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AMERICA WANTS MARIJUANA REFORM. CONGRESS SHOULDN’T STAND IN THE WAY.

Marijuana legalization was a clear winner in the November election, as one in three Americans will now live in a state with legal marijuana. In red states like Montana and South Dakota; swing states like Arizona; and blue states like New Jersey, marijuana legalization ballot measures were extremely successful, in many cases at levels approaching supermajorities. In every single one of these states–from red to blue, east to west, urban to rural–marijuana legalization far outperformed the states’ Democratic tickets. 

In my state of California, voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 64 in 2016, which legalized marijuana use. Following its passage, marijuana arrests decreased by 56%, demonstrating the power decriminalization has to curb mass incarceration.

None of this should come as a surprise. We knew the popularity of marijuana legalization and the MORE Act long before November 3rd. Support for these policies has been steadily rising since the 1970s. This summer, polling from Data for Progress and the Justice Collaborative Institute found that when asked about its specific provisions, 59 percent of voters, including a majority of Republicans, support the MORE Act.

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WHO (secretly) changed their definition of “Herd Immunity”

The World Health Organization has changed the definition of “herd immunity” on the Covid section of their website, inserting the claim that it is a “concept used in vaccination”, and requires a vaccine to be achieved.

Both of these statements are total falsehoods, which is demonstrated by the WHO’s own website back in June, and every dictionary definition of “herd immunity” you can find.

To quote the WHO’s own original definition:

Herd immunity is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or a natural immunity developed through previous infection.

This definition was posted on the WHO’s website on June 9th of this year, and conforms with the general usage of the term for generations.

Then, on October 15th, we woke up to find the words on the side of the barn had changed. The definition has been altered to this:

‘Herd immunity’, also known as ‘population immunity’, is a concept used for vaccination, in which a population can be protected from a certain virus if a threshold of vaccination is reached.

No explanation is offered for the change, in fact note of the change is made on the website at all.

Indeed all the previous versions of the website have been totally wiped from the wayback machine. A telling thing to do, in and of itself.

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Local Governments Play Scrooge To Stop People from Helping the Needy

It wouldn’t truly be the Christmas season here at Reason without a report about officials trying to shut down a project to help the needy. This year’s tale comes from Roslindale, a suburb of Boston.

There, as the coronavirus pandemic played out, residents looked for ways to help the needy in their neighborhood. A group of volunteers started putting together a community food pantry, salvaging groceries from local stores before they’d be tossed out as waste. A local therapist agreed to host the group’s fridge and freezer in her backyard. The group was serving more than 50 people every Friday.

Then local officials came calling. The Boston Inspectional Services Department warned the volunteers that they were operating an “illegal food pantry” and that they could, if they continued, face $1,000 fines and a year in prison.

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Details Emerge on How Zoom Censored Users in America for Communist China

An executive at the popular video-conferencing app Zoom was charged by the DOJ with conspiring to terminate Zoom meetings that commemorated the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre at the behest of the Chinese government. The incident is a troubling signal of the lengths companies based in America will go to maintain access to the lucrative Chinese market.

MSNBC reports that on December 18, prosecutors from the U.S. justice department charged a China-based executive for the video-conferencing company Zoom with conspiring to terminate Zoom meetings that commemorated the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre at the request of the Chinese government.

Breitbart News recently reported that Zoom executive Xinjiang Jin, who worked as the company’s government affairs liaison, contacted employees at Zoom’s headquarter about the anniversary of the massacre on June 4th. Jin told his colleagues in the U.S. that the “internet police” in China had increased pressure on the company to censor politically sensitive content of Chinese users no matter where in the world they were.

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Zhang Zhan: China jails citizen journalist for Wuhan reports

In a video interview with an independent filmmaker before her arrest, Ms Zhang said she decided to travel to Wuhan in February after reading an online post by a resident about life in the city during the outbreak.

Once there, she began documenting what she saw on the streets and hospitals in livestreams and essays, despite threats by authorities, and her reports were widely shared on social media.

The rights group Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders said her reports also covered the detention of other independent journalists and the harassment of families of victims who were seeking accountability.

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Nashville bomber Anthony Quinn Warner reportedly thought he’d be ‘hailed a hero’

Nashville RV bomber Anthony Quinn Warner was “heavily into conspiracy theories” about 5G networks — and thought he’d be “hailed a hero” for targeting a huge AT&T network, according to a report.

The 63-year-old loner — who died in his massive Christmas Day suicide blast — may have turned against the telecommunications industry after the 2011 death of his father, who worked for a company that later merged with AT&T, a source close to the investigation told the Daily Mail.

He was believed to be “heavily into conspiracy theories,” especially over fears that 5G networks were killing people, the source said.

“The unofficial motive thus far is the suspect believed 5G was the root of all deaths in the region and he’d be hailed a hero,” the source told the outlet.

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