Blog no Michi

Back today from a week of traveling, conferencing, and taking a bazillion photos at the conference. (about 2 GB worth of photos at about 5Mb apiece. That's quite a few photos.) There's no place like home, especially here on our ranch in Western Oregon.

Recently I find I am being inundated with spam again. Not from Blogger.com or this blog, but from other sources that have gotten my many email addresses and are sending me approximately 100 spam emails per hour. I've set up captcha's on my websites' forms, but that's not the problem. The problem is just getting a bazillion spams to my valid email addresses I can't get rid of.

I have Spam Assassin turned on, on the server. I am now looking at going through various anti-spam solutions (IHateSpam from www.sunbeltsoftware.com and MailWasher, to name but two) on my own computer. I have already set up numerous anti-spam filters, which catch some of it, through Outlook Express.

About spammers, my feelings on this remind me of the words of an angry mob: "Hanging's too good for them!" When I think of how much time is wasted around the world every day because of these idiots....

Your thoughts on this?

Labels: Spam

Willie Sutton was a bank robber and all-around thief. He was the original "Slick Willie" (long before Bill Clinton earned that appellation) and Willie was also known as "The Actor" because he played various roles during robberies, showing up as a mailman at one or as a telegram delivery clerk at another. The press made a couple of Willie's better lines famous. Here are two of this most popular quotes:

“I have always found you get a lot more in this world with a kind word and a gun than you do with just a kind word.”

and

When asked why he robbed banks, he stated:

"Because that's where the money is."

Willie spent a lot of his life in jail, escaped several times, was always quickly re-captured, and after his final release from prison for health reasons, he even made a commercial in 1970 for photo identity cards for a bank.

Even career criminals can have a wicked sense of humor.

Labels: quote, Willie Sutton

This video has a decent interview on Hannity's America, talking about the problems with school shootings and linking them to psychiatric drugs

I harp on this because it is such a major issue, one of the defining issues of our times. The 60's had Vietnam, the 70's had disco, the 80's had bad hair - in the 2000's, we have school shootings.

Labels: psych drugs, school shootings

Generation Rx is a new film by Kevin Miller on the dangers of mind-altering drugs. It will be released later this year. You can read a review of the film on the News Target website. (Click that link.)

According to the review, the film "delivers a devastating blow to the psychiatric drug pushers, FDA puppets and Big Pharma marketing fraudsters who have sold an entire nation on an absurd idea that turns out to be a grand medical hoax: that millions of children have 'chemical imbalances' in their brains requiring treatment with patented, profitable pharmaceutical drugs like Prozac and Ritalin." Which we know from experience to be true.

It's a rave review of a film that features interviews with many notable doctors, authors and health experts, including Dr. Julian Whitaker, Dr. Fred Baughman, Robert Whitaker and many others. According to this review, the film "weaves a terrifying tale of criminal conspiracy, the mass abandonment of medical ethics, and the routine betrayal of an entire generation by an industry that seems fixated on the idea of profits at any cost."

You can find out how you can view this film by signing up here: http://www.winhs.org/members/index.htm

Labels: Big Pharma, Documentary, Generation Rx, Prozac, psychiatry, Ritalin

CCHR Gets it right again:

Autopsy Results Confirm Omaha Shooter Was Yet Another Killer Under the Influence of Psychiatric Drugs

Watchdog Urges for Investigation Into Psychiatric Drug-Induced Teen Shootings

LOS ANGELES: The mental health watchdog group Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) is calling for a federal investigation into the link between psychiatric drugs and senseless teen shootings, following autopsy results confirming 19-year-old Nebraska mall shooter Robert Hawkins was under the influence of the “anti-anxiety” drug Valium when he killed eight people and wounded five before committing suicide last month. Hawkins is the eleventh recent teen shooter under the influence of psychiatric drugs, resulting in 48 dead and 89 wounded. Many of these drug-induced shootings occurred in schoolyards, including the massacres by Eric Harris at Columbine, Colorado and Jeff Weise at Red Lake, Minnesota
Another notorious figure, John Hinckley, who shot President Reagan and three secret service agents in a 1981 assassination attempt, was under the influence of the same drug as Robert Hawkins—Valium—which has been documented to cause violence, including murder and suicide. Hinckley was prescribed the drugs by his psychiatrist, and later admitted that the drugs turned him into a killer.
Another 19-year-old, James Wilson, killed two 8-year-old girls and wounded several others with his revolver at a South Carolina elementary school in 1988, after seeing psychiatrists and taking psychiatric drugs including Valium since he was 14. Californian Lynwood Drake III also took Valium before he shot and killed six people and himself in 1992.
Clinical psychopharmacologist and psychiatrist Dr. Peter Breggin wrote in his book, Brain Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry (1997) that “benzodiazepines [a class of drugs that includes Valium and Xanax] can produce a wide variety of abnormal mental responses and hazardous behavioral abnormalities, including rebound anxiety and insomnia, psychosis, paranoia, violence, antisocial acts, depression, and suicide.”
Although it is not yet known if Hawkins was prescribed the Valium found in his system (something investigators are looking into), what is known is that a staggering $265,000 in state funds were spent on Hawkins’ behavior and addiction “treatment.” This expensive state “care” included four years in and out of treatment centers, psych evaluations, regular therapy and extensive prescriptions for powerful drugs including Zoloft, Adderall and Effexor, warned to cause “homicidal ideation.” This case clearly refutes the mental health industry's standard negation of psychiatric drug-induced violence--the claim the patient did not get enough treatment, used to clamor for increased funding.
CCHR, concerned that most parents and consumers are unaware of the risk of homicide and suicide connected with these drugs, has launched a striking series of three PSAs warning of these side effects. The PSAs can be viewed at www.cchr.org/psas/. CCHR hopes that these PSAs serve to inform the public about the dangers of these drugs, and encourage support for a federal investigation into the link between these drugs and senseless teen violence.
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights is an international psychiatric watchdog group co-founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus, to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights. Contact CCHR's Media Department at 800-869-2247 or humanrights@cchr.org.

