FBI Interview Notes With Page And Papadopoulos Are Released

The Justice Department released a new trove of documents from the special counsel’s investigation, including FBI interview notes with Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.

Page and Papadopoulos were targets of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign.

The special counsel found no evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government.

The government is releasing FBI interview notes as part of a lawsuit BuzzFeed and CNN filed.

The Justice Department released its fourth batch of documents from the special counsel’s probe Friday, including notes of FBI interviews with former Trump campaign advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.

The documents include the FBI’s interviews conducted in 2017 with Papadopoulos and with Page, as well as interviews with Russian associates of Page.

The records were provided to BuzzFeed News and CNN in response to Freedom of Information Act lawsuits for FBI notes, known as 302s, that were used in the Trump-Russia probe.

Papadopoulos and Page were two of the four original targets of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign.

The probe was opened on July 31, 2016 and melded into the special counsel’s investigation on May 17, 2017, when the Justice Department appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel.

A report of the investigation ultimately concluded that there was no evidence the Trump campaign or any associates conspired with the Russian government to influence the 2016 election. The report also said there was no evidence that any Trump aides worked as Russian agents.

FBI agents first interviewed Papadopoulos on Jan. 27, 2017 and conducted follow-up interviews in February 2017. He was interviewed multiple times following his arrest on July 27, 2017 on charges of making false statements in his initial FBI interview.

In that first interview, Papadopoulos told agents about contacts he had in 2016 with Joseph Mifsud, a London-based academic.

Papadopoulos said that Mifsud told him during a meeting in London on April 26, 2016 that he had learned from Russian sources that Russia had “dirt” on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands” of her emails.

The FBI opened Crossfire Hurricane based on a tip from Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, who met Papadopoulos in London on May 10, 2017. Downer said in a memo that was given to the FBI that Papadopoulos said Russia might help the Trump campaign close to the election.

https://dailycaller.com/2020/01/18/fbi-notes-carter-page-papadopoulos/ The Justice Department released a new trove of documents from the special counsel’s investigation, including FBI interview notes with Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.

Page and Papadopoulos were targets of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign.

The special counsel found no evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government.

The government is releasing FBI interview notes as part of a lawsuit BuzzFeed and CNN filed.

The Justice Department released its fourth batch of documents from the special counsel’s probe Friday, including notes of FBI interviews with former Trump campaign advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.

The documents include the FBI’s interviews conducted in 2017 with Papadopoulos and with Page, as well as interviews with Russian associates of Page.

The records were provided to BuzzFeed News and CNN in response to Freedom of Information Act lawsuits for FBI notes, known as 302s, that were used in the Trump-Russia probe.

Papadopoulos and Page were two of the four original targets of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign.

The probe was opened on July 31, 2016 and melded into the special counsel’s investigation on May 17, 2017, when the Justice Department appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel.

A report of the investigation ultimately concluded that there was no evidence the Trump campaign or any associates conspired with the Russian government to influence the 2016 election. The report also said there was no evidence that any Trump aides worked as Russian agents.

FBI agents first interviewed Papadopoulos on Jan. 27, 2017 and conducted follow-up interviews in February 2017. He was interviewed multiple times following his arrest on July 27, 2017 on charges of making false statements in his initial FBI interview.

In that first interview, Papadopoulos told agents about contacts he had in 2016 with Joseph Mifsud, a London-based academic.

https://dailycaller.com/2020/01/18/fbi-notes-carter-page-papadopoulos/

US Military Jams GPS Across East Coast As FBI Seizes Night-Vision Devices

In case you didn’t fully realize that something big is about to take place in America, file these two facts in your brain:

#1: The U.S. military, Carrier Strike Group Four (CSG4), is jamming GPS signals from Jan 16th – 24th

…which may overlap the planned deep state false flag event in Richmond, Virginia. Richmond is just at the margins of the range of the GPS jamming exercise map released by the military (see below). The epicenter of the so-called “exercise” is off the coast of Georgia. The official FAA announcement claims no jamming will take place on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday next week, but we don’t trust the FAA, so your mileage may vary. Remember, too, that 90% of the American population below the age of 30 has never read a paper map and can’t use a compass.

The GPS jamming exercise continues through Jan. 24th and effects South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Eastern Tennessee, Alabama and all of Florida. The AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association) has posted details of the warning here.

