TBR News January 26, 2020
The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. January 26, 2020:“Working in the White House as a junior staffer is an interesting experience.
When I was younger, I worked as a summer-time job in a clinic for people who had moderate to severe mental problems and the current work closely, at times, echos the earlier one.
I am not an intimate of the President but I have encountered him from time to time and I daily see manifestations of his growing psychological problems.
He insults people, uses foul language, is frantic to see his name mentioned on main-line television and pays absolutely no attention to any advice from his staff that runs counter to his strange ideas.
He lies like a rug to everyone, eats like a hog, makes lewd remarks to female staffers and flies into rages if anyone dares to contradict him.
It is becoming more and more evident to even the least intelligent American voter that Trump is vicious, corrupt and amoral. He has stated often that even if he loses the
election in 2020, he will not leave the White House. I have news for Donald but this is not the place to discuss it.
Trump aches from his head to his toes
His sphincters have gone where who knows
And his love life has ended
By a paunch so distended
That all he can use is his nose
Commentary for January 26: “On Sunday here in the White House, it is an interesting place. Trump is kissing up to the Jesus Freaks and they come here on the Blessed Day to see what kind of mystic mischief they can get away with. Since I have an aversion to lunatics, I keep away from them but there are some deluded ones to do not. Most of them are not as fake as Trump but they try. And I am having a great laugh over tht humped-up ‘Chinese evil virus.’ It is obvious to anyone with an IQ bigger than their shoe size that the whole thing is rigged. Interesting that all the major media, or what ragged bits are still standing, are covered with pictures of millions of Chinese wering masks. What they do not tell you is that the pictures are taken in Beijing where everyone wears masks because of the really foul and dangerous air pollution. I think we are dealing with frightened rabbits here but I do not know what is worse: the stupid media or the pinheads who are trying to create a fear-moment in voters.”
Trump’s Approval/Disapproval rating January 26 reporting
Source Approve Disapprove
_________________________________________
YouGov 39% 54%
The Table of Contents
• Trump impeachment trial: what you need to know
• Ring Ukraine News Suppressed at Amazon’s Request, Journalists Say
• FBI’s facial recognition program hits ‘full operational capability’
• FBI Facial Recognition System Gives Officers an Investigative Lead
• List of CIA front organizations, domestic and foreign
• The Season of Evil
• The Encyclopedia of American Loons
Trump impeachment trial: what you need to know
• The president won’t be convicted and removed because Republican senators are spineless.
• But voters are different
January 26, 2020
by Robert Reich
The Guardian
Don’t get bogged down in the minutiae of Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial – the procedural maneuvers aimed at getting witness testimony and new documents that Republicans want to prevent at all costs. Stay focused on the big picture.
1. Did Trump commit an impeachable offense?
Yes. His attempt to get a foreign power to help him win the 2020 election is precisely the sort of thing the framers of the constitution worried about when they created the impeachment clause. If presidents could seek foreign help winning elections, there would be no end of foreign intrusions into American sovereignty and democracy.
2. Will the Senate convict and remove him from office?
No. The impeachment clause requires that two-thirds of the Senate vote to convict. That means that even if every one of the 45 Democratic and two independent senators votes to oust Trump, 20 Republicans would need to join them for Trump to be removed. The odds that 20 Republican senators will do so are exactly zero.
3. Why won’t they?
There are not 20 Republican senators with the courage and integrity to protect the constitution and the nation from the most dangerous and demagogic president in history. Led by Mitch McConnell, they are engaged in a concerted cover-up of some of the most outrageous conduct ever committed by high-level government officials. Even so-called moderates like Susan Collins and Mitt Romney cannot be relied on to grow a spine and conduct a fair trial.
4. Why are they so spineless?
Because they want to keep their jobs, and they know that 90% of Republican voters approve of Trump. They fear Trump’s sway over their voting base and his massive fundraising apparatus.
5. Why do 90% of Republican voters support him?
Because he has convinced them he’s on their side and that he’s the victim of a plot orchestrated by the establishment and “deep state” bureaucrats.
6. How has Trump retained their support?
By lying constantly, casting the mainstream press as biased and untrustworthy, relying on his propaganda machine (Fox News and rightwing radio) to trumpet his lies, using Twitter and Facebook to deliver those lies directly to his followers, and fomenting the “culture war” – wielding deep divisions over race, guns, religion, abortion and immigrants – to fuel his base.
7. Where’s the money coming from?
Billionaires, chief executives, corporate executives and the denizens of Wall Street continue to fund the Republican party and bankroll Trump and his propaganda machine. They’re doing this because they’re raking in billions thanks to the Trump-Republican tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks. Trump is already promising more if he gets a second term.
“The attitude of the business community toward the Trump administration appears quite positive,” says Stephen Schwarzman, who runs Blackstone, the world’s largest investment fund.
8. Will the Senate trial change public opinion about Trump?
No. Trump’s overall job ratings haven’t budged. In the most recent polls, 40% of Americans (including that 90% of Republican voters) approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president, while 58% say they disapprove. These percentages are exactly the same as they were in September, before the House launched its formal impeachment inquiry and voted to impeach the president.
9. What does all this mean for the 2020 election?
Trump will claim that his forthcoming acquittal by the Senate clears him of all charges, just as he claimed attorney general William Barr’s whitewash of the Mueller report absolved him of charges that he sought Russian help in 2016. He’ll use both as “proof” that Democrats fabricated a plot to remove him from office.
But none of this is likely to sway the majority of Americans who don’t want Trump re-elected. To be sure, the Republican party will try to suppress the votes of likely Democrats, Russia will almost certainly try to help Trump again, billionaires and big corporations will spend vast sums seeking to get Trump re-elected, and the electoral college will further handicap the Democratic candidate.
But Democrats and independents are fired up. The 2018 midterms featured the highest turnout of any such election since 1914, handing House Republicans their most resounding defeat in decades. In 2020, the “blue wave” could be a tsunami.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His next book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, will be out in March. He is a columnist for Guardian US
Ring Ukraine News Suppressed at Amazon’s Request, Journalists Say
January 24, 2020
by Sam Biddle
The Intercept
On November 21, the Ukrainian business publication Vector published a genuine regional success story: An Amazon research lab in Kyiv, affiliated with the company’s Ring home security division, was receiving a “rebrand” makeover and a broader new role within the company. The office was already involved “in many other Amazon projects,” a lab manager told Vector. “We are no longer part of a small startup,” he said in Ukranian, “but a full-fledged R&D center working for one of the world’s largest corporations.”
