By Michaela Whitton

As promised earlier in the year, the Conservative government is granting British spy agencies explicit rights to hack into smartphones and computers. Set to be introduced by Parliament next month, the forthcoming Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (DRIPA) will provide a legal basis for intelligence agencies to hack into computerised systems throughout the U.K.

Own a smartphone? Ever buy things online? Use social networks? Chances are that your data has passed through U.K. Government Communication Headquarters (GCHQ) surveillance programmes — particularly if you are a foreign national.

According to the Independent, spy agencies will be able to take over a phone remotely and install software that has the ability to examine your data at any time. Rushed through Parliament in July 2014, the new bill enables the Home Secretary to order communication companies to retain emails, calls, texts, and web activity of everyone in the U.K. for 12 months. Similar powers could also be used to target other databases, such as medical, travel, and financial records — including the records of those whose communications are deemed confidential, such as doctors, lawyers, journalists, and MPs.

The forthcoming bill comes as no surprise to activists who have long condemned the British government’s mass surveillance techniques exposed by Edward Snowden.

Privacy International has taken British spy agencies to court over bulk data-harvesting. Earlier this year, Deputy Director Eric King, said: “Secretly ordering companies to hand over their records in bulk, to be data-mined at will, without independent sign off or oversight, is a loophole in the law the size of a double-decker bus.”

He added, “Bulk collection of data about millions of people who have no ties to terrorism, nor suspected of any crime is plainly wrong. That our government admits most of those in the databases are ‘unlikely to be of intelligence value’ but that the practice has been allowed to continue, shows just how off course we really are.”

During a recent interview with Amnesty International, whistleblower Edward Snowden was asked what he would say to those who say they have nothing to hide and mass surveillance doesn’t matter:

“It’s not about having nothing to hide, it’s about being you. It’s about being friends with who you want to be friends with, without worrying about what it looks like on paper or inside some private record in some dark government vault,” he said.

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It’s about realising there’s a reason we close the bathroom door. There’s a reason we don’t want the police to have a video camera where they can watch us while we’re sitting in the bubble bath. There’s a reason everybody gets so concerned about the Samsung TV that’s recording what you say in your living room, and then sending it to third parties. This is what you’re going to get. You’re not going to watch TV any more. TV is going to watch you.

Asked if he had any regrets, he said he had one — that he should have come forward sooner.

“Had I done so, I think we would have a much greater degree of liberty in our online lives. Because the biggest challenge we face in reforming these surveillance programs is that, once the money has been spent, and once the practices have been institutionalized in secret, without the public knowing, it’s very difficult to change them,” he said.

This article (UK Government to Allow British Spies to “Legally” Hack into Everyone’s Phones) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Michaela Whitton and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Image credit: Defence Images. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

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By John Vibes

UK Police are asking the government for new surveillance powers to be able to view the Internet search history of every single person in the country.

Richard Berry, the National Police Chiefs’ Council spokesman told The Guardian that “We want to police by consent, and we want to ensure that privacy safeguards are in place. But we need to balance this with the needs of the vulnerable and the victims. We essentially need the ‘who, where, when and what’ of any communication – who initiated it, where were they and when did it happened. And a little bit of the ‘what’, were they on Facebook, or a banking site, or an illegal child-abuse image-sharing website?”

“Five years ago, [a suspect] could have physically walked into a bank and carried out a transaction. We could have put a surveillance team on that but now, most of it is done online. We just want to know about the visit,” he added.

It is likely that police are already looking at your online activity, but just want the power to do it legally. As we learned from whistleblower Edward Snowden, governments are very interested what their citizens are doing online, and they do have the technology to spy on every telephone call and Internet communication.

Police in the UK have been attempting to reach for these powers through legislation for years, but they have been blocked on multiple occasions. This new effort proves that they will not be giving up on getting legal permission for their spying programs.

MP David Davis told The Guardian “It’s extraordinary they’re asking for this again, they are overreaching and there is no proven need to retain such data for a year.”

