Phyrfight Intel

“AFP – Health experts in Portugal said Friday that Portugal’s decision 10 years ago to decriminalise drug use and treat addicts rather than punishing them is an experiment that has worked.

“There is no doubt that the phenomenon of addiction is in decline in Portugal,” said Joao Goulao, President of the Institute of Drugs and Drugs Addiction, a press conference to mark the 10th anniversary of the law.

The number of addicts considered “problematic” — those who repeatedly use “hard” drugs and intravenous users — had fallen by half since the early 1990s, when the figure was estimated at around 100,000 people, Goulao said.

http://www.france24.com/en/20110701-portugal-drug-law-show-results-ten-years-experts-say#

This is communism. Everyone who has lived in or come from Eastern Europe can see it clearly. Most Americans are too ignorant or too distracted to even be aware of the growing threat.

Further discussion:

It’s not who signed this that scares me, it’s the words, “Executive Order”.

A way to respond, if your power company is trying to install a smart meter on your home:

(more…)

“San Francisco is considering a ban on the sale of goldfish. Basically, the government is afraid that people are getting fish as impulse buys and not treating them properly, so they don’t want to allow anyone to buy them at all. They’re also considering a ban on parents having their babies circumcised.

They’ve already banned Happy Meals, as they think they’re too enticing to children and parents can’t be expected to control what their own kids eat. Also increasingly regulating the daily behavior of its citizens is New York City under Mayor Bloomberg, who has banned trans-fats city-wide and smoking in most of the city and has considered a ban on salt.

The leaders of these cities have taken it upon themselves to place their own opinions of what people should or should not be doing above basic liberty. They’ve made it the government’s role to be a nanny and have ruled individual choice as unimportant.”

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-real-story-of-americas-founding/

“[The] … BBC, is reporting video games might actually be a reason for a decline in U.S. crime.

The story is based on a study conducted by the Centre for European Economic Research and, according to those smart-sounding British folks; games ain’t so bad after all.

… According to the study, U.S. crime has been on the decline for the past two decades. This trend has continued, it would seem, despite the recent economic crumble. According to FBI figures, crime has actually been on a steeper decline these past couple of years.

Video games are another factor, according to the study, because they kept “young people off the streets and therefore away from crime.” According to Texan researchers working on the study, this “incapacitation effect” has “more than offset any direct impact the content of the games may have had in encouraging violent behavior.”

In other words: Why would kids want to risk committing actual crimes when they can commit them consequence-free from the comfort of their bedrooms?

http://www.joystickdivision.com/2011/06/study_says_games_to_blame_for.php

EFF urged a federal court to block Microsoft Corporation’s attempt to misuse copyright law to thwart a competitor offering memory cards for the Xbox gaming system. Microsoft claims that Xbox users violate U.S. federal law — the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) — if they use third-party cards memory cards, such as those produced by Datel Holdings. If Microsoft were to prevail on this point, it could give the software giant the ability to use the DMCA to prevent competitors from selling Xbox-compatible accessories, like memory cards, controllers, and headsets. Such a ruling would have wide-ranging ramifications for hundreds of other consumer products.

“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”

– Winston Churchill.

“In the course of any given year, Congress votes on taxes, medical care, military spending, foreign aid, agriculture, labor, international trade, airlines, housing, insurance, courts, natural resources, and much more. There are professionals who have spent their entire adult lives specializing in just one of these fields. The idea that Congress can be competent in all these areas simultaneously is staggering. Yet, far from pulling back — as banks or other private enterprises must, if they don’t want to be ruined financially by operating beyond the range of their competence — Congress is constantly expanding further into more fields. Having spent years ruining the housing markets with their interference, leading to a housing meltdown that has taken the whole economy down with it, politicians have now moved on into micro-managing automobile companies and medical care. They are not going to stop unless they get stopped. And that is not going to happen until the voters recognize the fact that political rhetoric is no substitute for competence.” –economist Thomas Sowell

Ordinance #2740( An unfunded city-wide mandate) was passed with a resounding 6 to 1 vote, and it allows for the citizens of Cedar Falls to forcefully give the government keys to their comercial properties through universal ‘lock boxes’.

The intent of the program is to provide increased safety and protection to personal, private property which include businesses, apartments and some rental houses– which by the way– comes at the expense of furthering wayward erosion of fundamental constitutional right

“… if you, a consumer, should share (that’s the “any other means” part), say, your Netflix password with someone else, whether that someone else is related to you or not, that person could be prosecuted.

The penalty for infringement? “Stealing $500 or less of entertainment would be a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and a fine of $2,500. Theft with a higher price tag would be a felony, with heavier penalties.”

