When The S*** Hits the Fan

#Iceland’s Biggest Political Party Is Now The “ #PirateParty” — and It’s Amazing

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(ANTIMEDIA) Iceland’s anti-establishment Pirate Party continues to lead nationwide polls as the most popular choice for the next elections. The party — whose policies include internet freedom, drug decriminalisation, and open democracy — has consistently led the polls for the last year and, as a result, has secured more funding than any of its rivals.

The 2008 financial crisis hit Iceland hard. The following year, the krona was devalued by around 50%, unemployment doubled, and capital controls were introduce. Miraculously, the country rose from the ashes to become one of Europe’s top performers in terms of growth. More recently, the political establishment has been in turmoil since three government ministers were implicated in the global Panama Papers scandal.

Despite their struggle, or perhaps because of it, the list of reasons to admire Icelanders keeps on growing. Whether it’s the sentencing of senior bankers — or the mass outrage at the offshore leak, which propelled 10% of the population to the streets and ousted the Prime Minister — the radical refusal of Icelanders to bow down and accept establishment corruption is admirable.

Because of this, the surge in popularity of the once-fringe Pirate Party comes as little surprise — recent polls suggest almost half the nation supports them. In Iceland, financial support for political parties is allocated based on how well they have done in polls.

Although the party doesn’t have formal leadership, chair of the parliamentary group and spokesperson, Birgitta Jonsdottir, said they did not expect the funding. Claiming their campaign was, so far, funded at a flea market, she said that was enough and that all the party needs is to be able to pay the salaries of its employees.

“We did not expect this. We don’t care. Democracy doesn’t revolve around getting loads of money from the government,” she added.

This article (Iceland’s Biggest Political Party Is Now The “Pirate Party” — and It’s Amazing) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Michaela Whitton and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

5 Huge Stories the Media Ignored While Arguing Over Which #Bathroom to Use

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(ANTIMEDIA) Americans are prone to obsessing over seemingly frivolous headlines. Over the past year, we’ve seen the media drive emotional feeding frenzies on everything from the Starbucks red cup scandal or the superficial Confederate flag saga that ultimately glossed over the true foundations of racism in the U.S. Regardless of what the subjective opinion may be, the United States populace tends to feel inclined to indulge in heated, dramatic conversations about the morality of apparently inanimate objects.

But sometimes, they focus on more substantive issues.

One consistent subject that repeatedly riles up the masses is the subject of transgender rights. Last year, America (and the world) erupted in glee, rage, and overall chaos after Caitlyn Jenner debuted her new identity on the cover of Vanity Fair. More recently, many Americans have zeroed in on the ongoing controversy over transgender bathroom rights — sparked by North Carolina’s recent LGBT law. Some champion equal rights for all; others lament the destruction of American values. Headlines have detailed high-profile boycotts against North Carolina, the viral petition condemning Target for allowing transgender people to use whatever bathroom they prefer, and now, the topic is trending again amid news of President Obama’s call on Friday for public schools to respect transgender bathroom rights.

As important as these developments may be — no matter your views on the subject — as tends to happen, other highly important stories have fallen by the wayside. Though they have not been wholly blacked out by the corporate media, they have implications of equal, if not more , importance than America’s obsession with transgender issues — and most Americans will likely never hear about them.

Here are five stories you might want to review before diving back into the transgender imbroglio:

1. Hillary’s Conflicts of Interest Continue to Mount: As we reported, it was revealed this week that employees at the Department of Justice — one of the agencies tasked with investigating Clinton’s allegedly improper use of private email servers — gave $75,000 in donations to the presidential front-runner. “Hillary’s donations from the Department of Justice completely swamp those of the other candidates, in fact, as Sanders’ total from 51 donors was just $8,900 and Trump garnered an inconsequential $381,” we reported. David Bossie, president of watchdog group, Citizens United, argued “Attorney General Lynch must appoint a special counsel to determine if Hillary Clinton or her agents broke the law and compromised our national security. This investigation needs to be conducted free of political influence once and for all.”

As our own Claire Bernish explained, “Critics have previously pointed to Lynch personally donating over $10,000 to Democratic candidates as evidence of her lack of impartiality — and sufficient reason she should not be charged with overseeing the investigation of Clinton’s emails.” Further, Judge Andrew Napolitano revealed Russia has obtained some 20,000 emails from Hillary’s personal server — and is debating whether or not to leak them publicly. Ultimately, this conflict of interest represents deeply-rooted, systemic glitches in American democracy, where accountability is often flouted to protect the oligarchy. This reality does not mean the transgender conversation is unimportant — however, it does provide a sad commentary on whom Americans will accept as their ruler while they trade insults over bathroom rights. In this case, it’s a corrupt career politician whose misdeeds have thus far failed to thwart her designs on power.