Home Secretary Theresa May will announce the specifics of the plan during a meeting about the Government’s new surveillance bill in the House of Commons on Wednesday.

“I’ve said many times before that it is not possible to debate the balance between privacy and security, including the rights and wrongs of intrusive powers and the oversight arrangements that govern them without also considering the threats that we face as a country,” May said.

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“They include not just terrorism from overseas and home-grown in the UK, but also industrial, military and state espionage.They include not just organized criminality, but also the proliferation of once physical crimes online, such as child sexual exploitation. And the technological challenges that that brings. In the face of such threats we have a duty to ensure that the agencies whose job it is to keep us safe have the powers they need to do the job,” she added.

The fearmongers in the UK are government are hoping that the bill will pass this time around, ushering in a new era of legalized mass surveillance.

John Vibes writes for True Activist and is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war.

This article (Police Will Be Able To Read Everyone’s Internet Search History Under New Plan) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TrueActivist.com.

By Melissa Dykes

While the police and surveillance state here seemingly gets worse all the time, Britain’s is about to take the Orwellian Nightmare cake.

The Draft Investigatory Powers Bill currently being considered there would allow British intelligence agencies to take over children’s toys and spy on people with them. From inside their own homes. The bill would also force Internet providers to assist in the “legal” hackings.

So long as the toy is Internet-connected, it could theoretically be remotely hacked.

Via the Telegraph:

“A range of devices that have been in the news recently, in relation to a hack, are children’s toys, that children can interact with,” Mr Walker said.

“These are devices that may sit in a child’s bedroom but are accessible.

“In theory, the manufacturer of those products could be the subject of a warrant to enable equipment interference with those devices.

“So the potential extent, I think, is something that needs to be carefully considered.”

Little Katy’s “Smart” Barbie… spying on you in your house for MI6.

The same would go for any “smart” appliances in a person’s home as well.

Can you imagine living in a world where law enforcement agencies can hack your home’s “smart thermostat” with voice recognition software to spy on you inside of your home?

And if bills like this — which give up liberty for security — are being considered and will likely pass in the UK, it’s only a matter of time before we see this in America, too.

In fact, let’s be honest with ourselves. All of this is probably happening already regardless, but the fact that it is being legally sanctioned and put right in people’s faces, however, is mind-boggling.

Related

• Google Patents Creepy New Toys That Spy on Your Kids, Control Smart Devices in Your Home


• Living in a World Where Your Appliances Spy on You


• LG Promises to Stop Spying on People with Its Smart TV

Melissa Dykes is a writer, researcher, and analyst for The Daily Sheeple and a co-creator of Truthstream Media with Aaron Dykes, a site that offers teleprompter-free, unscripted analysis of The Matrix we find ourselves living in. Melissa also co-founded Nutritional Anarchy with Daisy Luther of The Organic Prepper, a site focused on resistance through food self-sufficiency. Wake the flock up!

By Nicholas West

The global drone arms race continues to heat up as nation after nation tries to keep pace with what the U.S. military has initiated.

It is thought that the number of countries now possessing surveillance drones has topped 90, with more than 20 countries having weaponized drones. As more systems come on line, naturally the capabilities of those already in the race will need upgrading along the way. This is leading to a “drone war” scenario that experts continue to warn about. Moreover, the rise of Artificial Intelligence as part of the future battlefield could lead to computer systems completely breaking away from human control.

The latest push to integrate drones onto the battlefield and prepare for a possible future where drone meets drone, sans humans, comes from Great Britain’s Royal Navy.

The Mirror reports that a large-scale drill will commence in October off the Scottish coast. It has been dubbed “Unmanned Warrior 2016” and is to include a range of robotic craft in sea and sky, and on land. While it is being downplayed as a place for defense contractors to market or solicit their wares, it is made clear that it is a demonstration of current capabilities and a projection for what might be required in the future. And of course tech firms (and allies) are welcome to “take part.”

The Navy hopes the exercise will “demonstrate British innovation and shine a spotlight on British industry” in a “tactically relevant environment”.

It has invited the manufacturing firms behind the state-of-the-art weapons – as well as NATO member countries – to take part in the “realistic work-out”.

