CLICKHEREx
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http://www.tripme.co.nz/forums/showthread.php?12218-Floatation&p=82958#post82958
07-08-2014, 12:01 PM #1
Drael
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Floatation
Theres a place in auckland, mt eden, that is opening up this month.
Has anyone experienced floatation, and did it evoke images, sounds or anything of the like?
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" - Franklin
Drugs and alcohol are a sometimes food.
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09-08-2014, 09:54 PM #2
Drael
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Float culture opened up this weekend in auckland. Expensive, costs $120. But listening to joe rogan, I am super curious.
Please sound out, if your tried floatation. Or if you are going to float culture and giving it a go.
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" - Franklin
Drugs and alcohol are a sometimes food.
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Today, 12:37 PM #3
Drael
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Maybe I should start a float Drael and his friend fund, and take collections. I want drug free ego loss!
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" - Franklin
Drugs and alcohol are a sometimes food.
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Today, 07:02 PM #4
CLICKHEREx
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Some time ago I read John C Lilly, a psychonaut like Shulgin, (but not so heavily into drugs) on sensory deprivation, via the flotation tank. Check out http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&s...71.HldpYoPvN5Q
It uses a concentrated solution of magnesium sulphate (Epsom salts) which needs to be maintained by an accurate thermostat between an extremely narrow temperature range, around 96 degrees Fahrenheit, or the user feels as though they are freezing, or boiling. Pitch blackness, and as quiet and vibration free as possible.
Hallucinations occur after a while of floating without any physical sensations, quite possibly because the mind is creating input to replace that which is lacking from the environment, like dreaming while still awake and aware.
Apparently a proportion of users lose voluntary control of bladder and bowel functions temporarily, after some hours inside, so some commercial operators require special suits to be worn.
A friend tried to talk me into going halves in one, but the cost was prohibitive then, although if you could access bulk MgSO4 cheapish ...
Others have tried salt, (like floating in the Dead Sea) with varying degrees of success; any tiny cuts or sores sting, though. -
http://www.naturalnews.com/046414_Ebola_vaccine_safety_testing_drug_company_profits.html
Ebola vaccine to be manufactured by criminal drug company with felony record; rushed to market with near-zero safety testing
Monday, August 11, 2014
by Mike Adams
(NaturalNews) While the world of conventional medicine lines up to profit from the Ebola panic, there is no mention anywhere in the mainstream media of the criminal corporation behind the Ebola vaccine.
GlaxoSmithKline, now being celebrated by the pro-pharma press, is the same company that also has a proven criminal record of bribing physicians and knowingly distributing misleading information about the safety of their drug products.
Just two years ago, GSK plead guilty to felony crimes in the United States and was forced to pay an historical $3 billion fine for committing those crimes. After paying the fine, GSK was then exempted from normal rules regarding criminal enterprise, allowing it to continue conducting business with the federal government.
"Global health care giant GlaxoSmithKline LLC (GSK) agreed to plead guilty and to pay $3 billion to resolve its criminal and civil liability arising from the company's unlawful promotion of certain prescription drugs, its failure to report certain safety data, and its civil liability for alleged false price reporting practices, the Justice Department announced today," says a U.S. Department of Justice press release.
It goes on to explain, "GSK agreed to plead guilty to a three-count criminal information, including two counts of introducing misbranded drugs, Paxil and Wellbutrin, into interstate commerce and one count of failing to report safety data about the drug Avandia to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)."
As Natural News reported in 2012:
A roughly nine-year federal investigation has exposed GSK's rampant abuse of the law by illegally marketing drugs, forging drug safety data, bribing doctors to promote dangerous and expensive drugs, ripping off Medicare and Medicaid, and lying about the effectiveness and safety of drugs. And all this deception has generated tens of billions of dollars in profits for GSK over the years, while thousands of patients who used the drug products involved have suffered horrific side effects and even death.
Criminal drug company to spearhead Ebola vaccine with U.S. scientists
Now this same company that admitted committing multiple felony crimes is going to lead the development of the Ebola vaccine.
As CNBC reports: (1)
"A clinical trial of an experimental vaccine against the deadly Ebola virus is set to start shortly, according to British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline, which is co-developing the product with U.S. scientists."
Vaccine to be "rushed through" with very little safety testing
We also know that the vaccine will not be tested for anything other than short-term side effects. This is all part of the "rush to market" for Big Pharma to profit from Ebola as quickly as possible.
As CNBC says:
A company spokeswoman said on Sunday that the trial should get underway "later this year", while GSK's partner the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) said in a statement on its website it would start "as early as fall 2014", implying a potential September launch of testing.
A headline in the Daily Mail declares "World Health Organisation says vaccine could be 'rushed through' for 2015." (2)
That same story goes on to report, "the WHO said a potential vaccine for the Ebola virus is being tested on humans and could be ready for widespread use by early 2015."
Doing the math here, if the Ebola vaccine clinical trials start in September of 2014 and the vaccine is manufactured and distributed to the public by "early 2015," this leaves virtually zero time for observing vaccine side effects.
Manufacturing the vaccine in large quantities, after all, takes many months. If this vaccine is to be available to the public in early 2015, they will have to start manufacturing it as early as October 2014, roughly just one month after the vaccine trials begin.
Zero liability; total immunity for faulty products
Keep in mind that in the United States, vaccine manufacturers have zero liability for the damage and death caused by their products. Due to a literal Act of Congress, all vaccine manufacturers are able to abandon all safety testing and knowingly sell faulty, deadly products with zero risk of liability.
This was all set up by design to make sure vaccine manufacturers could enjoy record profits while having zero liability for producing faulty products that harm children and adults. This is the reason why mercury is still used in flu vaccines which are injected into children -- a fact which I have scientifically proven in the Natural News Forensic Food Labs using ICP-MS instrumentation.
This total immunity means there is no incentive for adequate safety testing of an Ebola vaccine. The company has the same liability (zero) whether they test the vaccine or not. Their goal is to SELL the vaccine, not to make sure it's safe and effective. Time spent on conducting rigorous clinical trials with long-term observations simply isn't part of the "Sell! Sell! Sell!" business plan of today's vaccine manufacturers. Their current business slogan? "Every pandemic is an opportunity for profit." And with blanket immunity from all product liability, who needs safety testing?
Vaccine manufacturers routinely rely on scientific fraud
Here's additional information you need to know about vaccine fraud, originally published in this article on Natural News:
According to two Merck scientists who filed a False Claims Act complaint in 2010 -- a complaint which has just now been unsealed -- vaccine manufacturer Merck knowingly falsified its mumps vaccine test data, spiked blood samples with animal antibodies, sold a vaccine that actually promoted mumps and measles outbreaks, and ripped off governments and consumers who bought the vaccine thinking it was "95% effective."
See that False Claims Act document at:
http://www.naturalnews.com/gallery/documents...
According to Stephen Krahling and Joan Wlochowski, both former Merck virologists, the Merck company engaged in all the following behavior:
• Merck knowingly falsified its mumps vaccine test results to fabricate a "95% efficacy rate."
• In order to do this, Merck spiked the blood test with animal antibodies in order to artificially inflate the appearance of immune system antibodies. As reported in CourthouseNews.com:
Merck also added animal antibodies to blood samples to achieve more favorable test results, though it knew that the human immune system would never produce such antibodies, and that the antibodies created a laboratory testing scenario that "did not in any way correspond to, correlate with, or represent real life ... virus neutralization in vaccinated people," according to the complaint.
• Merck then used the falsified trial results to swindle the U.S. government out of "hundreds of millions of dollars for a vaccine that does not provide adequate immunization."
• Merck's vaccine fraud has actually contributed to the continuation of mumps across America, causing more children to become infected with mumps.
• Merck used its false claims of "95 percent effectiveness" to monopolize the vaccine market and eliminate possible competitors.
• The Merck vaccine fraud has been going on since the late 1990's, say the Merck virologists.
• Testing of Merck's vaccine was never done against "real-world" mumps viruses in the wild. Instead, test results were simply falsified to achieve the desired outcome.
• This entire fraud took place "with the knowledge, authority and approval of Merck's senior management."
• Merck scientists "witnessed firsthand the improper testing and data falsification in which Merck engaged to artificially inflate the vaccine's efficacy findings," according to court documents.
Sources for this article include:
(1) http://www.cnbc.com/id/101909486
(2) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2721...
(3) http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/July/12-c... -
http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/731821-Rasmussen-Poll-America-Losing-War-on-Drugs
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Posts 10,769 Today 02:35 Rasmussen Poll: America Losing War on Drugs
10 Aug 2014
By Greg Richter
A vast majority of Americans believe the nation is losing the war on drugs, according to a new Rasmussen Poll.
According to the survey released Sunday, 84 percent believe the war on drugs is being lost. Only 3 percent believe it is being won, while 13 percent are undecided.
In 2012, 7 percent believed America was winning the war on drugs.
Just under a third believe America is spending too much to fight illegal drugs, while a similar number, 29 percent think not enough is being spent. About 17 percent believe the number is just about right, and 22 percent are undecided.
The survey also found that Americans are split evenly on whether recreational marijuana should be legalized in their state. Forty-three percent favor, and 43 percent oppose it. Still, Rasmussen reports, opposition has dropped from the first of the year when it was at 50 percent.
Demographically, 40 percent of men think too much is being spent on the drug war, compared to 24 percent of women. Senior citizens most feel that not enough is being spent on the war on drugs.