The FAA has also issued a flight advisory warning aircraft pilots that GPS will fail for “several hours each day” during this military jamming exercise. See:

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/whats-going-military-jams-gps-across-east-coast-fbi-seizes-night-vision-devices

Florida Sheriff: “I Will Not Enforce Assault Weapons Ban, Neither Will Most Sheriffs”

Dennis Lemma, who is the Sheriff in Central Florida’s Seminole County, told a group of 2nd Amendment activists recently that he would not enforce an assault weapons ban that could soon become Florida law if the “Ban Assault Weapons Now” amendment passes in the Sunshine State.

According to News965, the ban has the following specifications.

The amendment proposed in the state legislature would ban possession of assault weapons, which are defined as “semiautomatic rifles and shotguns capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition at once, either in fixed or detachable magazine, or any other ammunition feeding device.”

Lemma, an ardent supporter of the 2nd Amendment and a first term sheriff who is running for re-election, said this about whether or not he would enforce such a law.

“It’s not only that I wouldn’t, the majority of sheriffs across the state would not do it,” Lemma said in the video. It’s up to the sheriffs what they are willing to enforce.”

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/01/florida-sheriff-i-will-not-enforce-assault-weapons-ban-neither-will-most-sheriffs-video/

Claims That Iran Is ‘Close’ to a Nuclear Bomb Ignore Reality

Artificial estimates are built around idea Iran would build one bomb

A new round of alarmist reports on Iran’s civilian nuclear program, and possible weapons proliferation, are being publicized over the past week. As usual, this got its start in Israel, where military intelligence claimed Iran might have enough uranium for a single bomb by year’s end.

The arguments surrounding Iran’s “breakout” time are all built around irresponsible over-simplification of the nuclear process, and the assumption that Iran’s nuclear program has absolute mastery of aspects of enrichment they’ve never attempted.

Breakout time gets calculated on the basis of Iran’s existing stockpile of low-enriched uranium. At 3.67% enrichment, this stockpile is far below the 90%+ used in atomic weapons, and the needs for a weapon are built around the idea that Iran’s stockpile of 3.67% grows to a certain point wherein it is transmutated to weapons grade uranium and weaponized perfectly.

This isn’t how it works, of course. Iran would need a lot of further enrichment to take the uranium from levels needed for fueling a power plant to making a weapon, and Iran has never attempted to enrich uranium to anywhere near that level. This is a substantial set of challenges in the process by itself.

Getting to the point where they have a weapon’s worth of weapons-grade uranium isn’t the end, either, because then Iran has to successfully weaponize that level of uranium, which they’ve never had in the first place, and obviously never attempted to turn into a weapon before.

On top of all of that, Iran still couldn’t be called a nuclear power until they tested that weapon and proved it worked. This is the most foolish aspect of these breakout estimates, as even if Iran got enough uranium to hypothetically make one bomb, then went through all the other steps, and then detonated it as a proof of concept, they would have just used up their entire stockpile. That clearly would do them no good, so clearly a one-bomb stockpile is virtually no stockpile at all.

https://news.antiwar.com/2020/01/17/claims-iran-is-close-to-a-nuclear-bomb-ignore-reality/

Greek politician likens Haftar to Serbian war criminal

A Greek opposition party leader has likened Libya’s renegade commander Khalifa Haftar to former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, a convicted war criminal.

This came after Haftar visited Athens on Friday and met with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias.

“Athens today hosted Libyan warlord Haftar. An own goal for Greek diplomacy- similar to that in the 90s when the gvt led by Mitsotakis-snr embraced Karadžić. How did we get here? It all began with the Tsipras-Netanyahu-Exxon unholy alliance to drill for oil & gas in the E. Med,” Yanis Varoufakis, who is a former finance minister, wrote on Twitter.

Mitsotakis’ father, Konstantinos Mitsotakis, was also prime minister in the early 90s, when Karadzic visited Greece.

A UN tribunal at The Hague last year convicted Karadzic for genocide, crimes against humanity and violating the laws and customs of war during 1992-1995 Bosnian War and sentenced him to life in prison.