Ring Ukraine has repeatedly drawn scrutiny and criticism over the past year. In November, five U.S. senators, in a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, released the day before the Vector story, had raised concerns about the Kyiv office’s access to Ring home security footage and other private information and asked whether a foreign government could access the material as well. The letter cited an Intercept report that many employees in the office were provided blanket, inappropriate access to a web server containing customer video files. In response, Ring revealed that it had fired four employees over “access to Ring video data” that “exceeded what was necessary for their job functions.” The company did not say what, if anything, it was doing prevent such incidents in the future.
An August 2019 report in BuzzFeed News found that the Kyiv office employed a “head of face recognition research” despite repeated denials that it uses such technology.
It was intriguing, then, that an R&D lab synonymous with privacy violation had apparently been rewarded with an expanded role within Amazon, whose projects include a special classified cloud with the CIA and facial recognition services for police departments across the country. I asked multiple Amazon representatives and Ring’s head of communications about the Vector article, including specifically what were the “many other Amazon projects” Ring’s Ukrainian staff now worked on.
Although Amazon ignored repeated requests for comment and Ring refused to discuss the subject on the record, it seems that the company did take action: Within hours of my inquiries, the text of the Vector piece was quietly edited to remove references to Amazon. Most notably, the entire quoted sentence about the “many other Amazon projects” the Kyiv office was working on was excised.
The full quote, attributed to Ring Ukraine General Manager Lyubomir Vasiliev, is shown below, as translated by Google, with the deleted portion in brackets:
“It’s about reaching a new level. We are no longer part of a small startup, but a full-fledged R&D center working for one of the world’s largest corporations. [We are involved not only in Ring’s product line but also in many other Amazon projects. That is,] We are a large Ukrainian team of specialists working on the world market,” explained Vasiliev.
The author of the article, Dmitry Koshelnik, said that Ring Ukraine, after providing him the quotes directly through its publicity department, “asked us to remove the word Amazon [from] my article due to possible legal problems.” Koshelnik added that the quotes had been sent to him specifically attributed to Vasiliev, who, according to his LinkedIn page, is a three-year veteran of the company. No note was appended to the article acknowledging any changes or that any post-publication editing had taken place, and even Koshelnik himself said he had been unaware of the changes prior to hearing from me. In an email to The Intercept, Vector editor-in-chief Denis Marakin confirmed that the article had been edited at Amazon’s request, and relayed a response from his recent predecessor, Anton Polieskov, who was running the publication at the time:
We published a news about rebranding, later pr-manager of Ring Ukraine called me and asked to take Amazon mention out from the article. Since I had a good relationship with manager, the article got just several dozens of views and I understood that everyone know that Ring is part of Amazon anyway, I didn’t even asked questions, said ok and took Amazon part out
Contacted by WhatsApp, Polieskov, confirmed that he was asked to remove the quotes during “quick phone chat” with Ring PR: “The goal was to delete Amazon mention, I don’t remember reasoning.”
Vasiliev did not respond to requests for comment sent through LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Ring declined to address questions about the alteration of the article on the record or Ring Ukraine’s “rebrand.” The Ring Ukraine home page has been reduced to a message saying “UNDER CONSTRUCTION” laid over a music video of the Kyiv office performing an English rendition of “Let It Snow.”
FBI’s facial recognition program hits ‘full operational capability’
RT
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Next Generation Identification System, a biometric database reliant on tens of millions of facial-recognition records, is now fully operational, the agency announced Monday.
The NGI system, after three years of development, is billed by the FBI as a new breakthrough for criminal identification and data-sharing between law enforcement agencies.
“This effort is a significant step forward for the criminal justice community in utilizing biometrics as an investigative enabler,” the FBI said in a statement
The NGI database contains over 100 million individual records that link a person’s fingerprints, palm prints, iris scans and facial-recognition data with personal information like their home address, age, legal status and other potentially compromising details.
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the NGI is the facial-recognition information, which civil liberties advocates have said for years is among the most serious future threats to Americans’ privacy. The NGI database is expected to contain 52 million facial-recognition images alone by 2015.
The FBI said Monday that two new features of the database are now complete, capping off the NGI’s “operational capability.”
One feature, the Rap Back, will allow officials to “receive ongoing status notifications of any criminal history reported on individuals holding positions of trust, such as school teachers.”
Additionally, the Interstate Photo System (IPS) facial recognition service “will provide the nation’s law enforcement community with an investigative tool that provides an image-searching capability of photographs associated with criminal identities.”
But Americans not suspected of any criminal activity could easily be swept up into the NGI, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), in any number of ways. An individual who goes through a fingerprint background check for an employment opportunity, for instance, could soon be required to submit a picture of herself as well.
That picture could be stored alongside images of suspected criminals, unlike fingerprints, where a clear differentiation is made between law-abiding citizens and those who have been in trouble with the law before.
According to EFF senior staff attorney Jennifer Lynch, there is cause for concern because “the FBI and Congress have thus far failed to enact meaningful restrictions on what types of data can be submitted to the system, who can access the data and how the data can be used.”
“For example, although the FBI has said in these documents that it will not allow non-mug shot photos such as images from social networking sites to be saved from the system, there are no legal or even written FBI policy restrictions in place to prevent this from occurring,” Lynch said.
In June, EFF and other privacy advocates warned that the FBI’s facial-recognition database is in desperate need of more oversight.
“One of the risks here, without assessing the privacy considerations, is the prospect of mission creep with the use of biometric identifiers,” Jeramie Scott of the Electronic Privacy Information Center told National Journal. “It’s been almost two years since the FBI said they were going to do an updated privacy assessment, and nothing has occurred.”
A 2010 report of the FBI’s facial-recognition technology found that it could fail one in every five instances it was used, a rate higher than fingerprinting or iris scans.
Yet FBI Director James Comey has told Congress that the database would not amass photos of innocent people, and that it is only intended to “find bad guys by matching pictures to mugshots.”
In a milestone announcement, the FBI said in August that it had tracked down a 14-year fugitive suspected of child abuse using facial-recognition technology.
Meanwhile, US government intelligence researchers are developing the Janus Program which will “radically expand the range of conditions under which automated face recognition can establish identity.”
There are currently no federal restraints on the use of facial-recognition software.
FBI Facial Recognition System Gives Officers an Investigative Lead
The powerful tool replaces legacy technology and lets police officers automatically compare a suspect’s digital facial image against more than 20 million images, but it has accuracy limits and has raised concerns among privacy groups.
by Jessica Hughes
Government Technology and Emergency Management
New FBI facial recognition technology released in September means more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies can search potential criminals by face in addition to fingerprint.
