Sunday 30 September 2012

it's TEOTWAWKI


...it's the EVENT of the CENTURY, it's the LAST SHOW on EARTH, it's TEOTWAWKI...

...starring the ASCENSION plan and SPECIAL GUESTS...

...21:12:2012 - 8pm till the END of TIME - streaming LIVE via USTREAM - venue TBC...

...it's the NIGHT of 144000 stars...

...the LAST NIGHT of the BOMBS...

...be THERE or be NOWHERE...

Thursday 27 September 2012

Tesla Motors Launches Revolutionary Supercharger Enabling Free Long Distance Travel

J.G. Vibes
Activist Post

Today Tesla Motors unveiled its highly anticipated Supercharger network, which is said to make long distance travel in cars totally free thanks to the use of solar energy and electricity. So far the network is made up of six Supercharger stations stretching across California, as well as parts of Nevada and Arizona. These stations will allow the Tesla Model S to recharge for free, and each charge is said to last for an extremely long distance. This is so groundbreaking because until now one of the major drawbacks to electric cars was their inability to travel long distances on a single charge.

The charging centers that have opened so far are just the first of many, the company plans to install Superchargers in high traffic corridors across the United States, enabling fast, purely electric travel from Vancouver to San Diego, Miami to Montreal and Los Angeles to New York, all by next year. By 2015, Tesla Motors plans to create more than 100 charging stations across the United States, while also branching out into Europe and Asia.

The Supercharging stations will be twice as fast as any now in use and will be installed at highway rest stops. The rooftop canopy at many of the charging stations will carry a solar array that will place more electricity onto the local power grid, over time, than the cars use. For an undisclosed price there will also be home charging stations that will make local driving more convenient.

Elon Musk, Tesla Motors co-founder and CEO said in a press release “Tesla’s Supercharger network is a game changer for electric vehicles, providing long distance travel that has a level of convenience equivalent to gasoline cars for all practical purposes. However, by making electric long distance travel at no cost, an impossibility for gasoline cars, Tesla is demonstrating just how fundamentally better electric transport can be. We are giving Model S the ability to drive almost anywhere for free on pure sunlight.”


It is only fitting for an achievement like this to come from an organization that took on the name of Tesla. Nikola Tesla was one of the greatest inventors in history and had actually discovered methods of harnessing free energy during his lifetime. Since many of Tesla’s inventions were not politically feasible they were never invested in and were never able to truly be realized. Today’s political climate is just as treacherous and controlled as it was in Tesla’s day, and there are many people out there who are fighting to suppress this sort of energy, so the development of these charging sites will be a very interesting thing to watch.

Already there has been talk of financial problems for the company, and it was in the news this month that Morgan Stanley basically controls their stock rating. That in itself is another ironic twist, because Morgan Stanley can trace its roots to J.P Morgan, the investor who pulled his funding on Tesla when he realized the financial and political implications of a world with free energy. Morgan Stanley has been kind to Tesla Motors so far but we all know that history has a tendency to repeat itself so that is another thing to look out for.

If you have any questions or disagreements feel free to email me at jgvibes@aotmr.com

J.G. Vibes – is an author, and artist -- with an established record label. In addition to featuring a wide variety of activist information, his company -- Good Vibes Promotions promotes for electronic dance music events. You can keep up with him and his forthcoming book Alchemy Of The Modern Renaissance, at his Facebook page. AOTMR will be released this spring, thanks to Leilah Publications.  This project features nearly 100 different essays, just like this one, that cover a wide variety of topics.  These essays give historical and philosophical insight into the many important issues that our generation faces.  From banking cartels and alternative currency to eugenics and the drug war, AOTMR offers a complete and comprehensive breakdown of the counter culture’s struggle.

Wednesday 26 September 2012

SAVE THE CHILDREN - FRONT FOR CIA?



Many charities are fronts for the CIA and its friends.

1. In early September 2012, Pakistan ordered foreigners working for Save the Children to leave Pakistan.

Pakistan stated that Save the Children was being used by Western spies.

A doctor accused of assisting the CIA claimed that Save the Children had introduced him to US intelligence officers.

Pakistan orders Save the Children foreign workers to leave.
Child actors? Propaganda for the CIA? A Save the Children film.
2. On 25 September 2012, Save the Children produced what appears to be a piece of propaganda for the CIA.
The charity has released Untold Atrocities, a collection of alleged 'first-hand accounts' from children and parents allegedly receiving help from Save the Children after fleeing Syria.

"The six-year-old son of an anti-government activist is abducted, then starved and beaten to death. The new report by the UK charity Save the Children documents these and other alleged atrocities."

Save the Children has been refused permission to enter Syria.

Save the Children is on the ground on Syria's borders.
Justin Forsyth (left) with the notorious Andrew Mitchell (Andrew Mitchell 'plebs' comment)

Justin Forsyth became chief executive of Save the Children in July 2012.

Forsyth is a former adviser to Tony Blair.

He is also a former communications director to Gordon Brown.
The former boss of Save the Children was Jasmine Whitbread, who previously worked for Oxfam. 


3. Oxfam, like several other charities, has been accused of being a front for the UK security service MI6.

"In the early 1970s, the Tamil Tigers began establishing training camps and secret arms caches under the cover of a chain of Refugee and Rehabilitation Farms of the Gandhian Society.

"Funds for the farms came from Oxfam, one of the most powerful and secretive British intelligence organizations acting under non-governmental organization cover...

"John Glover, a British feature writer, wrote to the Western Mail in Wales about the ongoing and future training programs for Tamil youth by British mercenaries.

"A band of mercenary soldiers recruited in South Wales is training a Tamil army to fight for a separate state in Sri Lanka. About 20 mercenaries were signed up after a meeting in Cardiff and have spent the last two months in southern India preparing a secret army to fight the majority Sinhalas, in the cause of a separate Tamil state in Sri Lanka," he said...

(http://www.larouchepub.com/other/1995/2241_south_india_groups.html):


4. Reporter Andrew Geoghegan visited his 14 year old sponsor child in Ethiopia.

The girl has "been part of a World Vision program all her life" yet said "until recently, I didn't know I had a sponsor."

And when asked about her knowledge of World Vision sponsorship she said "Last time they gave me this jacket and a pen."

Geoghegan was disconcerted to find that despite being "told by World Vision that the girl was learning English at school, and was improving... she speaks no English at all."

(Geoghegan, Andrew "Ethiopia - The Endless Famine", Foreign Correspondent, 25 November 2008, series 18, episode 22,Australian Broadcasting Corporation)


Sabra and Shatila.

World Vision reportedly is a front for the CIA. (http://www.oilempire.us/reagan.html)

World Vision "ran the refugee camp in Sabra-Shatilla where the fascist Phalange were allowed in to kill the Palestinians...

"They ran the Cuban and Thai refugee camps in the United States.

"Mark David Chapman, who eventually shot John Lennon, worked at the Thai refugee camps out in Arkansas that World Vision operated there.

"They ran these camps brutally, forcing people into political education against Castro, refusing to feed people, beating people...

"The chairman of the board for some period was John W. Hinkley Sr.. The son worked at Fort Chafey at the Thai refugee camps.

"There were pictures of him after the Reagan shooting running in his World Vision T-shirt around the edge of the camp...

"Scott was already doing the wheeling and dealing and was tight with Neil Bush..."

Jonestown - linked to the CIA and World Vision

And what about the Jonestown Massacre and World Vision?(Source: Jonestown Massacre by Fiona Steel, published at Court TV's Crime Library)

Allegedly “Jonestown” was part of a CIA mind-control program: the CIA infiltrated The People’s Temple, to carry out their experiments.

CIA theorists claim that Jim Jones had many questionable associations with the CIA throughout the years he was establishing The People’s Temple.

The Temple had a strong association with the World Vision organisation that many believe to be another CIA front.

(http://www.crimelibrary.com/8)

"Jim Jones had a very interesting past which was overlooked by the media: Jones was ... sent to Brazil where his house, transportation and groceries were provided to him by the U.S. Embassy, and he frequently traveled to Belo Horizonte, the CIA headquarters in Brazil.

"Jones had been contacted in Ukiah by 'Christian missionaries' from World Vision (World Vision is a CIA controlled front operation), an evangelical order which had performed espionage work for the CIA in Southeast Asia."

(http://www.subversiveelement.com/Firefromsky20.html)

Monday 24 September 2012

Swiss Move to Decriminalize Marijuana Possession

Philip Smith
StopTheDrugWar

Switzerland is on the verge of decriminalizing the possession of up to 10 grams of marijuana after the lower house of parliament Thursday agreed to align itself with the Senate's version of the legislation, according to the Swiss news portal Swissinfo.ch. A final reading of the bill is expected to happen before the end of the fall session next week.

That would bring Switzerland in line with most of its Western European neighbors, which tolerate small-time marijuana possession. The move comes four years after voters rejected outright legalization in a popular referendum.

Switzerland has an estimated 500,000 pot smokers, with 10% of people in their teens and twenties saying they are consumers, one of the highest figures in the world. Currently, punishment for small-time possession varies from canton to canton, with some having already virtually decriminalized it with a small fine, while in others, violators face criminal penalties. Swiss courts handle 30,000 marijuana possession cases a year.


Preliminary parliamentary approval came over the opposition of conservatives in the Swiss People's Party and some members of center-right parties. People's Party legislator Thomas de Courten unsuccessfully sought to double the proposed $108 fine and warned that decriminalization was "giving the wrong message" to young consumers.

"The very mention of the word cannabis seems to trigger psychotropic effects among some members of this chamber," retorted Yvonne Gilli of the Green Party.

The proposal was pushed by the Christian Democratic Party, one of the five parties that make up Switzerland's governing coalition, but government officials seem decidedly lukewarm about it. The cabinet supports the bill, but "without enthusiasm," Interior Minister Alain Berset said.

For more information about marijuana legislation and the war on drugs, visit StopTheDrugWar.org

Sunday 23 September 2012

Jam Down Kernow - sep 2012


...join us again down andy's sh'been in the recently saved holy headland of the original, world record breaking pirate bay for more of that JamDownKernow vibration, in solidarity with Switzerland...

...anotherQUATILYproduct...

Friday 21 September 2012

Supporting the Local Cannabis Growers

Posted by

Any pot aficionado would tell you that the best pot is that which is grown locally. Of course, aside from the occasional covert operations, this can’t really apply everywhere. While some US states for instance have a more liberal policy on cannabis cultivation, if you live outside of these areas then you’re pretty much limited to taking whatever you can get so it’s literally a case of ‘pot luck’.

Here we give 5 pretty clear reasons why local growing should be the norm…

Quality Assured Cannabis

Whether you live in the US, The UK or Europe, you’ll have the same problems with the weed you’re getting hold of. In the US, it’s the Mexican imports while the UK and mainland Europe are regularly pulling in the North African imports. Whether, it’s weed or brick you’re getting, you should be asking the same question. What’s gone into this on its intercontinental journey? With this kind of mass smuggling and undoubtedly mass cultivating, you simply have no idea what processes are used to grow and maintain the weed.

It’s not like it’s a standards approved product so the fertilisers and stimulants could be making this natural herb as unnatural as Kristen Stewarts smile and that’s not even taking into account the other potential additions they make to boost their crop along the way.

With local cannabis growth, you can be a little more assured about the process. It’s effectively the same as a small local market. Less preservatives and more wholesome products all round.

Cutting Out the Middle Man

If you want an apple, it always tastes best picked straight from the tree. The same rule applies to pretty much any produce including weed. Buying from a dealer just means that there is one more person in the process who is not strictly necessary, ramping up the cost and pushing you further from the source. Sure, I’m leaving out the fact that in most cases this is illegal, but the process is effectively the same.

If on the other hand you had access to a local grower you would be able to see how their crop is grown, getting a better eye for the quality and a better price. Plus being able to see the product from marijuana seeds to full blown plants will certainly make you happier to hand over your money.

Legal Moderation

One defining point on the step towards controlled legalisation of cannabis is undoubtedly going to be support for local farming. One of the main issues that is holding back the legalisation of the plant is the government’s inability to moderate it effectively. Already in certain US states, declared medicinal marijuana outlets and cultivators have proven how well monitored such a commodity can be.

Also, while government control will inevitably bring in greater taxation on the plant similarly to tobacco or alcohol, it will almost certainly bring the standard price down. An illegal import commands a high price tag due to the inherent risks involved. Think alcohol prices in prohibition America.

When states and countries are allowed to grow cannabis as part of a taxable business, whether for medicinal use, recreation or hemp for textiles, insulation …the list goes on, then the economic benefits will become apparent.

Cull the Cartels

Just like Al Capone during prohibition, importing illegal produce is always to some degree funding organised crime. Every gram of cocaine is paid for in blood before money ever reaches the table and while less evident, cannabis is to a degree in the same boat. Border crossings between Mexico and America are often driven by drug trafficking and in many cases fund the Mexican and Colombian cartels. The same moral issues are apparent throughout Europe as people try to ignore the clearly dark underbelly of drug smuggling and farming.