….

In January, Commander Peter Pipkin, the Navy’s Fleet Robotics Officer, told a conference in Portsmouth how the “robot wars” exercise was not a “bidding process”.

Instead, “what we are seeking to achieve is an event that re-shapes the market to provide new opportunities for everybody and shows UK industry advancement in this area”, he said.

This drill is actually part of a much larger one that is held twice per year – Exercise Joint Warrior – the largest military exercise in Europe. The integration of unmanned war machines would seem to indicate the clear direction for the future battlefield.

In actuality, the future was well planned out long ago for just this type of scenario. Regular readers might recall a combat system called MUSIC that was brought to light in 2011. It was to be a fusion of multiple unmanned platforms slated to extend across the different branches of the U.S. military – essentially playing a concert of war between the aerial, ground and sea-based drones of the Army, Air Force, Marines, and Navy:

Not only is MUSIC helping shape the future of CAB units and the Army but its creating connections across joint boundaries to include the Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, said Maj. Gen. William T. Crosby, the Program Executive Office, Aviation.

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Once again, we see that U.S. systems have been acknowledged as the spur for other countries (even allies) to achieve the best level of dominance that they can. And, as you will hear in the video below, this particular genie is never going back in the bottle … at least if the militaries of the world continue to extract outrageous levels of funding for their toys.

It appears that we are indeed swiftly heading toward a future where drones will network with one another through sea, sky and land initiating war and defending against it. The only question that remains is for how much longer humans will remain part of that architecture.

Hat Tip: ZenGardner.com

Image Credit

Nicholas West writes for ActivistPost.com. This article may be freely shared in part or in full with author attribution and source link.

By Michaela Whitton

Billions of photos are shared on popular mobile app, Snapchat, every day. The messaging network, used mainly by teens and young adults, allows users to add a lens graphic or doodle over their personal images and instantly share them to hundreds of followers. Once the company server detects the material has been viewed or has expired, the image evaporates after 10 seconds. Due to the self-destructing nature of the images, the quick and easy-to-use app is rumoured to be popular for sexting and the exchange of explicit images.

But like anything on the Web, quick fingers can screenshot anything. Reassurances from Snapchat that senders will be notified if the app detects a screen grab offer little consolation to users. As a result, British authorities have taken things a step further by issuing a severe warning to those thinking of saving the sexy snaps (authorities have also attempted to force apps with encryption capabilities, like Snapchat, to share private data them with them).

The Independent reports that users caught screen-grabbing images and sharing them without the owner’s consent could be sued and face jail time. Under U.K. copyright law, it is illegal to copy an image and make it available to the public without consent. The original owner can sue anyone who does this for copyright infringement.

In addition, those caught saving and sharing ‘raunchy’ snaps could be looking at a much more serious crime. Those convicted of violating Section 33 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 — which deems it an offence to disclose private sexual photographs and films with intent to cause distress — could face up to two years behind bars.

According to a Channel 4 News investigation, Generation Sex, the sharing of explicit pictures has become normal teenage behaviour in the U.K. “I get asked for naked pictures…at least two or three times a week,” one 15-year-old girl said.

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Jon Brown of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) said the investigation uncovered a “very regular and normal” consumption of hardcore adult pornography by 13-16 year olds. He said the sharing of explicit sexual imagery via photos and video clips is now extremely normal, adding, “I think it’s important to recognise what was previously regarded as unusual, concerning, or sensationalist, now has in fact become the norm.”

While the U.K. government’s crackdown may be a step forward in punishing those guilty of sharing other people’s messages without their consent, what about those that go undetected among the billions shared each day? As a cautionary measure, it would be wise for users to think twice before sending images they wouldn’t want everyone to see.

This article (You Can Now Be Put in Jail For Taking A Screenshot With Your Phone) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Michaela Whitton and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

By Jon Rappoport

We have to start with Brexit, which scored a victory last night. Britain leaves the EU. Bang. Other European countries are ready to put the same referendum up for vote. And George Soros is making money from having invested in gold earlier in the month. Naturally. The vulture never sleeps.

