Adventures of a Gonzo Journalist
Kit is a gonzo journalist from Austin, Texas.
Is CBD oil legal in the US? Oddly, the answer seems to depend on who you ask.
Despite the many benefits of CBD oil and a growing field of research showing both its safety and its efficacy, this popular hemp extract exists today in a confusing legal gray area.
The Drug Enforcement Agency insists that CBD oil is illegal at the federal level, while other legal experts and many vendors and producers of CBD oil think the DEA is overstepping its bounds and argue that hemp extracts are legal.
Posted in Act Out!, Austin, Creative Commons, Journalism, and Video
So, you may have heard: the CIA could be listening to your phone conversations, recording your Skype calls, and even spying on you through your TV.
The latest bombshell from WikiLeaks, code named “Vault 7,” revealed the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret tool box of technological exploits. This leak is terrifying, to be sure, but it also gives tech companies valuable new information about how to protect their users.
And for everyday activists on the Front Lines, there are some vital, and simple steps we can take to protect our allies and our plans from surveillance.
Now, we still don’t know who’s responsible for the Vault 7 leak, although WikiLeaks released a statement saying that the anonymous source, “wishes to initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons.”
Much like Snowden hoped to do.
Posted in Creative Commons, Gonzo Notes, Journalism, MintPress News, and Occupy Wall Street
I wrote the last issue of Gonzo Notes, about creating resilience to both man-made and natural disasters, with a specific comrade in mind.
Just hours after the newsletter hit inboxes, I found out my comrade Liam Shea had died.
His death was devastating and unexpected to all his friends and allies, but most of all to his partner Luna. His loss robbed the world of a powerful activist; an old-school nazi-punching punk; someone who had, time and again, put himself at risk for the needs of others, to the point that he tattooed his knuckles with Y.N.W.A. (You’ll Never Walk Alone).
Posted in Act Out!, Austin, and Journalism
The reports from the first wave of Trump’s ICE Raids are full of disturbing stories of jackbooted thugs oppressing the oppressed — and literally tearing families apart in the name of a fascist, xenophobic and factually inaccurate agenda.
Trump’s long-promised mass deportations have begun, ramping up from the Obama administration’s already disgusting record of nearly 3 million deportations. As more and more people find themselves in the crosshairs of fascism, it is quite clear that those of us lower on that checklist — because we are all on it — have an obligation to stand up — to demand our communities and cities be safe havens for all — sanctuary cities, if you will. And to be ready to put our bodies on the front lines for freedom, justice and human rights.
The concept of a “sanctuary city” actually dates back to the Old Testament, and early Christian rulers who designated certain cities as places of sanctuary for those accused of accidentally committing manslaughter.
Two thousand years later, and we’ve entered the bizarro world of 2017, where people who call themselves the followers of Christ have turned “sanctuary” into a dirty word and back a crackdown on the undocumented, literally among the most vulnerable people around.
Posted in Journalism, and Ministry of Hemp
If you believe everything you read on the internet, CBD oil can cure almost any disease and replace every painkilling drug. Unfortunately, there’s just too much hype online.
The good news is that, for conditions ranging from epilepsy to chronic pain, CBD oil is an extremely beneficial extract of the cannabis plant that, for some people, can indeed be life-changing.
Psychoactive cannabis, commonly known as marijuana, has been frequently used to relieve the suffering caused by everything from migraines to menstrual cramps. CBD oil has almost no THC, the main mind-altering chemical in cannabis, and therefore offers many of the same benefits without making users “high.”
Posted in Journalism, and Lee Camp
Oxygen. You and I need it, and so do the fish in our planet’s oceans.
Unfortunately for the fish, there’s a little less oxygen in the oceans every year, according to a new study.
Climate scientists have long suspected that a warming planet would lead to the loss of oxygen in the ocean, because cold water can hold more dissolved gas than warm water. In an analysis published last week in Nature, three researchers from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany found that the ocean has lost about 2 percent of its total oxygen since 1960. However, some parts of the ocean are suffering more than others.
