Comment: Student witnesses report multiple shooters & mass shooting drill at Florida high school

Comment:

• Most mass shootings targeting schools occurred after the Gun-Free School Zones Act became law
• After 11 US school shootings this year, is it time to arm teachers?

Comment: Switzerland's gun laws provide a perfect example proving that gun ownership itself has little to do with the culture of mass shootings that exist in the US. Those with a criminal mindset will find ways to circumvent laws and/or will use other means to commit crimes - witness the outbreak of knife and acid attacks in the UK.

• Florida School Shooting: A Culture of Narcissistic Entitlement and Resentment
• Behind the Headlines: Florida School Mass Shooting: Gun Control, Mental Illness and the Criminal Mind

Comment: And, just like the 'Islamist threat,' the threat from the 'far right' will be used to empower intel and military circles while further clamping down on the citizenry. As Kurt Nimmo wrote after the Manchester bombings:

The record is clear - British intelligence allows dangerous terrorists to roam freely in the country, protects them, and refuses to prosecute them for plotting and engaging in acts of terror. The establishment media portray this as "intelligence failures," but there is another, more rational explanation - like the CIA, British intelligence is using Islamist terror as part of an Operation Gladio type covert operation to realize a political agenda: a never-ending war on terror that enriches the military industrial complex and extends the surveillance state and expands a repressive police state.

Further reading: In the UK watching terrorist or 'far right' videos could get you 15 years in jail

Comment: This bill will extend coverage of Alabama's 2006 'Stand Your Ground Law' to anyone in a house of worship, or on grounds in which church or religious activities are held, to use 'deadly physical force' against those attempting to kidnap, attack, or gain unlawful entry. One state Rep. Lynn Greer stated, "If you have someone coming into a church with a gun that starts shooting folks, you want to have someone that's going to shoot back."

Comment: The UK government are only interested in unscientific claims that confirm their bias. This is clear when we see that the last time they had a government drugs advisor, Professor David Nutt, who demonstrated science had proven contrary to their stance, they sacked him.

Government drug adviser Professor David Nutt sacked

Professor David Nutt

Professor David Nutt, the government's chief drug adviser, has been sacked a day after claiming that ecstasy and LSD were less dangerous than alcohol.

Nutt incurred the wrath of the government when he claimed in a paper that alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than many illegal drugs, including LSD, ecstasy and cannabis.

He's wrong on tobacco: A comprehensive review of the many health benefits of smoking Tobacco

A Home Office spokesperson said: "The home secretary has asked Professor Nutt to resign as chair of the ACMD [Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs].

"In a letter he [Alan Johnson] expressed surprise and disappointment over Professor Nutt's comments which damage efforts to give the public clear messages about the dangers of drugs.

"We remain determined to crack down on all illegal substances and minimise their harm to health and society as a whole."

They remain determined to crack down, not to find out the objective facts.

Nutt had criticised politicians for "distorting" and "devaluing" the research evidence in the debate over illicit drugs.

Arguing that some "top" scientific journals had published "horrific examples" of poor quality research on the alleged harm caused by some illicit drugs, the Imperial College professor called for a new way of classifying the harm caused by both legal and illegal drugs.

"Alcohol ranks as the fifth most harmful drug after heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and methadone. Tobacco is ranked ninth," he wrote in the paper from the centre for crime and justice studies at King's College, London, published yesterday.

"Cannabis, LSD and ecstasy, while harmful, are ranked lower at 11, 14 and 18 respectively."

Nutt said tonight he was disappointed by the decision but linked it to "political" considerations. "It's unusual political times, I suppose, elections and all that. It's disappointing," he told Sky News. "But politics is politics and science is science and there's a bit of a tension between them sometimes."

Nutt clashed with Jacqui Smith when she was home secretary after he compared the 100 deaths a year from horseriding with the 30 deaths a year linked to ecstasy.

Smith also ignored the recommendation of Nutt's advisory committee that cannabis should not be reclassified from class C back to class B, leading to heavier penalties.

That's 'politics'.