The facial recognition tool, called the Interstate Photo System, lets officers automatically compare a suspect’s digital facial image against the 20 million and growing images available for searches, giving officers an investigative lead.
“What this does for our criminal justice community is it provides them another tool to be able to go out and identify criminals,” said Stephen Morris, assistant director of the Criminal Justice Information Services Division of the FBI.
The facial recognition tool is part of CJIS’ Next Generation Identification (NGI) system, which is a 10-year IT project begun in 2008 to replace the decades-old legacy Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. The project has been launched in stages, but the September release marks the biggest rollout and the official end of the legacy system. The facial recognition technology was piloted in six states and developed in collaboration with law enforcement agencies nationwide. NGI currently operates in about 75 percent of the country’s law enforcement agencies.
“This is a long overdue effort to replace legacy technology, old technology, with new, relevant, more efficient, cheaper technology and, more importantly, more accurate technology,” Morris said.
The facial recognition technology represents the first time officers can search CJIS’ criminal mug shot database, which can store up to 92 million photos, against digital photos culled from investigations. Previously, there was no way to automatically search against the images collected along with fingerprints taken during booking or incarceration. Law enforcement officers would have to submit photos to the CJIS Division for facial recognition processing. With the new system, officers can choose between two and 50 candidates for review.
Any image used for search purposes is in law enforcement’s possession pursuant to a lawful investigation, Morris said. Digital photos, for example, can be taken from surveillance cameras or from digital devices that are seized with a search warrant. The ability to use the images captured on these devices is where the value in the tool lies, he said.
“Obviously you can’t pull a fingerprint off of a phone, but if there are images on a phone and you know that it’s that person’s phone, it’s the next best thing,” said Morris.
Facial recognition technology, however, is less reliable than fingerprint identification, with the Interstate Photo System returning the correct candidate a minimum of 85 percent of the time when a matching photos is in the repository. Any facial recognition hits are therefore investigative leads, not positive identifications, Morris said.
“In other words, it’s not an absolute identification,” Morris said. “When that agency gets that result back, they then have to go out and do the follow-up investigation.”
Additionally, controlled environments are best for facial recognition, a relatively young technology, which can be explained as an algorithm that make sense of millions of pixels describing facial features, said Chenjgun Liu, associate professor of computer science at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. DMV photos, for instance, are a good use for the technology.
“There is no such thing as a system or program that can recognize people without any constraint,” Liu said. “That is a fiction.”
Liu, who has received funding from the Department of Defense to support his research into improving the technology, recognizes the benefit of using the technology with digital images to narrow down the number of suspects in an investigation, reducing the search effort dramatically.
“The potential benefit is of course also obvious. We have nowadays images almost everywhere,” he said.
CJIS has put into place specifications to ensure photo quality for people submitting digital images to its database, requiring they be frontal facial images with no shadows, and be taken in controlled environments. The accuracy of the photos both in the database and for those that are searched against are correlated with faster and more accurate search results, Morris said.
And although it’s not an absolute, searching for both photo and fingerprint matches for one person can give officers almost virtual certainty of someone’s identify, he said.
“For the folks out there worried about it falsely identifying people, I would say it actually closes the gap and reduces the chance of an individual being falsely identified,” Morris said.
Indeed, the fact that law enforcement can search against such a large database of digital images, has some groups uncomfortable with its possible surveillance capabilities. The facial recognition technology received attention in the spring from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Morris said NGI has been subject to privacy threat assessments and privacy impact assessments, and that abuse of the technology using photos on social networking sites is “patently false.”
“First and foremost all of these things are done with absolute guarantee that privacy and civil liberties are of first concern,” he said.
Cost of the technology overhaul is another concern. The entire NGI System is a billion-dollar project. But Morris said the high price tag is an investment. “Over a long run, over a 20-year span, the return on that will be significant. You’re talking about savings in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”
That’s because the technology was built on a flexible framework, scalable as new biometric capabilities become economically and technically feasible. One such technology, iris image recognition, was just piloted under NGI.
Although the technology is not ready to be added to NGI’s set of biometrics tools, it soon may be, Morris said, just as facial recognition technology has come around.
List of CIA front organizations, domestic and foreign
• AALC, see Afro-American Labor Center
• A.P.I. Distributors, Inc.
• Actus Technology
• ADEP, see Popular Democratic Action
• Advertising Center, Inc.
• Aero Associates
• Aero Service Corp. of Philadelphia
• Aero Systems, Inc
• Aero Systems Pvt. Ltd
• AFME, see American Friends of the Middle East)
• African-American Institute
• Agencia Orbe Latinoamericano
• Agribusiness Development, Inc.
• AID (Agency for International Development – shared facilities with NIA)
• Air America
• Air Asia
• Air Proprietary Company
• All Ceylon Youth Council Movement
• Alliance for Anti-totalitarian Education
• American Committee for Liberation (of Cuba)
• American Committee on a United Europe
• America Fore Insurance Group
• American Association of the Middle East
• American Committee for Liberation from Bolshevism, Inc.
• American Committee for the Liberation of the People of Russia
• American Committee for the International Commission of Jurists
• American Council of Churches
• American Economic Foundation
• American Federation for Fundemental Research
• American Federation of Labor/Congress of Industrial Organization (AFL/CIO)
• American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)
• American Foundation for the Middle East
• American Friends of the Middle East
• American Friends of the Russian Freedom
• American Friends Service Committee
• American Fund for Czechoslovak Refugees
• American Fund For Free Jurists
• American Geographic Society
• American Historical Society
• American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD)
• American Institute of Cairo
• American Machine & Foundry
• American Mutual Insurance Company
• American Newspaper Guild
• American Newspaper Publishers
• American Political Science Association
• American Research Center in Egypt, Inc.
• Anderson Security Associates (Virginia)
• American Society of African Culture
• American University – Special Operations Research Office
• Ames Research Center
• M.D. Anderson Foundation
• ANSA (Italian Wire Service)
• Antell, Wright & Nagel
• Anti-Communist Christian Front
• Anti-Communist Liberation Movement
• Anti-Totalitarian Board of Solidarity with the People of Vietnam
• Anti-Totalitarian Youth movement
• Appalachian Fund
• Armairco
• Area Tourist Association
• Arbian-American Oil Company
• Arnim Proprietary, Ltd
• Arrow Air
• Ashland Oil and Refining Company
• Asia Foundation
• Association American Oriental Society
• Association of Former Intelligence Officers
• Association of American Geographers
• Association of Computing Machinery
• Association of Friends of Venezuela
• Association of Preparatory Students
• Atomics, Physics & Science Fund, Inc.
