP:
That is not to say that, algorithms are a panacea. But, they do provide a new type of risk profile, a new type of opportunity for investors, and are guaranteed to change the landscape of investing forever.
While the powers that be are determining the fate of alternative media voices that are now branded under the dubious label “fake news” and blacked out from online search results, it is worth keeping in mind all the disinformation and downright lies that have been perpetrated by the corporate news media – typically hand in hand with a political agenda.
Whether it is lies that took us to war, or the perception that a deadly attack was carried out by a certain group, the impressions they create play a significant role in determining world events. Often times, that role is one of deception, ensnaring people into supporting deadly and costly actions – in spite of the true facts.
These misleaders are the fake news, and the fake news problem has helped to ruin this country.
5 Times Corporate Media Got Caught Publishing Fake News Causing the Death & Suffering of Millions
A now-notorious list of ostensibly “fake” news sites — created by a liberal professor, seemingly out of thin air — spread like wildfire online in the past two days and was eagerly reprinted by corporate media presstitutes hoping to vindicate their own failed reporting on the 2016 election.
But branding perfectly legitimate outlets with the same scarlet letter as those devoid of integrity deemed the professor’s list a spurious attempt to defame alternative and independent media — anyone dissenting from the left’s mainstream narrative — as a whole.
This is, in no uncertain terms, a hit list — or, at least, a laughable attempt — and it fits conveniently into the establishment’s burgeoning war on independent media disguised as a battle against fake news.
When corporate media outlets from the Independent and Business Insider, to the Los Angeles Times and NYMag scrambled over one another to reprint this irresponsibly contrived hit list, they proved yet again a lack of journalistic integrity — the same issue that originally caused regular subscribers to abandon them in the first place.
Indeed, in this otherwise unknown professor’s foray into the world of journalism, a glaring mistake was made — the only mainstream outlets making the list were those who had heralded Bernie Sanders as the best candidate for the White House.
Such an obvious attempt to control thought could only be conjured in a totalitarian regime.
In fact, failing to place the exact corporate media organizations on the list, who for nearly a year praised fealty only to Hillary Clinton — and for decades have foisted on the public countless mendacious whoppers — constitutes a comedic lack of honesty. So, to bring that irony front and center, it’s imperative to examine some mainstream lies — most of which had appalling consequences — including the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in the United States and around the world.
1. George W. Bush’s Weapons of Mass Destruction
President George W. Bush decided to unleash the full force of the U.S. military upon the world in a new policy of war writ large disguised as a war on terrorism following the attacks of September 11, 2001. First arbitrarily designating Afghanistan as its primary victim due to the supposed identities of the attackers, Bush then chose Iraq to feel the wrath, and set out to invade the country following dubious claims Saddam Hussein harbored destructive chemical and biological weapons and was actively seeking far stronger munitions.
“Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised,” the president asserted in a public address on March 17, 2003.“This regime has already used weapons of mass destruction against Iraq’s neighbors and against Iraq’s people.”
Bush’s assertions were questioned by not only human rights experts, but by U.N. weapons inspectors and countless others — so shortly after the U.S. invaded the sovereign nation, the New York Times took up the slack to fill in the appropriatecasus belli.
Judith Miller notoriously reported on a source she described only as an Iraqi scientist who had seen several extensive caches of such weapons stored somewhere in the country. American weapons experts, she claimed, “said the scientist told them that President Saddam Hussein’s government had destroyed some stockpiles of deadly agents as early as the mid-1990’s, transferred others to Syria, and had recently focused its efforts instead on research and development projects that are virtually impervious to detection by international inspectors, and even American forces on the ground combing through Iraq’s giant weapons plants.”
In hindsight, Miller’s problematic report turned out to be horrendously flawed, and the Times spent months attempting tobacktrack, but the damage — fomenting widescale public support for a war no one wanted the military to undertake — had been done. Years later in 2014, the Times — after much internal strife — again took up Miller’s case, in a series reportingcatastrophic injuries U.S. military personnel suffered in handling chemical weapons in Iraq. But that report, and theparroting of it by multiple other mainstream mainstays, failed to fully disclose Hussein had been oblivious to the stockpiles presence — something the CIA had clearly stated in a report.