Of course most of the violence and blood money in these cases is tied to the more dangerous narcotics. Consider the fact that Canadian grass comes in with relative ease compared to the combined narcotic and weed running of South America.

That said, the problem is still there in any case. With cannabis however, more can be done to curb this. Putting the power in the hands of respectable local businesses to grow and distribute weed effectively castrates the smugglers.

Better Medicinal Testing

One of the key reasons right now for the semi-legal state of cannabis in America is due to its potential for medical applications. Used to treat AIDs related illnesses, symptoms of cancer and chronic pain, cannabis has already proven its effectiveness as a medicine.

Every now and then we’ll see further research but it is likely to always be limited and inhibited by governmental control. A broader range of local growers would allow greater resources for testing, wider ranges of treatment and potentially, a host of undiscovered health benefits which these medical seeds could contain.

So there you have it, 5 reasons why cannabis should be grown locally. Maybe in the near future we’ll see a bit more of this as the government’s wake up to the fact that cannabis was around long before they were and will be, long after they’ve blocked their last proposition.

Cannabliss is an advocate for the legalisation of cannabis seeds the world over.

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Thursday 20 September 2012

Police State (Mastercard Parody)


There are some things money can't buy, for everything else..

Wednesday 19 September 2012

Study Involving 18,000 People Confirms Acupuncture for Pain a Truly Effective Solution

Lisa Garber
Activist Post

Researchers examined over two dozen studies and determined that acupuncture effectively diminished chronic pain – news the pharmaceutical industry does not want to hear. The studies involved nearly 18,000 patients with back, neck, and shoulder pain, osteoarthritis, or chronic headaches, and showed that acupuncture for pain could be a simple solution.

“Many clinicians consider acupuncture to be merely a potent placebo and feel uncomfortable referring their patients to an acupuncturist,” says Andrew Vickers, a Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center researcher. “But our findings suggest that the effects of acupuncture go over and above the placebo effect.”

Acupuncture for Pain

In their findings, the researchers determined that, on a scale of 0 to 100, most patients arrived at an acupuncture session with pain at about level 60. Patients who received no acupuncture left the session with pain levels at about 43 while those who received “sham” treatments in which the needles were improperly placed left at level 35. Those who received proper acupuncture were at level 30.

The findings were published in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine and contest the results of a 2009 study published in the British Medical Journal. The latter dismissed the effects obtained through acupuncture as a placebo effect.


Many other studies, however, back up acupuncture as not only a valid form of medicine and healing but also an affordable one. A Belgian study published in the European Journal of Pain concluded that patients with chronic whiplash-associated disorders experience notable improvements through acupuncture, which activates endogenous analgesia in. And of course there is much more to acupuncture treatment than just acupuncture for pain.

Acupuncture for Exercise Recovery and Depression

Acupuncture may also be helpful for athletes according to an Australian study published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. Researchers from the University of Western Sydney found that most subjects in their trials who received acupuncture experienced enhanced athletic performance as well as postexercise recovery. Even conditions like depression—commonly believed to be treated only through emotional therapy and harmful antidepressants—may be helped through acupuncture.

This holistic treatment for depression bypasses the medications and opens up a whole new world for those only knowing Western practices.

Acupuncture for Children

Not just for adults, acupuncture for children can also be very effective. Rather than putting them on harmful pain medication, children experiencing migraines, endometriosis, and reflex sympathetic dystrophy can experience natural pain relief through acupuncture—once they get over their fear of needles.

Remember that there is more to acupuncture for pain or any other condition. For more on eastern versus western medicine, check out this infographic comparing the history, methodology, effectiveness, and cost of the two.

Additional Sources:

Boston

JAMA Network

Explore More:
This article first appeared at Natural Society, an excellent resource for health news and vaccine information.

Tuesday 18 September 2012

the Tre Project coming to Lamorna this Friday 21st Sept



8 Reasons to End Prohibition of All Drugs Immediately

NORML image
J.G. Vibes
Activist Post

The drug war is one of the most misunderstood subjects in the mainstream political dialogue, even among people who are sympathetic to the plight of responsible drug users. It is rare for someone to come out and say that all drugs should be legal, but in all honesty this is the only logically consistent stance on the issue. To say that some drugs should be legal while others should not is still giving credence to the punishment paradigm and overlooking the external consequences of drug prohibition, or prohibition of any object for that matter.

There is no doubt that drug abuse is a serious issue in our culture, primarily because people are so depressed and beaten down that they self medicate just to be able to tolerate the average day. However, a prohibition policy is a policy of violence, because if you happen to be caught with any of these banned items you will be forcefully taken against your will and put in a cage, and if you dare to prevent this kidnap from taking place you will inevitably be killed. This is the fundamental issue surrounding the drug war that we need to be focused on. Instead of bickering over how to slightly reform drug policy, or arguing about which drug is more harmful than the other, we need to be pointing out that prohibition itself is an inherently violent policy that rests upon the stone age concept of punishment.

As I alluded to earlier, there are many external factors that are effected by the drug war that many people don’t take into account. That is because when you carry out acts of violence, even in the form of punishment, you then create a ripple effect which extends far beyond the bounds of the original circumstance to effect many innocent people down the line. The following list delves into those external factors to illustrate how drug users and non users alike, would be a lot better off if prohibition ended immediately.


(1) – Reduce Violent Crime – The steady increase in violent crime over the past few decades is directly correlated with the escalation of the drug war. As we saw during the times of alcohol prohibition, when you ban any inanimate object, you create an incentive for people to get involved in the black market distribution of that object. Since there is no accountability, or means of peaceful dispute resolution within the black market, buyers and sellers are forced to resort to violence as their sole means of handling disagreements.

Eventually, this violence spills over into the everyday world and effects everyone’s lives. No one could imagine Budweiser and Miller Lite in a back alley gunfight, but less than a century ago during alcohol prohibition, distributors of the drug were involved in shootouts on a regular basis, just as drug gangs are today. Of course, all of this violence came to an immediate end when alcohol was legalized, however, it was not long before the establishment found a new crusade in the drug war, which allowed them to continue the same policy just with different substances.

(2) Improve Seller Accountability and Drug Safety - In the black market one of the major drawbacks is that there is no accountability among the people selling the drug. Since anyone can get kidnapped and thrown in a cage for even dealing with the stuff, it really doesn’t make sense for people to be plastering their names and logos all over the drugs. In this age of corporate mercantilism logos and branding may seem like a really tacky idea, but when looking at the black market we can see the value in such things. Someone who is selling a product with their name on it, is going to go through far greater lengths to ensure the quality of their product, as opposed to someone who would remain anonymous.

This anonymity creates an incentive for people to be dishonest with what they sell. This could lead to rip offs, or downright contamination of the drug with unwanted harmful substances. This is why there was bathtub gin that would make you go blind if your drank it during alcohol prohibition. This is also the reason why some of the harder street drugs today are cut with toxic chemicals that increase the chance of overdose ten fold. The fact that the drugs need to be smuggled also creates the incentive to make drugs more potent, and thus in some circumstances more dangerous. The increased potency and decreased availability inevitably leads to a massive increase in cost. The increased cost is a whole other issue with its own unique side effects in regaurds to drug safety. When the price of the real drugs go up, people just start huffing paint thinner, smoking bath salts and cooking up crystal meth in their basements, which is then even many times more dangerous than the unbranded drugs on the black market.

(3) – Reduce Drug Availability to Children – Many children have houses that are filled with alcohol, yet most of them find it way easier to get drugs than to get alcohol even though alcohol is legal. Even if there were no legal age restrictions on alcohol, the societal and family norms would be just as effective at deterring children from then a formal prohibition policy. If we look overseas at countries that don’t have age restrictions on alcohol, younger people are oftentimes much more mature and informed about its effects than children in the west, and are more likely to make responsible decisions about mind altering substances. In Portugal where drugs have been decriminalized for some time now there has actually been a double digit drop in drug use by school age children.

(4) – Reduce Nonviolent Prisoner Population – A vast majority of the prisoners in the united states are there for nonviolent non crimes, many of which stem from the drug war. Currently, there are more people in US prisons than were in the gulags of Soviet Russia at its worst. Putting nonviolent people in cages, bringing violence against nonviolent people is a horrible violation of natural law. However, if you have no sympathy or compassion for the casualties in this drug war, I would point again to the external consequences which effect even the most vocal prohibitionist. According to the most cited Judge in the United States, Richard A. Posner, the government spends $41.3 billion per year of your tax money on law enforcement measures against mostly small time drug users.

(5) – Real Crime Can be Dealt With – Even in areas with a declining homicide rate, the murder cases that are going unsolved are continuing to climb. Police departments and buerocrats have a million excuses, but the drug war is one of the primary reasons for this occurrence. On one hand indiscriminate killings become more common than crimes of passion that are easy to figure out, but there is a much more sinister aspect of this as well. If you look at the rate of incarcerations for drug offenses, and how incredibly often drug cases are “solved” and found in favor of the state, it becomes obvious that the police have more of an incentive in their day to day activities to hunt down drug users than murderers. These people aren’t selfless public servants as the propaganda on primetime television would lead you to believe, they are average people just like you and me. They will even tell ya “im just doin my job”, so like most of us, when they are on the job they try to get the most amount of money for the least amount of work, and murder cases are really tough work.

A cop could even miss his quota by taking the time and effort to hunt down a murderer, instead of grabbing a kid with a bag of pot, which is a lot easier to find and a lot easier to catch. Quotas are another thing that many police departments deny, but time and time again evidence surfaces that proves otherwise, recently a former NYPD officer has come forward saying that he used to ticket dead people just to meet his quota. This is not to say that all cops are nasty people, but the way that their jobs are monopolized by the state and focused on the drug war corrupts their position and forces them to hurt innocent people and violate people’s rights even if they have the best of intentions.

(6) – Encourage Genuine Treatment for Addicts – As a result of international drug treaties most of the world has remained trapped in a punishment mindset when it comes to dealing with the social problem of drug addiction. While an addiction may be problematic for the person involved and everyone that they come in contact with, they are not a criminal until they actually hurt someone or damage their property, and even then they are a criminal because of their aforementioned transgression not because of their drug addiction. Even the treatment that we see today is not genuine because it is forced on people and doesent address the reasons why they are doing drugs in the first place. In other words, today's treatment programs just try to bash the idea that “drugs are bad” into peoples heads, instead of really communicating with these them, treating them like human beings and overcoming the underlying issues in their lives that are pushing them towards lives of drug addiction.

(7) – Prevent Drug Overdoses – As I mentioned earlier most drug overdoses that happen today wouldn’t occur if it wasn’t for the artificially high potency of drugs that we see today. However, what is even more sad is that of those overdoses that do happen, many more of them could have been prevented but were not because witnesses were too afraid of the police getting involved to call for help. 9 states out of 50 in the US currently have good Samaritan laws to give legal amnesty to anyone who brings an overdosing person to the hospital, but that measure wouldn’t even be necessary if prohibition wasn’t a factor in the first place. The fact that people are actually afraid to call an ambulance in this country should really tell you something about the level that the police state has risen to.

(8) – Protect Individual Rights – Thanks to the drug war, merely on the whim of saying that they smell something cops are now able to enter homes, search cars and totally violate the rights of nonviolent people. The drug war and terrorism are the two biggest excuses used to violate peoples rights, yet according to the national safety council you are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than a terrorist. The very existence of the drug war to begin with, or a prohibition on any object is a fundamental violation of natural rights that should not exist in any civilized society.

If you have any questions or disagreements feel free to email me at jgvibes@aotmr.com

J.G. Vibes is an author, and artist with an established record label and event promotion company that hosts politically charged electronic dance music events. You can keep up with him and his new 87 chapter book Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance at www.aotmr.com where you can also catch his show Voluntary Hippie Radio every Wednesday night from 10pm-12am EST.

Monday 17 September 2012

Happy Birthday Pirate Bay!

The Pirate Bay turns nine years old today, a truly remarkable achievement considering the history of the site. What started out in 2003 as a fun project of a small group of friends turned into one of the largest websites on the Internet. The site has become a global icon; hated by Hollywood and other entertainment industries, but loved by millions of file-sharers.

the pirate bay15 September 2003 The Pirate Bay was founded by Swedish pro-culture organization Piratbyrån (The Bureau of Piracy).

Since there was no filesharing network in Sweden at the time, Piratbyrån decided to launch one, using the relatively new BitTorrent protocol.

Peter Sunde (Brokep), one of the co-founders together with Fredrik Neij (TiAMO) and Gottfrid Svartholm (Anakata), later said that their initial goal was to build a Scandinavian BitTorrent community.

“At the time there was one big torrent site, which was called Suprnova, but they mainly had international content. We and PiratbyrÃ¥n wanted more Swedish and Scandinavian content. So we started a big library, and that is The Pirate Bay.”

The technical setup was rather primitive in the beginning, to say the least.

The site first came online in Mexico where Anakata hosted the site on a server owned by the company he was working for at the time.

After a few months it moved to Sweden where it was hosted on TiAMO’s laptop, a Celeron 1.3GHz machine with 256MB RAM.

This one machine did all the work and included a fully operational tracker.


The Pirate Bay server

tpb classic

It didn’t take long before more server power was needed to keep the site and tracker from collapsing due to a growing number of visitors.

By the end of 2004, a year after the site launched, the tracker was tracking a million peers and over 60,000 torrent files. Around the same time the founders also noticed that it was not only Scandinavians developing interested in their site.

In fact, by now 80% of their users came from other parts of the world. Because of increasing worldwide popularity The Pirate Bay team completely redesigned the site, which became available in several languages in July 2005.


The Pirate Bay before the redesign

tpb classic

Due to these changes, The Pirate Bay grew even faster, and the number of peers tracked by the site grew to 2,500,000 by the end of 2005.

Pirate Bay’s increase in traffic didn’t go unnoticed in Hollywood either. Copyright holders started to send out takedown notices, which were often mocked by the site’s founders. Eventually, however, The Pirate Bay got raided following pressure from Hollywood and the USA.

May 31, 2006, less than three years after The Pirate Bay was founded, 65 Swedish police officers entered a datacenter in Stockholm. The officers were tasked with shutting down the Pirate Bay’s servers.

Footage from The Pirate Bay raid

The site went down for three days, only to reappear at a new hosting facility. The site’s operators were not impressed and renamed the site “The Police Bay” complete with a new logo shooting cannon balls at Hollywood. A few days later this logo was replaced by a Phoenix, a reference to the site rising from its digital ashes.

The raid brought the site into the mainstream press, not least due to its amazing three-day resurrection. All this publicity resulted in a huge traffic spike for TPB, exactly the opposite effect Hollywood had hoped for.


Logos after the raid

tpb classic

Despite a criminal investigation into the site’s founders The Pirate Bay kept growing and growing. After more than two years the Swedish investigation was finalized, and the three co-founders went to trial early 2009 together with businessman Carl Lundstrom.

April 2009 the four were found guilty of assisting copyright infringement. They were sentenced to 1 year in jail each and fines totaling $3,620,000. During the appeal in 2010 the prison sentences were reduced, but the fines increased to more than $6.5 million.

Pirate Bay’s assets, meanwhile, had been transferred to the Seychelles-based company Reservella which continued to operate the site.

Under new ownership two major technical changes occurred. In the fall of 2009 the infamous BitTorrent tracker was taken offline, turning The Pirate Bay into a torrent indexing site.

magnetEarly this year The Pirate Bay went even further when it decided to cease offering torrent files for well-seeded content. The site’s operators moved to magnet links instead, allowing them to save resources and making it easier for third-party sites to run proxies.

These proxies turned out to be much-needed, as The Pirate Bay is now the most broadly censored website on the Internet. In recent years ISPs in Denmark, Italy, UK, the Netherlands and elsewhere have been ordered by courts to block their users’ access to the BitTorrent site.

But The Pirate Bay is still here.

Despite numerous court cases, court-ordered blockades by ISPs and two full trials at the Stockholm Court, The Pirate Bay remains one of the 100 most visited websites on the Internet. Quite a remarkable achievement.

As for the future? It is expected that legal pressure will continue. It wouldn’t be a surprise if The Pirate Bay’s domain names are seized in the coming year. But whether that will bring the deviant site to its knees is doubtful.

As the resilient file-sharing icon that it is, it’s more likely than not that The Pirate Bay will celebrate its 10th anniversary next year.

Happy Birthday Pirate Bay

Sunday 16 September 2012

Decentralized Internet Being Built to Thwart Censorship

J.P. Hicks
Activist Post

Bloggers represent one of the last bastions of independent journalism. Since the Internet presents a level playing field for information, it's possible for talented bloggers to reach millions of people which only used to be available to large media conglomerates.

But the free Internet appears to be under attack on multiple fronts. It seems that these conglomerates don't like losing their audience to lowly bloggers. And, apparently, they have the government on their side not just because they fund politicians to do their bidding, governments themselves also don't like it when pesky bloggers expose their dirty deeds.

The result of this corporate-government merger against the free Internet has resulted in endless calls for Internet legislation from Net Neutrality, blogging taxes, cyber security trolling, to various draconian laws to enforce copyrights like SOPA, PIPA, and international attempts like ACTA.




Bloggers are now even being prosecuted for offering advice about nutrition and dieting. This story is explained in the video below:



So is it any wonder why many bloggers are concerned with Internet freedom and censorship?

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Although protests have stalled many of these bills from becoming law, authorities persist in getting their way. In fact, they are trying to jam the wording of such bills into international trade treaties like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The TPP is so secretive that a crowd-funding platform is offering an award just to read the treaty. Imagine how awful it must be for freedom if the people who it will govern aren't even allowed to know what's in it.

Since the writing is on the wall that these censorship forces will stop at nothing until they get their way, free speech activists and tech geeks are seeking to build a new decentralized Internet called MeshNet, which is essentially a peer-to-peer network that "makes the oppression of free speech impractical bordering on impossible."


Introduction to the MeshNet from Nicholas Ferrar on Vimeo.

Anyone who believes in their right to blog about anything they please should support these projects and others like it. Visit Project MeshNet today to learn more.

J.P. Hicks is an info-activist, pro blogger, editor of Blog Tips and author of a book about blogging. Follow @ Twitter, or like on Facebook and get the FREE ebook SEO For Bloggers.

Saturday 15 September 2012

Marijuana Compound Found Superior To Drugs For Alzheimer's

Sayer Ji, Contributor
Activist Post

Could the active ingredient in marijuana, responsible for its characteristic "high," help turn the tide against the accelerating Alzheimer's epidemic?

A remarkable study published in the journal Molecular Pharmacology in 2006, found that this long-vilified plant contains a compound with not one, but two therapeutic properties ideal for addressing both the surface symptom (memory problems) and root cause (brain plaque) of Alzheimer's disease.[i] This is an ironic finding, considering that the prevailing stereotype is that using marijuana "fries" the brain, leading to debilitating memory issues.