Speaking of money making money, the “hysterical aftershocks” in trading markets, right after the Brexit victory was projected, are all synthetic and artificial manipulations, laid on to prove a point: see what happens when a country defects from the New Order? Meanwhile, the people who had real jobs yesterday still have them today. Life goes on. Britain will still be able to engage in trade with other countries, despite Obama’s warning that they’ll have to stand in the back of the line to make deals with the US. Nonsense. Blather. Obama is failing in his job as front man for Rockefeller Globalists. If he can’t get Senate ratification on the TPP and the TTIP deals now, he’ll be the CFR’s failure of the decade. Hillary, who came out against Brexit, is looking like a clown with egg on her face.

So…what is Britain leaving when it leaves the EU? It’s departing a giant robot, a structure of untold numbers of sub-androids, bureaucrats who have been making life miserable for Europe. Higher debt, unlimited migration, blizzards of regulations, grim political correctness. All in the service of a coming utopia, of course.

The real job of the EU is dehumanizing people, for the sake of humanity. That’s how faceless robot-bureaucrats operate.

The EU is an illusion of authority, in the sense that it pretends to be in exclusive possession of knowledge that will make life better for all of Europe.

The EU built itself as a machine, a structure so maze-like, so complex that “it must be valuable.” It resembles a super-computer. “We have trillions of pieces of vital data. We can plan the future more competently than any smaller entity. Leave the details to us.”

The EU is in all these ways a copy of the Deep Global State, of which it is a part. And now we come to the second section of this article, which I wrote first, as I was becoming aware of the result of the Brexit vote. Consider it background. The Deep State has, of course, not gone away. A much greater degree of dismantling is necessary. Technocracy itself has to be understood and defeated, because it is the leading edge of the new Globalist society…

The State is now involved in making people into robots and robots into people.

Behind all the technological promises and heraldry, this is what’s happening. People are already beginning to feel a fierce unshakable loyalty to machines—and a religious adoration. Up the road, robots will be wise counselors and guides and priests. This is civilization’s version of magic.

Technocracy and theocracy are the same op. They are rule by fictional figures. And the knowledge supposedly possessed by these figures doesn’t exist.

Whether a person or a machine can dispense three pieces of information or three trillion, and whether the dispensing takes a year or a microsecond, the “authority” surrounding the dispensing is window dressing. It doesn’t have any inherent power. It’s laid on in the same way a movie set is built (or a green screen is deployed) to confer authenticity.

The following two statements are remarkably similar: the Pope is infallible; super-computer XYZ is infallible. The latter statement is a modern substitution for the former. It wouldn’t be a great surprise, at some point, to witness the election of a Pope that is a computer. The College of Cardinals might discuss whether to present him as a robot wearing the official costume of office. They might even decide this robot should ride in the Bubble Mobile with its protections, to avoid damage. Vatican technicians would assure the Pope uttered, from time to time, humanitarian messages in a credibly human voice.

On the other side of the op, as humans are fitted into tighter slots in the New Planetary Order, they would, more and more, resemble machines in thought and action. Losing their individuality, through sacrifice for the greater good, they would naturally seek out signs and signals of what they no longer had—and they would find those human traits in robot-computers, which would be built with great care to deliver an imitation of life.

Sit a very young child down in front of a crude robot called a television set, and show her an animated cartoon of Cinderella dancing in the hall of a great palace, and the child experiences trance-like ecstasy. Why, up the road, wouldn’t a sufficiently “mechanized” adult find the same joy, viewing an animated hologram of a remarkably convincing robot that hands out ideological imperatives on the oneness of all creatures on Earth?

—On the subject of taking individuality from humans and placing it into robots:

“Every one of our androids is different. Our company believes in imbuing each of our ‘messengers’ with a unique set of characteristics. This isn’t a sales technique. We’re dedicated to the mission of diversity. Personality isn’t something to be buried under a surface of sameness and conformity. It should be front and center. After all, our robots are conscious.”