• Atwater Research Program in North Africa
• Audio Intelligence Devices, Inc.
• Australian Association for Cultural Freedom
• Assoziation ungarischer Studenten in Nordamerika
• B.R. Fox Laboratories (B.R. Fox Company)
• Bahamas Commonwealth Bank
• Bank of Lisle
• Ball, Janik, and Novack
• Bankers Trust Company
• Basic Resources
• Battelle Memorial Institute
• Beacon Fund (West)
• Berliner Verein (West)
• Berliner Verein zur Forderung der Bildungshilfe in Entwicklungslandern (West)
• Berliner Verein zur Forderung der Publizistik in Entwicklungslandern
• Bird Air
• Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald, Dillingham and Wong
• Blythe & Company, Inc
• Boni, Watkins, Jason & Company
• Brazilian Institute for Democratic Action (IBAD)
• BRS Holding Company
• Broad and High Foundation
• J. Frederick Brown Foundation
• Bruce Campbell and Company
• Burndy Corporation
• Burgerkomitee fur Au Benpolitik (SS)
• Butte Pipe Line Company
• Cahill, Gordon, Reindel & Ohl
• Cahill & Wilinski
• Caramar (Caribbean Marine Aero Corp)
• California Shipbuilding Corporation
• Caribban Marine Area Corporation
• Caspian Pipeline Consortium
• Castle Bank and Trust
• Catherwood Foundation
• (CRESS) Center for Strategic Studies
• (CEAS) CEOSL, see Ecuadorean Confederation of Free Trade Union Organizations
• Center for Strategic and International Studies
• Center of Studies and Social Action
• Central Investigative Agency
• Century Special (controled by ICC)
• Chalk№s International Airlines
• Chesapeake Foundation
• Church League of America
• Civil Air Transport
• Civilian Irregular Defense Group(s
• Civilian Military Assistance
• Clothing and Textiles Workers Union COG, see Guayana Workers Confederation
• CMI Investments
• Coastal Products
• Coastal Trade Unions Cross, Murphy and Smith
• Cocke and Phillips International
• Columbian Financial Development Company
• Colt’s Patent Fire Arms Company
• Committee for Free Albania
• Committee for the Defense of National Interests
• Committee for Liberty of Peoples
• Committee of One Million Against the Admission of Communist China to the United Nations
• Communications Workers of America (CWA)
• Community Congress for Cultural Freedom
• Combat Military Ordinances Ltd.
• Computerized Thermal Imaging, Inc.
• Confederation for an Independent Poland
• Conference of the Atlantic
• Continental Press
• Continental Shelf Explorations, Inc.
• Cooperative League of America
• Coordinating Committee of Free Trade Unionists of Ecuador
• Coordinating Secretariat of National Unions of Students (cosec), see International
Student Conference (ISC)
• Corporate Air Services
• Cosden Petroleum Corporation
• COSECOIN (Corporate Security Consultants International
• Council on Economic and Cultural Affairs, Inc
• Council of Foreign Relations
• Cox, Langford, Stoddard & Cutler
• CRC, see Cuban Revolutionary Council
• Crest Detective Agency (Santa Monica)
• CROCLE, see Regional Confederation of Ecuadoreas
• Crossroads of Africa
• Crusade for Freedom
• Cryogenics, Inc.
• CSU, see Urugayan Labor Conference
• CTM, see Mexican Worker Confederation
• Cuban Portland Cement Company
• Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC, Cuban Exile)
• Cummings and Seller
• Curtis Publishing Company
• CUT, see Uruguayan Confederation of Workers
• Daddario & Burns
• Dane Aviation Supply
• Debevoise, Plimpton, Lyons & Gates (West)
• Defense Services, Inc
• Defense Systems, International
• Dektor Counterinteligence (Virginia)
• Deutscher Kunstlerbund
• Dominion Rubber Company
• Double-Check Corporation
• DRE, see Revolutionary Student Directorate in Exile
• Eagle Aviation Technology and Services
• Eagleton Institute of Politics – Princeton University East Asian Institute
• East-West Center
• EATSCO (the Egyptian American Transport and Service Company)
• EC (see also EC varients, PGES, Granville Road Company, Idaho Power Systems, Coastal Products, Fouch Electric, Linnco Electric, and law firm of Ball, Janik, and Novak)
• EC Company
• EC Distributing
• EC Engineering
• EC Pulp and Paper
• EC Technical Services
• EC Voice and Data
• Ecuadorean Anti-Communist Action
• Ecuadorean Anti-Communist Front
• Ecuadorean Confederation of Free Trade Union Organizations (CEOSL)
• Ecuadorean Federation of Telecommunications Workers (FENETEL)
• Editors Press Service
• Edsel Fund
• Electrical Construction
• Electrical Contractors
• Electrical Contractors of Oregon
• Electric Storage Battery Company
• El Gheden Mining Corporation
• Encounter Magazine
• End Kadhmir Dispute Committee
• Energy Resources
• Ensayos
• ERC International, Inc.
• ESI Electronic Specialties, Inc.
• Enstnischer Nationalrat
• Enstnischer Weltzentralrat
• Estrella Company
• Europe Assembly of Captive Nations
• Evergreen International Air
• Exeter Banking Company
• Fairfield Aviation
• Farfield Foundation, Inc.
• Federal League for Ruralist Action (Ruralistas)
• Federation for a Democratic Germany in Free Europe
• Fed. Inte. des Journalistes de Tourisme
• FENETEL, see Ecuadorean Federation of Telecommunications Workers
• Fidelity Reporting Service
• Fiduciary Trust
• First Florida Resource Corporation
• Food, Drink and Plantation Workers Union
• Ford Foundation
• Foreign Broadcast Information
• Foreign News Service
• Foreign Press Association B.C
• Forest Products, Ltd.