He criticised Smith's use of the "precautionary principle" to justify her decision to reclassify cannabis and said that by erring on the side of caution politicians "distort" and "devalue" the research evidence.

"This leads us to a position where people really don't know what the evidence is," he said adding that the initial decision to downgrade the classification of cannabis led to a fall in the use of the drug.

Nutt acknowledged there was a "relatively small risk" of psychotic illness linked to cannabis use. But he argued that to prevent one episode of schizophrenia it would be necessary to "stop 5,000 men aged 20 to 25 from ever using" cannabis.

Nutt also renewed his support for reclassifying ecstasy from a class A drug to class B, saying the advisory committee "won the intellectual argument" over the issue but obviously didn't win the decision after the home secretary vetoed the move.

He said the quality of some research papers about cannabis and ecstasy was so poor the articles had to be retracted.

Richard Garside, director of the centre for crime and justice, said Nutt's briefing paper gave an insight into what drugs policy might look like if it was based on the research evidence rather than political or moral positioning.

Garside added: "I'm shocked and dismayed that the home secretary appears to believe that political calculation trumps honest and informed scientific opinion. The message is that when it comes to the Home Office's relationship with the research community honest researchers should be seen but not heard.

"The home secretary's action is a bad day for science and a bad day for the cause of evidence-informed policy making."

Many countries are decriminalising cannabis, some are legalizing the production and distribution, and we're seeing it utilised, once again, as was known at least a century ago, but probably much longer, as a medicine, as well as for recreational use. In the UK whilst the public are labelled criminals, big pharma is hurrying itself to isolate the apparent singular healing compounds to be sold as medications. The inherent problem being that medicinal herbs generally require the whole plant, or at least parts of it like the leaves, root or buds, and their synergistic compounds to work effectively, so what you would be getting would be a poor substitute. But then big pharma can't patent, and therefore profit, from nature so they have to find a workaround.

The point is that this plant is relatively harmless but has been used as a tool for decades by governments, particularly the US and then its allies, and their nefarious players, to persecute and control people, with the reason for its criminalisation in the first place being highly dubious.

But as citizens around the world begin to realise they've been lied to and propagandised for decades - about all drugs - with science and life experience to back them up, and as the world turns away from the corrupt western nations, a new perspective is emerging; and with it a revolt against the draconian policies that cause more harm and suffering than the supposed substance they claim to be protecting people from.

Cannabis' possible healing qualities:

• Cannabis: A cure for antibiotic resistance
• The neuroprotective effects of cannabidiol
• Cannabinoids for Autoimmune Disease
• Cannabis compound 'halts cancer'
• Study Finds: Medical cannabis superior to opioids for chronic pain
• UK researchers investigating potential of cannabidiol to shrink brain tumors
• Toxic Alzheimer's protein in the brain removed by marijuana compound - THC
• Why CBD oil is better than prescription painkillers
• Study suggests magic mushrooms may 'reset' depressed patients' brains
• Health benefits of hemp
• Not for everyone: Mysterious, rare illness linked to smoking cannabis causes severe screaming and vomiting
• Cannabinoid Deficiency and Its Impact on Human Health and Disease

Other uses:

• Cannabis Construction: Entrepreneurs Using Hemp for Home-Building
• Industrial hemp extremely useful in removing radiation and other toxins from soils
• Industrial hemp sure to become NC's newest legal crop

Other news:

• Rocky Mountain high: Aspen marijuana sales outperformed alcohol
• San Francisco to expunge thousands of marijuana convictions which will "right so many wrongs"
• Indiana Attorney General declares CBD oil illegal, even though its non-psychoactive

Also check out SOTT radio's: The Health & Wellness Show: The Highs and Lows of Cannabis as Medicine

Comment: See also:

• Vietnam 'considered and considers Russia an extremely important partner'
• Vietnam joins Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union
• Russia proposes visa-free travel arrangement with Iran, India and Vietnam
• Vietnam signs free trade deal with Russia-led EEU economic block
• Global bully U.S. pushing Vietnam to end military cooperation with Russia
• Russia rebuilds ties with Vietnam