Friday, November 2, 2012
Bitcoins: The Currency of the Darknet
Bitcoins are an online currency with no ties to a government or central bank. Since their inception in 2009, it has become a medium for all kinds of black market activities online. Here’s what you need to know about the not-so-legal side of Bitcoins.
Antidepressant drugs are murdering babies before they’re even born: SSRIs cause birth defects, miscarriages and complications
This disturbing new science published in the journal Human Reproduction was authored by Dr. Adam Urato, obstetrician and chairman of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham, Mass., and Dr. Alice Domar, a psychologist and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.
The study shows drastically increased rates of birth defects in children who are exposed to SSRI drugs (antidepressants) while in the womb. The risk of miscarriages also skyrockets with antidepressant drug use during pregnancy.
Study author Dr. Urato is also warning that at least 40 studies now link SSRI use during pregnancy with pre-term births.
The abstract of the study lays out the findings in clear language:
Antidepressant use during pregnancy is associated with increased risks of miscarriage, birth defects, preterm birth, newborn behavioral syndrome, persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn and possible longer term neurobehavioral effects.
As The Telegraph reports:
The situation amounts to "a large scale human experiment", according to Dr Adam Urato, assistant professor of maternal-fetal medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts. Drugs firms were overstating the benefits and underplaying the risks for the sake of profit, he claimed. Family doctors were failing to grasp the true dangers and tell pregnant patients of them, he argued.
Antidepressants double risk of babies being born with autism
"A recent study has further documented some doctors' concerns that the use of SSRIs increases the risk of babies being born with autism. This particular research indicates the antidepressants double the risk," reports DrugWatch.comIn addition, antidepressants offer no benefit to pregnancy outcomes! As stated by the study authors:
"There is no evidence of improved pregnancy outcomes with antidepressant use."
In other words, antidepressants deliver all sorts of risks, but virtually no benefits, especially considering that even the psychological "benefits" of SSRI drugs are completely fabricated by the corrupt pharmaceutical industry which routinely fabricates clinical trial data.
Mainstream media tries to downplay risk
The mainstream media is, of course, incessantly running cover for the toxic pharmaceutical industry. That's why instead of seeing headlines that warn about "birth defects" from SSRIs, you get headlines like this one from a local Fox affiliate:"Antidepressants during pregnancy can be tricky"
(http://fox13now.com/2012/11/01/antidepressants-during-pregnancy-can-b...)
Tricky? The story then goes on to push the warped psychiatric "view" of these drugs, which is essentially that everybody needs to be medicated in order to be normal. And that includes pregnant women.
The entire charade is so sick and even criminal that it's hard to even watch. If an herbal supplement were causing birth defects, you wouldn't see the media reporting that decision about the herbal supplement are "tricky." Instead, you would see the media SCREAMING about how dangerous and deadly the supplement was, demanding the FDA to take immediate action to ban the substance and pull it from store shelves.
But somehow, when prescription drugs cause miscarriages and birth defects, it's all okay because the drug companies are involved.
Murdering babies is perfectly fine, you see, as long as Big Pharma and the psychiatric industry and pocketing some cash at the same time.
And don't forget: Vaccines are also being pushed on pregnant women now, even though throughout the history of medicine pregnant women were always warned to avoid vaccines due to mercury toxicity. But suddenly, the authorities and the drug companies want to inject pregnant women with as much mercury as possible.
It's not just mercury, either: As Natural News has just exposed in a shocking new article, even the CDC openly admits that today's vaccines are made with MSG, mercury, formaldehyde and aluminum -- on purpose!
And what's one of the most common side effects of all these toxic metals and chemicals in vaccines? Spontaneous abortions, of course.
Source: Natural News
The New Facebook Buttons: Promote, Despise, Abandon
Just in case you haven't noticed, your Facebook activity may not be reaching the FB audience you enjoyed a few months ago.
If you want to reach your previous audience, you need to click that little "promote" button and pay the fee.
My friend Richard Metzger of Dangerous Minds alerted me to a remarkable coincidence: shortly after Facebook's May launch of the "promote" option for business accounts, business users noticed an 85% reduction in their FB reach. Facebook: I Wany My Friends Back.
Like many other "stealth" revenue campaigns in social media, the "promote" revenue stream was first introduced as a marketing tool for enterprises and groups: Facebook's tempting 'Promote' button for business (CNET).