Since the ouster of late leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, two seats of power have emerged in Libya: one in eastern Libya supported mainly by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates and the other in Tripoli, which enjoys UN and international recognition.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200118-greek-politician-likens-haftar-to-serbian-war-criminal/

Photo Reveals Identity of a Secretive Top Los Zetas Cartel Boss

MONTERREY, Nuevo Leon – A husband and wife team who use demonic nicknames are believed to be two of the top leaders within the Cartel Del Noreste (CDN) faction of Los Zetas in Nuevo Leon. The duo deals direct with the cartel’s leadership and makes sure certain executions are completed. Breitbart Texas obtained an exclusive photograph showing the face of the man.

Known in the criminal world only as “El Mounstro,” the individual in the photograph is described as the link between Los Zetas-CDN members throughout Nuevo Leon and Hector Raul “El Tory” Luna Luna, the narco-terrorist behind the 2008 grenade attack on the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey.

El Tory currently hides in Nuevo Laredo, where he was recently wounded during a shootout with police. From there, El Tory relies on El Mounstro and his wife, “Lucyfer” to deliver orders, U.S. law enforcement officials working in Nuevo Leon revealed to Breitbart Texas. They also provided the photograph of El Mounstro.

Both El Mounstro and Lucyfer are considered the masterminds behind a series of attacks and threats against Nuevo Leon law enforcement on behalf of El Tory.

In June, Breitbart Texas unmasked the cartel’s strategist at the time, Jorge Antonio “El Yorch” Gloria Palacios, who placed a series of banners to blame rivals for the organization’s own murders. Messages also intended to expose police working with cartels. Just days after the Breitbart Texas release, Mexican authorities arrested El Yorch on drug charges. That arrest forced El Mounstro to come out of the shadows and take El Yorch’s duties as the link between CDN-Los Zetas leadership and the operators on the ground.

https://www.breitbart.com/border/2020/01/17/exclusive-photo-reveals-identity-of-a-secretive-top-los-zetas-cartel-boss/

Children’s Makeup Kit Is Full Of Asbestos, Test Reveals

Scary stuff coming out of the Toy Industry on your Saturday morning.

Any parent will tell you children love playing dress-up.

And, sneaking into mommy’s makeup drawer is usually part of the fun. That’s why companies sell toy makeup kits for kids.

But, a nonprofit environmental watchdog reports one particular kit is packed with potential danger.

The Environmental Working Group says tests of IQ Toys Princess Girl’s All-in-One Deluxe Makeup Palette revealed high levels of asbestos.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, the microscopic fibers can be inhaled and cause lung cancer.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration says “there is no “safe” level of asbestos exposure.

Asbestos was once common in thousands of products – everything from insulation to brake pads – and the CDC reports it can still be found in many homes and businesses.

“Amazon, eBay and any other retailer marketing this and similar makeup kit ‘toys’ from IQ Toys should take heed of these test results and immediately pull these products from their websites,” EWG’s Vice President for Healthy Living Science Nneka Leiba said in a news release.

https://thedcpatriot.com/childrens-makeup-kit-is-full-of-asbestos-test-reveals/

Nothing extraordinary in government’s resignation, it should be taken calmly - former PM

Dmitry Medvedev and his cabinet offered their resignation on Wednesday night after Russian President Vladimir Putin had delivered his State of the Nation Address to the Federal Assembly

MOSCOW, January 18. /TASS/. Russia’s former Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev dubbed the government’s resignation as a routine event and called to take it calmly, Medvedev said in a televised interview on Channel One on Saturday.

"In general, the resignation of a government should be always taken absolutely calmly. There is nothing extraordinary about that. It happens throughout the world, it happens in our country. Maybe, it did not use to take place very often in recent years, but nevertheless, it is a totally routine event," Medvedev said.

"Moreover, when a government is being formed, I will say frankly, both a president and a prime minister, whoever president or prime minister are, not only discuss issues before the cabinet appointment, but also the issues of potential resignations. It is absolutely normal," he added.

Resignation and appointment

Medvedev and his cabinet offered their resignation on Wednesday night after Russian President Vladimir Putin had delivered his State of the Nation Address to the Federal Assembly (both houses of Russia’s parliament), announcing ambitious measures of social protection for Russians and besides, putting forward a proposal to amend Russia’s Constitution. In particular, he spoke about delegating to the State Duma the authority of approving the candidate for prime minister, along with the deputy prime ministers and ministers nominated by the new prime minister. Later in the day, at Putin’s meeting with the cabinet, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said it was right amid those conditions for the government to resign in conformity with Article 117 of Russia’s Constitution.

