The Three Kings' Preparation
It was prepared on January 6th and sprayed along the perimeter of the Camphill Dingle land and around the garden borders. All done in a grey drizzle.

 This poem was found in the concentration camp Ravensbrück after the liberation, written on a piece of packing paper, author unknown.

Prayer for the Tormentors
Peace to those of bad will  and an end to revenge and all talk of punishment and chastise.                     The cruelties mock all that has ever been --                                                                                   crossing the boundaries of human understanding                                                                                      and the martyrs are manifold.
Therefore, O God, don’t weigh their suffering  on the scales of justice,
Don’t demand dreadful retribution, rather
let them approach with all executioners, traitors and spies
and with all bad people
and forgive them
for the sake of the courage
and soul strength of the others...

....for all that is good should count
and not the evil
and in remembering our enemies                                                                                                       we should not continue life as their victims,
not as nightmare and ghosts

Rather come to their help so they can
remove themselves from their madness.
This alone is asked of them,
and that we, when all is over
may live as humans among humans
And that, once again, there may be
peace on this poor earth for people of good will                                                                                   and that this peace may also come to those others.

Gebet fuer die Peiniger
Friede den Menschen, die bösen Willens sind,
und ein Ende aller Rache und allen Redens
über Strafe und Züchtigung.
Die Grausamkeiten spotten alles je Dagewesenen,
sie überschreiten die Grenzen menschlichen Begreifens,                                                                       und zahlreich sind die Märtyrer.
Daher, o Gott, wäge nicht ihre Leiden                                                                                                       Auf den Schalen deiner Gerechtigkeit,                                                                                               fordere nicht grausame Abrechnung,                                                                                                   sondern lasse sie zukommen allen Henkern Verrätern und Spionen                                                          und allen schlechten Menschen,
und vergib ihnen um des Mutes
und der Seelenkraft der anderen willen .....
...... all das Gute sollte zählen, nicht das Böse und in der Erinnerung unserer Feinde
sollten wir nicht als ihre Opfer weiterleben, nicht als Alptraum und Gespenster
vielmehr ihnen zur Hilfe kommen, damit sie Abstehen können von ihrem Wahn.
Nur dies allein wird ihnen abgefordert,
und dass wir, wenn alles vorbei sein wird,
leben dürfen als Menschen unter Menschen,
und dass wieder Friede sein möge auf dieser
armen Erde den Menschen, die guten Willens sind, und dass dieser Friede auch zu den anderen komme.
                                                          -----------------------------


...and when it's all over, the mass madness, the delight in roaring crowds, the flag waving; when this illness of our age, pretending that base instincts are good and battles for radical conservatism necessary, is gone, then one day someone will make an earth shaking discovery. They will discover the individual human being. They will say: Everything depends on individuals. The question will be: are they happy, and the goal: are they free. Groups will be secondary. The State will be secondary. Important will be not that the State lives, but that the human being lives...People will cheer and say: 'how novel! What courage! We never heard that before! Books will be written, not by that first person but by his successors because the first is always stupid. And the result will be that thousands of banners and brown, red, and blue shirts will be thrown in the trash and people will start to have courage and believe in themselves without fear of the State, before which they previously grovelled like beaten dogs...
--written by the German author Kurt Tucholsky in 1931 

Dream House

Mazzarella O'Flaherty has made her art studio available for holiday rentals. This is an unusual wood panelled house with all conveniences and lots of atmosphere. Sleeps four. Located on Chapel Lane in the centre of Dingle, Co. Kerry. Rental € 550 by the week during the months of July and August. For more information ring 00353 (0)87 298 4550 or email mazz@ireland.com

To view her website click on her name.

Gardeners and Growers!

Prelude for the upcoming activities of the Biodynamic Agricultural Association of Ireland (see events list below)

Have you ever hear of Ehrenfried Pfeiffer? As an organic farmer or gardener you might have read one of his books: Grow a Garden & Be Self Sufficient—still the best introduction to organic-biodynamic horticulture. (copies available from the Office of the Biodynamic Agricultural Association, Watergarden Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny, €12.50)

Here’s an extract from an article on Pfeiffer by A.W. Martinez, Collier’s, May 31, 1952. (for the full article see http://rotheraine.com/golden_garbage.html):

The City With Golden Garbage?

Trained bacteria, turned loose on the refuse of Oakland, Cal., produce a rich, sweet-smelling fertilizer that’s guaranteed to perform near miracles for farm land. It’s like backyard compost, and it could save the nation billions of dollars.Dr. Ehrenfried E. Pfeiffer, German-born biochemistOne morning in October, 1950, two strangers walked into the office of Tony Dalcino, president of the Oakland Scavenger Company, with a proposition that turned Dalcino’s casual smile into a look of utter disbelief.

His callers wanted to know whether the company would let them have part of the daily haul of garbage from the city of Oakland, California. They hoped, they said, to put the garbage on an assembly line and sell it!