• “Forum” (Wein)
• Fouch Electric
• Foundation for International and Social Behavior
• Foundation for Student Affairs
• Franklin Broadcasting Company
• Free Africa Organization of Colored People
• Free Europe Committee, Inc
• Free Europe Exile Relations
• Free Europe Press Division
• Freie Universitat (FU)
• Frente Departmental de Compensinos de Puno
• Fund For Peace
• Fund for International, Social and Economic Development
• Gambia National Youth Council
• GEICO (Government Employees Insurance Company)
• Geneva’s Exchange and Investment Bank
• Geological Society of America
• George L. Barnes & Associates (Los Angeles)
• Georgia Council on Human Relations
• Gibralter Steamship Corp
• Global Financial
• Global International Airways
• Glore, Forgan & Company
• Golden West Airlines
• Goldstein, Judd & Gurfein
• Gotham Foundation
• Government Affairs Institute
• Grace Capital
• W.R. Grace and Company
• Grandville Road Company
• Gray and Company
• Granary Fund
• Great American Banks
• Grey Advertising Agency
• Gulf Stream, Ltd.
• Gulf Oil Corporation
• Guyana Workers Confederation (COG)
• Andrew Hamilton Fund
• Heights Fund
• Joshua Hendy Iron Works
• Hercules Research Corporation
• Hierax
• Hill & Knowlton
• Himalayan Convention
• Histadrut – The Federation of Labor in Israel
• Hiwar
• Hoblitzelle Foundation
• Hodson Corporation
• Hogan & Hartson, legal firm (Edward Bennett Williams firm)
• Hoover Institute on War, Revolution and Peace
• Howard Hughes Medical Institute
• Hutchins Advertising Company of Canada
• Huyck Corporation
• IBAD, see Brazilian Institute for Democratic Action
• IBM (International Business Machines)
• ICC (International Controls Corp
• Idaho Power Systems
• Impossible Electronic Techniques (Russiaville, In.)
• Independence Foundation
• Independent Research Service
• Industrial Research Service
• Information Security International Inc.
• Institut zur Erforschung der USSR e.V.
• Institute Battelle Memorial
• Institute of Historical Review
• Institute of International Education
• Institute of International Labor Research Education
• Institute of Political Education
• Institute of Public Administration
• Inter-American Capital
• Intermountain Aviation
• Inter-Probe, Inc.
• Interarmco (International Armament Corp.)
• Intercontinental Industries
• Intercontinental Finance Corporation
• Intercontinental Research Corporation
• Intermountain Aviation
• International-American Center of Economic and Social Studies
• International-American Federation of Journalists
• International-American Federation of Working Newspapermen (IFWN)
• International-American Labor College
• International-American Police Academy, see International Police Academy
• International-American Regional Labor Organization (ORIT)
• International Armament Corporation (INTERARMCO) International Air Tours of Nigeria
• International Bancorp, Ltd
• International Business Communications
• International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (IFCTU)
• International Commission of Jurists (ICJ)
• International Cooperation Administration (ICA)
• International Credit Bank of Switzerland
• International Development Foundation, Inc.
• International Fact Finding Institute
• International Federation of Christian Trade Unions IFCTU, see World Confederation of Labor
• International Federation of Journalists
• International Federation of Petroleum and Chemical Workers (IFPCW)
• International Federation of Plantation, Agriculture and Allied Workers (IFPAAW)
• International Federation of Women Lawyers (IFWL)
• International Geographical Union
• International Investigators, Inc.
• International Journalists Conference
• International Labor Research Institute
• International Press Institute
• International Rescue Committee
• International Police Services (INPOLSE)
• International Secretatiate of the Pax Romana
• International Student Conference (ISC)
• International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation (ITT)
• International Trade Services
• International Trade Secretariats
• International Trading and Investment Guaranty Corp., Ltd.,
• International Transport Workers Federation (ITF)
• International Union Officials Trade Organizations
• International Union of Young Christian Democrats
• International Youth Center
• Internationale Federation der Mittel- und Osteuropas
• Internationale Organization zur Erforschung kommunistischer Nethoden
• Internationaler Bund freier Journalisten
• Internationales Hilfskomitee
• Intertel (International Intelligence Incorporated)
• IOS (Investor№s Overseas Services)
• ITT (International Telephone and Telegraph)
• Japan Cultural Forum
• John P. Muldoon Detective Agency
• Joseph Z. Taylor & Associates Kenyon Electronics
• KAMI
• Kaplan Fund, Inc.
• Kennedy & Sinclaire, Inc.
• Kentfield Fund J.M.
• Kenya Federation of Labour
• Khmer Airlines
• Kilmory Investments, Ltd
• Kimberly-Clark Corporation
• Komittee fur internationale Beziehungen
• Komittee fur Selbstbestimmung
• Komittee fur die Unabhangigkeit des Kaukasus
• Korean C.I.A.
• Korean Freedom and Cultural Foundation, Inc.
• Labor Committee for Democratic Action
• Lake Resources
• Law Enforcement Assistance Administration
• Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit
• Lawyer’s Constitutional Defense Committee
• League for Industrial Democracy
• League for International Social and Cooperative Development
• Ligue de la Liberte
• Linking Progressive Corp., S.A.
• Linnco Electric
• Litton Industrial Company
• London American
• Management Safeguards, Inc.
• Manhattan Coffee Company
• Maritime Support Unit
• Marconi Telegraph-Cable Company
• Marshall Foundation, Center for International Studies (MIT-CIS)
• Martin Marietta Company
• Mathieson Chemical Corporation
• McCann-Erikson, Inc.
• Megadyne Electronics
• Mercantile Bank and Trust Company
• Merex
• Meridian Arms
• Charles E. Merrill Trust
• Mexican Workers Confederation (CTM)
• Military Armaments Corp.
• Miner & Associates
• Mineral Carriers, Ltd.
• MITRE Corporation
• Mobil Oil Company
• Molden-Verlag
• Monroe Fund
• Moore-McCormack Lines, Inc.
• Moral Majority Moral Rearmament Movement
• Mount Pleasant Trust
• Movement for Integrated University Action
• Robert Mullen Company
• Narodno Trudouoj Sojus (NTS)
• National Academy of Sciences
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
• National Board for Defense of Sovereignty and Continental Solidarity
• National Catholic Action Board
• National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse
• National Council of Churches
• National Defense Front
• National Educational Films, Inc.
• National Education Association
• National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty
• National Federation of Petroleum and Chemical Workers of Ecuador
• National Feminist Movement for the Defense of Uruguay
• National Intelligence Academy,
• National Railways Security Bureau, Inc
• National Research Council
• National Student Association
• National Student Press Council of India
• National Union of Journalists of Ecuador
• Newsweek
• New York Times
• Norman Fund
• Norman Jaspan Associates
• North American Rockwell Corporation
• North American Uranium, Inc
• Norwich Pharmaceutical Company
• Nugan Fruit Group
• Nugan Hand Bank
• Oceanic Cargo
• Oil Workers International Union
• Omni Spectra, Inc. (Tempe, Az.)