They aren’t, but who pauses to notice? Wave after wave of fictional propaganda is launched to make the case that machines are alive. The major target of the campaign is the educated class.

“It is now an established fact that evolution took place through higher and higher orders of information-processing functions. Indeed, the complexity of processing is the definition of consciousness.” Gibberish.

In this technological and pragmatic civilization, many humans already consider themselves, first and foremost, problem solvers. However, recognizing their skills are lacking, especially when it comes to personal issues, people are more than willing to surrender the job to machines. Computers will provide undeniable answers and advice. Of course, to make this system work, the problems and the people will have to be reduced down to manageable proportions—flattened, short-circuited, cartoon-ized. People will need to see themselves as biological machines with only a handful of basic needs. And some historian will one day write:

“Humans were operating on flawed self-destructive programs. The best of them realized this. And so, out of need and desperation, they invented machines that could guide them and work around those errors. This was the patch that was laid on, until we could precisely identify both the programs and the flaws, flush them out of the system, and install new software in the brain.”

This is the future.

Unless individuals, with the power they actually do have, reclaim what is theirs, and dump the whole ridiculous apparatus.

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The EU—that machine—is one small part of the whole op.

It is a machine, whose purpose is turning humans into robots and robots into humans.

That’s the bottom line of highly centralized authority in the modern age.

Coda: warning: the BBC is reporting that the British Parliament must ratify the referendum result. And the UK withdrawal from the EU will take place “within two years.” It’s a withdrawal negotiated between the British government and the EU. So various conditions and side-deals could be slipped into the equation.

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

By Nicholas West

Now that the air is filled with automated weapons of war, the next part of the drone matrix is being built in earnest.

Over the past year we have witnessed several new developments in sea-based autonomous weapons systems that herald a new aspect to the ongoing global drone arms race. The U.S. military – and its allies – clearly view the sea as a compliment to unmanned aircraft. In April, DARPA unveiled plans for a flotilla of 132-foot “Sea Hunter” drones that could roam the seas of the world within 5 years if all goes according to plan. It is an advancement in what already exists under the Control Architecture for Robotic Agent Command and Sensing (CARACaS), which in effect creates robot swarms that can identify and intercept perceived threats.

A short while later, the U.S. announced its intention to utilize what already has been developed in sea drone systems to potentially launch into the highly contested territory of the South China Sea.

This is occurring amid the backdrop of the largest group of autonomous weapons drills yet planned, with the U.S. and its allies engaging in war games known as Unmanned Warrior 2016, which occurs off the Scottish Coast in October.

The UK’s Royal Navy will naturally have a presence in those drills, and they have just unveiled yet another potential technology that we can see used in the seas of the future: “robot spy speedboats,” officially known as MAST – Maritime Autonomy Surface Testbed. In the Telegraph article cited below, it is clearly stated that this system will be unarmed. However, this is tacitly admitted to be perception management, as I’ve highlighted toward the end.

The 34ft boat can skim across the waves at more than 50kts to track high speed targets, while navigating and dodging other ships without the control of a human.

Naval commanders believe the Maritime Autonomy Surface Testbed (MAST) could herald a robot fleet of high-speed craft packed with sensors to carry out spy and scouting missions.

…

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1526143560956-5'); });

The dawn of unmanned vehicles is likely to have the same revolutionary effect on naval warfare as the birth of flight and aircraft carriers, according to the navy’s Fleet Robotics Officer.

….

While the MAST is only a test platform for new technology and will not enter service as it stands, sources said it could it pave the way for future robots vessels that can track, shadow or spy on other craft as well as loitering off coastlines.

Elizabeth Quintana, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, said the Navy was looking at unmanned vehicles to take on “dull, dirty, and dangerous” jobs.

….

But she said military chiefs were hesitant about arming unmanned vehicles.

She said: “The real issue is the public perception and the nervousness that some in the military might have and the potential legal challenges.

“The use of unmanned systems to deliver lethal force is still extremely controversial. It’s facing all sorts of legal challenges, so I think going down that road is quite difficult.”