Labels: CCHR, Omaha shooting, psych drugs

A bit of satire on the subject of the necessity of banning guns.

While it's not up to the standards of "A Modest Proposal" it is still worth reading and quite droll.

Labels: ban guns, satire

Here is one testimonial from a teacher who went through the continuing education at Eastern Oklahoma State University, learning the truth about drug rehabilitation:

Narconon is a needed program, one that I feel can help with the drug problem in the state of Oklahoma. Things that I learned were great, easy, and informative. This workshop is the BEST workshop I’ve ever been involved in. The teaching was wonderful. I walked away with skills that I can use on a personal level as well as with clients that I have that do have drug problems. Thank you Narconon for coming to our state!

M.M First Steps Program Course





I have to tell you that I almost backed out of coming to this seminar. I just didn’t know if I could sit through another boring seminar--------and for two whole days! I told myself that I would be receiving 15 CEU’s,and the seminar was being held fairly close to home, the cost was not too expensive so I came------and now I can’t believe that I almost missed this experience. I was very surprised and delighted with this seminar. I learned so much about addiction and the process of overcoming addiction. All this information was new and innovative for me. Narconon handles this process of overcoming addiction in a simple step-by-step process that works. I learned the natural remedies to help overcome the physical addiction, as well as process of of re-learning to assist clients in dealing with the real world when they go home, this was a GREAT experience.

S.W. First Steps Program Course.

The Narconon drug rehabilitation experience is unlike others in that each part of it is simple, it works, and is extremely effective.

Desiree Cardoso of Narconon Arrowhead recently taught the first ever college course for continuing education units that is based on the drug rehab program developed by L. Ron Hubbard. Here's a photo of the graduates.




The college where this continuing education in drug rehab technology is being taught is Eastern Oklahoma State University. Apparently three courses have been accredited where counselors can come and be trained in workable drug rehab technology.

Desiree Cardoso is a Master Addictions Counselor and Master of Education.

I have several friends working at Narconon Arrowhead. They do an incredible job of getting people off of drugs. If you are losing a loved one to drugs, I invite you to call them at 1-800-468-6933.

The first course, according to Desiree, is a course where they unlearn some of the things that they've been taught about drug addiction. One of the first things they learn is that it is not a disease. Then they learn the real handling for drug addiction.

Labels: drug addiction, drug rehab, Narconon

My gal Marie Gale recently published a book about labeling.

The book got a great review today on About.com from the Candles and Soap About.com editor, David Fisher.

The book is a very comprehensive and helpful guide to how to label soap and cosmetics, for the handcrafted soapmaker. Big corporations making soap (usually making detergents, not actually soaps at all), have teams of lawyers on retainer or in-house to help them cope with the many requirements of labeling soaps and cosmetics. There are so many regulations that it is quite possible to be in non-compliance with one or more of the regulations, despite one's best intentions, which noncompliance can put the small soap maker at legal risk.

So Marie's book, while not a replacement for a lawyer's advice, will certainly help many small soapmakers become conversant with and more likely to be compliant with the rules and regulations. These rules and regs are buried in among other non-applicable laws and regulations, so Marie dug them out and organized them by industry and state. It's a very useful book. She has been getting and delivering many orders for the book since its first publication in May of this year (2007).

There was also a very good review of Marie's book in the Saponifier magazine, which she will have up on her website soon. You can only read Saponifier Magazine online if you have a subscription, so there's no link directly to the article about her book.

Labels: about.com, labeling, Marie Gale, Saponifier, soap maker