Republican voters are more likely than Democrats and independents to believe that not enough money is being spent on the drug war, but even they are unlikely to advocate for more spending.
Just under half blame Mexican drug producers for violence in that country associated with the drug trade, while 32 percent think drug users in the United States deserve most blame.
Just more than half agree with Attorney General Eric Holder's plan to cut back on stiff minimum sentencing guidelines for low-level non-violent drug offenders.
Forty-four percent think too many Americans are in prison, and 46 percent don't think there should be mandatory sentences for certain crimes.
Forty-six percent believe the justice system is unfair to black and Hispanic defendants, and 33 percent think it is unfair to the poor.
The nationwide survey talked to 1,000 adults on August 3-4. The margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95 percent level of confidence, Rasmussen said.
Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/US/rasmussen-...#ixzz3A6VfNcqr RECOVERY FORUMS ~~~ADDICTION GUIDE~~~ CONTACT ME
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Blog Entries8 Today 03:26 Thank God that, as each day passes by, more and more men and women appear to be realizing what a colossal flop this war on drugs has been. -
http://www.smh.com.au/national/high-price-of-alcohol-drives-demand-for-illegal-drugs-20140810-102eo6.html#ixzz3A9ajOBDr [view bar graph onsite]
August 11, 2014
Inga Ting Data journalistThe expense of alcohol is driving Australia's high rates of illicit drug use, health experts say, as new figures show Australia's combination of high levels of use and expensive illicit substances buck international trends.
Australia is one of the most expensive countries in which to buy illicit substances. It ranks second for amphetamine, fourth for cocaine, fifth for methamphetamine and eighth for both ecstasy and cannabis, according to price data in the 2014 UN World Drug Report and a 2014 National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre report on drug use trends.
However, high prices have not dampened demand for these drugs.
Australia has some of the world's highest rates of illicit drug use per capita, ranking first for ecstasy, second for opioids, third for amphetamines, fourth for cocaine and seventh for cannabis, according to the UN report.
"Oceania [Australian and New Zealand] is something of an exception among the major consumer markets," the UN report states. Generally, cheaper drugs partner higher levels of use and vice versa.
But Australia is also one of the most expensive countries in which to buy alcohol, making substances such as ecstasy and cannabis a "sensible" economic choice for someone looking for a night on the town, leading Australian researchers say.
"Substitution between substances, whether they're legal or illegal, is very common," NDARC drug policy modelling program director Alison Ritter said.
"That's just sensible consumer behaviour at one level … It's no different to the choices one makes when shopping in a supermarket."
Cameron Duff of Monash University's School of Psychology and Psychiatry says young people frequently talk about the price of alcohol when explaining illicit drug use.
"The thing that comes through again and again is that party drugs, particularly ecstasy, are cheaper relative to alcohol," said Dr Duff, who has been researching cultural aspects of drug use for more than a decade.
"Young people are … thinking the average night out at a bar can be $100 without even trying, whereas a couple of tablets of ecstasy is $40 or $50."
Greater awareness of the harms associated with alcohol and tobacco was also pushing some people towards ecstasy and cannabis, Dr Duff said. And with a wealth of online resources such as global discussion forum Bluelight available, those who wanted to try illicit drugs could more easily find information about the risks.
"This is one of the other myths that is offensive to young people: that young people get drunk, take risks, don’t think about it," Dr Duff said. "Nothing could be further from the truth.
"They compare [alcohol's] risks and harms with those perceived to be associated with ecstasy, and they say: 'Ecstasy seems to me to be a safer drug'."
Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation president Alex Wodak says there is "no doubt alcohol is far more damaging".
"[Ecstasy] is not harmless by any means ... But if people migrated from alcohol to cannabis or ecstasy, they would be migrating from high risk to low risk," Dr Wodak said.
Alcohol consumption cost society an estimated $14.4 billion in 2010, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology.
However, Jo Baxter, executive director of advocacy group Drug Free Australia, rejected the link with alcohol prices. She said organised crime was aware Australians had high disposable incomes and were prepared to pay high prices for illicit drugs.
"People are choosing to do it because of risk-taking behaviour," she said. "We need more education about what ecstasy and other amphetamine-type stimulants can do to the brain."
Professor Ritter said Australians were "surprisingly conservative" when it came to illicit substances. Most Australians were against the legalisation of cannabis or ecstasy, and the latest alcohol figures showed "a much greater rate of abstinence among young people than there’s ever been".
Illicit drug use cost the Australian society an estimated $8.2 billion in 2004-05, according to the latest available statistics.
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http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/731679-War-on-drugs-not-working-New-Voices
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Posts 10,739 Yesterday 10:36 War on drugs not working: New Voices
By Casey Given
August 9, 2014|
On May 12, 1996, Miami police raided the home of Richard Brown on a false tip that the 73-year-old retiree with no criminal record was selling drugs. After busting the door open, police claim that Richards began firing a gun, prompting officers to pump 123 rounds into his body.
However, a later investigation revealed that the gun police allege Brown had used had no traces of his fingerprints on them. Brown's 14-year-old great-granddaughter, Janeka, reported he was not holding a gun when he instructed her to take shelter in a bathroom moments before he was killed.
Sadly, Brown is just one of countless victims of the war on drugs, a federal policy push that has squandered billions of dollars overcrowding America's prisons, militarizing state and local police, and making no measurable impact reducing drug abuse. It's time for Americans to stand up against this failed policy as taxpayers and, more important, human beings.
Since 2001, the Department of Homeland Security alone has spent $34 billion in federal grants for state and local police departments to purchase paramilitarylike equipment, including tanks and assault rifles. While the circumstances surrounding Brown's raid may seem unique, mistakes are commonly made in SWAT operations. By the Cato Institute's count, there have been 14 raids on innocent suspects in Florida over the past three decades, three of which have ended in death.
This problem is particularly pronounced in Florida because of the state's harsh mandatory-minimum sentencing requirements. Under state law, individuals can be convicted for prescription-drug trafficking by simply possessing more than four grams (seven pills) of opiate-based painkillers. As a result of these draconian punishment laws, Florida prisons are notoriously overcrowded, with more than 100,000 inmates in state custody at a cost of more than $2 billion per year.
Many residents convicted of these harsh state laws are not violent offenders; they just got caught up in unfortunate circumstances. One such example is Scott Earle, a Florida man who occasionally used Vicodin to treat the residual pain from numerous car accidents throughout his life.
A few months after being prescribed the drug in September 1995 for a diverticulitis attack, Scott was introduced to a woman at a local bar who began romantically pursuing him. As their relationship began to blossom, the woman began asking him for Vicodin to treat her back pain. Three months after meeting her, Scott was arrested for felony drug trafficking and conspiracy. She was an undercover cop.
Sadly, such ridiculous sentencing is not a problem exclusive to Florida, but one that persists on the federal level as well. About half of the close to 200,000 inmates in U.S. custody are serving time for drug offenses; many of them were locked up for crimes as simple as marijuana possession. In fact, cannabis is responsible for the largest chunk of drug convictions at 27.6 percent more than harder narcotics like methamphetamine, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
In total, there are more than 2.2 million Americans in state, local or federal custody. The U.S. has spent roughly $1 trillion on drug prohibition since 1971. But despite these massive costs in dollars and human lives, marijuana and prescription-drug abuse has risen, defeating the very purpose for which the war on drugs was launched.
As taxpayers and human beings, it's high time to stand up against the war on drugs' incredible waste and demand more humane approaches like treatment and decriminalization. Especially in Florida, lawmakers can follow the lead of other states like Texas and Louisiana that have successfully enacted drug-sentencing reform.
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/...-drug-offenses -
New law a ‘positive step’ in reducing number of lives ruined by drugs
Heroin addicts are to be given free foil - to heat up the drug - in an effort to help them kick the habit and cut the risk of contracting disease, the Government will announce tomorrow.
They will be offered the foil to encourage them to inhale, rather than inject, class A substances, as part of programmes to tackle their addiction.
Addicts use aluminium foil to warm heroin and breathe in its fumes in a practice nicknamed “chasing the dragon”. Substances such as crystal meth and cocaine can be inhaled in the same way.
Critics will raise questions over any move that enables drug users to maintain their habit, but the independent Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) concluded last year that offering foil can help an addict’s eventual recovery.
Providing aluminium foil is safer than addicts buying tin foil used in cooking as that contains vegetable oil which can be toxic when breathed in.
Health experts also argue that smoking heroin stops users contracting blood-borne viruses like HIV and hepatitis B through shared needles, cuts damage to veins and soft tissue and reduces the risk of overdose.
Video: Clegg argues an attitude to drug prevention is neededAn order will be laid in Parliament on Friday to sweep away the ban on health professionals issuing free foil on the condition that it is provided within programmes to tackle addiction.
The change in the law, which currently prohibits the supply of “articles to be used for the preparation or consumption of illicit drugs”, will come into force next month. It will apply both to the National Health Service and privately run treatment centres.
Norman Baker, the Crime Prevention Minister, said the available evidence shows that providing foil did not encourage drug use, but spurred addicts to get help.
“By allowing foil to be legally provided by healthcare professionals we are taking another positive step in reducing the number of individuals, families and communities whose lives are destroyed by drugs,” the Lib Dem minister told The Independent.
“The decision was made on the condition that it is part of structured efforts to get individuals off drugs and will minimise the risk of spreading viruses like HIV, while encouraging more addicts to engage with support services.
