The United States' first marijuana cafe opened on Friday, posing an early test of the Obama administration's move to relax policing of medical use of the drug.The Cannabis Cafe in Portland, Oregon, is the first to give certified medical marijuana users a place to get hold of the drug and smoke it -- as long as they are out of public view -- despite a federal ban."Our plans go beyond serving food and marijuana," said Martinez. "We hope to have classes, seminars, even a Cannabis Community College, based here to help people learn about growing and other uses for cannabis."Members pay $25 per month to use the 100-person capacity cafe. They don't buy marijuana, but get it free over the counter from "budtenders". Open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., it serves food but has no liquor license.

As long as our goals in Afghanistan remain as elusive as they are now, Obama shouldn't be sending troops. He should be bringing them out.

It's been 10 years since Washington repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, the moment we got royally screwed by the banking system -- and we're still paying the price.

"We're too scared to have real trials in our country" is a level of cowardice unmatched in the world.

U.S. Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, a single mother, is being threatened with a military court-martial if she does not agree to deploy to Afghanistan, despite having been told she would be granted extra time to find someone to care for her 11-month-old son while she is overseas. Hutchinson, of Oakland, California, is currently being confined at Hunter Army Airfield near Savannah, Georgia, after being arrested. Her son was placed into a county foster care system. Hutchinson has been threatened with a court martial if she does not agree to deploy to Afghanistan on Sunday, Nov. 15. She has been attempting to find someone to take care of her child, Kamani, while she is deployed overseas, but to no avail.---

"Mr. Obama announced this week that he would convene a jobs summit at the White House next month to explore ways of putting Americans back to work. It remains to be seen whether the summit will yield anything substantial. But it’s fair to wonder why the president and his party have not been focused like fanatics on job creation from the first day he took office."

"On a beach where dozens of turtles used to nest on a given night, scientists spied only 32 leatherbacks all of last year. With leatherbacks threatened with extinction, Playa Grande’s expansive turtle museum was abandoned three years ago and now sits amid a sea of weeds. And the beachside ticket booth for turtle tours was washed away by a high tide in September. “We do not promote this as a turtle tourism destination anymore because we realize there are far too few turtles to please,” said Álvaro Fonseca, a park ranger."

"There is no firm national count of the number of untested rape kits. But last March, Human Rights Watch found more than 12,500 untested rape kits in the Los Angeles area alone. The Houston Police Department recently found at least 4,000 untested rape kits in storage. Detroit’s backlog may be as high as 10,000 untested kits."

A group of Iraqi and British officials, including the former Iraqi minister for women's affairs, Dr Nawal Majeed a-Sammarai, and the British doctors David Halpin and Chris Burns-Cox, have petitioned the UN general assembly to ask that an independent committee fully investigate the defects and help clean up toxic materials left over decades of war – including the six years since Saddam Hussein was ousted. "We are seeing a very significant increase in central nervous system anomalies," said Falluja general hospital's director and senior specialist, Dr Ayman Qais. "Before 2003 [the start of the war] I was seeing sporadic numbers of deformities in babies. Now the frequency of deformities has increased dramatically."

Investing billions today to protect threatened ecosystems and dwindling biodiversity would reap trillions in savings over the long haul, according to a UN-backed report issued Friday. More than a billion of Earth's poorest denizens depend directly on coral reefs, forests, mangroves, aquifers and other forms of "natural capital" to eke out a living. Unless world leaders take swift action to halt the accelerating depletion of these resources, the result could be hunger, conflict and environment refugees, the study warned.

Gerald Celente is one of the world’s best trend forecasters. In the following 4-part radio interview, Celente blasts current political and economic “leadership” as beholden to large corporate and financial interests. As I’ve documented, professionals who work with economics are using unprecedented harsh language in attempt to get Americans’ attention to the loss of trillions of our collective dollars. His comments include (paraphrased): * “Too big to fail” banks are anathema to real capitalism. * US economy is like a ruthless mafia ripping-off the American public. The US is being looted. * US economy is no longer capitalism, it’s oligarchies and fascism. * We are witnessing the greatest heist in American history, and the banks are doing it. * “I don’t like getting raped. I don’t like my money going to Goldman Sachs.” * “Do you have eyes to see and a mind to understand? These crimes are an affront to my intelligence.” * Bankers are money junkies lying to get their money fix. We have a criminal gang of money junkies dealing scams to get money from us. They never have enough. And for what? For gambling. * This is no different from the French Revolution. * The money junkies are in for a shock. The second American Revolution has begun. * They are not my political leaders; they are political hacks. We are going back to royalty and serfs.

