Carrot legalize!

Chill out, people! Have some fun watching this video by Roots Intention Crew from beautiful country France. Would love to read your comment on this. :D

PS: If you are interested, visit their myspace page.

US-style legalization

You probably have heard about real changes made by Obama: medical marijuana is now legalized in 13 states of the USA. Now all you need to smoke a legal joint is to get a doctor’s recommendation. I'm sure you can find something what suites you from wide range of illnesses.. Starting with cancer, glaucoma and epilepsy this list ends with such banal things as permanent headaches and sleep disturbance. 

Moreover, heads of California state are planning to fully legalize  pot, charging $50-per-ounce fee and a 9 percent tax on retail sales.

Is it the beginning of New Era?

British scientists express their indignation at the government drug policy

Professor David Nutt, ex-cheif of the UK government's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, was asked to resign after he publically criticized government’s policy on the war on marijuana and ecstasy. His colleagues supported his statements and threatened the government to follow David Nutt and leave the Advisory Council. And they did it. Scientists claimed that they are tired of the situation where the opinion of the Council is systematically ignored.

In 1972 for first time the Government commissions of Canada (Le Dain Comission) and the USA (Shafer Comission) recommended to legalize marijuana. Since then scientific reports about harm of drugs were making the same conclusion - marijuana and some other drugs do not present essential health hazard, do not cause serious habituation and, correspondingly, must be legalized. Each time governments do not pay any attention to these reports. Last scientific research, ordered by WHO (World Health Organization), was published in June. The conclusion is: cocaine is less harmful for the health than alcohol and tobacco.

But in this situation a question about the harm of marijuana is irrelevant. There is another disturbing thing:

"Under the public pressure the government was forced to create the special commission, which, as they hoped, will give official confirmation of their fears and seemingly it will justify reclassification of ecstasy and weed into the class B. But it didn’t work. Scientists are called scientists because they conduct independent researches. It turned out that the harm level from cannabis is much lower than from alcohol and nicotine, which are absolutely legal and acceptable (because of huge taxes which the government receives form this industries), while marijuana is class B now. So, Mr. Nutt protested against the situation where the Advisory Council provides scientific proofs and the Government simply ignores it. But the government decided to shut him down and discharged comrade Nutt."

(vince_vega, 04.11.2009)

I fully support the opinion of vince_vega and understand why such things happen around. Not only high taxes but also opportunity to control the nation is one of the reasons for this behaviour. And there are more and more similar reasons. What's on your mind? I would love to have a discussion and if you have something to say - welcome to comments.

Citizen journalism

Hey everyone, that’s the first post on my brand new blog. And I’m going to talk about citizen journalism and its reflection on community and, as a consequence, our personal life.

Basically, citizen journalists are non-professionals, ordinary people, with a desire to share news about what is happening around and what is significant for them.

The growth of citizen journalism in recent years is caused by an expansion of the Internet. Nowadays, with help of personal blogs and such public content websites as YouTube.com, Digg.com, Twitter.com, etc large amount of young people has an opportunity both to provide and receive news on any topic which appeals to them.

Although most people here in Australia would probably think that it is not a big deal to have a connection to the net and publish your stories there, it is simply because they got used to it. For totalitarian countries, countries with low level of freedom of speech, it is a big deal. I would say huge. When you do not have an access to any objective information (or different subjective views on the same issue) as all the mass media is controlled by the government or massive corporations, Internet becomes the only source where you can actually find this information.

Another great thing about citizen journalism on the net is anonymity. This topic is interestingly explored in Anita’s blog. Obviously, there are several different levels of anonymity on the net, and it depends not only on user’s wish. Governments all over the world (including Australia and US) attempt to achieve total control of the net in order to censor it and shape public opinion. This directly brings us to understanding the importance of citizen journalism. The most striking example of this importance is latest events in Iran and the way how the world learnt about them.