[emphasis added]

(Source: The Telegraph)

Anyone who has been following the progression of drones knows that this is merely part of the stepping-stone tactic that is used to merely delay any potential concerns or outrage that might come from open admission that autonomous weaponized systems will be roaming the planet in the near future. These supposed concerns from the military – and presumably the public as well – have done nothing to exercise caution in the development of lethal airborne drone systems.

The fact is that it has long been planned to have a full matrix of war, once labeled MUSIC, where multiple platforms across sea, land and sky would be orchestrated to identify threats and carry out attacks … potentially without ever being subjected to human oversight.

If anyone still believes that the military has purely benevolent intentions and will exercise restraint in the further development of autonomous systems of surveillance and killing, then perhaps the cautionary words of DARPA itself should force us to seriously question the unintended consequences of war becoming computerized. Have not all connected devices been easily hacked?

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D6jxBDy8k8]

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The following videos show the current trends in the development of sea-based drone systems:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvzmxZkAbUM]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX3Tdwy0DBE]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDEtOlvfIcg]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsIrVRd3SDk]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOH4alBg_ZA]

Nicholas West writes for ActivistPost.com. This article can be freely republished in part or in full with author attribution and source link.

By Derrick Broze

On Monday January 18, the Blackpool Council approved a plan to introduce fluoridated milk to school children via the town’s free breakfast program. The Council is attempting to tackle a dental health problem that has caused nearly half of all 12-year olds in Blackpool to have at least one decayed, missing, or filled tooth.

The Blackpool Gazette reports:

Coun Graham Cain, cabinet secretary for Blackpool Council, said: “Unfortunately the state of Blackpool’s dental health is very poor.

However, where some parts of the country can benefit from fluoride naturally appearing in their daily drinking water, in Blackpool we cannot.

What we do have is a method through the free breakfast programme that allows us to reach all primary school children as they are growing up and make the fluoride milk available to them there.

The proposal will allow for children to opt out and requires the schools to provide non-fluoridated milk. First proposed in 2013 the plan was delayed while studies were conducted. The studies found that children in the town have “lower than normal” levels of fluoride.

The Blackpool Council’s website states,

a proposal to introduce fluoridated milk, which contains fluoride to help reduce the risk of tooth decay, was approved by the Council’s Executive on Monday 18 January. The milk, which is recommended by the World Health Organisation, is the latest in Blackpool Council’s plans to tackle poor dental hygiene amongst children in the town.

Around 400 children in Blackpool are also admitted to hospital every year to have teeth extracted under general anaesthetic, at a cost to the NHS of thousands of pounds.

The Council also states that the fluoridated milk plan will come at no extra cost to the taxpayer thanks to the free breakfast program. They estimate that 8,400 students currently receive milk on a daily basis and many of them will now be drinking fluoridated milk. The plan would add .8 mg Fluoride per 189 ml of milk, or 4.2 parts per million. In April 2015 the U.S. government lowered the recommended levels of fluoride to 0.7 parts per million.

Interestingly, under a section titled “Ethical Considerations” the Blackpool council writes “none.” The reason I find that interesting is because a simple search of studies on fluoridation will show that there are many health issues associated with the practice and thus dosing children with the chemical through their milk does raise some ethical questions.

The Blackpool Council also writes that the benefits of fluoridated milk have been proven by the European Union and the World Health Organisation. “This is why fluoride is widely used in many ways for example water or toothpaste and mouth washes. A well mineralised tooth is what everyone is trying to achieve to prevent decay,” the Council writes.

However, critics have long argued that any benefits of fluoride are only effective when applied topically, directly to the teeth. This would make water and milk fluoridation largely a waste of resources. Moreover, exposing the internal organs to fluoride might actually be harmful to health. The possibility of harmful side effects from water fluoridation is still heavily debated.

In 2015 Truth In Media reported that the Cochrane Collaboration, a  global independent network of researchers, professionals, and patients, narrowed the review down to the most comprehensive, well-designed and reliable papers, before analyzing and publishing their conclusion.

