2009 will go down as the beginning of the end of the United States drug war. I have worked at the Drug Policy Alliance promoting alternatives to the war on drugs for 10 years, and I can say without a doubt that there was more debate and movement toward sensible drug policies this year than in the last 9 years combined! Here are 10 stories that contributed to the unprecedented momentum to end America’s longest running war.

1) Three Former Latin American Presidents Call Drug War a Failure (February) Read the full story

Undoubtedly by now you’ve heard about Tiger Woods’ car crash. Early reports had him in serious condition (which remember, is better than critical condition) after he apparently hit a fire hydrant and a tree while leaving his home in his SUV. The latest reports say he has been released from the hospital and is “fine.” But I’m not going to speak to any of that because that’s not what we do (you can find out more here). Read the full story

(CNN) — A gunman was holding a school principal hostage Tuesday at a school in Pine Plains, New York, about 90 miles north of New York City, police and the town supervisor told CNN.

Police have the gunman contained to a room at Stissing Mountain High School and are negotiating, said Pine Plains Town Supervisor Gregg Pulver.

Pulver said he believed the gunman is a parent. Read the full story

Although CNN has chosen to report this ‘discovery’ as something that has happened recently, the discovery of this pyramid is not recent news. According to this Wikipedia entry for El Mirador:

Discovery

El Mirador was first discovered in 1926, and was photographed from the air in 1930, but the remote site deep in the jungle had little more attention paid to it until Ian Graham spent some time there making the first map of the area in 1962.^{[citation needed]} A detailed investigation was begun in 1978 with an archaeological project under the direction of Dr. Bruce Dahlin (Catholic University of America) and Dr. Ray Matheny (Brigham Young University). Dahlin’s work focused primarily on the bajo swamps and mapping, while Matheny’s team focused primarily on excavations in the site center and architecture. This project ended in 1983. To the surprise of the archaeologists, it was found that a large amount of construction was not contemporary with the large Maya classic cities in the area, like Tikal and Uaxactun, but rather from centuries earlier in the Pre-Classic era^{[citation needed]} (see: Mesoamerican chronology). Read the full story

Three years in the making, this cinéma-vérité feature from acclaimed filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Brother’s Keeper, Paradise Lost, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) is the epic story of one of the largest and most controversial environmental lawsuits on the planet

. The inside story of the infamous “Amazon Chernobyl” case, Crude is a real-life high stakes legal drama, set against a backdrop of the environmental movement, global politics, celebrity activism, human rights advocacy, the media, multinational corporate power, and rapidly-disappearing indigenous cultures. Presenting a complex situation from multiple viewpoints, the film subverts the conventions of advocacy filmmaking, exploring a complicated situation from all angles while bringing an important story of environmental peril and human suffering into focus.

The landmark case takes place in the Amazon jungle of Ecuador, pitting 30,000 indigenous and colonial rainforest dwellers against the U.S. oil giant Chevron. The plaintiffs claim that Texaco – which merged with Chevron in 2001 – spent three decades systematically contaminating one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth, poisoning the water, air and land. The plaintiffs allege that the pollution has created a “death zone” in an area the size of the Rhode Island, resulting in increased rates of cancer, leukemia, birth defects, and a multiplicity of other health ailments. They further allege that the oil operations in the region contributed to the destruction of indigenous peoples and irrevocably impacted their traditional way of life. Chevron vociferously fights the claims, charging that the case is a complete fabrication, perpetrated by “environmental con men” who are seeking to line their pockets with the company’s billions.