2. Somebody was finally arrested for voter fraud, but it wasn’t the people committing it: This week, Anti-Media also reported on a Florida-based hacker, David Michael Levin, who exposed security flaws in the website of the Lee County Elections Office and the Division of Elections in Tallahassee. He shared them with authorities in the hopes of fixing the problem, but instead was arrested and charged. “According to the somewhat redacted police report, Levin’s associate, Daniel Sinclair, sent a security report about the SQL vulnerability — including details of the security flaw and a screenshot — to ‘an employee within the Department of State, Division of Elections,’” we reported. Shortly after, a special investigation was launched and Levin was arrested. “Levin’s foray into the elections data had not been undertaken with the appropriate permission — and because he didn’t alert the authorities as soon as he discovered vulnerabilities, law enforcement is required to be blind to his good intent,” we noted. He spent six hours in jail, even though he complied with all searches and confiscation of electronic devices.

Sinclair is running for a seat on the Lee County elections board, drawing some suspicion the hack was a publicity stunt, but as we noted, “with rather overt fraud disenfranchising voters across the country, arresting the one hacker who attempted to help secure elections seems oddly ironic.” Here’s a list of the many irregularities plaguing the electoral process this year.

3. Former Facebook employees revealed how the site censors news stories: Last week, Gizmodo published an in-depth story on how journalists working for the “Facebook Trends” feature of the social networking site were mistreated and quarantined from the rest of the staff. This week, Gizmodo published a follow-up piece documenting allegations from former employees that curators of the trending section excluded stories from conservative outlets and deliberately failed to include conservative topics from the IRS discrimination scandal to Rand Paul. Though these exclusions appeared to be unintentional displays of bias from individual employees, they dominated coverage of the story. But other manipulations of the feed were more deliberate. One official policy of the department included censoring stories about Facebook from trends.

“When it was a story about the company, we were told not to touch it. It had to be cleared through several channels, even if it was being shared quite a bit. We were told that we should not be putting it on the trending tool,” said one former employee. Further, in another official policy, employees were allowed to artificially inject stories into that trending pool, even if they were not trending on Facebook — as long as they were covered by mainstream outlets.

Though Republican lawmakers demanded answers from Facebook, perhaps the real story is Facebook’s complicity in perpetuating corporate media narratives; Facebook has long-partnered with corporate outlets (and the U.S. government), and has also been accused of censoring stories critical of Hillary Clinton, while blocking grassroots groups supporting Bernie Sanders. While Facebook is ultimately a private company that can make its own decisions, its users would do well to take the revelations as an opportunity to decide whether they trust the outlet to responsibly and equitably provide them with information.

No matter one’s view on Facebook’s rights as a private institution, the news of their practices runs in direct violation of their assertion the feed is comprised of “topics that have recently become popular.” The whistleblowers expressed hope that with the increased use of algorithms, Facebook Trends will be less subject to human bias and manipulation. In case that doesn’t happen, sign up for the weekly Anti-Media newsletter to get information unfiltered by Facebook.

4. Rat DNA, Human DNA, and Pathogenic Germs… in your hamburgers: According to an independent analysis conducted on over 250 burger brands in the United States — ranging from fast food to frozen food, and even vegetarian products — America’s love for burgers faces some snags. Though the report by Clear Labs, a California-based food industry researcher, praised overall improvements in the hamburger industry, they noted severe shortcomings, particularly with product labeling and the presence of germs. Rat DNA was found in three vegetarian burger samples while human DNA was found in one — but those were not the most concerning findings, the researchers noted, because though their presence is revolting, they are not necessarily considered dangerous to humans.

More worthy of alarm, they explained, was the mislabeling of vegetarian products, the presence of meat in some of those purportedly meatless burgers, and the total absence of black beans in a black bean burger. The report notes “23.6% of vegetarian products showed some form of discrepancy between product and label, compared to the 13.6% of all samples. We found pervasive issues in food quality and end-product consistency in these non-meat samples.”

Further, they found pathogens known to cause illness in 11 samples, four of which were found in vegetarian burgers. Though their tests could not determine whether the pathogens were alive or dead, their presence at all should raise eyebrows. Another top concern of analysts was the finding that “nearly 81 percent (38 of 47) of the fast food burgers tested contained more calories than reported in the product’s nutritional information,” and that“these discrepancies are potentially worrisome for customers who make decisions about what to order based on calorie counts and other available nutritional information.”

Though food contamination in the United States is nothing new, these findings are relevant not only because they document ongoing issues with food quality, but because they represent an attempt by a private organization to pick up the FDA’s slack. As Anti-Media pointed out, “Perhaps most telling is Clear Labs’ subtle, if not unintentional, commentary on the failures of the FDA to keep food safe for consumers; they stress their goal is to improve the safety and quality in hamburgers — ‘regardless of whether or not they are acceptable according to FDA guidelines,’” ultimately providing a silver lining to the unsettling report.

5. American foreign policy continues to have unintended ramifications: Americans have by and large accepted aggressive militarism as a linchpin of U.S. policy, and though the overwhelming civilian casualties and military failures are widely-known, this week Anti-Media reported on another consequence of the longest war in U.S. history: the war in Afghanistan has turned a generation of children into heroin addicts.