• Operations and Policy Research, Inc.
• Orange Spot
• Organix. Ukrainischer Nationalisten (OUN)
• ORIT, see International-American Regional Labor Organization
• Overseas New Agency
• Overseas Southeast Asia Supply Company
• Pacific Corporation
• Pacific Life Insurance
• Paderewski Foundation
• PAMCO (Pacific Aircraft Maintenance Company
• Pan-American Foundation
• Pan Aviation
• Pappss Charitable Trust
• Parvus
• Jere Patterson & Associates
• Pax Romana
• Peace and Freedom
• Penobscot Land & Investment Company
• Phoenix Financial
• Plant Protection, Inc.
• Plenary of Democratic Civil Organizations of Uruguay
• Pope & Ballard
• Popular Democratic Action (ADEP)
• Press Institute of India
• Price Fund
• Project Democracy
• Property Resources, Ltd.
• Public Service International (PSI)
• Publisher’s Council
• Rabb Charitable Foundation
• Radio Americas
• Radio Free Europe
• Radio Free Asia
• Radio Liberty
• Radio Liberty Committee, Inc.
• Radio Liberation
• Radio Swan
• Rand Corporation
• Rapid-American Corp.
• Red Pearl Bay, S.A.
• Regional Confederation of Ecuadorean Coastal Trade Unions (CROCLE)
• Research Foundation for Foreign Affairs
• Resorts International (Parent of Intertel)
• Retail Clerk’s International Association
• Revolutionary Democratic Front (RFD, Cuban exile)
• Reynolds Metal Company
• Robert A. Maheu Associates
• Robert R. Mullen Company
• Rubicon Foundation
• Rumanisches Nationalkomitee
• Russian and East European Institute
• Russian Institute
• Russian Research Center
• Safir
• Saman
• San Jacinto Foundation
• San Miguel Fund
• SBONR
• SECOIN (Security Consultants International)
• Sentinels of Liberty
• Sheffield Edwards & Associates (Virginia) :
• Shenandoah Airleasing
• SIONICS
• Southern Air Transport Spectre Security Products (Orange, Ca)
• Sith & Company
• Social Christian Movement of Ecuador
• Sociedade Anomima de Radio Retransmissao (RARETSA)
• Society for Defense of Freedom in Asia
• SODECO (Sakhalin Oil Development Cooperation Co)
• SODIMAC Southern Air Transport
• St. Lucia Airways
• Standard Commerz Bank of Switzerland
• Standard Electronics, Inc.
• Standish Ayer & McKay, Inc.
• Stanford Technology Trading Group International (STTGI)
• Strauss Fund
• Sterling Chemical Co.
• Streamlight, Inc. (King of Prussia, Pa.)
• Student Movement for Democratic Action
• Sur International
• Sullivan & Cromwell
• Summit Aviation
• Sylvania Electric Products, Inc.
• Synod of Bishops of the Russian Church Outside of Russia
• Systems Development Corporation
• Tarantel Press
• Tetra Tech International
• Thai-Pacific Services Company
• The Aquatic Club
• The Bourbon and Beefsteak Bar and Restaurant
• The Broyhill Building (Arlington, VA)
• The Law Association for Asia and the Western Pacific
• The Second National Bank of Homstead (Florida)
• The Texas Tavern
• The Washington Monthly
• The World Finance Corporation
• Tibet Convention
• Time Magazine
• Tower Fund
• Tractron (Vienna, Va.)
• Trade Winds Motel
• Transmaritania
• Trident Bank
• Twentieth Century Fund
• Udall Corp.
• Unabhangiger Forschugsdienst
• Ungarischer Nationalrat
• United Fruit Company
• United States Youth Council
• United Ukrainian American Relief Committee
• Universal Service Corporation
• Untersuchungsausschub freiheitlicher Juristen (UfJ)
• Uruguayan Committee for Free Detention of Peoples
• Uruguayan Confederation of Workers (CUT)
• Uruguayan Labor Confederation (CSU)
• USAID (Agency for International Development – shared facilities with NIA)
• USIA (United States Information Agency
• USIA Weapon Sales
• U.S. News and World Report
• U.S.-Russian Commercial Energy Working Group
• Vanguard Service Corporation
• Varicon, Inc
• Vector, Ltd.
• Venture Fund
• Wackenhut
• Wainwright and Matthews Joseph Walter & Sons
• Warden Trust
• Erwim Wasey, Ruthrauff & Ryan, Inc.
• Washington Post
• Wexton Advertising Agency
• Western International Ground Maintenance Organization (WIGMO)
• Whitten Trust
• Wikipedia
• Williford-Telford Corporation
• World Assembly of Youth (WAY)
• World Confederation of Labour
• World Marine, Inc.
• Wynnewood Fund
• York Research Corporation
• Zapato Off-Shore Oil Company
• Zapato Petroleum Corp
• Zenith Technical Enterprizes
• Zen Nihon Gakusei Jichikai Sorengo
• Zentrale for Studien und Dokumentation
• Zweites deutschen fernsehen (ZDF)
The Season of Evil
by Gregory Douglas
Preface
This is in essence a work of fiction, but the usual disclaimers notwithstanding, many of the horrific incidents related herein are based entirely on factual occurrences.
None of the characters or the events in this telling are invented and at the same time, none are real. And certainly, none of the participants could be considered by any stretch of the imagination to be either noble, self-sacrificing, honest, pure of motive or in any way socially acceptable to anything other than a hungry crocodile, a professional politician or a tax collector.
In fact, the main characters are complex, very often unpleasant, destructive and occasionally, very entertaining.
To those who would say that the majority of humanity has nothing in common with the characters depicted herein, the response is that mirrors only depict the ugly, evil and deformed things that peer into them
There are no heroes here, only different shapes and degrees of villains and if there is a moral to this tale it might well be found in a sentence by Jonathan Swift, a brilliant and misanthropic Irish cleric who wrote in his ‘Gulliver’s Travels,”
“I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most odious race of little pernicious vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.”
Swift was often unkind in his observations but certainly not inaccurate.
Frienze, Italy
July 2018-August 2019
Chapter 68
The object of their passions went outside early in the morning while everyone else was in bed to ascertain if the bears had feasted on the decaying LeBec during the night, obviating the necessity of trying to bury him in the ground which was now very frozen.
After the warming trend of the past few days, the temperature had plummeted again and Chuck pulled the collar of his leather jacket up against the biting cold. It had snowed about six inches in the night and the sky was leaden with portent of more snow to come.