The case takes place not just in a courtroom, but in a series of field inspections at the alleged contamination sites, with the judge and attorneys for both sides trudging through the jungle to litigate. And the battleground has expanded far beyond the legal process. The cameras rolled as the conflict raged in and out of court, and the case drew attention from an array of celebrities, politicians and journalists, and landed on the cover of Vanity Fair. Some of the film’s subjects sparked further controversy as they won a CNN “Hero” award and the Goldman Award, the environmental equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

Shooting in dozens of locations on three continents and in multiple languages, Berlinger and his crew gained extraordinary access to players on all sides of the legal fight and beyond, capturing the drama as it unfolded while the case grew from a little-known legal story to an international cause célèbre. Crude is a ground-level view of one of the most extraordinary legal dramas of our time, one that has the potential of forever changing the way international business is conducted. While the environmental impact of the consumption of fossil fuels has been increasingly documented in recent years, Crude focuses on the human cost of our addiction to oil and the increasingly difficult task of holding a major corporation accountable for its past deeds. www.crudethemovie.com…

White House Communications Director Anita Dunn declared a war with Fox News this week and this morning on This Week, Axelrod reinforced their stance saying “[FOX] is really not news.”

I asked him if he’s worried his strategy is fortifying his enemy?

“I’m not concerned, Mr. Murdoch has a talent for making money,” Axelrod said.

“The only argument that Anita was making is that they are not really a news organization, if you watch even its not even their commentators, but a lot of their news program. It’s really not news, it’s pushing a point of view and the bigger thing is that other news organizations like yours, ought not to treat them that way. And we’re not going to treat them that way, we’re going to appear on their shows and participate, but understanding that they represent a point of view.”

http://blogs.abcnews.com/

White House Urges Other Networks to Disregard Fox News

Senior Obama administration officials took to the airwaves Sunday to accuse Fox News of pushing a particular point of view and not being a real news network.

The White House is calling on other news organizations to isolate and alienate Fox News as it sends out top advisers to rail against the cable channel as a Republican Party mouthpiece.

Top political strategists question the decision by the Obama administration to escalate its offensive against Fox News. And as of Monday, the four other major television networks had not given any indication that they intend to sever their ties with Fox News.

But several top White House officials have taken aim at Fox News since communications director Anita Dunn branded Fox “opinion journalism masquerading as news” in an interview last Sunday.

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told CNN on Sunday that President Obama does not want “the CNNs and the others in the world [to] basically be led in following Fox.”

Obama senior adviser David Axelrod went further by calling on media outlets to join the administration in declaring that Fox is “not a news organization.”

“Other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way,” Axelrod counseled ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “We’re not going to treat them that way.”

Asked Monday about another Axelrod claim that Fox News is just trying to make money, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that while all media companies fall under that description, “I would say sometimes programming can be tilted toward accentuating those profits.”

But by urging other news outlets to side with the administration, Obama officials dramatically upped the ante in the war of words that began earlier this month with Dunn’s comments.

So far, none of the four other major networks has given any indication that they wish to disinvite Fox News from the White House pool — the rotation through which the networks share the costs and duties of White House coverage and the most significant interaction among the news channels.

The White House stopped providing guests to “Fox News Sunday” after host Chris Wallace fact-checked controversial assertions made by Tammy Duckworth, assistant secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, in August.

Dunn said fact-checking an administration official was “something I’ve never seen a Sunday show do.”

“She criticized ‘Fox News Sunday’ last week for fact-checking — fact-checking — an administration official,” Wallace said Sunday. “They didn’t say that our fact-checking was wrong. They just said that we had dared to fact-check.”

“Let’s fact-check Anita Dunn, because last Sunday she said that Fox ignores Republican scandals, and she specifically mentioned the scandal involving Nevada senator John Ensign,” Wallace added. “A number of Fox News shows have run stories about Senator Ensign. Anita Dunn’s facts were just plain wrong.”

Fox News senior vice president Michael Clemente said: “Surprisingly, the White House continues to declare war on a news organization instead of focusing on the critical issues that Americans are concerned about like jobs, health care and two wars. The door remains open and we welcome a discussion about the facts behind the issues.”

Observers on both sides of the political aisle questioned the White House’s decision to continue waging war on a news organization, saying the move carried significant political risks.

Democratic strategist Donna Brazile said on CNN: “I don’t always agree with the White House. And on this one here I would disagree.”

David Gergen, who has worked for Democratic and Republican presidents, said: “I totally agree with Donna Brazile.” Gergen added that White House officials have “gotten themselves into a fight they don’t necessarily want to be in. I don’t think it’s in their best interest.”

“The faster they can get this behind them, the more they can treat Fox like one other organization, the easier they can get back to governing, and then put some people out on Fox,” Gergen said on CNN. “I mean, for goodness sakes, you know, you engage in the debate.

“What Americans want is a robust competition of ideas, and they ought to be willing to go out there and mix it up with some strong conservatives on Fox, just as there are strong conservatives on CNN like Bill Bennett.”

Bennett expressed outrage that Dunn told an audience of high school students this year that Mao Zedong, the founder of communist China, was one of “my favorite political philosophers.”

“Having the spokesman do this, attack Fox, who says that Mao Zedong is one of the most influential figures in her life, was not…a small thing; it’s a big thing,” Bennett said on CNN. “When she stands up, in a speech to high school kids, says she’s deeply influenced by Mao Zedong, that — I mean, that is crazy.”

Fox News contributor Karl Rove, who was the top political strategist to former President George W. Bush, said: “This is an administration that’s getting very arrogant and slippery in its dealings with people. And if you dare to oppose them, they’re going to come hard at you and they’re going to cut your legs off.”

“This is a White House engaging in its own version of the media enemies list. And it’s unhelpful for the country and undignified for the president of the United States to so do,” Rove added. “That is over- the-top language. We heard that before from Richard Nixon.”

Media columnist David Carr of The New York Times warned that the White House war on Fox “may present a genuine problem for Mr. Obama, who took great pains during the campaign to depict himself as being above the fray of over-heated partisan squabbling.”

“While there is undoubtedly a visceral thrill in finally setting out after your antagonists, the history of administrations that have successfully taken on the media and won is shorter than this sentence,” Carr wrote over the weekend. “So far, the only winner in this latest dispute seems to be Fox News. Ratings are up 20 percent this year.”

He added: “The administration, by deploying official resources against a troublesome media organization, seems to have brought a knife to a gunfight.”

A Florida man with male breast cancer says he has now identified 39 other men with the rare disease who all share one thing: They lived at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

The numbers surprise scientists studying water contamination at the Marine Corps installation where up to a million Marines and family members may have been exposed to tainted water during 30 years ending in the late 1980s. Read the full story

Read Article

The power of lies, deceptions and disinformation as Americans pay the price of collective stupidity.

“You know very well, and the stupid Americans know equally well, that we control their government, irrespective of who sits in the White House. You see, I know it and you know it that no American president can be in a position to challenge us even if we do the unthinkable. What can they (Americans) do to us? We control congress, we control the media, we control show biz, and we control everything in America. In America you can criticize God, but you can’t criticize Israel…” Israeli spokeswoman, Tzipora Menache Read the full story

From Archives.gov :

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Read the full story

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) — Watching the Dave Matthews Band moments before they take the stage is like watching a football team bursting out of the locker room before a big game.

They slap hands. Bump fists. Jump up and down, exclaiming “Feel the love, feel the love!” The energy in the air is electric. Read the full story

Clearly you can see in this more recently released video a line of demo charges going off vertically on the right middle of the building. Note the charges start going off and only then does the building start to collapse with them. And I say this to any who will insist that the “structural failure” caused these effects. Nuh uh, no way in hell.

Something went off inside that building, in a line, just like demo charges!

From the Financial Times (FT.com) Read the full story

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut (CNN) — A Yale University lab technician was arrested Thursday and charged with murder in the slaying of a graduate student whose body was found in the basement wall of an off-campus medical research building, police said.

Raymond Clark was apprehended about 8:10 a.m. ET at a Super 8 motel in Cromwell, Connecticut, where he had spent the night after being released Wednesday following his submission to DNA testing.