Researchers discovered that the psychoactive component of marijuana, Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), both "competitively inhibits the enzyme acetylcholinesterase (AChE) as well as prevents AChE-induced amyloid β-peptide (Aβ) aggregation."

On the first account, THC's ability to inhibit the AChE enzyme, is not unlike the mechanism of action behind most Alzheimer's drugs on the market today. Drugs like donepezil (trade name Aricept), for instance, by targeting and inhibiting the brain enzyme acetylcholinesterase (AChE), result in an increase in brain levels of this neurotransmitter, which in turn, results in symptom reduction, i.e. improved memory. Donepezil, however, is riddled with controversy due its well-known association with seizures, which likely reflects its intrinsic neurotoxicity. It is, in fact, a chemical in the same general chemical class as venom, insecticides and chemical war agents, such as nerve gas.


On the second account, THC's ability to prevent the acetylcholinesterase-associated amyloid β-peptide (Aβ) aggregation, i.e. brain plaque, indicates that it may, as the researchers noted, "directly impact Alzheimer's disease pathology." In fact, they found "Compared to currently approved drugs prescribed for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, THC is a considerably superior inhibitor of Aβ aggregation, and this study provides a previously unrecognized molecular mechanism through which cannabinoid molecules may directly impact the progression of this debilitating disease."

What is so encouraging about this research, and which the researchers described as "noteworthy," is the following:
THC is a considerably more effective inhibitor of AChE-induced Aβ deposition than the approved drugs for Alzheimer's disease treatment, donepezil and tacrine, which reduced Aβ aggregation by only 22% and 7%, respectively, at twice the concentration used in our studies.7 Therefore, AChE inhibitors such as THC and its analogues may provide an improved therapeutic for Alzheimer's disease, augmenting acetylcholine levels by preventing neurotransmitter degradation and reducing Aβ aggregation, thereby simultaneously treating both the symptoms and progression of Alzheimer's disease.
THC, of course, is only one of a wide range of cannabinoids in the plant marijuana. Not only is there already plentiful information on the neuroprotective properties of marijuana compounds, but there is also a sizeable body of clinical and/or biomedical research indicating the medicinal value of this plant in over 150 health conditions. To view this research visit our Medical Marijuana Research page.

Notes:
[i] Lisa M Eubanks, Claude J Rogers, Albert E Beuscher, George F Koob, Arthur J Olson, Tobin J Dickerson, Kim D Janda . A molecular link between the active component of marijuana and Alzheimer's disease pathology. Mol Pharm. 2006 Nov-Dec;3(6):773-7. PMID: 17140265

You can support this information by voting on Reddit HERE

This article first appeared at GreenMedInfo. Please visit to access their vast database of articles and the latest information in natural health.

Friday 14 September 2012

Big Brother or Peeping Tom? UK Installs CCTV in School Bathrooms, changing rooms

RT.com
September 13, 2012

Over 200 UK state schools have installed cameras in bathrooms and changing rooms to monitor students, a recent surveillance survey reported. British parents will likely be shocked by the study’s findings.

­The survey is based on a freedom of information request conducted by Big Brother Watch, an anti-surveillance activist group. The group said they were shaken by the results, which was much higher and more extensive than expected.

The report “will come as a shock to many parents“, Nick Pickles, Director of Big Brother Watch said. “Schools need to come clean about why they are using these cameras and what is happening to the footage”.

- 47,806 cameras used in 2,107 schools
- 207 schools have 825 cameras in changing rooms and bathrooms
- 90% of schools use CCTV cameras
- 54 UK schools have 1 camera or more per 15 pupils
- 106,710 CCTV cameras estimated in high schools and academies in England, Scotland and Wales

A total of 825 cameras were installed in the bathrooms and changing rooms of 207 different schools across England, Scotland and Wales, according to data provided by more than 2,000 schools.

It remains unclear where in the bathrooms and changing rooms the cameras are located, who watches the footage and whether any pupils were recorded while changing.

The principal of the Wildern School in southern England, however, said that the cameras in her school – one per bathroom – are located “nowhere near the toilet cubicles.”

The images are not looked at unless there has been a reported problem and all images are deleted after a maximum of 30 days,” she said.

Video recording in toilets or changing rooms is legal, but recommended only for exceptional circumstances, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) reported. The ICO is an independent authority in the UK, whose duties include promoting privacy.

Research also showed that the extent of CCTV use varied widely from school to school. “With some schools seeing a ratio of one camera for every five pupils,” the report said. “CCTV appears to be used as a quick fix to much more complex problems and issues that simply cannot be solved with passive surveillance.”

UK schools so unsafe that surveillance needed in the most private spaces?
Since the 1990s, the UK’s Home Office has spent 78 percent of its crime prevention budget on CCTV installations, and schools have likewise invested significant resources in their own surveillance equipment, the Big Brother Watch report said.

No significant research has been done into whether CCTV cameras actually lower crime rates.

Big Brother Watch was able to locate a single study by the French Institut D’ Aménagement Et D’Urbanisme, which concluded that theft and burglary continued to increase after the 2007 installation of CCTV in the ÃŽle-de-France region. A marginal reduction in disorderly incidents in schools was also reported.

‘Shocking’ highlights
The Big Brother Watch report estimated that more than 100,000 cameras monitor students and teachers across Britain, with 90 percent of the schools surveyed acknowledging the use of some form of video surveillance.

Responses from 2,107 secondary schools showed that they used 47,806 cameras in total with more than half installed inside the schools. The Radclyffe School in Oldham surpassed all other schools in the survey, with 20 cameras total in bathrooms and changing rooms.

Sharon Holder, the GMB’s national officer, told Newsvine that her trade union was disgusted with the findings.

Placing CCTV in school bathrooms poses a worrying development in school policy and raises a number of questions,” she said. “How many parents have given headteachers permission to film their child going to the toilet or having a shower? What happens to the film afterwards? How much discussion has there been on governing bodies and to what extent have councils and councilors had any input into these developments? What problems are the schools trying to solve?

This article first appeared on RT.com.