The president nominated Mikhail Mishustin, the head of Russia’s tax service, for prime minister. On January 16, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, the State Duma, backed the candidate at its plenary session and Putin immediately signed a decree appointing Mikhail Mishustin as the country’s prime minister.

Under Article 112 of Russia’s Constitution, within seven days after their appointment a prime minister submits proposals to the president about composition of the federal executive bodies and nominates candidates for deputy prime ministers and ministers. Mishustin said he would name his cabinet in the coming days.

https://tass.com/politics/1110349

LAPD Officers Faked Reports, Added Innocent People To Its Gang Database

Sure, gang databases seem like a good idea. Intel on known criminals is important and can help law enforcement keep tabs on the most problematic people in their patrol areas.

Like many things that are great in theory, gang databases are awful in practice. The criteria for being "nominated" is vague and the people doing the nominating – police officers – aren’t detail-oriented or too worried about tossing innocent people into the virtual clink.

In Chicago, this has led to 15,000 people being (permanently!) listed in the PD’s gang database despite there being no gang affiliation named and no reason given for the person’s addition to the database. In Boston, wearing certain clothing items (like Nike shoes) or being assaulted by a gang member is enough to get a person added to the PD’s gang database.

The databases are so ridiculously inclusive cops have found themselves listed as gang members. One cop became a "gang member" simply because his family car was spotted on the same street as two motorcyclists wearing supposed gang t-shirts.

Given this history of lousy gang databases run by people who display an almost-sociopathic desire to punish innocent people, it comes as no surprise the database the LAPD uses sucks just as hard.

More than a dozen Los Angeles police officers with the elite Metro Division are being investigated on suspicion of falsifying information they gathered during stops and wrongly portraying people as gang members or associates, according to multiple sources.

The officers, assigned to special patrols in South Los Angeles, are suspected of falsifying field interview cards during stops and inputting incorrect information about those questioned in an effort to boost stop statistics.

Just a little standard police misconduct with bonus lifetime repercussions for those falsely added to CalGang, the LAPD’s gang database.

In these cases, body camera recordings undercut police reports and narratives, resulting in the removal of "some" officers from active duty. This is good news because it means someone’s looking at recordings for something other than footage that might assist prosecutors.

The bad news is everything else. Cops don’t do this sort of thing unless they feel comfortable doing it. The snowball effect of lax oversight and toothless discipline long ago reached terminal velocity. Cops falsifying reports and padding stop stats even though they know their actions are being recorded makes it clear the LAPD’s accountability efforts have had almost no deterrent effect.

Then there’s the database innocent people are being fed into. There are currently 90,000 people in the LAPD’s gang database. The database did not implement removal procedures until 2017, 20 years after its debut. The LAPD, which shares this database with seven other law enforcement agencies, did not remove a single person in 2018.

The LAPD handles its nomination process just as cavalierly as the departments in Chicago and Boston. Cops added Larry Sanders, a gang interventionist, to CalGang after hassling him and few other people in a park, demanding they lift their shirts and show officers their tattoos. (The officers claimed they were answering a call about public drinking, but the people drinking in public were never approached by the officers.) Sanders, who has lived in the area his entire life, has never been arrested or a member of a gang.

Another man, Brian Allen, was added to the database just because he lives in an area where gang activity is prevalent. Allen was told he was added for "associating with gang members," which is vague enough to encompass simply making small talk with anyone in his neighborhood.

This latest news is more of the same: people being added to the gang database because they’re minorities and because cops can nominate anyone they want to without really having to worry about being held responsible for their actions.

Meanwhile, the "removal from active duty" suggests suspension or desk work, rather than termination, which makes this statement by LAPD Chief Michel Moore especially ridiculous:

“An officer’s integrity must be absolute. There is no place in the Department for any individual who would purposely falsify information on a Department report,” Moore said in a statement.

Great, but these officers are still "in the Department." Maybe that will change once the investigations have concluded, but termination seems unlikely. There will be a place in the LAPD for these officers once the news cycle ends and their union has applied pressure. And, if the LAPD can actually get rid of them, they’ll just end up violating citizens’ rights at some other law enforcement agency.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200109/09210943706/lapd-officers-faked-reports-added-innocent-people-to-gang-database.shtml

Advertisement Warning Of Potential 5G Dangers Banned By UK Advertising Authority

The government and the telecom industry are allowed to roll out 5G without any real certainty about its health effects but the citizenry are not allowed to question it.