Climate-justice activists in Copenhagen will argue that, far from solving the climate crisis, carbon-trading represents an unprecedented privatization of the atmosphere, and that offsets and sinks threaten to become a resource grab of colonial proportions. Not only will these "market-based solutions" fail to solve the climate crisis, but this failure will dramatically deepen poverty and inequality, because the poorest and most vulnerable people are the primary victims of climate change--as well as the primary guinea pigs for these emissions-trading schemes.

I'm a doctor of medicine and in 2006 I published the study Crimes and Abuses of the Pharmaceutical Industry. - Last May, WHO changed the official definition of a pandemic -- it changed from a logical definition (a pandemic is an infection of global proportions and with a high mortality) to an illogical definition (a pandemic is an infection of global proportions). -- What are the consequences of this change? -- Under the new definition of "pandemic", the annual [seasonal] flu more than meets the requirements to be one. Are we going to declare a world health alert every fall? Besides absurdity from the scientific standpoint, this has serious financial and policy consequences. -- You don't trust the vaccine. Why? - Unlike the annual seasonal flu vaccine, the influenza vaccine contains such powerful adjuvant substances that they can get the normal immune response to multiply by a factor of 10. In addition, two doses are recommended, to be received after the injection for seasonal influenza, which also contains adjuvants, although less potent. - Never before have these substances been injected three times in a row in the general population, starting with children, the chronically ill and pregnant women. --- What effects can result? - The artificial stimulation of the immune system can cause autoimmune diseases.

The 2010 Ford Flex will include the auto industry's first use of wheat straw, a waste byproduct of wheat production.Wheat straw will make up 20 percent of the vehicle's two third-row storage bins, lowering the bins' weight by 10 percent, reducing Ford Motor Company's petroleum use by 20,000 pounds a year and lowering its carbon dioxide emissions by 30,000 pounds a year.Ford is already looking at expanding its use of wheat straw to other car parts like center console bins and trays, armrest liners, interior air registers and door trim panels.The use of wheat straw in the plastic bins also represents the first production-ready application to come out of the Ontario BioCar Initiative, a collaboration among Canadian universities and the auto industry to advance the use of plant-based materials.

There are moments when a radical idea quickly goes mainstream. A cause for optimism but also caution; an opportunity for a practical challenge. -- The “Green New Deal,” a proposal for a green way out of recession, is such an idea. -- It has now been adopted in some form, in theory if not in corresponding action, by governments across the world.

In his approach to National Security Agency surveillance, as well as CIA renditions, drone assassinations, and military detention, President Obama has to a surprising extent embraced the expanded executive powers championed by his conservative predecessor, George W. Bush. This bipartisan affirmation of the imperial executive could "reverberate for generations," warns Jack Balkin, a specialist on First Amendment freedoms at Yale Law School. And consider these but some of the early fruits from the hybrid seeds that the Global War on Terror has planted on American soil. Yet surprisingly few Americans seem aware of the toll that this already endless war has taken on our civil liberties.

In a November 12, 2009 Facebook note, Sarah Palin falsely claimed clean energy legislation was a "job-killing scheme." In reality, an increased investment in renewable energy would create millions of American jobs across every single state.

Last week, the Treasury Department took a step to address those concerns: For the first time, it issued guidelines requiring mortgage servicers to give homeowners details about why they’ve been denied. But the required disclosure will only be partial, and housing advocates say that means servicers’ denials of loan modifications will still be shrouded in secrecy and protected from scrutiny.

So the myths prevail. Our wars are always noble, fought for the purest of motives. Our warriors are similarly noble, engaged in a high-minded crusade. They butcher and slaughter, and are butchered and slaughtered themselves, so that "civilization" might be preserved. Never mind that many of the warriors themselves would not agree. Never mind that the front-line soldiers know that war is insanity, and only insanity. Never mind the overwhelming, senseless, futile, endless horror of what actually happens in combat, and the details that never reach the public.

As Diogenes might say, the big thieves are giving lectures to the little thieves...the biggest corruption of all is the occupation itself, because it is all based on a big lie: the claim that our continued occupation of Afghanistan is justified by the threat of an Al Qaeda "haven" in Afghanistan. This is a lie because: 1) as former counter-terrorism official Paul Pillar has pointed out, "the case has not been made" that "such a haven would significantly increase the terrorist danger to the United States" and 2) Mullah Mohammed Omar's "Quetta Shura" Taliban have been signalling for months that they are done with Al Qaeda and there has been no U.S. response. McChrystal wants reinforcements to go to Kandahar. That's Mullah Omar's home turf. If McChrystal is given troops to go to Kandahar, then it's not about Al Qaeda.