“It is also part of a range of work the coalition government is doing to reduce and prevent illegal drug use – helping dependent individuals through treatment, educating young people about the risks and supporting law enforcement in tackling the illicit trade.”
The move comes amid signs that use of the most addictive substances is falling, particularly in younger age groups, among whom heroin use has fallen out of fashion as they switch to party drugs.
However, recent figures suggest almost 300,000 people in England still use heroin and crack cocaine, with 529 deaths in England and 46 in Wales in 2012 linked to heroin.
Steve Rolles, senior policy analyst at Transform, the drugs policy charity, said: “It is much safer to be smoking heroin than injecting it. This is a sensible harm reduction intervention when you are trying to get people to transition from a more dangerous way of using heroin to a less dangerous way.”
The ACMD had been examining the case for providing foil for since 2009. Twelve months ago it called for the move to take place, a recommendation that was accepted by the Home Secretary Theresa May.
She approved its conclusions as long as foil is “only offered by drug treatment providers as part as part of structured efforts to get individuals into treatment, on the road to recovery and off of drugs”.
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I don't understand the apparent double standard that exists, with harm reduction advice to users of synthetics (to keep well hydrated) withdrawn by police in Scotland, (Just say NO to synthetics) yet England and Wales are giving out free foil to heroin addicts, or is this part of Scottish home rule? -
http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/731554-Tennessee-Drug-Tests-Welfare-Applicants-Discovers-Less-Than-One-Percent-Use-Drugs
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Posts 10,736 09-08-2014 06:03 Tennessee Drug Tests Welfare Applicants, Discovers Less Than One Percent Use Drugs
BRYCE COVERT
AUGUST 7, 2014
In July, Tennessee began a drug testing program for applicants to the state’s welfare program. Since then, just one person has tested positive out of more than 800.
Applicants have to answer three questions about drug use to get benefits, and if they answer yes to any of them, they get referred to urine testing. If the result is positive, they have to complete a treatment plan and then take another test. If the second comes back positive, they get cut off from benefits for six months. Those who refuse to take a drug test in the first place can’t get benefits.
In the month since it began, six people submitted to a drug test and just one tested positive out of the 812 people who applied. Four were turned down for benefits because they refused to participate in drug screening. That means a positive rate of 0.12 percent for those who took part in the screening. That compares to the 8 percent of state residents generally who use illegal drugs.
Despite stereotypes that the poor people who need welfare assistance use drugs at a high rate, other states have had similar results. In Utah, just 12 people tested positive in a year of drug testing applicants. In Florida, 2 percent of applicants failed the tests in 2011 but the state has an 8 percent rate of illegal drug use.
And when Maine’s governor set out to prove that welfare recipients in his state were using their benefits to buy drinks and cigarettes at bars and strip clubs, he turned up next to nothing.
Many other stereotypes about how welfare recipients use their money turn out to be untrue when data is examined. Those who get public assistance spend less than half of what families who aren’t enrolled spend and still put a larger share of those small budgets toward basics like food, housing, and transportation. At the same time, they spend less on luxuries like eating out and entertainment.
Welfare recipients may be spending so much less in part because the benefits have become so meager. Virtually all of them are worth less now than in 1996. And many families who should be eligible aren’t even getting them. In the mid-90s, a little over a quarter of poor families with children didn’t get benefits. In 2012 that number had soared to three-quarters.
Yet a chunk of the program money is being used now to administer these costly drug testing regimes. Utah spent more than $30,000 in the year that turned up just 12 drug users.
The purported savings in Florida’s program will be negligible after administrative costs and reimbursements for the drug tests are taken into account. The $1.5 million price tag with
just $229,000 in savings for a proposed program in Virginia prompted lawmakers to reject it.
Still, the move has been popular in other states. Eleven of them have enacted drug screening or testing for welfare applicants.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/201...test-positive/ -
http://www.naturalnews.com/046378_CDC_Ebola_pandemic_survival_tips.html
Friday, August 08, 2014
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
(NaturalNews) The spread of Ebola to the USA is "inevitable," said the head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday. Tom Frieden made the statement in a House Subcommittee hearing, adding that he does not think there will be a "large Ebola outbreak" in the U.S. Does he think there will be small ones?
Ken Isaacs, vice president of program and government relations at the Christian aid group Samaritan's Purse warned "the world is woefully ill-equipped to handle the spread of Ebola," reports Yahoo News. (1)
"It is clear that the disease is uncontained and it is out of control in West Africa," he told the hearing. "The international response to the disease has been a failure."
"If you read the Ministry of Health status reports coming out every day from Liberia, I don't mean to be dramatic, but it has an atmosphere of 'Apocalypse Now' in it," said Isaacs, as reported by Breitbart.com. (5)
The spread of Ebola to the U.S. will likely happen due to international air travel, CDC head Frieden warned. Today's Ebola outbreak is the largest ever recorded in history. Is the CDC perhaps preparing America for an announcement that Ebola is now being found in U.S. patients?
"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued its highest alert activation over the Ebola outbreak," reports CBS News. (4) "CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden announced on Twitter Wednesday that their operations center has moved to a Level 1 response."
America is nowhere near prepared for an Ebola outbreak
Mac Slavo from SHTFplan.com just posted a really important story that I recommend you read. It's entitled What You Need to Do to Survive Ebola BEFORE the Panic Starts.
As Slavo rightly points out, if there is even a single case of Ebola appearing on the streets of America, the masses will outright panic.
Michael Snyder from The Economic Collapse Blog (7) also makes a powerful point in this recommended article, where he says:
Yes, we may be able to provide "state of the art care" for a handful of people, but if thousands (or millions) of Americans get the virus you can forget about it. Our health industry is already stretched incredibly thin, and we simply do not have the resources to handle a tsunami of high risk Ebola patients. And of course conventional medicine does not have a cure for Ebola anyway.
Outbreak will immediately turn to panic
In truth, almost nobody is America is prepared for an Ebola outbreak -- not the people, not the hospitals, not the grocery stores and certainly not the government.
Even a small, local Ebola outbreak would result in a mandatory lock down of people in their own homes. The government's phrase for this is "shelter in place," and it was invoked at gunpoint during the Boston Marathon bombings.
The problem with all this is that the very minute the public gets word of Ebola spreading in America, people will launch into panic buying of everything you can imagine: gasoline and fuel, water, storable foods, chemical sanitizers, ammunition, firearms and so on. Think "zombie apocalypse" and you'll get the idea.
Case in point: The announcement that the water supply in Toledo, Ohio was poisoned due to chemical agricultural runoff caused an immediate and total wipeout of water supplies from store shelves.
Hawaii just experienced the same thing, reports Intellihub: (2)
Due to the recent weather warnings, local stores have been mostly cleared out of bottled water and other essential supplies, such as batteries, in anticipation of the coming storms.
"Residents of Hawaii are cleaning out stores of supplies in anticipation of power outages and major flooding," says USA Today. (3)
Even worse, some residents are finding they are completely on their own, with other residents utterly unwilling to help them. As Mike Tsukamoto says in this USA Today video (3):
"There was a woman there [at the Costco store] who had a crutch, and she was asking people if they could help her, and no one would help and she was pretty upset. She told me that nobody cares to help anyone in times like this, and all they care about is getting stuff for themselves and clearing out."
Storms pass quickly; but pandemics keep spreading
Hurricanes quickly pass, but an Ebola outbreak might keep spreading and lingering for a very long time. What will the average unprepared American do after 3 days of lockdown? Five days? A month?
Most people could not survive more than a week or two without needing emergency supplies from the grocery store. It's not difficult to imagine 911 call centers being flooded with desperate cries for food after just 3-5 days of lockdown.
An Ebola outbreak lockdown would also grind the local economy to a halt. No one showing up for work means no economic activity. It also makes you wonder who's supposed to run the power plants, water treatment facilities, emergency services and law enforcement. Anyone who thinks under-paid cops are going to run around the streets trying to keep the peace when there's an Ebola outbreak on the loose is living in a fantasy dreamland.
Ebola has the potential to cause widespread economic destruction beyond its medical casualties. That's why it has been selected and preserved by numerous governments as a bioweapon. Some people are convinced, in fact, that the current pandemic in West Africa is a "trial run" for a larger release somewhere else, but I have to caution that's mere conjecture and no evidence has yet surfaced to support the accusation.
Solutions for Americans and Canadians
So what you do to prepare for the Ebola spread into America that the CDC now calls "inevitable?"
First, you should substantially increase your personal preparedness in terms of supplies of food, water, emergency medicine, sanitizing liquids (like plain bleach), batteries for flashlights and so on. An Ebola outbreak may come to your neighborhood without warning, and the government may announce a mandatory quarantine without notice. You could suddenly find yourself stuck in your own home with no access to a grocery store for weeks.
Secondly, it's probably a wise idea to stock up on natural anti-virals that might be beneficial against Ebola. Although I must caution you that there are no clinical trials of anything treating Ebola -- not medications, not herbs, not anything -- there are many natural substances with well-documented antiviral effects that have near-zero risk of any downside. Those include vitamin C powders, anti-viral herbs like elderberry, Traditional Chinese Medicine formulas and immune-boosting minerals like zinc and selenium.
Many people are right now saying colloidal silver might combat Ebola, although I personally haven't investigated this issue and therefore can't say whether silver might be effective as an internal defense against Ebola. Don't count on the government to test this, of course: they're only interested in high-profit drugs, not affordable natural solutions.