2. Gulf of Tonkin Incident
Often, the American mainstream media becomes a de facto government employee, taking the claims of U.S. officials and reporting them as proven fact — and nothing exemplifies this penchant better than reporting on the Gulf of Tonkin incident — perhaps one of most flagrant lies ever dreamed up as a justification for war.
On August 5, 1964, the New York Times reported “President Johnson has ordered retaliatory action against gunboats and ‘certain supporting facilities in North Vietnam’ after renewed attacks against American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.”Additional outlets, such as the Washington Post, echoed this claim.
But it wasn’t true. At all. In fact, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, as it became known, turned out to be a fictitious creation courtesy of the government to escalate war in Vietnam — leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of U.S. troops and millions of Vietnamese, fomenting the largest anti-war movement in American history, and tarnishing the reputation of a nation once considered at least somewhat noble in the eyes of the world.
In 2010, more than 1,100 transcripts from the Vietnam era were released, proving Congress and officials raised serious doubts about the information fed to them by the Pentagon and White House. But while this internal grumbling took place, mainstream media dutifully reported official statements as if the veracity of the information couldn’t be disputed.
Tom Wells, author of the exhaustive exposé “The War Within: America’s Battle Over Vietnam,” explained the media egregiously erred in “almost exclusive reliance on U.S. government officials as sources of information” and“reluctance to question official pronouncements on ‘national security issues.’”
If due diligence had been performed, and reporters had raised appropriate doubts about the Gulf of Tonkin false flag, it’s arguable whether support for the contentious war would have lasted as long as it did.
3. Suppression of brutality perpetrated in Bahrain during the Arab Spring
CNN sent reporter Amber Lyon and a crew to U.S. ally Bahrain for a documentary about technology’s role in the 2011 people’s uprising known as the Arab Spring, ultimately titled “iRevolution: Online Warriors of the Arab Spring” — but what they encountered instead bore the hallmarks of a repressive and violent regime, and its attempt to filter and censor the truth. Lyon and the other CNN reporters went to great lengths to speak with sources participating in the massive uprising — one the Bahraini government wished to quash at all costs.
“By the time the CNN crew arrived,” the Guardian reported, “many of the sources who had agreed to speak to them were either in hiding or had disappeared. Regime opponents whom they interviewed suffered recriminations, as did ordinary citizens who worked with them as fixers. Leading human rights activist Nabeel Rajab was charged with crimes shortly after speaking to the CNN team. A doctor who gave the crew a tour of his village and arranged meetings with government opponents, Saeed Ayyad, had his house burned to the ground shortly after. Their local fixer was fired ten days after working with them.”
Even the CNN crew experienced the wrath of the regime, upon showing up to interview one source, the Guardiancontinued, “‘20 heavily-armed men’, whose faces were ‘covered with black ski masks’, ‘jumped from military vehicles’, and then ‘pointed machine guns at’ the journalists, forcing them to the ground. The regime’s security forces seized their cameras and deleted their photos and video footage, and then detained and interrogated them for the next six hours.”
After returning to the U.S., Lyon felt it her duty to expose the abuse being perpetrated by the government of an ally nation — but CNN International didn’t agree. CNN U.S. eventually aired the one-hour documentary. Once. CNN Internationalnever did — worse, the organization gave Lyon the cold shoulder, ignoring her repeated requests to return to Bahrain, which would have put CNN ahead of the game in reporting government brutality. Its failure to air the documentary and refusal to provide justification for doing so angered seasoned CNN and other mainstream established journalists across the board.
Lyon met with CNN International president Tony Maddox twice — he first promised to investigate why the documentary wasn’t aired, and then turned against her, warning the journalist not to discuss the matter publicly. Bahraini officials contacted CNN International repeatedly complaining about Lyon’s continued reporting on what she’d witnessed. Intimidation continued until she was eventually laid off, putatively for an unrelated matter.
