http://www.communicationagents.com/sepp/society.htm en-us sepp@lastrega.com Thu, 12 Apr 2012 11:56:04 GMT http://www.communicationagents.com/sepp/2012/04/12/quackbusters_skeptics_and_the_web_of_trust.htm What are 'quackbusters', you might ask. Well, Tim Bolen has the answer to that question. On his site (quackpotwatch.org) he explains: The "quackbuster" operation is a conspiracy. It is a propaganda enterprise, one part crackpot, two parts evil. It's sole purpose is to discredit, and suppress, in an "anything goes" attack mode, what is wrongfully named "Alternative Medicine." It has declared war on reality. The conspirators are acting in the interests of, and are being paid, directly and indirectly, by the "conventional" medical-industrial complex. These so-called quackbusters seem to be a branch of a larger movement, the "skeptics". Their website at www.skeptic.com/ shows who they are. Skeptics think of themselves as having opinions based on scientific 'truth'. They are very outspoken and very much "out there" to disabuse the rest of us of any idea that does not fit into their version of the scientific world view. While real scientific procedure requires there to be observation and experiment, formation and testing of hypotheses, and open discussion of both experiment and theories, the skeptics have firmly made up their mind on a number of issues. And they don't hesitate to tell us where we are going wrong... Mercury and fluoride for instance are not poisons for skeptics, and anyone who thinks they are must clearly be a conspiracy nut. Vaccination is good for you, as are chemotherapy and radiation cancer treatments offered by conventional medicine. If you oppose either of them you are simply a 'quack' or at the least you are an easy target for those who take advantage of your stupidity. The practices of alternative medicine, including "chiropractic, the placebo effect, homeopathy, acupuncture, and the questionable benefits of organic food, detoxification, and ‘natural’ remedies" are a favorite subject of the skeptics. They know that only mainstream medicine should be relied on and everyone who is into those practices really needs to have their head examined.... Food for Thought Sepp Hasslberger Thu, 12 Apr 2012 11:56:04 GMT http://www.communicationagents.com/sepp/2012/03/30/the_biochemical_matrix_the_myths_of_matrix_science.htm by Jon Rappoport www.nomorefakenews.com The medical system kills 225,000 people a year. (Starfield, JAMA, July 26, 2000, "Is US health really the best in the world?") "In principle, gene therapy is a medical miracle waiting to happen ... after 17 years of trying, scientists are still struggling to make gene therapy work. Complications include rejection of DNA carriers ... [and] new genes end up where they shouldn't, or behave unpredictably." ("Gene Therapy: Is Death and Acceptable Risk?", Wired, Brandon Keim, August 30, 2007) MARCH 28, 2012 - In discussing Matrix Science, I'm reminded of Philip Dick's sensational novel, Lies, Inc. It proposes an invention that can teleport humans light-years to a planet where a better way of life exists. The author then spends the rest of the book deconstructing this utopian legend and revealing the truth and the titanic power-grab that sit behind it. Then there is HG Well's 1933 classic novel, The Shape of Things to Come, in which a world exhausted by war and economic collapse turns to a Global State as the only possible solution, after all other solutions have historically failed. This new ruling authority is based on Science. All religions are crushed. Education is designed to teach every child how to become a genius/global citizen. Eventually, the State withers away and is of course replaced by a spontaneous Utopia. Science/technology: the final all-encompassing answer. A significant aspect of Matrix propaganda revolves around myths about how human behavior can be transformed. Transformed through advances in biology and chemistry. Populations are being trained to expect these momentous changes. A major selling point: no effort is required. Just ingest this tablet. Accept this new gene. All will be done for you by experts. Technocrats will design the future so you will fit into it happily. The technocratic wing of Globalism has clout. It promises management of the planet through science, and who can argue with science? Central Planning will ensure proper benefits for all. My late friend and colleague, hypnotherapist Jack True, once told me in an interview:... Food for Thought Sepp Hasslberger Fri, 30 Mar 2012 11:56:03 GMT http://www.communicationagents.com/sepp/2008/02/21/expert_patients_a_new_healthcare_paradigm.htm Healthcare is a business - one of the major productive enterprises in the industrialized world. How much of this business is really 'taking in our own laundry' is hard to tell at a glance. Some say that the business with disease is largely responsible for keeping us sick, as there is no financial reward in having a healthy population. On the other hand, much money is to be made from selling remedies that do not cure but merely alleviate our symptoms. Doctor yourself - take responsibility for your own health - is the motto of Andrew W. Saul, one of the major proponents of orthomolecular medicine, a system of health care based on supplying the nutritional elements we are often missing in our diet. We are moving into a third healthcare revolution says Kathryn Alexander, one of the leading experts in detoxification and dietary healing who lives in Queensland, Australia and who has lectured on the dietary approach to health