Avoiding immune-suppressing substances is a key strategy for strengthening your immune response to most viral infections. This means now is probably a good idea to stop smoking, stop using chemical fragrance laundry detergents, stop using cheap personal care products, stop taking medications that suppress immunity, and stop eating foods that contain immune-suppressing chemicals, additives and preservatives.
The stronger your immune system, the better your chance of survival if an Ebola outbreak happens near you. This is wisdom the CDC will never publicly encourage. The entire medical system is wholly opposed to the idea of people strengthening their own immune systems and therefore not needing "miracle" drugs or vaccines.
So if you want to be safe from Ebola, it's entirely up to you. No government official or public health department is going to tell you the truth you need to hear: If you want to survive a serious outbreak, you'd better have weeks worth of water in your home, and months worth of food. You'd also better have some cash, sanitizers, flashlights, radios and the whole gamut of survival preparedness items that you can read about on other sites like The Organic Prepper.
Don't wait until the government announces the coming pandemic. By then, it's too late. If you ever find yourself in a crowd of people, lining up to get food, water or medicine, you're already way behind the curve.
Sources for this article include:
(1) http://news.yahoo.com/ebolas-spread-us-inevi...
(2) http://www.intellihub.com/hawaii-bottled-wat...
(3) http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2014/0...
(4) http://atlanta.cbslocal.com/2014/08/07/cdc-i...
(5) http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014...
(6) http://www.naturalnews.com/046314_toledo_wat...
(7) http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/...
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http://www.naturalnews.com/046331_Ebola_government_propaganda_medical_questions.html
Tuesday, August 05, 2014
(NaturalNews) Something's fishy about the official stories we're being told on Ebola. Things don't add up, which is why I'm posing these twenty-one important questions we should all be considering:
#1) How can U.S. health authorities claim there is zero risk from Ebola patients being treated in U.S. hospitals when those same hospitals can't control superbug infections? "Many hospitals are poorly prepared to contain any pathogen. That’s why at least 75,000 people a year die from hospital infections. If hospitals can’t stop common infections like MRSA, C. diff and VRE, they can’t handle Ebola." - Fox News (1)
#2) Why should we trust the CDC's handling of Ebola when the agency can't even keep track of its anthrax, avian flu and smallpox samples?
#3) Why were Ebola victims transported to cities in the USA when they could be given state-of-the-art medical care overseas? "Now, they are bringing in highly infectious patients into this nation that is Ebola-free. In doing so, they are violating the primary rule of contagion: isolation." - Radio host Michael Savage (2)
#4) Why is the company working on Ebola vaccines -- Tekmira -- receiving money from Monsanto and considers Monsanto to be one of its important business partners? (3)
#5) If Ebola is "not a threat" to U.S. citizens as government authorities keep claiming, then why did the U.S. Department of Defense spend $140 million on an Ebola-related contract with the Tekmira company?
#6) If Ebola is not a threat to the U.S., then why did the Department of Defense deploy Ebola detection equipment to all 50 states? (4)
#7) Why did President Obama just sign a new executive order authorizing the government arrest and quarantine of Americans who show symptoms of respiratory infections? (5)
The language of his new executive order states that government officials may forcibly detain and quarantine people with:
...diseases that are associated with fever and signs and symptoms of pneumonia or other respiratory illness, are capable of being transmitted from person to person, and that either are causing, or have the potential to cause, a pandemic, or, upon infection, are highly likely to cause mortality or serious morbidity if not properly controlled.
#8) How can we trust a government to tell us the truth about Ebola when that same government repeatedly lies about Swine Flu, influenza, Fukushima radiation, weather control technology, the security of the border and seemingly everything else?
#9) If U.S. doctors claim to be so incredibly careful around Ebola that the virus could not possibly escape from the containment rooms at Emory University, then how did the American doctors being treated there contract Ebola in the first place? Weren't they also being careful?
#10) How are U.S. doctors and health workers supposed to even identify people with Ebola when they appear "fit and healthy" right until the very end? "What's shocking is how healthy the patients look before they die and how quickly they decline. A number of the Ebola patients I've seen look quite fit and healthy and can be walking around until shortly before their deaths." - Dr. Oliver Johnson (6)
#11) If Ebola is not spread through the air as some claim, then why do doctors who treat Ebola patients always wear masks?
#12) If hospitals are good at infection control, then why did so many SARS victims contract the infection while sitting in waiting rooms at hospitals? "A government report later concluded that for the hospital overcome by SARS, 'infection control was not a high priority.' Eventually, 77% of the people who contracted SARS there got it while working, visiting or being treated in a hospital." - Fox News (7)
#13) If Ebola escapes from patients at Emory University and begins to infect the public, do you think we would ever be told the truth about it? Or instead, would the official story claim that "Ebola terrorists" let it loose?
#14) WHO BENEFITS FROM AN EBOLA OUTBREAK in the USA? This is a key question to ask, and the answers are obvious: the CDC, vaccine manufacturers and pharma companies, and anyone in government who wants to declare a police state and start rounding people up for quarantine in a medical emergency.
#15) We already know there are powerful people who openly promote population reduction (Bill Gates, Ted Turner, etc.) Is a staged Ebola outbreak possibly a deliberate population reduction plan by some group that doesn't value human life and wants to rapidly reduce the population?
#16) Why are U.S. health authorities intentionally concealing from the public the true number of possible Ebola victims in U.S. hospitals who are being tested for Ebola right now? "In an apparent attempt to avoid hysteria, U.S. health authorities are withholding details about a number of suspected Ebola victims from the public." - Paul Joseph Watson, Infowars (8)
#17) If Ebola infections are so easy to control (as is claimed by U.S. health authorities), then why are Ebola victim bodies being openly dumped in the streets in West Africa? "Relatives of Ebola victims in Liberia defied government quarantine orders and dumped infected bodies in the streets as West African governments struggled to enforce tough measures to curb an outbreak..." - Reuters (9)
#18) Why do many locals in Sierra Leone truly believe the recent Ebola outbreak was deliberately caused by government officials? "Ebola is a new disease in Sierra Leone and when the first cases emerged, many people thought it might be a government conspiracy to undermine certain tribal groups, steal organs or get money from international donors..." - The Daily Mail (6)
#19) Given that the U.S. government has already funded outrageous medical experiments on Americans and foreigners (see the NIH-funded Guatemalan medical experiments), why should we not believe the government is capable of deploying Ebola in bioweapons experiments in West Africa?
#20) Given that many vaccines accidentally cause the disease they claim to prevent (due to weakened viruses still remaining active in a small number of vaccine vials), isn't it likely that Ebola vaccines might actually cause Ebola infections in some percentage of those receiving them? How can we trust any vaccines when vaccine manufacturers have been granted absolute legal immunity from faulty products or failures in quality control?
#21) How can we trust a medical system that continues to put mercury in flu shots, refuses to recommend vitamin D to cancer patients and has been criminally corrupted to the point where drug companies are routinely charged with felony crimes for bribery and price fixing?
Sources for this article include:
(1) http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/08/04/ma...
(2) http://www.wnd.com/2014/08/ebola-madness-is-...
(3) http://www.naturalnews.com/046290_ebola_pate...
(4) http://www.naturalnews.com/046259_ebola_outb...
(5) http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/executive...
(6) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-27...
(7) http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/08/04/ma...
(8) http://www.infowars.com/u-s-health-authoriti...
(9) http://news.yahoo.com/bodies-dumped-streets-...-
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http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/smugglers-cove-check-out-bizarre-4023606
Anti-smuggling bosses say officers have seen "every trick in the book" but the scams are getting more and more sophisticatedVIEW GALLERY
These pictures show the desperate depths smugglers will sink to in an attempt to get illegal goods into the country.
From iguanas in socks to Class A drugs in sweets and chocolate bars, the smugglers stop at nothing in their determination to make money out of misery.
Most of the scams involve drugs where huge profits are to be made.
Smuggler Thottapuram Thomas was jailed for four and a half years after he had the cheek to use a portrait of former South African President Nelson Mandela to hide 4lbs (1.85kg) of cocaine -worth £380,000 - behind the picture.
Severely disabled Daniel Roque Hall was jailed for three and a half years in 2012 after being found with £370,000 worth of cocaine hidden inside the padded seat of his wheelchair.
Border Force officials have also released photographs showing how smugglers tried to conceal illegal drugs inside Snickers chocolate bars, lollipops, carpets and even a chapatti oven!
Flickr/UK Home OfficeCheeky monkeys: These two statues were filled with opium!Sir Charles Montgomery, director general of the agency tasked with protecting Britain’s border, said officers had seen “virtually every trick in the book" but were facing increasingly sophisticated smuggling techniques.
He said: “As these pictures show, smugglers are trying increasingly sophisticated methods and we need to stay one step ahead.
“Fortunately our officers have seen virtually every trick in the book.
“Border Force is the first line of defence in protecting the UK from serious and organised crime.
“The skill and experience of our officers helps keep drugs and other illegal goods out of the country and off our streets.”
Flickr/UK Home OfficeIllegal: Endangered iguana from Bahamas found in a sockOther recent cases include 4.5lbs (2kg) of opium worth £20,000 discovered inside two monkey statues in a parcel at the Coventry International Postal Hub while Iranian Amir Rahnama got six years after 22lbs (10kg) of opium was found in pots of hair product.
Meanwhile a consignment of children’s lollipops was intercepted by Border Force officers working in Ghana in September 2012. The sweets concealed 9lbs (4kg) of cocaine with a street value of £200,000.