The gory drag marks on the street were entirely covered and there were no bear tracks in the fresh snow as he crossed the road and peered down the side of the steep hill.
In the daylight he had a clear view of the large pine against whose base the contorted LeBec had come to an angular rest.
Chuck was very pleased to note that there was no trace of the corpse so his assumption was that LeBec’s only local appearance would be in reeking deposits of bear dung. It was, he thought, a fitting conclusion to a wasted life.
When he went back through the open gate, something whizzed past his face and splattered on the wire fence. There was cracking laughter as Alex fired another snowball at him and indelicate language from Chuck when it hit him squarely in the chest.
He scooped up a handful of snow, compacted it and hurled it at Alex…and missed.
Following this, a great snowball war broke out on the driveway with occasional hits scored on both sides. Alex finally took refuge behind a pine tree, popping out from its protection to throw more damp missiles. While he was rearming himself, Chuck charged the tree and grabbed the boy from behind.
“Now, you poor white trash, prepare to meet your doom!” he shouted as he pushed a laughing Alex down into the snow and sat on him.
He washed the shouting boy’s face in cold snow and was struck in the back with an angular knee.
The bad language soon brought Claude outside to see what the noise was all about.
“Chuck, if you don’t stop torturing that boy, I’ll get Gwen after you, see if I don’t.”
When Alex finally got up, he rewarded Claude by hitting him over the ear with a snowball and thus precipitated a major conflict. Soon the entire front of the house and most of the trees were pocked with ill-aimed missiles and everyone was very red in the face and filled with savage good humor.
When Gwen finally came out, she was at once the target of a fusillade that drove her back inside.
After breakfast, jointly prepared by the damp gladiators, Claude went to his room and brought back the paper with the article about the ice-free harbor and laid it on the table in front of Chuck.
Alex immediately came over and looked over Chuck’s shoulder.
“What’s that all about, Chuck?”
Chuck turned and pulled on Alex’s ear.
“Listen, monkey butt, clean off the table and put the things in the dishwasher.”
Chuck read the article and silently passed it to Gwen.
“My, no ice in the harbor. I read about the warm weather in Chicago. Maybe you two could go down there and see about that car Chuck wanted to buy.”
This was said because Alex was obviously listening to them.
“Can I go with you guys?”
“No,” Gwen said firmly, “you stay here and learn how to cook.”
“Shit, let me go, OK?”
“No,” Chuck said, pointing to the open dishwasher door. “Just pile the dishes up in there like I showed you. And I’ll start to lay things out for tomorrow’s dinner. Hey, hey, get moving.”
Lars, who had slept late, came into the kitchen, yawning.
“What’s for breakfast?”
“Bear brains and oatmeal,” Alex said.
“What? No, I don’t think I would like bear brains. I saw a bear a couple of days ago, now that you bring it up. It was crossing the road. Why was it doing that?”
“Obviously,” Chuck replied with a grin, “to get to the other side. Sit down and I’ll make some scrambled eggs for you. All right? And try to get down here earlier, Lars or you can get cold oatmeal.”
“No bear brains, Chuck.”
“No, just cold oatmeal. Alex ate the brains before you got here. He said they were delicious, didn’t you Alex?”
“Better than my mom used to make, Lars.”
“I’ll take the eggs.”
Later in the morning while Mitnik was having an early lunch with Collins, Chuck, Claude and Gwen were in Chuck’s bedroom discussing the matter of Collins and his removal..
Alex and Lars were in their respective rooms, one listening to his CDs and the other practicing on the electronic piano keyboard.
It had started snowing heavily and this weighed on the thrust of the conversation.
Gwen was of the determined opinion that Collins needed to be eradicated immediately, thaw or no thaw. Claude, who had as much to gain by the detective’s death as Chuck, completely agreed.
The new storm moving southeast across the top of Minnesota and down into Wisconsin looked on the weather channel radar as if it might well strike Chicago in a few hours. It was a very cold front that moved with it and perhaps the harbor might ice up again, making the yacht marina an unattractive meeting area.
Chuck was the one that pointed out the potential problems with the weather.
“Yes, Chuck,” Gwen said as she drank the rest of her coffee, “we all agree that the weather is important but it is important only to the boat idea. Why not just let Claude get into his apartment house and put a bomb in front of his door? He says he’s been in that building before and can certainly do it. Well?”
“Fine. If that’s what you both think is good, don’t let me stop you. My own opinion is that we should just wait a week or so to see about the weather. I mean if Claude goes down there to take care of business, I am certainly going with him because Collins is as much my problem as his and I wouldn’t think of letting him do this hit business alone.”
“Here, hold on Charlie Tuna. I always work alone as you know. Making a really effective bomb is not hard. I can use a claymore mine with a special trigger, put it up against the door and the first person who opens the door will be turned into cat meat in two seconds.”
“Fine, Claude, wonderful. Suppose it’s his girl friend? Or a maid? At least with the boat business, he has to turn on the ignition to set off the bomb. A bomb against the door is too random for me. We could just go up there, you and I, and blow him away with a shotgun, couldn’t we?”
“No, Chuck, we can not. The halls are filled with surveillance cameras and anything on them is taped. We get in, go up there and we’d both be on tape. If I went in alone, I could wear the right kind of custodian gear, get in, do the job and get out. If you want to drive down with me, fine. I go inside and you stay in the car. I don’t need a point man but you can be my wheelman if you want. Now, which do we do? The boat or the surprise package at the front door?”
Gwen set down her coffee cup on the floor.
“Maybe there’s another way, guys. Does this bean brain go out for walks? Does he have a dog that has to shit? Does anyone know that?”
No one did.
“Well, fine. Why don’t we go down there and watch the asshole for a week or so? Maybe he likes to take the girl friend out for a nice walk so she can shit in the park instead of in bed. OK? If they do, the three of us can take care of them but let me point out to you macho stud muffins that I can shoot better than both of you put together. Since we’re on the subject of hit jobs, I helped my dad out on one when I was fourteen. He hurt his leg so I took out a guy in a swimming pool in Phoenix. Two shots to the head and off I went. Who the hell is going to look for a sweet little girl holding a puppy? The first shot went right where I aimed, the left eye, and the second through the right. Bang, bang, just like that, and I was home for whatever shit my dear mom called dinner. Why don’t you let me come along and do things the right way? I agree with Chuck about a bomb in the hall. Why kill innocent people? I’ll nail both him, his girl friend and a dog, if they have one. You get three for the price of one.”
Claude leaned over her chair and kissed her on the forehead.