According to Newsweek:

The review identified only three studies since 1975—of sufficient quality to be included—that addressed the effectiveness of fluoridation in the population at large. These papers determined that fluoridation does not reduce cavities to a statistically significant degree, says study co-author Anne-Marie Glenny, a health science researcher at Manchester University in the United Kingdom.

The scientists also found “insufficient evidence” that fluoridation reduces tooth decay in adults (children excluded). “From the review, we’re unable to determine whether water fluoridation has an impact on caries levels in adults,” Glenny says.

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Trevor Sheldon, dean of the Hull York Medical School in the United Kingdom, conducted a review of water fluoridation in 2000. Sheldon concluded that the process is not effective. “I had assumed because of everything I’d heard that water fluoridation reduces cavities but I was completely amazed by the lack of evidence,” he told Newsweek. “My prior view was completely reversed.”

Sheldon points out that some studies have actually shown that when water fluoridation was ceased, cavities went down a small percentage among schoolchildren.  This includes a 2001 study of two British Columbia communities that was included in the Cochrane review.

The Cochrane team also found that most studies confirming the effectiveness of fluoridation were completed prior to the widespread use of dental products such as mouth rinses and toothpastes. The study did find evidence that fluoridation was linked to a 26 percent decrease in cavities. However, this study was also done before the growth of modern dentistry. The researchers write, “We have limited confidence in the size of this effect due to the high risk of bias within the studies and the lack of contemporary evidence.”

In early June, the Health Research Board (HRB) completed an in-depth review of the effects of water fluoridation. The review was conducted at the behest of the U.S. Department of Health. After examining all internationally peer-reviewed papers on the topic of fluoride and health effects from 2006 to 2014, the HRB “found no definitive evidence that community water fluoridation is associated with positive or negative systemic health effects.”

Image Credit

Derrick Broze is an investigative journalist, community activist, gardener and promoter from Houston, Texas. He is the co-founder of The Houston Free Thinkers, and co-host of Free Thinker Radio. Broze also hosts and produces a weekly podcast under the name the Conscious Resistance Live. His writing can be found on TheConsciousResistance.com, The Liberty Beat, Activist Post, and other independent media sources.

This article may be freely reposted in part or in full with author attribution and source link.

By Michaela Whitton

Around a million people in the U.K. use cannabis for medical reasons, and every single one of them is breaking the law. With an increasing acceptance among the medical community regarding the use of cannabis in treating a range of medical conditions — and with many only too aware that an end to the drug war is long overdue — British parliamentarians and campaigners are stepping up the call for the legalisation of medical marijuana.

Patients not criminals

Many derive the benefits of marijuana as an alternative to fistfuls of opiate-based pills for chronic pain, but in the U.K., tens of thousands are criminalised every year for using the it either recreationally or medicinally. Elsewhere in the world, sanity has prevailed, and medical marijuana can now can be prescribed in 11 European countries, 24 U.S. states, and many other countries throughout the world.

On a trip to Westminster last month to make the case for the legalisation of cannabis for medical use, Professor of Neurology Mike Barnes from the End Our Pain campaign said eight million people in the U.K. suffer from chronic pain.

Claiming a third of those who are prescribed opioids cannot tolerate them, he laid out evidence pointing to the success of marijuana in treating a number of conditions, including multiple sclerosis, glaucoma, epilepsy, and Crohn’s disease.

In addition, the End Our Pain campaign points to emerging indications of CBD — a key ingredient of cannabis — to treat epilepsy and alleviate mental health conditions, including social anxiety disorder and PTSD. Calling for the legalisation of the drug when prescribed for medical conditions, Professor Barnes said the fact cannabis is illegal is hampering the ability of researchers to conduct further studies on its medical benefits.

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In March 2016, another advocate of the End Our Pain campaign, Liberal Democrat politician, Norman Lamb, put forward the decriminalisation of the drug in the House of Commons by calling for an amendment to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. Claiming the public are way ahead of politicians on the issue, Lamb called the war on drugs a “spectacularly, stupid self-defeating policy.” The Liberal Democrats have made a case for a fully legal and regulated market that would include the sale of cannabis to those over 18 and specialist cannabis retailers, as well as legalize home cultivation for personal use and small-scale licensed cannabis social clubs.