in the USA, Europe and Australia. Dietary Healing - by Kathryn Alexander Kathryn has traced the forces for change in our medical system. She says that the internet-driven knowledge revolution and the new tendency to electronically record patient data in electronic health records may be helping to overcome the current, profit-centered approach to health. By analyzing the collected data we will discover what actually works and start to rearrange healthcare to be more efficient. The fact that our personal health records are actively being collected and will in the future be coveted objects of trade, according to Kathryn will actually catalyze patients, the real owners of these personal data, to band together. Patients will become a force in their own right with policy forming and decision making powers and together, they might just be able to tip the balance in favor of real prevention...... Health Sepp Hasslberger Thu, 21 Feb 2008 18:24:56 GMT http://www.communicationagents.com/sepp/2008/02/15/creating_reality_from_consciousness_and_free_will_to_three_dimensional_networking.htm How often have we been told that we create our own reality. That all we need to do is envision, with positive thought, what we want and it will surely come about. Actually, a whole industry has sprung up around that meme, from life coaches to do-it-yourself success books. Perhaps the most recent and arguably one of the most widely known examples of this is The Secret, an inspirational film and a book that promote what is called the law of attraction. The object seems to be to obtain what you most wish for. In our society, that normally turns out to be financial success, but it is not necessarily limited to that. Now how does this really work. How do we create reality in a world where everyone seems to have a different agenda, where political forces are overwhelmingly seen as a violent driving force for the accumulation of power that is in contrast with the deepest and most cherished wishes of the majority of thinking individuals. Creating Reality Claus Janew has examined the question in some depth in the book "The Creation of Reality" which is only available in German. An abridged version, translated into English, is available from Janew's site as a PDF file. The title is How Consciousness Creates Reality. If you are interested at all about the deeper questions of our existence, I recommend you download and print that 36-page essay. Janew says he "wrote the book out of a desire to examine the structure of our reality from a standpoint unbiased by established teachings, be they academic-scientific, popular-esoteric, or religious in nature. The solution to the classical problem of free will," he continues, "constitutes the gist of the concepts revealed." No need to bring previous philosophical knowledge to the reading of the text, simply an interest in fundamental interconnections, a certain openness and the willingness to think along. A second, shorter paper, which has been published in the German Magazin 2000 and titled Omnipresent Consciousness and Free Will might serve as an introduction to those of you who don't want to invest the time necessary to read the whole 36-page essay. And then - you can always choose to go on from there. I should like to thank Mike Emery for having pointed me in the direction of Janus and his essays. And in case neither The Secret nor Consciousness and Free Will hold much attraction for you at this time and yet you want to change the reality in which we live, I have another tip for you. One more way of creating the reality we want is simply to link up with other people and start networking. You can do that either on the internet or in person - starting right in your own neighborhood...... Human Potential Sepp Hasslberger Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:26:40 GMT http://www.communicationagents.com/sepp/2008/01/18/psychopharmacology_critical_psychiatry.htm Psychopharmacology or "pharmacology of the soul" is really a contradiction in terms, but then so is psychiatry itself. It is the art of influencing and controlling behavior that we consider socially unacceptable by means of chemicals, yet psychiatry pretends to be a part of medicine, of an effort to help and heal. Sometimes psychiatrists have been called shrinks or head shrinkers. Shrinking heads was a traditional practice of some ferocious jungle tribes. Psychiatrists shock and drug their patients, many of whom end up leading a life of mere vegetation, and they may well feel that their head has been shrunk to resemble one of these... Shrunken heads - image credit: Sony Pictures I want to thank Vince Boehm for making me aware of the following essay is from medical ethicist Barry Turner. Mr turner is a lecturer in law at Leeds School of Law in the U.K. He teaches mental health, criminal and tort law and he explains, in very erudite terms, why psychiatry and especially psychopharmacology contravene the social values of our society. - - - Critical Psychiatry By Barry Turner January 17, 2008 The dissemination of information is the hallmark of a free society and is the basis of freedom of speech. This fundamental human right is founded on the concept that information and knowledge are essential to free choice, it is the right of many individuals to hear that is being protected rather than the right of one individual to speak...... Health Sepp Hasslberger Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:42:46 GMT http://www.communicationagents.com/sepp/2007/11/23/adhd_psychiatric_drugs_bring_brave_new_world.htm "Only a large-scale popular movement toward decentralization and self-help can arrest the present tendency toward statism... A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers." - Aldous Huxley - (1894-1963) Forword to 'Brave New World', 1932 Brave New World - Image from HuxleyNet. Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or ADHD is said to be a developmental disorder. All but unknown as little as two decades ago, word has it that now about 5 % of children suffer from it. Whatever the cause, the rise of ADHD has been explosive, and it seems that schools, rather than doctors, may be a driving force behind the diagnosis. Officially, there is no cure for ADHD, yet children, once diagnosed, are prescribed all manner of psychotropic drugs - Ritalin, Adderall, Concerta, Strattera, Methylphenidate - to quiet them down and 'make them pay attention'. We are down on illegal drug use, even to the point of putting people in prison for smoking a joint. Yet here we are pushing mind altering drugs on millions of children. The side effects of the drugs prescribed - amphetamine and methylphenidate and even antipsychotic drugs like Risperdal, Zoloft and Zyprexa - are horrendous. Violence and suicide are often associated with their use. Let's take a look at the diagnosis itself. We're talking about children who, in school, don't give close attention to details and make mistakes in their schoolwork. They don't listen well, don't follow instructions, are unwilling and are easily distracted or "forgetful". They are unable to sit still, are fidgety, "can't play quietly" and worst of all, they talk a lot. Disruptively blurting out answers before the teacher even finishes asking the question, they tend to interrupt others. In other words, those kids are a nuisance to teachers. Does that, by the way, bring back any memories of your own time in school? Rather than being a sign of illness however, this kind of behavior tells us something about the dismal state of today's educational system! We are indoctrinating children with useless knowledge, trying to make good robots out of them. Since we still believe having a job should be the only way for people to make a living, we extend education to keep kids out of the job market for as long as possible. The brighter ones rebel at that. They are telling us: "let me go out and learn something". They are bored by what schools have to offer. They want to learn and do something useful, have adventure and feel they are part of society. Most kids know computers better than their teachers. No wonder they are impatient. Home schooling may be an alternative for some, but not all countries allow it. What we do need, it seems, is a re-tooling of the educational system to support critical thinking, creativity, as well as the capacity to evaluate data and make decisions. There is nothing like learning something you want to learn. Active learning seems to fit the bill.... Pharma Sepp Hasslberger Fri, 23 Nov 2007 15:12:51 GMT http://www.communicationagents.com/sepp/2007/11/07/healing_psychiatry.htm Ever since the days of Freud, psychiatry has been hostage to the needs of society, rather than serving those of individual patients. Supposedly a healing art, it has instead developed into a tool of social control, removing the points of view that don't fit the paradigm. The bearers of uncomfortable views are labeled "crazy" - they are often incarcerated in institutions, shocked into oblivion or drugged until they forget. Psyched Out - How Psychiatry Sells Mental Illness and Pushes Pills that Kill. The dragnet of psychiatric diagnosis is the ever-growing Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a handbook of behaviors that are considered deviant and in need of treatment. The conditions listed are in the realm of ideas. Delusions and hallucinations are merely a refusal to see reality like the majority sees it. There is no physical marker, nothing that could be healed by chemical or surgical intervention. Yet, psychiatric screening for those differing views is being extended to all schools in America, through a controversial program that is geared to increase the prescribing base for costly and most damaging mind altering drugs. We tend to justify subjecting people to inhumane treatment by separating ourselves from those we think are sick. An "us" versus "them" mentality makes it easy to sustain the illusion that treatments and circumstances we wouldn't tolerate for a moment are quite ok as long it's one of "them" that is subjected to them. More often than not, physical conditions that are at the basis of pain and apparent "mental" symptoms remain undiagnosed and unresolved. While there are plenty of views critical of psychiatry, hardly anyone asks what we could do to better the situation of individuals who find themselves at odds with society or who behave strangely. Pat Risser is a survivor of psychiatric treatment and past president of the National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy . In 2005, Risser received the prestigious Clifford Beers Award of the National Mental Health Association. Here is what he would change ...... Health Sepp Hasslberger Wed, 7 Nov 2007 15:40:03 GMT http://www.communicationagents.com/sepp/2007/10/29/guinea_pig_kids_aids_denial_and_human_experiments.htm Experiments with highly toxic pharmaceutical drugs on orphans in New York - exposed first by Liam Scheff in an article titled The House That AIDS Built - are still, after more than three years, the subject of heated discussion, specially since the BBC aired a documentary titled Guinea