From ISPreview, "Electrosensitivity UK Ad Banned for Claiming 5G is Dangerous":

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a "misleading" advert by campaign group Electrosensitivity-UK after it wrongfully claimed that the roll-out of ultrafast 5G mobile networks could result in a range of health effects, such as "reduced male fertility, depression, disturbed sleep and headaches, as well as cancer."

The advert itself took the form of a poster – seen in July and August 2019, which began with a headline that asked "How safe is 5G?" and featured four quotes from various "professionals" detailing their opposition to the roll-out of 5G (mobile broadband) network technology.

This is the ad:

https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=61121

Apple News: Why The Tech Giant Bought Another Artificial Intelligence Start-Up

It's been about a month since the last Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) acquisition that investors have caught wind of (Spectral Edge, to bolster the company's computational photography). CEO Tim Cook confirmed last year that the tech titan tends to buy smaller companies every two to three weeks. Apple's latest acquisition is all about low-power edge-based artificial intelligence (AI).

Here's what investors need to know.

Doing things locally

GeekWire reports that Apple has scooped up Xnor.ai, a Seattle-based start-up that specializes in on-device AI. Xnor.ai was previously spun out of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's AI incubator, the Allen Institute for AI (AI2), back in 2017. The company provides tools through a self-service platform that allow other developers to incorporate AI into their apps.

Apple paid an estimated $200 million for Xnor.ai, according to the report. Apple had previously acquired another Seattle-based AI start-up, Turi, back in 2016, also for around $200 million.

Xnor.ai's main differentiator is that its technology keeps all of the AI processing on the local device as opposed to relying on data centers in the cloud. Apple prefers to store as much data locally as possible in order to improve privacy protections.

Apple's A-series of chips include a neural engine that handles most of the machine learning and AI locally on iPhones, with the latest A13 Bionic chip boasting significant machine-learning performance improvements thanks to its eight-core neural engine. Sensitive biometric data used for Face ID or Touch ID is also stored locally in what Apple calls a Secure Enclave.

At the same time, low-power computing is critical to improving battery life. The start-up showed off an AI chip last year that used so little energy, it could run off solar power.

In recent years, Apple has been aggressively expanding in Seattle. The company said last summer that the Emerald City would "become a key engineering hub" that would employ 2,000 workers within the next few years. The Mac maker's office is right around the corner from Amazon's headquarters, and Apple is undoubtedly poaching talent from its rival.

Sorry, Wyze

Xnor.ai's tech was incorporated into Wyze's smart home security cameras last summer, enabling people detection on the affordable – the entry-level Wyze Cam V2 costs just $20 – devices that was all processed locally. Just a few months after that feature was added, Wyze said in November that the people detection capability would be removed in January 2020 after Xnor.ai terminated its contract.

Wyze is internally developing a comparable feature, although it may use the cloud instead of on-device processing. The timing of all of that probably isn't a coincidence. It's entirely possible that Apple bought Xnor.ai a couple months ago and investors are just now finding out.

https://www.ibtimes.com/apple-news-why-tech-giant-bought-another-artificial-intelligence-start-2904861

Happy Birthday Mooch! Trump Ends Failed Michelle Obama School Lunch Program on “Her” Birthday

Thinking back a few years, do you remember what students were saying about Michelle Obama’s lunch program?

Here are a few reminders…

San Diego sheeple happily sign petition for “Michelle Obama Soylent Green” school lunch menu

EXPERT: ‘MICHELLE OBAMA SCHOOL LUNCHES’ CAUSING CANCER

BUGS & MOLD: ‘Michelle Obama School Lunches’ Continue to Disgust

Michelle Obama’s school lunches look and taste like ‘decomposed rotten prison food’

Let Them Eat Cake: The First Lady’s “Improved” Public School Lunches vs. The Obama Girls’ School Lunch Menu

Michelle Obama’s School Lunches In Pictures: “Is That Photo Taken From Death Row?”