Earlier that year, Ivan Sacido, from Madrid, was jailed for five years after sniffer dogs at Gatwick Airport discover 4.5lbs (2kg) of high-purity cocaine worth £550,000 inside Snickers chocolate bars.
But it is not just drugs that attract smugglers. In February this year two women flying from the Bahamas were stopped at Heathrow airport with 13 endangered San Salvador rock iguanas stuffed into socks in their luggage.
One of the reptiles died in transit. The two Romanian women were jailed for a year.
Another case of wildlife smuggling saw nine grey Francolin birds hidden inside a suitcase - their skeletons showing up on X-ray images.
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http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nick-clegg-says-lib-dems-4022692#.U-cI5aMf6Hs
Aug 07, 2014 23:52- By Piers Eady
The Deputy Prime Minister's proposal would see prison sentences abolished in England and Wales even for possession of Class A drugs such as heroin and cocaineGettyPromise: Clegg says it's "senseless" putting people who need treatment behind barsLib Dem leader Nick Clegg has said his party will abolish jail sentences for drug possession if he wins the next election.
Mr Clegg’s proposal would see prison sentences abolished in England and Wales even for possession of Class A drugs such as heroin and cocaine.
The Lib Dems believe that people who use drugs should be treated for addiction rather than caged behind bars.
The party says 1,000 people a year are jailed for the possession of drugs for their own personal use at a cost to the taxpayer of £5m.
Half of those serving time are in jail for using the Class B drug cannabis.
Mr Clegg told the Sun: “At the moment, we are doing an utterly senseless thing - chucking the people who need treatment behind bars so they simply become even more vulnerable to the criminal gangs who exploited them in the first place.”
The Lib Dems’ plan is a manifesto commitment for the party rather than being a change in the Tory-led Coalition’s policy.
Clegg said in December 2012 that Britain was losing the war on drugs ‘on an industrial scale’ and called on PM David Cameron to consider decriminalisation.
But his call set him at odds with Cameron, who denied the government’s drugs policy was failing.
Mr Cameron said: “The government, I think, has got a good record on these things and there is some evidence that drug use and abuse is falling.”
The Home Office is currently undertaking a review into Britain’s drug policy, considering how the law on drugs works in different countries.
Home Secretary Theresa May has previously said there was no need for a rethink on Britain’s approach to drugs.
But the review has examined drugs policies such as Denmark’s ‘fixing rooms’ where addicts can inject without fear of prosecution.
It has also looked at countries such as Portugal, which has decriminalised personal possession.
Mr Clegg added: “We should be treating these people, we should be dealing with them.
“We shouldn’t be putting them back into the hands of the dealers. The people who should be behind bars are the criminal gangs, the Mr Bigs.”
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Seventeen percent of the study participates said they also regularly used opioids. (Photo : Stephen Cummings)
The use of illicit drugs is inked to many preventable deaths each year. Statistics show that illegal drug use or abuse of prescription drugs were to blame for a 118 percent increase of deaths since 1992 in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Recent findings published in JAMA examine treatment methods used to prevent abuse of various drugs. Results revealed that short interventions were unlikely to help dissuade regular users from taking their use to the limit.
Lead study author Richard Saitz, M.D., of the Boston University School of Public Health, recruited 528 adult patients with a history of unhealthy drug use, for the study. He was randomly assigned those in the experiment to one of three groups.
The first group consisted of a brief negotiated interview (BNI) that lasted 10 to 15 minutes, while the second group involved motivational interviewing (MOTIC) for 30 to 45 minutes. The last group did not receive any kind of intervention and everyone was given a list of substance use disorder treatment options and resources to use.
Sixty-three percent of the participants reported marijuana use as their main drug at the study's start. However, 19 percent also said they used cocaine and 17 percent said they used opioids.
Unfortunately, researchers found that throughout the first 30 days of an intervention treatment, there were no significant differences in drug use among the three groups.
"Prescription drug misuse is particularly complex, with diagnostic confusion between misuse for symptoms (e.g., pain, anxiety), euphoria-seeking, and drug diversion. Brief counseling may simply be inadequate to address these complexities, even as an initial strategy," the authors concluded, in a news release. "These results do not support widespread implementation of illicit drug use and prescription drug misuse screening and brief intervention."
However, researchers added that finding the right treatment options early for those in need was critical to prevention and recovery. -
http://fox17.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/teen-dies-after-one-hit-fatal-synthetic-marijuana-22783.shtml
Friday, August 8 2014, 10:10 PM CDT
Connor Eckhardt, 19, had smoked a readily available product known as ‘spice’ before falling into a coma. He passed away on July 16, just ten days later after taking ‘one hit’, his family said. The product is considered by users as an alternative to cannabis and is made from plants treated with chemicals that bind to the brain’s cannabinoid receptors, much like the drug.
While illegal in California, it is often marketed as incense and is reportedly sold under code names by retailers. Mr Eckhardt’s parents issued an emotional plea on a Facebook page dedicated to her son’s memory. “Our son is gone forever from one hit of SPICE!!! Which is legal. How can that be?” the post read. “So many people have messaged me that their loved ones died too. My son is gone forever. “Something has to be done!!! Please share our story.”
Another Facebook tribute, by family friend Sarah Sailer, has been shared over 445,000 times on the site. “This 19 yr old (sic) is dead because of taking ONE HIT of a substance that is readily available in many smoke shops, even convenience stores around the country,” Mrs Sailer said. “If you know anyone who has tried or uses SYNTHETIC MARIJUANA (aka SPICE, K2, POTPOURRI) - please tell them it may kill them.” Doctors warn that synthetic marijuana substitutes can be many times more powerful than the drug itself, potentially leading to kidney failure, psychosis, heart attack and overwhelming brain circuitry. (SOURCE MSN) -
http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.co...ater-1-3500466
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Posts 2,411 07-08-2014 03:25 Didn't comply with the new "harm escalation" programme... -
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-07/green-remember-there-is-no-privacy-in-team-australia/5654014
By ABC's Jonathan GreenUpdated
Thu at 9:06amThu 7 Aug 2014, 9:06amREMEMBER, BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, AND YOU, AND ESPECIALLY YOU!!!We might feel happier about the privacy shakedown if the Government could make even a bit of sense. Instead we get obfuscation and urges to toe the line as dutiful members of Team Australia, writes Jonathan Green.
As they say: "There's no jihad in team".
Team Australia that is. Or is that Operation Team Australia? Whichever, we're all in this together now, armed only with sprigs of wattle and the nation's internet browsing history against "unhealthy immigrant values" and the chilling possibility of mass-casualty homeland terror.
On the first point we have columnist Andrew Bolt's word for it, that "Australia is being asked to assimilate to immigrant values, and not necessarily the healthiest ones".
"But wait ..."
Yes Andrew?
"Don't we need a frank debate - more frank than it's been so far - into how the Islamic culture, the Muslim culture, people from certain Muslim countries in the Middle East, how they integrate here? That is a very difficult and dangerous discussion."
Well, you know, on the evidence, probably not; let's not treat the deplorable exception as the common condition, or, worse, the product of the fevered and fearful imagination as the reality.
And yet there are exceptions.
And here our Prime Minister is clear, and we must take his word on this, that the threat posed by returning jihadis is real, hotheads who have taken up the cause of jihad and the caliphate in foreign parts. As the Australian newspaper reported:
The Prime Minister also warned of a big rise in the number of suspects who could attempt a "mass casualty" attack on home soil given there are now five times as many Australians fighting with terror groups in Syria and Iraq as there were in Afghanistan in the past.Of about 30 Australians who fought with terrorists in Afghanistan, 25 returned home and two thirds of that group were later involved in domestic terrorism, the government said."If we see anything like the same ratios in respect of people coming back from Syria and Iraq, the potential for terrorism in this country has substantially increased," Mr Abbott warned.Some key numbers there, like "30" and "25". Smallish numbers you might say. By some accounts as many as 150 Australians may now be serving other interests than our national interest in war zones overseas. Which is not a big proportion of the broader Australian population, nor even a big share of our Muslim head count of 480,000 or so. But perhaps 150 misguided jihadis pose a sufficient risk to merit turning a nation's notion of privacy on its head, enough of a threat to expose every Australian's life on the phone and online, to reverse the onus of legal proof and all the rest of it.
Perhaps. Acts of random and bloody terror are not, after all, labor intensive. It takes no more than one malevolent sociopath to bear all this out, to make good the Government's worst fear, to deliver on its promise.
It's all a bit woolly, but then this is national security, an area of public life in which we extend our Government a considerable benefit of the doubt. We take it on trust that their anxieties, more often alluded to than made plain (because you know, national security), are the real deal. We presume that when they say they are in receipt of credible evidence that they are in fact in receipt of credible evidence, despite the occasional episodes that provide credible evidence to the contrary.
And there have been times, not so far past, when claims have flown ahead of substance but still been believed, with appalling and deadly consequence.
As prime minister John Howard once put it:
Iraq has a usable chemical and biological weapons capability which has included recent production of chemical and biological agents; Iraq continues to work on developing nuclear weapons. All key aspects - research and development, production and weaponisation - of Iraq's offensive biological weapons program are active and most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War in 1991.Several tens of thousands died proving that hypothesis wrong, a toll with which makes the current threat of data retention and a beefed up surveillance state look meek by comparison.