Pig Kids. Children refusing medication were surgically implanted a tube to allow direct injection of drugs into the stomach - Image: Pediatrics. There are those who say the exposé was really a covert attempt to argue that HIV does not cause AIDS. Not really the truth but then, the media does not bend to truth - it bends to pressure. And pressure there was. In January this year, a campaign by a group of AIDS activists who push the final solution of toxic chemo drugs for those unfortunate enough to test positive for a stressed protein fraction, bore down on the editorial offices of the BBC. The arguments were hard and heavy - any questioning of the orthodox (HIV=AIDS=DEATH) view was compared to denying the holocaust that hit the Jewish community during the Second World War. The word denialist was invented by the scheming cabal to describe those who have - often legitimate - questions about the association of HIV, AIDS and certain death in an obvious effort to associate them with the rascals of the day - the deniers of the holocaust. Although the arguments missed the point - the documentary simply told of the plight of Incarnation's human guinea pigs - the BBC fell for the hard talk and caved, asking forgiveness for having aired their documentary on the drug experiments in the Children's home. Aidstruth, the group which set their sights on wiping out any opposition to the current dogma on AIDS, is jubilant. One of the major figures in the Aidstruth camp is John P. Moore, associated with Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York City. Moore is quite clear regarding the agenda of his group. He says they want nothing less than destroy - perhaps the equivalent of 'wipe off the map'? - the "denialists" who are causing so many problems to the pharma-drug based AIDS orthodoxy. Liam Scheff analyzes and responds to John Moore's contradictory statements, giving him some of his own medicine...... Health Sepp Hasslberger Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:42:45 GMT http://www.communicationagents.com/sepp/2007/06/26/is_food_production_feeding_the_population_bomb.htm There is a view, expressed in papers by Russell Hopfenberg, that human population continues to increase as a function of the availability of food. The corollary and suggested remedy is that, putting a cap on food production, we can stop human population from further growing. The implied problem of population increase is that we are eating up our environment - we are diminishing the vital space of thousands of different species leading to their extinction, all in the name of food production. Personally, I believe that this is an oversimplified view and that, although we do cause havoc in the environment, population numbers may not be the exclusive or even the principal culprit in this play. Overpopulation? Some time ago, Steven Salmony contacted me by making comments on this site, arguing the view that we must recognize population growth is the major problem facing humanity, and that we must do something about it. Although he did not directly say that humanity needs to be starved into shape, the suggestion was that capping the food supply could slim down the population into acceptable numbers. At the time, I posted Overpopulation - Does Population Growth Follow Food Supply?, organizing the exhortations and successive comments, and my somewhat doubting replies into an article that could give an idea of both sides of the argument. The reason I come back to the theme of overpopulation and food supply now is an invitation by a friendly lady to take part in a discussion on the guestbook page of a website about the writings of Daniel Quinn, who seems to be a great fan if not the originator of the idea that human population increases whenever food is produced in abundance. Read on, to see what the discussion was about and how I responded...... Society Sepp Hasslberger Tue, 26 Jun 2007 17:46:48 GMT http://www.communicationagents.com/sepp/2007/05/09/confined_animal_feeding_operations_spearhead_corporate_food_monopoly.htm Factory farms or CAFOs, Confined Animal Feeding Operations, not only provide most of the foods that are eaten in "developed" countries the world over, they are a spearhead for establishing a food monopoly of giant biotech corporations and Big Food multinationals. That is the gist of an urgent call to action issued by Eileen Dannemann, the former director of the National Coalition of Organized Women, on the Progressive Convergence site: The sudden overwhelming proliferation of Confined Animal Feeding Operations; the FDA approval of cloned meat and milk from cloned cows unlabeled at the consumer level; the Monsanto patents pending on GMO hog breeds; and the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) are all synchronized elements of the covert roll out of Monsanto's "GMO livestock conversion plan". Image credit: Greenpeace Dannemann adds that the purpose for the build-up of CAFOs is to establish a seamless infrastructure for converting our supply of meat to genetically engineered animals, just like Monsanto’s “acreage conversion plan” for GMO grains brought us GMO corn, soybeans and rice. The animal feeding operations are part of a grand plan to take agriculture out of the hands of farmers and put food production squarely under the control of corporations, controlled by patents and new "food safety rules" that control everything "from farm to fork" but are really designed to edge out small family farms in favor of corporate operations.... Environment Sepp Hasslberger Wed, 9 May 2007 17:11:34 GMT