Kids say Michelle’s school lunch tastes like vomit

https://www.dcclothesline.com/2020/01/18/happy-birthday-mooch-trump-ends-failed-michelle-obama-school-lunch-program-on-her-birthday/

6 Illegals Busted as Part of Child Grooming Gang in Wisconsin

Here’s just another friendly reminder to build the wall.

This is the latest example of bad guys with bad intentions entering America.

Authorities have arrested 6 men in Wisconsin in connection with child grooming activities.

MANCHESTER, WI (Channel 3000) – The Green Lake County Sheriff’s Office has arrested six people in connection with a sex trafficking case, according to a news release.

Law enforcement officials said they received a 911 call Nov. 28 from a juvenile on the run. According to police, she had escaped from a residence where she was being sex trafficked. Police said she was able to provide information that allowed police to start an investigation.

Police executed a search warrant on Nov. 29 at W2964 County Line Road in Manchester, Wisconsin, where they seized multiple items of evidence believed to be connected to the assault of the juvenile. The warrant also led to the arrest of six people who all lived in the home.

Thirty-three-year-old Esler Hugo Rivera, 28-year-old Rolando Corado Gonzalez, 40-year-old Avelino Sarceno-Sarceno, 37-year-old Ember Rivera, 28-year-old Noe Bautista-Martinez and 31-year-old Evis Amabilio Garcia-Rivera were all arrested on suspicion of second-degree sexual assault.

Amabilio Garcia-Rivera is suspected of trafficking the juvenile, the release said. Police believe all of the suspects are undocumented immigrants from Guatemala. According to the release, the suspects have made court appearances and are being held at the Green Lake County Correctional Facility on cash bonds varying from $20,000 to $50,000.

The incident is currently under investigation by the Green Lake County Sheriff’s Office and the Wisconsin Department of Justice’s Division of Criminal Investigations.

https://www.dcclothesline.com/2020/01/18/6-illegals-busted-as-part-of-child-grooming-gang-in-wisconsin/

Michigan Pedophile Claims Child Porn Collection Is His ‘Constitutional Right’ Because He Identifies As 8-Year-Old Girl

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — (WZZM) — A convicted sex offender who says he identifies as an eight-year-old girl will spend at least a decade in prison for dozens of images of child pornography found on his home computer.

Joseph Gobrick, 45, claims the images were computer-animated and protected under the First Amendment.

https://breaking911.com/michigan-pedophile-claims-child-porn-collection-is-his-constitutional-right-because-he-identifies-as-8-year-old-girl/

MDMA Inches Away From Becoming FDA-approved Pharmaceutical

A set of clinical trials for MDMA, sponsored by the non-profit Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) has now reached “Phase 3,” which brings the substance just a few steps away from getting approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Only drugs that show promising results during Phase 1 and Phase 2 trials are considered for Phase 3 trials. According to MAPS, their Phase 2 trials involved 107 subjects with PTSD, and they saw incredible results from the study. After just three sessions of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy, 61% of the participants were no longer showing major symptoms of PTSD when they were evaluated two months after their treatment, and that number jumped to 68% after 12 months.

All of the participants in the study had very severe “treatment-resistant PTSD” that they lived with for an average of 17.8 years.

Brad Burge, director of strategic communications at MAPS, told Forbes, “We’re literally rewiring neural connections in the brain. If you look at what MDMA and other psychedelics do, they’re encouraging neuroplasticity. So they encourage neurons to make new connections, to get out of the old connections and to make new ones.”

Associate Social Worker Ashley Booth, who helped facilitate the Phase 3 trials, says that the MDMA allowed the patients “to look at trauma in their lives without being re-traumatized.”

“It’s common for people who’ve had a trauma to take on responsibilities, like ‘I shouldn’t have walked down that alley, or talked to that person. MDMA has psychoactive properties that lower activity in the amygdala, which is the fear center of the brain, and allows people to look at themselves from a more empathetic perspective,” Booth says.

MDMA is still a schedule 1 drug that is heavily prohibited by the US government. Until recently, the substance has been popularly known as a recreational club drug called “ecstasy,” but studies in recent years have shown its incredible potential as a tool for therapy.

Additional clinical trials are currently taking place at 15 research sites, including Boston, Montreal, Charleston, San Francisco, and Tel Aviv.

https://www.naturalblaze.com/2020/01/mdma-inches-away-from-becoming-fda-approved-pharmaceutical.html