It was presented as a way to expand one's reach on FB, to friends of friends, etc. What was not highlighted was the "stealth" reduction in reach to "encourage" use of the "promote" option: Broken on Purpose: Why Getting It Wrong Pays More Than Getting It Right:
Many of us managing Facebook fan pages have noticed something strange over the last year: how our reach has gotten increasingly ineffective. How the messages we post seem to get fewer clicks, how each message is seen by only a fraction of our total “fans.”It’s no conspiracy. Facebook acknowledged it as recently as last week: messages now reach, on average, just 15 percent of an account’s fans. In a wonderful coincidence, Facebook has rolled out a solution for this problem: Pay them for better access.
As their advertising head, Gokul Rajaram, explained, if you want to speak to the other 80 to 85 percent of people who signed up to hear from you, “sponsoring posts is important.”
In other words, through “Sponsored Stories,” brands, agencies and artists are now charged to reach their own fans--the whole reason for having a page--because those pages have suddenly stopped working.
Facebook is broken, on purpose, in order to extract more money from users.
Does anyone else smell the stench of burning opium in the air? Step right this way, ladies and gentlemen, for free access to exciting new marketing thrills--unlimited reach to a global audience!
Next, encourage them to depend more and more on your product for their marketing and thus financial survival.
Excellent! They're now addicted, and without really noticing the rise of their dependence.
Now reduce their reach. We're sorry to hear you're experiencing withdrawal symptoms; but unfortunately we've run out of the "free" good stuff. We do, however, have a substitute that will fill your need, but there is a modest fee, of course.
Yes, it's the addict-pusher model.
Since few addicts complained or refused the new paid substitute, Facebook is testing the addiction level of personal-account FB users: Facebook’s ‘promote’ button rolls out beyond pages to some personal accounts (9/18/12, Inside Facebook).
Facebook testing promoted user posts in the US.
The "promote" service is being, well, promoted, as a way to spread the word about your garage sale this weekend, for instance. With the promote button, all the friends of your friends in Ningbo, China, will helpfully find out about your garage sale in Phoenix AZ. Just how helpful is that?
And all for only $7, if you have a small audience. The price scales up along with your audience. Richard calculated that promoting all of his site's daily posts would require $672,000 annually. The price of that once-free marketing is now rather stiff.
I have always been skeptical of the entire social media phenomenon. I recounted some of my experiences in How I Friended a Dead Guy and Became a Social Media Zombie (February 22, 2011).
I have also opined that Facebook Is a Utility Which Can't Charge Its Users (July 22, 2010) for the basic reason that Facebook has the same customer satisfaction ratings as hated cable providers and the I.R.S. Users view Facebook as a free utility, and tolerate it because it's free.
I have also commented on the underlying dynamics of social media:
800 Million Channels of Me (February 21, 2011)
Are You Loving Your Servitude Yet? (July 25, 2012)
The Last Refuge of Wall Street: Marketing To Increasingly Insolvent Consumers (December 12, 2011)
What's happening is that Facebook is realizing the advert model of revenue is fatally limited. Adverts just don't generate billions of dollars in profit, even with 1 billion users. So it was inevitable that those using the FB platform to generate revenue in some fashion would be squeezed to "share" their revenues with FB.
Previously "free" distribution would no longer be free, and users would face a stark choice: either start paying for distribution or lose 85% of their audience.
The response depends on the users' level of dependence. Those who are well and truly hooked on the FB platform can either make ineffectual protests and end up paying to reach their former audience, or they can quit: cold turkey, baby.
The alternative FB hopes they don't choose is to do nothing, accept their reduced reach and audience, and move their social media energy elsewhere. Most personal account holders don't really care about their reach; as long as their inner circle still get their posts and photos, they're happy.
So FB will eventually have to decide if it can profit with a customer base in which 99% don't pay anything. They could try squeezing users in more "stealth" ways, for example, making the first 10 friends and first 10 posts a week free, and charging for useage above a low threshold. If it follows this revenue model, it will follow MySpace down the path to hosting tens of millions of zombie users.
Or FB (and Wall Street) could accept that it is fundamentally a low-profit utility and always will be. It could charge individuals $1 a month--a utility fee, in effect-- $10 a month for groups and small enterprises and $100/month for corporations and large organizations. This model would recognize FB is basically offering server space. If users aren't getting $1 a month in value, then why be users at all?
How addicted are we? It's a good question of all social media, especially the (currently) "free" stuff. How many people would click "abandon FB" if that were offered alongside the new "promote" button?