“The psychological damage of war, together with the flood of cheap heroin, has led to a doubling in addiction rates over the last five years. In the Channel 4 documentary, Unreported World, Ramita Naval explores a harrowing escalation in child addiction. In the ravaged country, where access to drug treatment is severely limited, she visits a rehabilitation centre where children as young as four or five — haunted by horrors they have witnessed — attempt to regain lost childhoods,” Anti-Media noted.

A Kabul-based doctor told Naval rates of addiction had jumped 60 percent in the last two years at the only treatment center in the city that helps children. Naval spoke to a thirteen-year-old boy whose parents were killed by shelling when he was eight. He ended up working as a guard for drug dealers, eventually becoming addicted to opium himself. He said he prostitutes himself to be able to maintain his habit.

Another young boy’s addiction began when, “after witnessing a suicide bomb attack in Kabul, he went to stay with relatives in the countryside. While he was there, U.S. forces bombed his village, killing dozens of people; he described seeing bodies scattered everywhere. The young boy and other villagers had to pick up the body parts and put them in plastic bags. Claiming the war breaks his heart — and making his descent into drug use more understandable — he said, ‘I’d rather not live, than live through this war.’”

“What’s happened in Afghanistan over the last 13 years has been the flourishing of a narco-state that is really without any parallel in history,” Kabul-based journalist Matthieu Aikins told Democracy Now back in 2014.

Afghanistan now produces 90 percent of the world’s opium, and even the CIA has been linked to key players in that trade. Clandestine operations aside, however, a generation of children lives in a country where opium is cheaper than food — and where unrelenting violence chronically traumatizes their young psyches, driving them deeper into addiction.

Of course, it is possible to care about transgender rights and political corruption, censorship, contaminated food, and the unintended victims of the Afghanistan War. As Facebook highlights transgender rights and Americans preach from the bully comment thread pulpits, however, it’s important to remember the broad view of current affairs.

This article (5 Huge Stories the Media Ignored While Arguing Over Which Bathroom to Use) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

#Government Chemist Was Making #Crack in the Lab, Stealing Meth and Cocaine

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(ANTIMEDIA) As if the futility, destruction, and absurdity of the decades-long war on drugs were not already painfully apparent, a Massachusetts state chemist involved in testing evidence for drug prosecutions was high on a variety of illicit substances, including crack, cocaine, meth, and acid, for most of the nine years she worked for the government, including one year working directly for a police lab.

The chemist was not only high on drugs she stole throughout her tenure — she cooked and consumed crack cocaine at work. Additionally, throughout the years she testified in scores of drug cases, whose verdicts — along with the Drug War itself — have now been called into question.

Sonja Farak worked as a chemist for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) from 2003 to 2012, switching labs twice throughout the years. She spent most of her time with DPH at a lab in Amherst, but also worked as a chemist for the Massachusetts State Police from 2012 to 2013.

As a Massachusetts Attorney General (AG) investigation released this week summarized, her responsibilities included “testing, for authenticity, various controlled substances submitted by law enforcement agencies throughout the Commonwealth. Additionally, she was required to testify in court as to her test results, which served as evidence in criminal cases.”

The implications of her behavior are nothing short of disturbing. “Anything that went through that lab while she was there is in question,” said Anthony Benedetti, chief counsel of the Committee for Public Counsel Services. “It’s too soon to know how many, but it clearly is in the thousands.”

In at least one case, she appeared to have consumed drugs submitted by police and replaced them with counterfeit substances. Farak was reportedly also overly inquisitive about large arrivals of new drugs at the lab, which tipped off others who worked there when considered along with the absence of other drugs.

According to the AG report:

“Farak began to consume the Amherst Lab’s standards [drugs purchased from drug companies to be used as controls in testing] on a fairly regular basis beginning in late 2004 or early 2005. The first standard she admitted to using was the methamphetamine standard, which was the largest or most voluminous standard at the Amherst Lab. The methamphetamine standard was a base sample, meaning its form was oil base and it was not cut or diluted with any other substance, essentially making the standard the purest form of a controlled substance.”

By 2009, her addiction was so consuming she had “nearly exhausted” the lab’s methamphetamine standard supply. As the report notes, “by 2009, she also began using other standards at the Amherst Lab including ketamine, MDMA, MDEA, and LSD (including police-submitted evidence samples),” as well as cocaine. She eventually took it a step further, ultimately manufacturing crack for her own consumption. By Farak’s own admission:

“During mid to late 2012, she would enter the Lab after hours or when she was working overtime, remove powdered cocaine from samples, and cook it to produce crack. Specifically, Farak would dissolve the powdered cocaine in water, add baking soda, and heat up the mixture so that the moisture would dissipate and form crack,” the AG report says.

Though she only did so three or four times, she said she made large batches to “make a quantity worth [her] time.”

“All told,” she said, according to the AG report, “she estimated that she was smoking crack ten to twelve times a day.” She says her colleagues never suspected anything. One later testified that in 2012, her appearance had begun to deteriorate, as had the quality and volume of her work.

Farak was only caught when it was discovered in 2013 that drug samples were missing from the lab. Farak was arrested and ultimately served 18 months after pleading guilty in 2014. She was convicted of “evidence tampering, theft, and possession charges relating to a handful of criminal cases.” Though she was sentenced to two-and-half years, the rest of her sentence was suspended for five years.

The state is currently reviewing cases from individuals convicted, in part, as a result of Farak’s lab work and testimonies against them. “We are deeply concerned whenever the integrity of the justice system is called into question or compromised,” said Cyndi Roy Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Maura Healey. “The information we gathered during the course of our investigation is disturbing and will no doubt have implications for many cases.”

Considering another former lab employee was found, also in 2013, to “have fabricated evidence in thousands of samples she tested at a second state lab in Jamaica Plain, possibly tainting as many as 40,000 cases,” the underlying moral of Farak’s story is perhaps best illustrated by Matthew Segal, the legal director for the ACLU’s Massachusetts branch.

“It’s easy to get caught up in these scandals, zooming in on the specific misconduct because it’s so salacious,” he said.

“But it’s also important to zoom out, and take a look at what the drug war in Massachusetts has wrought. It hasn’t cured us of an addiction problem. It has obliterated the integrity that is supposed to be the foundation of the criminal justice system.”

No doubt, his observations can apply to the United States as a whole, where corruption and drug addiction plague the very individuals and institutions tasked with the fantastical — and futile — obsession with eliminating drug use.

This article (Government Chemist Was Making Crack in the Lab, Stealing Meth and Cocaine) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Elizabeth Montag and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

Anti-Mafia Prosecutor: Legalizing #Cannabis Would Help Defeat #Terrorism

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Carey Wedler
April 29, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) In recent years, calls to end the global war on drugs, particularly against cannabis, have grown louder — and show no signs of stopping. As evidence continues to mount showing the decriminalization of cannabis can have profound benefits, however, one potential side effect of ending the costly battle against the plant is only beginning to gain attention.

In recent years, governments and media outlets alike have highlighted the role drug trafficking plays in sustaining terrorist groups around the world. A brief report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime notes:

“Indeed drug trafficking has provided funding for insurgency and those who use terrorist violence in various regions throughout the world, including in transit regions. In some cases, drugs have even been the currency used in the commission of terrorist attacks, as was the case in the Madrid bombings.”

Similarly, as far back as 2003, the FBI observed the connection between terrorism and the drug trade. “Drug trafficking is a highly lucrative enterprise generating billions of dollars in profit that terrorist organizations can easily tap into,” said then-assistant director of the FBI’s Office of Intelligence, Steven McCraw, in a testimony before the Senate judiciary committee. “That is why all aspects of the terrorist enterprise including funding and support must be attacked.”

Of course, neither of these governmental observations considered decriminalizing cannabis, let alone all drugs. As a recent Reuters report details, however, cannabis plays a direct role in the way ISIS obtains its funding. In an interview with Italian prosecutor Franco Roberti, the nation’s top anti-terrorism and anti-mafia attorney, he discussed the way illicit hashish empowers the Islamic State.

He contends, as Reuters summarized, that “the main smuggling route for North African hash – compressed cannabis resin – now runs from Casablanca, Morocco, through Algeria, Tunisia to Tobruk in eastern Libya. Along that route is the seaside city of Sirte, which now serves as a Mediterranean base for the most powerful Islamic State (IS) branch outside Syria and Iraq.”

Citing investigations not yet made public, Roberti said police have found “evidence that Italian organized crime, which has long controlled most of the country’s illegal drug supplies, and ‘suspected terrorists’ in North Africa are trafficking hash together.” Though Italy has not experienced a terror attack by Islamic militants, ISIS has threatened Rome and the Vatican, making Roberti’s concerns about drug prohibition all the more valid.

In another example, Lebanese cannabis farmers — who have previously taken up arms to fight ISIS militants — continue to work with the terrorist group. One farmer, Imad, told the Daily Beast that though he “hates ISIS with a bitter passion” and still seeks revenge against them for killing one of his relatives, the war in Syria has blocked off their traditional trade routes to markets in Jordan and Turkey — leaving them desperate for business.  “Before the war in Syria we would cross the mountains with 200 kilos [of hash] each, get the cash and come back,” he said.

Amid sparse commercial opportunities, he began selling hashish to ISIS soldiers — both for their militants to smoke, themselves, and for the group to traffic. “Last month we sold one ton of hash to ISIS,” he said in April of last year. One of the biggest hash exporters in Lebanon, Abu Hussein, told the Daily Beast most of his product ends up in Egypt, Syria, the Gulf, and Saudi Arabia, though it has also made its way into Israel. He said he expected his 2015 crops to yield $200 million.

As hashish makes its way along ISIS-dominated trade routes — both as a drug for fighters and as a means to raise funds for their conquests — prohibition continues to fuel the illicit drug trade and its ties to terrorism.

“Decriminalization or even legalization would definitely be a weapon against traffickers, among whom there could be terrorists who make money off of it,” Roberti said. He further expounded on the problems with prohibition, noting, “We spend a lot of resources uselessly. We have not succeeded in reducing cannabinoid trafficking.”

Though he does not endorse legalizing or decriminalizing of all drugs — which would likely go a longer way in weakening ISIS’ hand in the illegal drug trade — he strongly questions increasingly archaic policies on cannabis. “Is it worth using investigative energy to fight street sales of soft drugs?” he asked rhetorically.

Reuters referenced a new report released this month by analysis company IHS, which concluded ISIS obtains just under 7 percent of its funding through the illicit narcotics trade. Other sources of revenue for terrorist groups come, as Roberti noted, from “smuggling commercial goods, smuggling oil, smuggling archaeological relics and art, kidnapping for ransom, and extortion.”

While governments contribute to the intersection of drug traffickers and terrorists, the U.S. government has, on multiple occasions, played an additional role.

Don Winslow, an expert on both drug trafficking and terrorism, explained in an article for the Daily Beast that during the Vietnam War, “American intelligence was helping heroin traffickers fly their product in order to assure their loyalty against the Communists.” He also discussed how the Reagan administration worked with Mexican cocaine traffickers to undermine a left-wing Nicaraguan government in the 1980s.

Evidence also suggests the CIA is at least somewhat involved in the illicit drug trade, notably, the opium trade in Afghanistan, which has largely funded terrorism operations.

Regardless of who is trafficking drugs, committing acts of terrorism — or both — it is increasingly clear the prohibition of cannabis and other drugs has contributed to the power and scope of terrorist organizations and drug rings.

“Terrorists and traffickers can easily connect because they inhabit the same spheres and in many cases share the same enemies: law enforcement and intelligence services,” Winslow said.

“Make no mistake, our drug policies have driven these groups into each other’s bloodstained arms.”

This article (Anti-Mafia Prosecutor: Legalizing Cannabis Would Help Defeat Terrorism) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

Was #Prince’s Life Taken by America’s Prescription #Drug #Epidemic?

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Carey Wedler
April 28, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) According to new reports, Prince was in possession of painkillers at the time of his death. Law enforcement sources cautioned they could not yet determine whether or not the pills were related to the death of the beloved icon last week. Conflicting statements from those who knew him make the truth difficult to decipher, and frenzied coverage from tabloids and news outlets makes the developing story all the more convoluted. Regardless of what the ongoing investigation determines, however, the emerging reports highlight America’s ongoing struggle with widespread prescription drug abuse.

CBS News reported two law enforcement officials informed them the painkillers were “in his possession and at his home” when he died, though it was unclear whether they were on him or simply in his home. Other news outlets also reported receiving the same information from unnamed sources. A local ABC affiliate cited “multiple sources close to the investigation” who said painkillers were found at his home, but like CBS, they did not indicate where in the home they were found. Prince was found unconscious and alone in an elevator in his Paisley Park home. First responders who attempted to revive him did not administer any overdose drugs, according to Carver County Minnesota Sheriff Jim Olson.

Investigators have reportedly begun tracking Prince’s history of prescription pill use and are focusing at least part of their investigation on painkillers. The DEA has joined the investigation due to the discovery of pharmaceutical opioids.

However, even as narratives have begun swirling around the possibility that Prince — like so many other millions of Americans — fell victim to the powerful pills, it remains unclear whether or not he had a history of addiction, and, of course, whether or not that was the cause of his death. As Mother Jones noted, Hollywood’s top gossip outlet, TMZ, reported that less than a week before Prince’s death, his private jet was forced to make an emergency landing after he was found unresponsive. He had been battling the flu for several weeks, though TMZ linked the landing to a drug overdose. As Mother Jones summarized:

“The celebrity news site TMZ, which first broke the news of the pop icon’s death, reported that doctors reportedly injected the 57-year-old with a ‘save shot’ to counteract the damaging effects of an opiate overdose of Percocet, a prescription painkiller with a combination of oxycodone and acetaminophen. Prince was treated and released from the hospital three hours after his arrival.”

Though flight records confirm a plane landing and Quad City airport officials confirmed an emergency medical landing, they did not provide details on who it concerned. It should be stressed TMZ provided no named sources.

Even so, an attorney close to Prince’s siblings said the musician battled an addiction to cocaine and Percocet, a painkiller, over a decade ago, fuelling speculation that painkillers took his life last week. In another development (that must be presented with a massive asterisk), an anonymous source allegedly told British tabloid, the Daily Mail, he was Prince’s drug dealer and sold him tens of thousands of dollars worth of drugs. It is necessary to keep in mind the sensational nature of Daily Mail, as well as the proclivity of figures seeking attention to crawl out of the woodworks following a celebrity death.