The Government's call is the same one though: to be concerned if not slightly alarmed at the menace within, and to take them at their word; this time with the catchy embellishment that we ought toe the line and surrender our metadata as dutiful members of Team Australia.
We might feel happier about the privacy shakedown if the ministers in charge - who presumably have thought this through, or at least compared notes between radio interviews - could make something even approaching sense.
Instead we are left with the likes of this from the Attorney-General as he attempted just yesterday to calm our nerves on Government access to our internet use: "We're not tracking the websites you visit, only the web addresses," he told Sky News. Students of addled obfuscation as a refined form of political discourse would be well advised to watch the entire interview linked above. It is a masterwork.
The full policy detail, Senator Brandis explained, is a work in progress. Social media: Well that's under discussion. Phone calls? No more information than is collected now for the purposes of billing. By some suppliers. I think.
We shall see.
We should also forgive the PM a certain haziness on these issues bordering as they do on the technical; this was never his strong suit.
As Mr Abbott told Kerry O'Brien back in 2010 when discussing his misgivings over the mooted NBN, "I'm no Bill Gates here and I don't claim to be any kind of tech head in all of this."
And so it was that through yesterday he assured us that:
"It is not what you're doing on the internet, it's the sites you're visiting."
Alternatively:
"It's not the content, it's just where you have been, so to speak."
Which is to say:
"We are not seeking content, we are seeking metadata."
Or to put that another way:
"Metadata is the material on the front of the envelope, and the contents of the letter will remain private."
And with that metaphor the PM may have delivered inspiration to thousands who, confronted by the rather grim promise of unprecedented state intrusion into their phone calls, their physical location, their email and browsing history, may soon opt to buy typewriters. Or pens. And stamps for the ensuing envelopes, thus denying any civil servant without access to a kettle everything but the obvious metadata.
But remember, Team Australia: there is no privacy in team.
Jonathan Green hosts Sunday Extra on Radio National and is the former editor of The Drum. View his full profile here.
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If I was a major crime figure, paedophile, or terrorist, or even aspiring to be, (which, fortunately for me, I'm not, or I wouldn't be writing this) I'd be extremely wary of using the internet, or mobile phones, even landlines, except for perfectly innocuous, everyday type communications..
I suppose I could use it more safely and anonymously at the airport, (not an internet cafe) on a notebook, tablet, or laptop, but I'd probably put it on an encrypted data stick as a file, to send the bulk of it, and receive most replies that way.
I'm not too sure about Virtual Private Networks, and how safe (or not) they are, nor of the benefits of using proxies, but I'm informed that the computers we buy here have inbuilt security deficiencies in their software that an expert could drive a truck through.
Would skyping at an airport be more secure than mobile phones?And they say ignorance is bliss; I don't think so. Am I being too paranoid? Maybe not, in light of recent events.
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http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-27/federal-police-call-for-more-access-to-metadata/5286596
By Josh Bavas
Updated 28 Feb 2014, 7:44am
The Australian Federal Police is calling for more powers to monitor phone and internet data from ordinary Australians, saying a lack of access is letting criminals slip through the cracks.
The AFP's Tim Morris says authorities have been easily retrieving metadata since the agency was first established but the amount of electronic information is now exploding.
Metadata is the information showing who contacted who, from where and for how long but not the content of the correspondence.
"Companies aren't keeping this data necessarily or if they are keeping it, they're keeping it for inconsistent periods of time," Mr Morris said.
"If law enforcement is going to have a chance of keeping up with evolving criminality, then we believe we have to have access to this kind of data; it's absolutely essential."
Interception warrants by organisation
In the 2012/13 financial year, the AFP was granted the highest number of telecommunication interception warrants for named persons.
Australian Crime Commission: 442
Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity: 8
Australian Federal Police: 814
Corruption and Crime Commission - Western Australia: 28
Crime and Misconduct Commission: 26
New South Wales Crime Commission: 234
NSW Police: 288
NT Police: 11
QLD Police: 151
SA Police: 31
TAS Police: 10
VIC Police: 193
WA Police: 268
Intercepting telephone calls or electronic communication requires a court-ordered warrant.
But Mr Morris says metadata is a separate category of surveillance.
"This is not data that contains content of conversations or content of SMSs or contents of emails," he said.
"What we're talking about here is the indicative communications data; the time of the call, the length of the call and who the call was made to."
A Senate Committee is currently evaluating mass surveillance laws as part of a revision of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979.
Last year, the then-federal government shelved plans to retain internet and phone data for at least two years following a public backlash.
At the time, a Parliamentary inquiry into potential reforms of National Security Legislation suggested a wider shake-up of surveillance laws.
Alleged sexual abusers not caught due to lost data: AFP
The AFP says several large investigations have not been solved because it could not access metadata.
In one, the AFP received a number of referrals in relation to Australian internet users allegedly involved in the sexual abuse of children and the production, dissemination and possession of child abuse material.
But more than a third of all possible offenders in a child-exploitation image-sharing network cannot be traced because their internet data was not recorded or retained by the service provider.
In another investigation, the IP address of a mastermind behind a money-laundering syndicate targeting an Australian bank could not be identified because the data was not retained by the carrier.
The AFP says about $80,000 of share investments were sold off from a number of accounts after scammers illegally obtained details of bank accounts that were linked to an online share trader.
The money from the illegal share trades was then transferred into a number of false accounts operated by criminals.
Six people were charged but the AFP says the mastermind escaped and was never tracked down.
Pooled metadata could be 'hacked or leaked'
Jon Lawrence from Electronic Frontiers Australia says the widespread use of smartphones and tablets means the information obtained through metadata could lead to elaborate profiling of individuals.
"The sort of information that's generated here, particularly when looked at in aggregate ... can generate a very, very specific profile on certain people very quickly," he said.
"For example, if you're looking at Twitter communications, the metadata, the information about when and who and where associated with a tweet, is much bigger than the tweet itself."
He says it could also pose a security threat if the information falls into the wrong hands.
"Just simply capturing all this data in one place is risky in the sense that it's open to misuse, it's open to being hacked or leaked," he said.
Greens Senator Scott Ludlam says Australians should be concerned about the amount of information already available to authorities and private companies.
"The policing agencies and the intelligence agencies need to take some responsibility," he said.
"If it's okay to obtain a search warrant to listen in on your phone call, it should be okay to obtain a search warrant to spy on your location and your whole social network.
"Metadata allows for incredibly invasive, real-time snooping of innocent Australians and I don't think it should be available to anybody who wants it unless there's a warrant."
A spokesman for Attorney-General George Brandis says it is too early to comment on possible changes to surveillance laws and his Department is waiting on recommendations from the Senate Committee, which are due in June 2014.
More than 25 countries in Europe have signed up to the Data Retention Directive, requiring companies to store metadata between six months and two years.
In the last financial year, the AFP says it has made about 58,000 requests for metadata from telecommunication companies, about two-thirds of which were to identify the IP addresses of possible criminals. -
http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/731425-U-S-Hospitals-See-Big-Rise-in-Drug-Related-Suicide-Attempts
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Posts 10,690 Yesterday 00:37 U.S. Hospitals See Big Rise in Drug-Related Suicide Attempts
By Steven Reinberg
Spikes noted among young and middle-age adults; experts cite easy access to prescription meds
THURSDAY, Aug. 7, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Drug-related suicide attempts in the United States increased over a recent six-year period, with dramatic increases seen among young and middle-aged adults, health officials reported Thursday.
Overall, suicide attempts involving prescription medications and other drugs jumped by 51 percent among people 12 and older between 2005 and 2011, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
In two reports, the agency examines trends in ER visits for drug-related suicide attempts. The most significant increases occurred among adults younger than 30 -- up 58 percent over the six years studied -- and people between 45 and 64, who experienced a 104 percent spike in drug-related suicide attempts.
"We probably are seeing an increase in overall suicide attempts, and along with that we are also seeing an increase in drug-related suicide attempts," said Peter Delany, director of the agency's Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality.
"People have access to medications, and they are using both prescription and over-the-counter meds," he said. "It is clear that there are more drugs out there."
Dr. Sampson Davis, an emergency room physician at Meadowlands Hospital Medical Center in Secaucus, N.J., agreed. "What we are seeing are the ramifications of the overuse of prescription drugs," he said.
Davis added that the combination of these drugs and alcohol can be lethal.
"Patients who are taking [the painkiller] oxycodone and chasing it with a glass of wine only increase the chances of overdose," he said.
By 2011, young and middle-aged people accounted for about 60 percent of all drug-related suicide attempts seen in emergency rooms, the researchers said.
The significant jump in suicide attempts by middle-age men and women may reflect the aging population as baby boomers enter middle-age, Delany said.
He's concerned that middle-aged people get less attention than teenagers or the elderly who attempt to kill themselves. Many middle-age patients who attempt suicide are released from the emergency room without a follow-up plan, Delany said.
"We know the number one indicator of future suicide attempts and even suicide completion is a previous attempt," he said. "For professionals in the emergency room, it's really important that there be a really good discharge plan and some clear follow-up."
In addition, you have to bring the family in, Davis said. "There really has to be a community effort to help people," he added.
In one report, SAMHSA zeroed in on suicide attempts by people ages 45 to 64. In 2011, 96 percent of emergency room visits for attempted suicide involved the nonmedical use of prescription drugs and over-the-counter medications, the agency found.
These included anti-anxiety and insomnia medications (48 percent), pain relievers (29 percent), and antidepressants (22 percent).