Attempting to save face, CNN International rebuffed the Guardian’s account and interview with Lyon — but the effort was an impotent justification for the obvious failure of integrity.
But threats for Lyon to remain silent followed her off the job, and when she persisted in exposing the Bahraini regime, as well as the suppression by CNN, the outlet sent a stern warning to halt. Lyon, however, said she had never signed a non-disclosure agreement and would not be pressured into their lies — ultimately walking away reputation in hand — something that could not be said for CNN.
4. That time Fox News hired a CIA operative who wasn’t a CIA operative
Wayne Shelby Simmons made guest appearances on Fox News as a security expert with insider expertise from his work as a CIA operative — for over a decade. However, Simmons had never been employed by the agency — in fact, the imposter’s lies eventually caught up with him and he was arrested and sentenced to 33 months in prison.
“Instead of verifying whether Simmons had actually worked for the CIA, Fox News and the Agency allowed him to make fools out of Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Andrew Napolitano, Neil Cavuto, and everyone at Fox & Friendsfor over the last twelve years. After building a false reputation as a CIA agent on Fox News, Simmons obtained an interim security clearance when an unnamed government contractor hired him in 2008. Simmons also falsely claimed on national security forms that his prior arrests and criminal convictions were directly related to his supposed intelligence work for the CIA, and that he had previously held a top secret security clearance from 1973 to 2000,” The Free Thought Project’s Andrew Emett explained.
In other words, mainstream Fox News didn’t bother with journalism at all — proffering fake expertise as the real deal — because the outlet failed the most basic of tasks any hourly wage employer would perform.
Simmons’ commentaries weren’t harmless stabs in the dark, either — relentlessly parroting baseless Islamophobic rhetoric to drum up support for the government’s insidious war on terror likely poisoned the minds of thousands of viewers, furthering the already divisive atmosphere in the U.S.
5. Vapid anti-marijuana propaganda and the furtherance of the war on drugs
According to the Drug Policy Alliance, over $51 billion is spent fighting the war on drugs in the United States — each year. In 2015, a striking 38.6 percent of all arrests for drug possession were for cannabis — 643,121 people were arrested for marijuana-related offenses.
What those figures don’t show are the millions of lives ruined by criminal conviction for the government’s unjustifiable quest to eradicate, demonize, and vilify this beneficial plant. It would be an impossible task to tally the number of families whose homes have been destroyed by SWAT teams searching for marijuana — whether or not police bothered to verify anaddress. An untold number of others have been slain by police for the same reason.
But worst of all, the mainstream media propagates nonsensical, false propaganda about cannabis to convince the gullible and ignorant among us to equate it with heroin, cocaine, and other ‘illicit’ substances. And while a majority of the populace has seen through such lies, some outlets have obstinately continued the drug war — seemingly of their own volition.
One stunning example occurred in March last year, when Dr. David Samadi made a guest appearance on Fox News to fearmonger the horrors of marijuana and scare the bejeezus out of the viewing audience.
“It actually causes heart attacks. It increases your heart rate. And on and on,” Samadi claimed, fecklessly distorting statistics. “We’re seeing in Colorado that we had 13 kids that came to the emergency [room] and ended up in the ICU as a result of overdose from marijuana. Now we have crack babies coming in because pregnant women are smoking this whole marijuana business.”
Fortunately, the Internet has provided the public with alternatives to these corporate media lies — and as of two years ago, despite these and other claims about pot being a dangerous substance, Pew Research Center foundfully 69 percent of the population felt alcohol was more harmful than cannabis.
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While this list presents only a few of the bigger lies of the corporate press, there are innumerable examples of its proud history of actual fake news. Keep these in mind when the mainstream presstitutes rush to reprint a hit list targeting journalists and outlets whose narratives counter the establishment. Indeed, it would be the corporate media — with its vast captive audience — who most deserves to be listed as propagators of lies.