Thursday 13 September 2012

Wild Food


Out Walking in Cornwall, with my dog Jasper.
Foraging for wild food, enjoying the veiws and, peace & quite
In this episode i take a look at: Wild/Sea Carrot. Common Vetch. Stitchwort. Three Cornered Leeks. Hogweed. Common Sorrel. Alexanders. Ground Ivy. Fairy Ring Champignions (mushrooms). Wild Strawberries. Wild Garlic

Wednesday 12 September 2012

Portugal's Decriminalisation - After 10 Years, the results are Astounding


"The government in Portugal has no plans to back down. Although the Netherlands is the European country most associated with liberal drug laws, it has already been ten years since Portugal became the first European nation to take the brave step of decriminalizing possession of all drugs within its borders—from marijuana to heroin, and everything in between. This controversial move went into effect in June of 2001, in response to the country's spiraling HIV/AIDS statistics. While many critics in the poor and largely conservative country attacked the sea change in drug policy, fearing it would lead to drug tourism while simultaneously worsening the country's already shockingly high rate of hard drug use, a report published in 2009 by the Cato Institute tells a different story. Glenn Greenwald, the attorney and author who conducted the research, told Time: "Judging by every metric, drug decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success. It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country."

Read more: http://www.alternet.org/drugs/151635/ten_years_ago_portugal_legalized_all_dru...

Cenk Uygur discusses the study and what we can learn from it.

Support The Young Turks by Subscribing http://bit.ly/TYTonYouTube

Tuesday 11 September 2012

Coconut Oil Hailed as ‘Miracle’ Dental Breakthrough, Deadly Bacteria Killer

Anthony Gucciardi
Activist Post

Looking for an alternative to toothpastes loaded with sulfates and other toxic ingredients such as fluoride? Mainstream science has now fully recognized the ‘miracle’ powers of coconut oil to not only combat tooth decay and drastically improve overall mouth health, but also to specifically crush a yeast known as candida albicans that can lead to deadly infections. This ‘news’ likely comes as nothing more than further confirmation for many, as natural health practicioners have been recommending coconut oil for years.

The research comes from the Athlone Institute of Technology, where Ireland-based scientists examined the effects of natural and digested coconut oil on common strains of bacteria within the mouth. What they found was that not only did the coconut oil effectively inhibit a majority of the bacteria strains single-handedly, but it was also particularly harmful to candida albicans. This is important when considering the fact that an excessive amount of the yeast known as candida albicans can be brought upon by a poor diet consisting of processed foods and sugar.

Candida infection, also known as candida overgrowth or the ‘candy disease’, can be associated with symptoms like chronic tiredness, recurring yeast infections, and digestive issues. It can also lead to a mouth infection known as thrush — a condition typically ‘treated’ using anti-fungal medications preceeded by an x-ray of your esophagus. Now, researchers are highlighting how coconut oil intake can be an alternative solution with far less side effects and concerns.

In their report, the scientists state that coconut oil could be ‘an effective alternative to chemical additives’ in most dental hygiene products. This refers to the many sulfate chemicals linked to numerous conditions, added fluoride, and many others.


It is important to ensure that you purchase the right kind of high quality coconut oil when purchasing it online or from your local supermarket. An important consideration is that the scientists conducting the study may have actually used an inferior low quality coconut oil, meaning that the results may have actually been even more positive if they were to use a 100% organic, extra virgin source. As a general rule of thumb, just as with vitamins and other supplements, avoid purchasing a generic brand of non-organic coconut oil from your local chain market.

Instead, look for a USDA certified organic or 100% organic label that is unrefined and cold-pressed. Personally, I would recommend Nutiva’s coconut oil on Vitacost for a high quality source that isn’t going to be highly expensive (I have no ties to either company). As a side note, coconut oil is also great to store as a preparedness food as it has a very long shelf life and is packed full of nutrients.

You can support this information by voting for it on Reddit HERE

This article first appeared at Natural Society, an excellent resource for health news and vaccine information.

Monday 10 September 2012

Why Tony Blair Is A War Criminal Who Should Be On Trial In The Hague


Brit Dee, Contributor
Activist Post

Archbishop Desmond Tutu's recent condemnation of Tony Blair's role in the invasion of Iraq, and his refusal to attend a summit with the former British prime minister, increases the pressure on war criminal Blair.

In a searing written indictment published on Sunday, Tutu slammed Blair for the devastating war. He criticised Blair's fabrications which led to the invasion of Iraq, including his lies about the country's supposed weapons of mass destruction, and his refusal to allow UN inspectors more time to establish whether or not Saddam Hussein posed a genuine threat to world peace.

He described Blair and Bush as immoral playground bullies, whose reckless warmongering has caused extensive suffering and loss of life, further polarised the world, and helped normalise a climate of Western aggression that currently threatens formerly stable, sovereign, and peaceful Iran and Syria.

Here are five reasons why Tony Blair is a war criminal, who should be on trial in The Hague.

1) Blair launched a war of aggression that broke international law

In attacking Iraq, Blair committed a crime against peace, defined by the Nuremberg Principles as the "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression". The Iraq war was waged for a reason other than self-defence, which made it a crime of aggression and violated Articles 33 and 51 of the UN Charter.


2) Blair knew he was breaking international law

Eight months before the invasion, the British government's most senior legal adviser wrote to Blair and advised him that an attack on Iraq would be a serious breach of international law, and the UN charter. Lord Goldsmith's July 2002 letter stated that an invasion launched on the premise of self defence would be illegal because Britain was not under threat by Iraq, and that whilst in certain circumstances the UN allowed 'humanitarian intervention', it was not relevant in the case of Iraq.

Blair not only ignored Goldsmith's letter, but banned him from attending cabinet meetings and gagged him so that he could not speak out publically.

Blair was explicitly warned by his Cabinet Office that a "legal justification for invasion would be needed. Subject to law officers' advice, none currently exists." Then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw similarly advised Blair that none of the legal conditions for war had been met.

3) UN Security Council Resolution 1441 did not authorise war

Blair and his supporters argue that UN Security Resolution 1441, passed on November 8th 2002, authorised war on Iraq. This resolution did strengthen the mandate of the UN Monitoring and Verification Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and gave Iraq "a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations" - but it did not authorise war.

American ambassador John Negroponte assured the Security Council the resolution meant a "further breach" by Iraq would require "the matter...return to the Council for discussions as required in paragraph 12."

UK Permanent Representative Sir Jeremy Greenstock KCMG similarly confirmed that "there is no 'automaticity' in this resolution. If there is a further Iraqi breach of its disarmament obligations, the matter will return to the Council for discussion as required in Operational Paragraph 12."

4) Blair lied to help fix the intelligence and facts around the policy

There are numerous examples of Blair lying, deceiving, and misleading, in order to hype the supposed threat from Iraq, and try and justify war. Here are just a few examples.

In April 2002 he claimed that Saddam Hussein had major stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons - even though the Joint Intelligence Committee had described the intelligence as "sporadic and patchy" just the previous month. They also said that Saddam only had "some production equipment, and some small stocks of CW agent precursors".

Blair claimed that Iraq posed a regional threat, when the previous month a secret Cabinet Office paper noted that "Saddam has not succeeded in seriously threatening his neighbours."

During a press conference Blair and Bush jointly referred to a purported IAEA report, apparently confirming that Iraq was six months away from developing a nuclear weapon. IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky later denied that the agency had issued any such report, said that there was no substantiated evidence for an Iraqi nuclear weapons program, and that anyone who claimed to know the nuclear situation in Iraq was "misleading you".

In late September 2002, citing a British government dossier, Blair claimed that Iraq had "existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes". When this was later revealed to be untrue, Blair claimed that he had never understood that intelligence agencies did not believe Saddam had long-range weapons of mass destruction.


However, former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook confirmed that on March 5th 2003 - two weeks before the attack on Iraq - Blair told him that Saddam's "battlefield weapons had been disassembled and stored separately".

Blair later claimed that he did not recall Cook telling him that Saddam had no long-range weapons.

5) The illegal war on Iraq has caused an enormous amount of suffering and death

Estimates vary, but according to the Iraq Body Count Project at least 108,000 Iraqi civilians have died as a result of violence since the country’s invasion in March 2003, with tens of thousands wounded and traumatised and millions displaced. Nearly 5000 military personnel have been killed.

Others have been tried for war crimes which resulted in the deaths of far fewer people than the Iraq war and, as Archbishop Tutu states:
In a consistent world, those responsible for this suffering and loss of life should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers who have been made to answer for their actions in the Hague.
Let's keep up the pressure on the war criminal Tony Blair - and everyone else who was complicit in the illegal invasion of Iraq.

This article first appeared at ResistRadio.com

Brit Dee's ResistRadio.com is an independent media website approaching global news, politics and conspiracy theory from a radical, but critical and rational perspective.

Sunday 9 September 2012

Should Grandma Smoke Pot?


Called by one media critic, "Genius". Produced by famous smuggler, author/activist Robert Platshorn and the award winning film maker Walter J. Collins. This made for TV version of Roberts Silver Tour stuns viewers with medical and legal facts long kept from the public. Robert's tour teaching seniors the benefits of medical marijuana have drawn world wide praise for all branches of the media. Front page in the Wall St Journal, featured on CNN Money, praised by News Week's Daily Beast and coming soon to The Daily Show!

Tuesday 4 September 2012

Bush, Blair must stand trial for war crimes: Tutu

"The immorality of the United States and Great Britain's decision to invade Iraq in 2003, premised on the lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, has destabilized and polarized the world to a greater extent than any other conflict in history.”

South African Nobel Laureate, Archbishop Desmond Tutu

PressTV

Sun Sep 2, 2012

South African Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu has called for the trial of former US President George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair for their role in the Iraq war.

“The immorality of the United States and Great Britain's decision to invade Iraq in 2003, premised on the lie that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, has destabilized and polarized the world to a greater extent than any other conflict in history,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote in an article in The Observer on Sunday.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner called for the trial of the pair at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.


Tutu added that, instead of recognizing the sophistications and issues of the world, “the then-leaders of the US and UK fabricated the grounds to behave like playground bullies and drive us further apart.”

He further argued that, the suffering and loss of the victims of the war were beyond the killing fields, “in the hardened hearts and minds of members of the human family across the world.”

Tony Blair, however, responded to Tutu in a statement saying that “this is the same argument we have had many times with nothing new to say.”

This comes after Tutu boycotted the one-day Discovery Invest Leadership Summit in Johannesburg on Tuesday, saying it would be “inappropriate” for him to share a platform with Blair, because of his “morally indefensible” support for the US-led war in Iraq.

Tutu has been a prominent peace icon in South Africa, and he won the Noble Peace Prize in 1984 following his campaign against apartheid.

Source: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/09/02/259483/tutu-calls-for-the-trial-...

Sunday 2 September 2012

European Commission Recommends Banning Mercury Fillings

Elizabeth Renter
Activist Post

Just a few decades ago, it was completely common to go to the dentist with a cavity or two and leave with several silver-colored fillings. And while these fillings were frequently referred to as “silver,” dental professionals were referring to the color, and certainly not the contents. Those fillings are mercury, and they are highly toxic. Now, about half of American dentists are mercury-free and the general population is starting to take note on the dangers of the dental amalgam mercury fillings in their mouths.

Mercury Fillings to be Banned Due to Health Hazards

The European Commission has paved the way, in recent weeks, for phasing out dental mercury, but it seems the United States is not ready.

According to the Commission:
Mercury and most of its compounds are highly toxic to humans, animals and ecosystems. High doses can be fatal to humans, but even relatively low doses can seriously affect the nervous system and have been linked with possible harmful effects on the cardiovascular, immune and reproductive systems.

Despite these devastating effects, even the E.U. stops short of mentioning the specific dangers of mercury fillings, instead focusing on the dangers of mercury in general.

But, if mercury can cause these problems when ingested, couldn’t it also cause problems as it sits in your mouth, potentially giving off vapors when damaged and leeching into your foods and saliva?

The procedures taken by trained dentists when removing these fillings is sufficient evidence of the dangers of mercury amalgam fillings. They must provide an alternate airflow for the patient, so they do not breath the contaminated air from the mouth. A dam must be used to limit swallowing and inhalation. Protective gear must be worn on the body and face, and air purifiers are used. These precautions indicate a serious risk is present.

But the United States has been ‘shockingly slow‘ to do anything to reduce the use of these mercury fillings, particularly when compared with countries in Europe. Sweden has phased out dental amalgam completely and this latest move by the E.U. indicates it will soon be eliminated on the continent.

About 77 percent of Americans who are told their amalgam filling is mostly mercury would opt for an alternative, and would be willing to pay more for it. Resin composite fillings are more expensive, but are safe and well worth the cost. When the external costs of mercury fillings are considered (including damage to the environment and health care costs), the alternative fillings aren’t much more expensive at all. Another way to reduce costs and dentist visits? One simple solution to avoiding these fillings altogether is to learn how to prevent cavities.

There is really nothing new about the dangers of mercury, or its high presence in today’s society. It’s a highly toxic substance and science has recognized this for some time. However, many maintain dental amalgam is safe, despite research to the contrary. The good news is that the European Commission’s action may pave the way for a similar closer look by American officials– though we aren’t entirely hopeful, considering the EU’s commitment to GMO labeling has not rubbed off on the U.S. at all.

Additional Sources:

EC.Europa.eu

EEB.org

Mercola

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