“You are a really marvelous woman, dear.”
“Knock that shit off, Claude! Don’t get sexy with me while I’m talking business, OK?”
He backed away, hands held up in mock fright.
“Oh please, lady, don’t shoot me in the eye! I promise to be good, I really do!”
“I’ll shoot you in the balls, creep, if you don’t keep your tongue in your mouth.”
Claude shook his head in mock sadness.
“You know, Chuck, I thought that Gwen here was such a real sweet thing when I met her in the post office in town. Jesus, I’m surprised she didn’t ice me right there, right next to the wanted notices.”
Chuck finished laughing.
“I know, Claude, I know. I won’t tell you how I met her but she was certainly in no position to argue. Still and all, tough as she is, Gwenneth is one hell of a fine lady and don’t ever forget it.”
“Oh how romantic, Chuck! You should propose to her really fast before she shoots you in the eye.”
“If you two assholes will keep your mouths shut for about a minute, I have one serious question to ask you. That is, what do we do and when do we do it?”
“We kill him,” Chuck said firmly, “and we kill him as quickly as possible but let’s not just drive down to Chicago in a bad storm and get stuck in a snow bank in Elgin, OK?”
He pointed to the window and the heavy fall of snow that obliterated view of the forest below the house.
It was then generally agreed that driving to Chicago at this moment was not an especially good idea but that Collins had to be tended to as soon as possible.
Chuck had forgotten about the gigantic ebon dildo he had sent to his uncle for Christmas but his uncle had not and while they were speaking, Charles Rush was shrieking into the phone to a senior U.S. Postal Inspector about it.
He knew it had come from his warped and twisted nephew who was now, he discovered from the postmark, in San Francisco or Fairyville as he liked to call it.
The Inspector could do nothing but make extensive promises but he knew that given the huge volume of complaints filed every day and the small number of inspectors assigned to investigate such matters, there was no hope at all of even attempting to locate the sender. Also, sending large latex African-American dildos to people for Christmas was certainly in bad taste but not illegal. He did not tell Charles Rush this because Charles Rush was shouting so much he couldn’t gotten a word in edgewise, even if he had wanted to.
When he had finished screaming at the Inspector, Rush called Mitnik at home and shouted at him that his filthy nephew was now in San Francisco and to tell the incompetent embezzler, Collins, about it.
He then hung up and went to dress for a small New Year’s eve party he was planning for a few of his staff, Tyler McKnight and his idiotic wife.
(Continued)
This is also an e-book, available from Amazon:
The Encyclopedia of American Loons
Deborah Stevens
Yes, she’s pretty obscure, but Deborah Stevens is at least some kind of serial conspiracy theorist with numerous webpages to her, and whose ravings occasionally make their way to various whale.to-style websites. According to her bio, her “mission is to stand up for the Constitution and The Bill of Rights and to educate folks through her music (Three Shoes Posse) about 9/11 Truth, proper grand jury power and function, voting machine fraud and Vote Rescue, the scam of the Federal Reserve and an alternative known as the Liberty Dollar” (hyperlinks removed). Yes, it’s civics woo, through and through, and once you’ve bought into some freeman-on-the-land-style crazy it’s apparently hard to stop – Stevens, unfettered by reality, appears to believe roughly every dumb thing thrown her way as long as it fuels her already well-developed paranoia.
Her band, Three Shoes Posse, apparently consists of her, Jerry Stevens (her husband) and Patterson Martin, and they have ostensibly “brought their own special blend of activism together with genuine musical talents to bring the world their self titled CD release which includes the smash truth hit, 10 Second Freefall.” Apparently she is also a (somewhat) prominent member of WeAreChange San Antonio and runs (as far as we can tell) something called the Rule of Law radio network and the unlicensed Radio Free Austin, where she and her cohost Randall Kelton have been ranting about Barack Obama’s birth certificate, “the cartel” (“it’s all about the cartel, the monopoly cartel, the Texas Association of Broadcasters and the FCC protecting their cartel illegally”) and the accuracy of various prophecies. Much of Stevens’s contributions emphasized how ordinary citizens can “take back control” of the legal system. Stevens is not a lawyer.
Diagnosis: Probably rather harmless – Stevens is probably more reflective of a disconcertingly common mindset than someone who actually manages to change anyone’s mind. Her apparently firm beliefs about the law are mostly likely to harm herself.
Clint Werner
Marijuana is a tremendous source of ridiculous woo. But although claims to the effect that marijuana allows you to use more than the normal 10% of the brain are hardly worth discussing, the work of Clint Werner seems to have found an audience among people who really should know better. Werner is a San Francisco-based “researcher” and the author e.g. of Marijuana Gateway to Health: How Cannabis Protects Us from Cancer and Alzheimer’s Disease. Apparently the publishers didn’t give him sufficient space for a complete list of all the ailments from which marijuana, Werner asserts, can deliver you, which include in addition to Alzheimer’s (and most other forms of dementia) and cancer: epilepsy, tobacco addiction, Crohn’s disease, psoriasis, type 1 and 2 diabetes, stroke-related disabilities, gastrointestinal irritation, schizophrenia, degenerative arthritis, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and retinitis pigmentosa. The book was apparently endorsed by Andrew Weil, and Werner earned himself some airtime on Coast to Coast AM with his … thing.
Werner has, of course, not the faintest trace of any relevant medical background, and has apparently no idea how scientific investigations work. Though he does, indeed, “cite” medical studies, the correlation between what these studies say and what Werner attributes to them appears to be somewhat worse than random, with a smattering of quote mining, cherry-picking, as well as liberal use of his own imagination to fill in perceived gaps in the research. In short, there is no connection between marijuana and the effects Werner describes in his book but – big surprise – that has not prevented the book from achieving popularity among certain groups of readers.
And just for completeness sake, there is no evidence at present that cannabis cures cancer, whereas the evidence for cannabis as a therapeutic tool for dementia is “either inconclusive or still missing”. Cannabis does not help with diabetes (this little detail apart), nor is there enough evidence to draw conclusions about the safety or efficacy of cannabinoids in the treatment of epilepsy. It is overall pretty worthless for glaucoma and has no measurable beneficial effect on anorexia or neurological disorders. A few areas of application do indeed seem promising –cannabinoids can serve as appetite stimulants, antiemetics, antispasmodics, and have some analgesic effects – but given the present state of research (due in part, of course, to legal problems any research runs into) any grand claims about the health benefits of cannabis are utter pseudoscientific rubbish.
Diagnosis: Pseudoscientific rubbish.