With over 12,000 signatures so far, the End Our Pain campaign is asking the public to sign a petition supporting the call for U.K. law change. If it is successful, it will allow doctors in Britain to prescribe cannabis when they think it can help their patients. You can sign it here.

This article (One Million People in the UK are Forced to Break the Law to Stay Healthy) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Michaela Whitton and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

By Claire Bernish

After the DEA moved to further constrain Americans’ access to medically miraculous CBD oil by classifying it alongside heroin and cocaine, Britain chose compassion and common sense — and just classified cannabidiol (CBD) as a medicine.

On Monday, Britain’s Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) decided CBD — which can treat illnesses and conditions from severe childhood epilepsy to autism to cancer — warranted the classification as a medicine based on credible evidence of its efficacy.

Thus, unlike in the U.S. — where the substance is now considered devoid of medical benefit by the DEA — CBD meeting quality and regulatory standards may be legally obtained by any British citizens who need it, reports High Times.

“We have come to the opinion that products containing cannabidiol (CBD) used for medical purposes are a medicine,” an MHRA spokesperson said in a statement on the agency’s website.

Our primary concern is patient safety and we wish to reiterate that individuals using cannabidiol (CBD) products to treat or manage the symptoms of medical conditions should discuss their treatment with their doctor.

MHRA will now work with individual companies and trade bodies in relation to making sure products containing CBD, used for a medical purpose, which can be classified as medicines, satisfy the legal requirements of the Human Medicines Regulations 2012.

This rational approach stands in sharp and tragic contrast to draconian drug laws in the U.S., where, as of January 13, CBD oil — which does not contain the psychoactive chemical THC, which gives people a high — and all cannabinoids will be considered dangerous substances.

Healthcare and cannabis rights advocates have excoriated the DEA’s brash and baseless move, noting lives will now be in jeopardy.

“The whole policy around this plant is just so illogical,” Robert J. Capecchi, director of federal policies at the Marijuana Policy Project, told Vice. “Even when you look at the criteria you’re supposed to be looking at under the law, they’re just not following it. It’s just a stupid policy for lack of a better term.”

THC-containing cannabis — also medically beneficial for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, among many other conditions — still remains as a Schedule I substance in the U.S., and is not considered medicine in Britain.

But the latter has taken steps in the right direction with the new classification for CBD — a complete reversal of cease and desist orders sent by MHRA to vendors only months ago, as High Times notes, ordering it to be “removed from sale in the UK.”

“The change really came about with us offering an opinion that CBD is in fact a medicine,” Gerald Heddel, director of inspection and enforcement at the agency, explained to Sky News, “and that opinion was based on the fact that we noted that people were making some quite stark claims about serious diseases that could be treated with CBD.”

Decades of government propaganda about the putative dangers of ‘marijuana’ — amplified exponentially by President Nixon’s administration’s agenda to, in essence, criminalize black people and the anti-war left — still linger in the stigmatization of all the cannabis plant’s myriad derivatives.

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Despite the DEA’s war on cannabis and its users, onerous prohibition has been voted out in an increasing number of states — forcing those who need it to uproot their lives and move, in order not to face arrest over their medicine. Medical research into cannabis and cannabinoids continues to evince the miraculous assets the plant offers. In just one example, as High Times explains,

In early December, researchers from the University of Alabama found that CBD oil reduces both the frequency and severity of seizures in children and adults with with severe, intractable epilepsy. In two-thirds of the 81 participants, the severity was reduced by at least 50 percent.

In classifying CBD as medicine, MHRA recognizes such benefits — and the improved health of British citizens — eclipse the value in blindly continuing dangerous and inaccurate propaganda.

Sadly, the highly profitable war on drugs and influence of pharmaceutical corporations have the DEA feigning ignorance about cannabis and CBD — at the expense of people’s lives.

Claire Bernish writes for TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared.