[Transcript of a TED talk by Ethan Nadelmann, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.]

What has the War on Drugs done to the world? Look at the murder and mayhem in Mexico, Central America, so many other parts of the planet, the global black market estimated at 300 billion dollars a year, prisons packed in the United States and elsewhere, police and military drawn into an unwinnable war that violates basic rights, and ordinary citizens just hope they don’t get caught in the crossfire, and meanwhile, more people using more drugs than ever. It’s my country’s history with alcohol prohibitionand Al Capone, times 50.

Which is why it’s particularly galling to me as an American that we’ve been the driving force behind this global drug war. Ask why so many countries criminalize drugs they’d never heard of, why the U.N. drug treaties emphasize criminalization over health, even why most of the money worldwide for dealing with drug abuse goes not to helping agencies but those that punish, and you’ll find the good old U.S. of A.

Why did we do this? Some people, especially in Latin America, think it’s not really about drugs. It’s just a subterfuge for advancing the realpolitik interests of the U.S. But by and large, that’s not it. We don’t want gangsters and guerrillas funded with illegal drug money terrorizing and taking over other nations. No, the fact is, America really is crazy when it comes to drugs. I mean, don’t forget, we’re the ones who thoughtthat we could prohibit alcohol. So think about our global drug war not as any sort of rational policy, but as the international projection of a domestic psychosis.
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A massive, history-making march in New York City.
Hundreds of coordinated actions around the world.

(Silence Dogood, New England Courant, August 31, 2014)

I find it quite amazing that a direct descendant of one of Communism’s leading proponents should find herself fronting for big money drug companies.

As the current director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), she has been directly responsible for ensuring that no significant resarch may be conducted in the U.S. into the potential medical uses for the cannabis plant. Out of one side of her mouth she claims that there is no research to support the medical benefits of the plant, and out of the other side of her lying mouth she refuses to let research proceed.

Not only is she a wonderful tool for the capitalist drug and liquor companies to use to keep out the competition of a non-patentable and easy to grow plant, but she is also a big help to the marijuana cartels in her country of birth, Mexico.

Interestingly, her early research was about so-called addiction, beginning with the premise that almost everything can be addicting. Since the government money for research was completely focused on the negative aspects of drugs, she immediately locked herself into the industrial / pharmaceutical / government industry known as the War on Drugs. Her POV is that everyone who uses cannabis is and addict. It’s like that old saying that if the only tool you have is a hammer then every problem looks like a nail. For the current head of NIDA, not only is her only tool a hammer, she seems to be using a hammer for a brain.

You will have to click “CC” to turn on the captions, but if you want to experience what I expect to be some deep historical background one day, you owe it to yourself to watch this entire press conference. This is what Paine, Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson must have sounded like in 1776.

(Valerie Tarico, AlterNet, August 30, 2014)
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Did the historical Jesus exist? A growing number of scholars don’t think so

1. No first century secular evidence whatsoever exists to support the actuality of Yeshua ben Yosef.
2. The earliest New Testament writers seem ignorant of the details of Jesus’ life, which become more crystalized in later texts.
3. Even the New Testament stories don’t claim to be first-hand accounts.
4. The gospels, our only accounts of a historical Jesus, contradict each other.
5. Modern scholars who claim to have uncovered the real historical Jesus depict wildly different persons.

[CLICK the above link for details.]