While it is true that the intent of the bill was to address the blatant illegal sharing of entertainment content by the likes of those legions of scofflaws called “pirates” or “students,” the potentially ridiculously wide net it casts is ripe for abuse by Big Media.”

http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2011/060911-backspin.html

A Pakistani official shows exactly where the 5:23 a.m. sharp—no later—strike will occur.

From the Onion:

“At a hastily convened press conference, ISI chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha called Pakistan’s long- standing partnership with the United States “stronger than ever,” explaining that both countries share an interest in rooting out al-Qaeda before its leaders have time to gather their secret cache of hidden weapons and move to a new location, possibly a tribal area in northwest Pakistan where Pasha said U.S. intelligence is limited in both its sophistication and reach.

Pasha emphasized the ISI’s extensive integration with U.S. forces in planning the attack, saying that the specific time was agreed upon to ensure the terrorists wouldn’t try to escape across the porous Afghan border, which he noted is often poorly guarded—especially near the town of Shirhani—at that hour of the morning.

As of press time, the U.S. has given Pakistan more than $20 billion in aid since Sept. 11, 2001

http://www.theonion.com/articles/pakistani-intelligence-announces-its-full-cooperat,20681/?utm_source=recentnews

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court says fleeing police custody in a vehicle can be considered a violent felony.

The high court made its ruling on Thursday in the case of Marcus Sykes.

Sykes argued his fleeing conviction shouldn’t be considered violent and two federal appeals courts, the 7th Circuit in Chicago and the 11th Circuit in Atlanta, have ruled in opposite ways.

The high court said in a 6-3 judgment that Sykes’ flight from police can be considered a violent felony.”

http://www.policeone.com/legal/articles/3801875-Supreme-Court-Fleeing-police-in-car-is-a-violent-offense/

“… Utah has passed a law intended to encourage residents to use gold or silver coins made by the Mint as cash, but with their value based on the weight of the precious metals in them, not the face value — if, that is, they can find a merchant willing to accept the coins on that basis.

…The law is the first of its kind in the United States. Several other states, including Minnesota, Idaho and Georgia, have considered similar laws.

… one day soon Utah might mint its own coins, that retailers could have scales for weighing precious metals and that a state defense force could be formed to guard warehouses where the new money would be made and stored.

“This is an incremental step in the right direction,” said Lowell Nelson, the interim coordinator for the Campaign for Liberty in Utah, a libertarian group rooted in Ron Paul’s presidential campaign. “If the federal government isn’t going to do it, then we here in Utah ought to be able to establish a monetary system that would survive a crash if and when that happens.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/us/30gold.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

“Nothing illustrates the out-of-control government bureaucracy than a Tuesday news item in the Daily Caller… a family being fined over $90,000 for selling a few rabbits. It started out as a hobby, a way to teach their son financial responsibility. It’s interesting to note that selling the rabbits for meat consumption was NOT what put them in hot water with the USDA, however.

It was because they sold them to a local pet store. Seems you can’t sell over $500 worth of rabbits per year to a pet store without buying a USDA permit. The first inspector that arrived to correct this gross malfeasance of the law told the family that their cages were “a quarter inch too small” and would have to be replaced.

Even though the Dollarhites immediately quit selling rabbits and actually got out of the business (hobby is more the word), the USDA sees fit two years later to generously submit a bill for $90,000 to make the whole thing just go away.

You know, I wonder how the American republic was ever founded. I mean, if you think about it, we’re obviously too stupid to be able to manage our own lives and make decisions, especially if you look at the actions of the federal government. First our gardens, then raw milk, and now baby rabbits. Is there nothing out of the reach of government oversight and reach?”

The “Candy Cane” case, as it has come to be known, began in 2001. It involves several students in the Plano Independent School District outside Dallas and includes a student who, as a third grader, was barred from giving candy cane pens with a religious message to his classmates at the class “winter” party. It also deals with a class that was prohibited from writing “Merry Christmas” on the holiday cards it was sending to American troops overseas.

But now, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has decided that the two principals can be held liable for engaging in religious speech discrimination.

Kelly Shackelford”This is just a big win for the First Amendment and for millions of students nationwide,” comments Kelly Shackelford, president of the Liberty Institute, the firm representing a number of students and their parents in the case.”

http://www.onenewsnow.com/Legal/Default.aspx?id=1079224

"I don’t see how the Secret Service can get away with interviewing a minor without a parent present. There seem to be an awful lot of stories going around about law enforcement agencies overstepping their boundaries these last few weeks."