Alcohol accounted for 39 percent of those mid-life suicide attempts and illegal drugs for 11 percent, the report said.
Dr. Eric Collins, an addiction psychiatrist at Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, Conn., said that as people age, they typically use less lethal means to attempt suicide -- "pills versus guns."
Collins said doctors need to be aware if their patients suffer from depression or anxiety. "These are treatable conditions," he said.
But Davis added that mental health services are in short supply. "We need more treatment facilities," he said.
"We also need to decrease the amount of prescription narcotics, sleep and anti-anxiety medications being prescribed," he said. "Doctors aren't to blame, but we must take ownership and responsibility for this."
Analyzing ER visits by age, the SAMHSA researchers found the following:
Treatment of 18- to 29-year-olds for drug-related suicide attempts rose from about 47,500 in 2005 to roughly 75,000 in 2011.
Among people aged 45 to 64, these ER visits increased from about 28,800 to almost 58,800 in those years. Suicide attempts involving drugs doubled for both men and women in this age group, the researchers note.
Overall, there were 228,277 drug-related suicide attempts in 2011, according to the agency.
http://consumer.healthday.com/caregi...ts-690541.html -
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Please consider signing the petition over on change.org:
Note: please bear in mind that change.org seems to be a double-edged sword and signing the petition may open a floodgate of spam! Still, I think in this case it may be worth it.
I tried and failed, probably due to a Javascript problem. It can be helpful to have disposable email addresses at places like hotmail, to minimise spam.
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I'm assuming that you're posting similar threads in all the Aussie cannabis forums at http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en-AU&source=hp&q=forums%3B+cannabis%3B+au%3B+list&gbv=2&oq=forums%3B+cannabis%3B+au%3B+list&gs_l=heirloom-hp.12...4002.12074.0.13884.8.8.0.0.0.0.1051.2862.4-1j1j1j1.4.0....0...1ac.1.34.heirloom-hp..5.3.2053.57YT0Dtzd_U
I'll post about this tomorrow at aussielegalhighs.com.au & legalhighsforum.com.au and leave the rest to you.
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http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/731333-Goodbye-to-the-Godfather-of-Psychedelics-Sasha-Shulgin-Now-“Tripping-in-the-Cosmos”
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Bluelighter
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Join Date Jun 2013
Posts 176 Yesterday 02:54 Originally Posted by University of Berkeley Alumni Magazine
Goodbye to the Godfather of Psychedelics: Sasha Shulgin Now “Tripping in the Cosmos”
By Laura B. Childs
They came by the hundreds to Berkeley this past weekend to pay their respects to the man they called Sasha—the Berkeley-bred chemist nicknamed the Godfather of Psychedelics. Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin, a controversial iconoclast who pioneered the use of psychedelics for self discovery and synthesized Ecstasy in the 1970s and some 200 variations of it in his lifetime, died of cancer on June 2 at age 88.
“He was the first scientist who was a chemist, who worked at Berkeley, who had impeccable credentials, and yet he believed what I believed,” said an attendee known as Mr. Natural, himself the subject of a 1960s counterculture comic. Confined to a wheelchair, Mr. Natural took BART for the first time in 30 years Saturday to attend the public memorial for his old friend. Traveling from San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury neighborhood—where the elderly music teacher/artist/scientist spends most of his time—he joined the throng filling the seats at the Berkeley Community Theater.
“Sasha’s work is by all objective criteria worthy of the very highest academic honors, Nobel Prize kind of stuff, but such honors are impossible as we struggle as a society to learn how to balance the complexities that are stirred up by the power of psychedelics,” said UC Berkeley neurobiology lecturer David Presti during the hour-long memorial service. “It was too big to be done in a multimillion dollar laboratory. It instead required an alchemist’s den, a courageous spirit, a careful focus of intention, and a goodly dose of mystical insight. Then the stuff of legend happened. Thank you, Sasha.”
The turnout included scientists and artists, professionals and idlers, the young and the old. Some dressed to the nines, others in shorts, sandals and socks. Many long haired, most grey-haired. All personally touched by Shulgin’s work.
“Today I am a vice president at Google. Thirty years ago, I was a kid in the Midwest who knew there must be something more,” said Bradley Horowitz, one of the speakers. He said his journey began with psychedelic chemistry. “When I think of Sasha’s work, I think not only of the brilliant chemistry but also the contribution in legitimizing these experiences, making them supported, shedding the stigma, shedding the misunderstanding of society and making them open and available to people who are genuinely curious and want to know who they are. So on behalf of one kid in the Midwest and all of us who know, thank you.”
For years, Shulgin’s work was isolated to his backyard laboratory. He once had a strong relationship with the Drug Enforcement Administration, often assisting with drug trials and providing expertise on the subject. But that changed when his compounds moved from the laboratory to the rave party scene in the 1980s. Reports of bad reactions, fatal overdoses and negative long-term health effects fueled political outcry. Some critics blamed Shulgin.
In 1986, U.S. authorities classified Ecstasy, known as MDMA, as a Schedule 1 drug, which has “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” The DEA cut all ties with Shulgin. The biochemist spent the rest of his life defending his compounds, publishing countless papers about their therapeutic effects. He remained a dichotomous figure. The New York Times described him as “both a rogue and a wizard, a legitimate scientist and a counterculture hero.” The Guardian wrote: “It was not Shulgin’s intention to launch a global drug culture, nor to have that compound consumed with such abandon by millions of people. But it was his connection with this drug that made him a folk hero for the counterculture, known as the “godfather of ecstasy”, and a folk devil for many outside it.”
Shulgin cautioned about the repercussions of psychedelics. “Use them with respect as to the transformations they can achieve, and you have an extraordinary research tool,” he wrote. “Go banging about with a psychedelic drug for a Saturday night turn-on, and you can get into a really bad place.”
Family friends, colleagues and kin painted a picture of a hero, a savior. Shulgin applied science to develop a deeper sense of spirituality. He spent his life seeking truth. Shulgin’s research assistant, Tania Manning, explained how he taught her to “make friends with my shadow.” The message from Ricci and Jack Coddington, who traveled from Hawaii to attend the service: “We are forever grateful. Mahalo.” Scott Bodarky compared the late chemist to Socrates and Galileo, calling him the last Renaissance man, a “citizen scientist working in a shed out in the yard fueled by his curiosity, the love of the truth.”
Mr. Natural also remembers him as having a dirty old boy’s humor. The oft-smiling Shulgin “really liked double-entendre and triple-entendres and if it bordered on the edge of something sexy, that was even better,” he recalled. He loved puns, palindromes, limericks and wordplays.
Mariavittoria Mangini remembered one of his favorite jokes, about Gandhi, who walked barefoot, ate very little and suffered from bad breath. “This made him a super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis,” she delivered the punchline, which elicited a roar of laughter from the audience—a reaction generated less from the bad pun itself than from the nostalgia for his sense of mirth.
But most of all, Shulgin loved his Ann, his second wife, with whom he shared the latter half of his life. Together they wrote PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story, an autobiography/psychedelic recipe book. Several speeches mentioned Shulgin’s everlasting love for his wife, noting how he would walk out to greet her every time she arrived home.
After the ceremony, Ann sat at the center of a courtyard gazebo from which white linen blew in the wind. She was surrounded by her children, grandchildren and close family friends, while guests feasted on a potluck. Melodies from a duo of sitars wafted through the air. Inside there was a traditional tea service.
Shulgin’s work has always combined spirituality and science. Mr. Natural sees it as combining the old world and the new world; he recounted how Shulgin would seek out shamans and witch doctors to see if the drug he synthesized matched one that they had been using for centuries. Where many chemists might look down on “soft” scientists such as psychiatrists, Shulgin insisted hard and soft science went hand in hand.
He is credited with introducing MDMA to psychologists in the late 1970s. John Harrison, an addiction treatment specialist from San Diego and Shulgin memorial volunteer, said he sometimes uses psychedelics in his practice. “Some people think it’s snake oil,” he explained before the service, “but it’s in you.”
The memorial’s participants noted that although Shulgin was no longer with them, he would be be forever be immortalized in his compounds.
“It breaks my heart that we’re missing him now, but somehow it seems that Sasha Shulgin is now tripping in the cosmos somewhere,” said Paul Daley, a research chemist at UC Berkeley who worked closely with Shulgin. “Somehow I also have the feeling that I’ll be running into him again. I’ll probably recognize him in whatever form he’s taking, so I just want to let Sasha know, I’m keeping my eye out.”
Posted on August 4, 2014 - 10:15am
http://alumni.berkeley.edu/californi...n-now-tripping-
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Transnational criminal networks target Pacific; Australia looks to expand jobs to counter criminal elements
https://au.news.yahoo.com/a/24658330/transnational-criminal-networks-target-pacific-australia-looks-to-expand-jobs-to-counter-criminal-elements/
By Australia Network Political Editor Catherine McGrath August 7, 2014, 8:38 pm
Australian law enforcement agencies are concerned that criminal networks are increasingly targeting Pacific nations.
A meeting in Canberra to discuss the issue has heard an outlawed Australian motorcycle gang has set up a branch in Fiji as it expands its illegal activities.
The CEO of the Australian Crime Commission, Chris Dawson, and Australian Federal Police (AFP) Deputy Commissioner Michael Phelan said authorities are looking at increasing cooperation with Pacific nations to address the growing crisis.
"Eighteen months ago one of the outlaw motor cycle groups known as the Rebels established a chapter in Fiji, not there just to ride motor bikes," Mr Dawson told the seminar.
"They are described as an organised criminal network and are a key focus of law enforcement... they have expanded footprint globally and Pacific is one area of that.
"No doubt that is a concern to the Pacific states."
Hosted by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the panel discussion also featured Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Brett Mason, and the Regional Representative for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Jeremy Douglas.
Pacific used as 'staging point' for organised crime
The Pacific is now a route to move drugs from the Americas.
Mr Dawson says recent arrests have been made over the alleged importation of large quantities of drugs that have transited through the Pacific to Australia.
The AFP is concerned about the lack of the rule of law and corruption as a driver of crime in the Pacific.
AFP Deputy Commissioner Michael Phelan says Australia is the market for drugs and the Pacific has become a "staging point" because of its proximity.
"If you look at the region and you look at organised crime as a business, then the market for serious and organised crime in our part of the world is us, is Australia," he said.
"It is the biggest market for drugs and the source of capital for organised crime. The closest to us and part of our front door is the Pacific.
"The only reason the Pacific is used as a staging point for either narcotics importation or the facilitation of money laundering and so on is because of the porous nature of the Pacific and issues such as the rule of law.
"We see organised crime specifically exploiting those opportunities. Opportunities of corruption, opportunities of the proximity to Australia, for example you bring bulk (drugs) into Pacific islands then use small craft into Australia."
UNODC wants to engage Pacific nations in programs it runs that can assist in countering transnational crime.
Its regional representative for South-East Asia and the Pacific Jeremy Douglas says the UN can support local governments.
Australia looking to help empower Pacific nations
The Australian Government is considering expanding employment opportunities for Pacific Islanders in Australia to help grow economies and provide a counter to criminal pressures.
Senator Brett Mason says that without economic growth the Pacific will remain a target for international crime syndicates.
"What you want is to empower Pacific Island nations," he said."They want themselves and their own people to be empowered.
"We already have a seasonal workers program here in Australia where Pacific Island nations' workers come and work often seasonally picking fruit and vegetables and they send back remittances to their nations. That has worked very well so far.
"In the past there has been a lot of discussion from all parties in Australia about extending that more broadly and that will be part of the ongoing discussion,I think, in the Pacific."
Senator Mason says labour mobility programs in Australia could help build economic viability in the Pacific.
"It is part of a conversation about transnational crime more broadly that we are having in the Pacific."
Senator Mason says it is a complicated issue due to immigration and labour laws and no timetable or targets have been set. -
4 Aug 2014
Source: Columbian, The (WA)
Website: http://www.columbian.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/92
Author: Jim Kennedy
STATS ASCERTAIN PROHIBITION FAILED
In a Los Angeles Times article appearing in The Columbian on July 29, "Pot: U.S. sees profound cultural shift," Stuart Gitlow, president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine, is quoted thusly: "When you look back at Prohibition, what you see is that per-capita use of alcohol dropped by more than 50 percent; as a result of that, alcohol-related deaths dropped considerably as well. Prohibition was an enormous public health success." This is where the adage about not believing everything you read fits.
According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, alcohol-related deaths increased during that period from 1 per 100,000 in 1920 to 4 per 100,000 in 1928. Also, crime was rampant during that period as is indicated by this quote from Henry Hilfers, the then-president of the New Jersey State Federation of Labor ( before the Senate, May 1926 ): "The Volstead Act has been the direct result of creating more crime in the state of New Jersey than there ever has been before."
Shame on Gitlow for perpetuating a falsehood. Alcohol prohibition was an abysmal failure. I'm rather bemused it appears nothing was learned from that catastrophe.
Jim Kennedy
Vancouver
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I've been watching the TV documentary series "Prohibition", which clearly showed that it was a monumental failure, that in New York alcohol use actually increased, police and politicians were corrupted wholesale, ogranised crime / the Mafia became institutionalised, and many other people also went blind from wood alcohol (methanol) in bad liquor (which is one of the things that's currently occurring in Bali, and the rest of Indonesia, from Arak, which often is extended with methanol).
It actually began from racist ideology; the white Anglo-Saxon protestants organised politically and passed the Volstead Act to repress the Irish catholics and Germans, who often liked a drink. A fascinating series, with parallels to drug prohibition; another, even bigger, resounding failure; it's on SBS1 & SBS HD at 1.50 a.m. on Fridays, but check out your local guide.
As the lady said many decades ago, following its repeal: "You can't legislate morals".
"Those who don't learn from history are condemned to repeat it" -
- Fewer Teenagers Are Using Pot Now That Colorado Has Legalized ItDENVER (Reuters) – The number of Colorado high school students who believe marijuana is harmful has fallen since the state legalized recreational pot, while teen use of the drug has declined slightly during the same time, health officials said on Thursday.Colorado and Washington became the first U.S. states to legalise the possession and use of recreational marijuana by adults in ballot measures approved by voters in 2012.Retail marijuana stores opened in Colorado on Jan. 1 and in Washington last month. Alaska, Oregon and the District of Columbia will vote on legalization initiatives in the fall.The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said that in a survey it conducted of 40,000 teens, 54 per cent believe use of the drug poses “a moderate to serious risk” to their health, down from 58 per cent polled before the vote to allow recreational pot sales.The survey found that one in five students admitted using marijuana within the last 30 days, down from 22 per cent of those surveyed in 2011. One-third said they have tried pot.Dr. Larry Wolk, the Colorado health department’s chief medical officer, said in a statement that more young people will likely experiment with pot because of legalization.But cigarette smoking by teens is declining at a faster rate than marijuana use, he noted, due to efforts to curb its use.“As with tobacco, youth education prevention campaigns will help ensure adult legalization of marijuana … does not impact the health of Colorado kids,” Wolk said. “We know what works to protect young people from unhealthy substances.”Bob Doyle, chairman of the Colorado chapter of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), a group opposed to legalization, said his organisation shares the health department’s concerns about “the negative impact” pot is having on the state.“The good news is the majority of communities in Colorado have a ban or moratorium on commercial marijuana businesses, and we hope that trend continues,” Doyle said.Cont -
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This refers to an earlier post: "Mystery surrounds THREE DAY police 'drug' raid on 43-year-old light plane after it made bizarre journey from the US to Australia via Guam and the Philippines"
- Mark Morri Crime Editor
- The Daily Telegraph
- August 07, 2014 12:00AM
Police go over a US-registered Swearingen Merlin 3 twin-turbo prop plane at the Illawarra Airport, Albion Park / Picture: Dean Lewins/AAP
Pilot Bernard Stevermuer / Picture: Simon Bullard.
- Pilot, 43, charged with being part of crime gang
- Police broke up ‘sophisticated drug network’
- Eight-seater plane was bought in U.S. for $400,000
- Flew around world before arriving at Port Kembla
A TINY regional airport 80km south of Sydney was used by a major international crime syndicate to import guns and drugs for distribution throughout southwest Sydney, police alleged yesterday.
Port Kembla court heard the syndicate allegedly spent more than $400,000 buying an eight-seater plane in the US. It was then allegedly flown around the world before entering Australia at Port Hedland.
It ended up at the Illawarra Regional Airport at Albion Park where it was seized by police
Wollongong pilot, Bernard Stevemuer, 43, has been charged with being part of a criminal organisation and dealing with the proceeds of crime.
He made a brief appearance yesterday to have his bail conditions altered.
His part in the syndicate was allegedly uncovered during an investigation by NSW detectives from the Middle Eastern Organised Crime squad which began in April.
“Through an ongoing investigation police were able to establish that this syndicate was under control and direction of Darren Rispen, known as Buzz, and Yousseff Sammak, known as Joey,’’ the documents said.
“It was established (they) were responsible for orchestrating an established, sophisticated well-respected drug manufacture and distribution network operating throughout southwest Sydney.’’
The pair were also alleged to have links to outlaw motor cycle gangs.
Illawarra Regional Airport at Albion Park, where the drugs were imported. Picture: Simon Bullard
Police documents allege the syndicate used Stevemuer and a finance company, Mortgage Kingdom at Five Dock, to purchase the plane in the US which was flown to Malaysia before heading into Australia.
“It is alleged that the accused, along with a another man were responsible by the syndicate to obtain the plane from US into Australia for the purpose of facilitating the (supply of) prohibited drugs and firearms.
“It is alleged this importation took place around Friday, June 27, 2014.’’
Port Kembla Police Station and the local courthouse. Picture: Supplied
It was also alleged Stevemeuer appeared to come into a large amount of money and offered to buy a business at the Illawarra airport for $1.5 million.
The sale fell through when he wanted to pay for the first instalment with $300,000 in cash but allegedly would not tell the vendor where the money came from. On July 8 police raided the airport, arresting Stevememuer and impounding the plane.
Police claim they also found cash inside his vehicle, which was near the hangar.
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Updated list of sources for forum members to select posting topics from.
in Chill Space
Posted
As stated previously, increasing ill health is taking its toll, and will soon prevent me from posting in the forums, so today will be my last day of regular posts, although I may still make an appearance occasionally, when I'm able to.
So it'll be up to you to go on, and if anyone wants to use them, here is a list of my main sources:
bluelight.org
drugs-forum.com
stopthedrugwar.org
mapinc.org/drugnews/index.htm
tripme.co.nz/forums
naturalnews.com
Google Alerts: (enter "Google Alerts" as a search term): synthetic cannabis; legal highs; illicit drugs, Australia