These caveats are all the more relevant considering others have insisted Prince was consistently sober and healthy. Robbie Paster, Prince’s valet and assistant from 1982 to 1992, said, “I never knew of any opiate or cocaine problem. There’s no way you can do both of those and be as driven as he was. I never saw it.”

Prince’s long-time attorney, L. Londell McMillan, said he was in great condition just days before he died, even after having suffered an ongoing flu. “He said he was doing perfect,” McMillan said of a conversation he had with Prince the Sunday before he died. He said that while Prince may have taken pain medication from time to time, he was “not on any drugs that would be any cause for concern.” Prince suffered from epilepsy throughout his life, and often experienced aches and pains from his many years performing on stage.

The conflicting stories surrounding his death make it effectively impossible, at this point, to know what actually happened. An autopsy was conducted last Friday, but the results will likely not be released for weeks. Regardless of what caused Prince’s death, however, the presence of painkillers at his home reflects the United States’ ongoing toxic relationship with legal opioids.

Countless other celebrities have struggled with prescription painkillers — as have millions in the United States and around the world. Whether or not it is concluded the painkillers were related to Prince’s death, however, their sheer presence in his home might — hopefully — further elevate the vital, ongoing conversation about dangerous, government-approved drugs in the United States, where the painkiller epidemic is most pronounced.

This article (Was Prince’s Life Taken by America’s Prescription Drug Epidemic?) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

#Alaska Man Sentenced to 60 days in Jail for Growing $1.5 Million in #Pot

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Lou Colagiovanni
April 26, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Homer, Alaska — Joseph Gabryszak, 32, of Homer, Alaska was arrested earlier this year after he was found to be in possession of $1.5 million worth of marijuana.

The trouble began for Gabryszak on February 12, 2016, when Alaska’s State Drug Enforcement Unit raided a 4,500 square-foot building leased to Gabryszak and found 1,000 plants that allegedly contained around 6,000 ounces of marijuana, according to a local report by Homer News.

Further complicating matters, in 2014 Alaskan voters passed “Ballot Measure 2” with 52% of the vote, which legalized commercial, medical, and personal use of marijuana. In March of this year, the Alaska Marijuana and Alcohol Control Board began to accept applications for citizens interested in growing marijuana commercially. However, while they have accepted applications, as of this article’s publication, zero licences have been granted.

Gabryszak’s lawyer, Evan Barrickman, argued in court, “What happened here is he kind of jumped the gun on the new marijuana regulations in Alaska.”

The kinks in Barrickman’s argument concerned elements of Ballot Measure 2 that granted cities and municipalities the right to decide if they wanted to allow marijuana to be commercially grown within the limits of their borders. Gabryszak was arrested on February 12; on February 8, the Homer City Council introduced an ordinance to ban the commercial cultivation of marijuana in Homer. A second ordinance was introduced to zone districts to allow for commercially cultivated marijuana. The overall ban on commercial cultivation was rejected while the zoning of districts passed. This means commercial marijuana cultivation is legal in Homer — if a citizen has both a licence from the Alaska Marijuana and Alcohol Control Board and proper zoning permissions from the city. Gabryszak had neither.

Gabryszak had his day in court, and Homer District Court Judge Margaret Murphy sentenced Gabryszak to 360 days in jail and a $5,000 fine. Part of Gabryszak’s sentence was suspended, including 300 days in jail and the $5,000 fine. Gabryszak will spend 60 days in jail as part of a plea deal in which he agreed to plead guilty and forfeit his grow operation equipment, as well as a variety of electronics including a camera, laptop computer, television, and gaming equipment.

Had Gabryszak’s marijuana growing operation been legal, he would have owed the state $50 for each ounce of marijuana, totaling $300,000. The city of Homer would have received $67,000 in sales tax. Instead, the state receives nothing, and Gabryszak owes nothing — assuming he fulfils the judge’s sentencing requirements.

This article (Alaska Man Sentenced to 60 days in Jail for Growing $1.5 Million in Pot) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Lou Colagiovanni and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

Cops Seize $53,000 Raised for #Charity by #Christian Band

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SM Gibson
April 26, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Muskogee County, Oklahoma – Eh Wah is a refugee from Burma who became a citizen of the United States more than a decade ago. Today, the 40-year-old resides in Dallas, Texas, where he regularly attends church and helps out as a volunteer manager for a Christian rock band from Burma, Klo & Kweh Music Team.

The group has been touring all over the United States in order to raise money for a Christian college in Burma and an orphanage in Thailand, but recently hit a setback when Eh was pulled over by a cop on his way back home to Texas to see his family. He had been on the road with the band for 19 concerts.

Eh, who is in charge of keeping up with all the money raised from the band’s merchandise and album sales, as well as donations received, had $53,249 on him when was pulled over in Muskogee County, Oklahoma for a busted taillight. And because Eh’s first language isn’t English, the officers had a difficult time understanding the explanation he provided, even when they interrogated the man for hours back at the police station.

“I just couldn’t believe it. An officer was telling me that ‘you are going to jail tonight.’ And I don’t know what to think. What did I do that would make me go to jail? I didn’t do anything. Why is he saying that?” he said.

As the Washington Post reported:

“Eh Wah even had the officers call one of the band’s leaders, Saw Marvellous Soe, who was living in Miami while the band was on a break. ‘The police officer started asking questions,’ Marvellous recalled. ‘I explained: ‘We are a music team. We came here for a tour.”‘ Marvellous tried to explain that the band was from Burma. ‘He kept telling me, “You are wrong, you are wrong,”‘ Marvellous said. ‘Everything I said, [he said,] “You are wrong.” I said: “We are doing a good thing! And now you are accusing us of being like a drug dealer or something like that.”’”

“I realized that they were seizing all of the money. I was like, ‘This can’t be happening.’ But I didn’t know what to do,” Eh said.

Although the property receipt states Eh was brought in for possession of drug proceeds, he was released that night — but five weeks later was charged with a felony for “acquir[ing] proceeds from drug activity.”  It is worth noting that absolutely no weapons or drugs were found in Eh’s possession, despite a drug-sniffing dog extensively searching the vehicle for illegal paraphernalia or items.

The officers’ theft of the money earmarked for the orphanage and college is called asset forfeiture and is perfectly legal in Oklahoma, a state that does not require any conviction whatsoever for police to remain in possession of 100% of all property confiscated from citizens.

Having taken Eh’s case on pro bono, the Institute for Justice had the criminal and civil charges against him thrown out on Monday afternoon after his case was reviewed by Muskogee County District Attorney Orvil Loge. After his decision, the District Attorney said, “I looked at the case and met with the officers, and determined that we would not be able to meet the burden of proof in the criminal case and in the civil case.” A check will be sent to Eh’s lawyers for the full amount taken from him, according to Loge.

The Institute for Justice says that despite the ultimately positive outcome in Eh Wah’s case, his is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the injustice of civil asset forfeiture laws in the United States.

Nevermind that it should have never been allowed to happen in the first place.

This article (Cops Seize $53,000 Raised for Charity by Christian Band) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to SM Gibson and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

 

From theantimedia.org Team

This Viral #Green 4/20 #Moon Meme Is Everything That’s Wrong with the Internet

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One wonders about the education system…a funny joke that takes on a life of its own.

Claire Bernish
April 11, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Apparently, the internet can’t take a joke. After weathering an increasingly cynical and cantankerous general populace on April Fool’s Day, a friend of mine crafted a satirical meme about a Green Moon ostensibly occurring on April 20 — but once the meme began to go viral, it quickly became clear the joke had gone, well, laughably awry. Along with the image of an intensely green-tinted moon, the meme reads:

“On April 20th 2016 several planets are going to align which will cause the Earth’s moon to appear green for about 90 minutes. This phenomenon is known as ‘Green Moon’ and only happens once every 420 years. Please share this event.”

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Intended as satire for what’s known by cannabis enthusiasts as Weed Day, the internet, for the most part, missed the obvious reference — though that didn’t entirely surprise the meme’s creator, Johnny Liberty (yes, that’s an obvious pseudonym, but in light of the topic at hand, I feel it must be said).

What began as a request from his brother for a cannabis-themed green moon meme — in the same vein as common memes heralding Blood Moons, Pink Moons, and the like — turned into a humorous challenge when he jokingly suggested I share it to see how many people would be fooled.

I bet him it would take three minutes for someone to take it seriously — it took twelve — but that wasn’t the end of it. Not by far.

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Without rhyme or reason, the meme went viral. Incredibly viral. Posted in the evening on April 2, in just five hours the meme had been shared from my personal Facebook profile over 900 times. When it hit the eleven-hour mark, the number had jumped to over 2,300 and was growing exponentially — with a rather embarrassing number of people taking it seriously.

In fact, we were so astonished at its ‘success’ rate, Johnny opted to post the Green Moon on a Facebook page with millions of followers — just to see what would happen. In eight days, the meme had accumulated more than 10,000 shares from my timeline and well over 400,000 from the large page — but even that wasn’t the end of it.

To our mutual bewilderment, the Green Moon meme became the subject of ostensible debunking by the mainstream media. Yahoo News, International Business Times, CNet, Inquisitr, Mic, and others have now all printed articles supposedly hoax-slaying the meme that was never a hoax to begin with. Though some of those outlets appeared to grasp the funny, the fact a joke meme necessitated such articles is a terribly troubling commentary far beyond people’s gullibility. All joking aside, it unintentionally turned the meme into a telling social experiment.

“I can’t believe it. I still can’t believe it,” Johnny told me, laughing, when I interviewed him for this article. When he created the cannabis-themed meme, he hadn’t been aware of an unrelated moon meme arbitrarily claiming the moon will turn green on May 29, which had been posted by a Facebook user on March 25 — though we both learned of that meme when people posted its debunking by Snopes on the cannabis version.

Incidentally, Snopes has since included the April 20 date from Johnny’s meme in its post about Green Moons, but failed in its research by assuming it was simply another derivation of the post with the May 29 date.

“You know, I made the moon meme right in the wake of that whole April Fool’s thing, and The Free Thought Project, Anti-Media, and several outlets put out joke stories — and people were very, very mad. There was a lot of anger in response to the April Fool’s jokes,” he explained. Past experience with a mathematically-inaccurate meme going incredibly viral and satirical April Fool’s Day articles being shared tens of thousands of times appeared to prove, he explained, that people will share anything — without even reading an article or critically considering information presented in a meme.

Asked whether he views this more as a symptom of the so-called dumbing down of our society or just unadulterated laziness, Johnny theorized:

“In my opinion … there’s a part of this that’s just intellectual laziness. A lot of people watch television, and they get information just spoon-fed to them — so they see a meme or they see a headline” that catches their eye, and people will blindly share it “without doing any independent research, whatsoever; and that’s got to change, as a society.”

People, he lamented, seem to have lost the drive to bother with researching information for themselves — and that’s likely due to the education system’s emphasis on regurgitating information and agenda-driven corporate media’s regimented, governmental narrative.

“I made [the Green Moon meme] so it would be blatantly obvious it was a joke,” he continued. “I could not have made it any more obvious it was a joke.” Johnny said he even captioned the meme on the large Facebook page, “Seems legit,” and included three laughing, tear-faced emojis for emphasis — but the top comment, itself garnering over 1,000 likes, was made by someone who had taken the meme seriously.

“I find it incredibly funny that this joke, my little joke — which maybe took me five minutes to throw together — turned into a pretty hilarious social experiment,” Johnny said.

Mic thought itself clever with its theory on the motivation for his meme, saying, “Perhaps out of preemptive excitement, a Weed Day partaker got high and decided to spread an astronomical rumor about the moon turning green on April 20 — as if the cosmos wanted to vicariously celebrate the wonders of marijuana with us.”

When I asked Johnny to comment on this notion, he stated, er, bluntly, “Why does there always have to be some deep-seated reasoning? Don’t people just tell jokes anymore?”

‘Nope,’ the internet apparently replied.

This article (This Viral Green 4/20 Moon Meme Is Everything That’s Wrong with the Internet) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

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From theantimedia.org Team

Bill #Clinton May Have Just Cost #Hillary the #Black Vote

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Nick Bernabe
April 8, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Philadelphia, PA — Hillary Clinton has been performing well with minorities so far in the 2016 Democratic primary, but that could soon be changing. Bill Clinton may have just severely damaged the former secretary of state’s reputation among African Americans by committing a major gaffe — one he is now “almost” apologizing for.

At a campaign stop in Philadelphia on Thursday, Bill was interrupted by protesters — a common theme this presidential election. The protesters, mostly young black Americans, interrupted Bill’s speech to air their grievances about his sweeping 1994 crime bill — the largest ever passed. The bill, sold as a way to effectively fight inner-city crime, actually helped expand an already developing trend of mass incarceration that had an overwhelmingly negative impact of the black community.

Signs reading “Clinton Crime Bill destroyed our community,” and “Hillary is a murderer” could be seen waving in the audience as Bill was interrupted Thursday. He caused a major backlash in the the African-American community when he decided to comment on the people who were incarcerated because of his crime bill.

“I don’t know how you would describe the gang leaders who got 13-year-olds hopped up on crack and sent them out in the streets to murder other African-American children.“Maybe you thought they were good citizens…You are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter. Tell the truth. You are defending the people who cause young people to go out and take guns,”  he said at the campaign event.

Hillary Clinton was a major supporter of her husband’s crime bill when she was First Lady. As we reported previously:

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“Hillary Clinton lobbied Congress to pass the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. Bill Clinton signed the act into law in 1994… The largest crime bill in history, it provided $9.7 billion in prison funding. From 1992 to 2000, the amount of prisoners in the U.S. increased almost 60%.”

In another recent incident, Hillary came under scrutiny for alluding to young black males as “super-predators” in a speech in 1996. She, like Bill, has been confronted by activists for her contribution to the nation’s mass incarceration problem.

Hillary is facing eroding support from the Latino community, as well. Recent polling shows her previous popularity among this key demographic has evaporated — leaving Bernie Sanders with a slight lead of 48% to Clinton’s 47% in Latino support.

Ironically, though he defends it now, Clinton previously disowned the crime bill, admitting in an interview with CNN last year that it had “too wide a net” that resulted in “too many people in prison.”

Regardless, Hillary Clinton is still raking in major cash from the private prison industry despite her haunting past with mass incarceration.

This article (Bill Clinton May Have Just Cost Hillary the Black Vote) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Nick Bernabe and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

From theantimedia.org Team