Bond for Clark has been set at $3 million, New Haven Police Chief James Lewis said.

Hours after his arrest, Clark appeared in court and did not enter a plea. Standing with chains on his ankles and his palms on a table, he looked only at the judge and spoke only to acknowledge that his rights were read to him.

A court date of October 6 was set.

Lewis described the killing as an instance of “workplace violence” but did not elaborate. Watch chief, acquaintances talk about Clark »

Annie Le’s body was found in the basement wall of an off-campus medical research building Sunday. She had been strangled.

Le, 24, a pharmacology student, was last seen alive September 8, the day she appeared in a surveillance video entering a four-story lab at 10 Amistad St., about 10 blocks from the main campus.

Her body was found on what was to have been her wedding day.

Lewis said the arrest “went smoothly.” Watch the police chief announce the arrest »

He could not release details about the charges or whether DNA results led police to arrest Clark, who initially was described as a person of interest in the case.

“This arrest warrant has been sealed, so no further information can be released in order to comply with this court order,” Lewis said.

Clark could have been arrested Wednesday if he had declined to provide DNA samples and allow police to search his home, but he was released after complying, New Haven city spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga said. Police had been monitoring the motel where Clark was staying.

When asked about the arrest, Clark’s attorney David Dworski referred CNN to the statement he released earlier: “We are committed to proceeding appropriately with the authorities with whom we are in regular contact.”

Two other search warrants also were executed Wednesday — one on property belonging to Clark that was not named in the first warrant and a second for Clark’s vehicle, which was being processed Wednesday evening, Lewis said earlier.

He said Clark is a technician who does “custodial-type” work at the building. Clark answered police questions for a while but later retained an attorney and stopped, Lewis said.

Yale President Richard Levin said while the school’s administration is “relieved” by the news of Clark’s arrest, “we must resist the temptation to rush to judgment.”

Clark, a lab technician at Yale since December 2004, had nothing in his employment history that “gave an indication that his involvement in such a crime might be possible,” Levin said in a statement Thursday.

Lewis said Clark and Le worked in the same building and passed in the hallway, but he refused to comment further on whether they knew each other.

Investigators have collected about 250 pieces of evidence, Lewis said. Watch police discuss the investigation »

Lewis earlier said police had reviewed about 700 hours of video and interviewed more than 150 people, some more than once. Watch a timeline leading up to Le’s death »

Authorities have not released information on what DNA evidence may have been found, although investigators said earlier that bloody clothing was found hidden above tiles in a drop ceiling in another part of the building.

Police have not described the clothes that were found, nor said to whom they might have belonged. Teams of investigators at a Connecticut State Police lab worked through the weekend processing and examining the bloodstained garments.

But Thomas Kaplan, editor in chief of the Yale Daily News, said a Yale police official told the college paper that the clothes were not what Le was wearing when she entered the building.

Lewis said Wednesday that processing of the building was nearing completion and police would probably clear it Thursday morning. Watch a report on the police saying the killing was no random act »

Le was to have been married Sunday on New York’s Long Island to Jonathan Widawsky, a Columbia University graduate student.

Le was from Placerville, California, and seemed to have been aware of the risks of crime in a university town. In February, she compared crime and safety at Yale with other Ivy League schools for a piece for B magazine, published by the medical school.

Among the tips she offered: Keep a minimum amount on your person. When she walked over to the research building last week, she left her purse, credit cards and cell phone in her office.

http://www.cnn.com/

(CNN) — Scientists have discovered the first confirmed Earth-like planet outside our solar system, they announced Wednesday.

“This is the first confirmed rocky planet in another system,” astronomer Artie Hatzes told CNN, contrasting the solid planet with gaseous ones like Jupiter and Saturn. Read the full story

“We think the first doses of some of the vaccine forms should be available in about three weeks,” said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Previously, the CDC had been predicting the vaccine would not be available before middle or late October.

Read the full story