The two visitors were Richard Stovroff, a young owner of a wastepaper business in Buffalo, New York. The other was Dr. Ehrenfried E. Pfeiffer, German-born biochemist, holder of an honorary U.S. medical degree, and lifelong experimenter with new ways to grow better food.
Pfeiffer, a tall, robust, pink-cheeked man with an infectious twinkle, explained. In the course of his researches he had discovered a new ‘race” of bacteria which converts garbage into a sweet-smelling black earth fertilizer which could perform virtual miracles for the land. A tablespoon of the bacteria, grown in test tubes, could turn a ton of garbage into rich humus in three weeks.

Pfeiffer told Dalcino: “It costs the American taxpayers a few billion dollars a year when we throw away as garbage the precious minerals and organic material we take out of the soil in the form of food. At the same time it costs farmers nearly $7,000,000,000 a year to put some of these minerals back in the ground in the form of chemical fertilizers. That doesn’t make sense.” He had, he added, decided to do something about it ever since his arrival in the U.S. in 1940 as a refugee from war-ravaged Europe.

In control tests at Pfeiffer’s Biochemical Research Laboratory at Spring Valley, New York, vegetables grown in this converted garbage weighed 25 per cent more than those grown with conventional fertilizers, with from one to three times more vitamin A. The garbage-compost treated soil showed from one to four times as much life-giving nitrogen, and grain showed a consistently higher protein content. Laboratory experiments proved that the mixture could restore even sterile sandy soil to vigorous fertility and make rich farm land out of desert if adequate water was available. The converted garbage restored organic matter, mineral balance and structure, giving soil body, and permitting it to absorb and hold water. The organic matter released a powerful concentration of bacteria whose digestive activities and decay created plant foods, soil-binding humus and released nitrogen.

Alas, the city of Oakland did not take Pfeiffer up on his offer. Now, half a century on, have we moved on, or found anything better?

We invite everyone interested in learning more about Pfeiffer’s biodynamic approach to composting farmyard manure and barrel composting to participate under the Skillnet programme at the following venues and events:

11 AM – 4 PM on each of the following dates:

May 9, June 6, and July 4, plus a date in September to be confirmed

at Camphill Jerpoint, Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny

or

May 16, June 13, and July 11 plus a date in September to be confirmedat John McDonnell’s farm, Shalvanstown Organics,Slane, Co Meath

We will also assess the state of the compost via microscopy in order to establish the soil-food-web and create “Barrel Compost” the backyard gardeners gold ! Please bring appropriate clothing, overalls, boots, (a dungfork if you can)

Registration prior to the events essential at the BdAAI office

We look forward to seeing you all, as we will hardly have another 50 years to move to a sustainable agriculture!

Michael Miklis, Biodynamic Agricultural Association in Ireland, Watergarden, Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny, Tel. / Fax. 056-7754214, email: bdaai@indigo.ie Website http://www.biodynamic.ie/

The World According to Monsanto - A documentary that Americans won't ever see.

Perhaps Americans won't get to watch it but we all should. Click on the above, or Google it and take your time, it's a documentary but it's at least 90 minutes long. Created by an intrepid French woman named Marie Monique Robin. Watch it and then turn your imagination ahead four or five years.

The Survival of the Social

"What do we observe in human life? Is it brotherhood, or the struggle for existence that has accomplished great things in mankind's development--or have both impulses contributed to something? The Russian scientist Kessler gave a lecture in 1880, in which he showed that the most progressive animal types, those most capable of development, are not the ones that do the most fighting, but those that give mutual support to one another... In all of nature we see examples of the cooperation of single beings within a whole. Consider the human body. It consists of independent beings, millions and millions of cells... What causes the cooperation of these small cells? Man's soul is the cause....The soul sees with the cells of the eye, thinks by means of the cells of the brain, lives through the cells of the blood. There we can see what union, what association, means. It means the possibility for a higher being to express itself through the members when they are united.

This principle is general for all of life. Five people who think and feel harmoniously together, are not just the sum of the five...a new higher being is in their midst...It is not the one, or the other, or the third, but something entirely new that springs from the union. This new entity arises only when...the single individual draws strength not only from her/himself but also from others.

...The struggle for existence has its justification because we are individualities who have to make our way through life...In a sense, the words of Rusckerts hold here: when the rose beautifies itself, it also beautifies the garden. If we do not make ourselves capable of helping our fellows we shall be poor helpers. If we do not see to it that all our talents are developed, we shall have little success in helping others. In order to develop these talents, a certain egoism is necessary , because egoism is connected with initiative.

...Everyone would like to know how to unite struggle for existence with brother/sisterhood. That is very simple...replace struggle with positive labor, replace combat with the ideal...try without fighting an opponent, to introduce into life what your experience and cognition have found to be correct...

You will see that we develop our talents best when we live in community, that we live most intensively when we take root in that totality."
Excerpted from 'Brotherhood and the Struggle for Existence, R.Steiner, Berlin, Nov 23 1905, published by Mercury Press, Chestnut Ridge, NY

W e a t h e r

"People joked in the not too distant past that if you talked about the weather, you had nothing better to talk about. Today, we talk about the weather because the weather is important in our lives. Rudolf Steiner comments on this in The Driving Force of Spiritual Powers in World History (Lecture 7, Dornach, March 22 1923, GA 232). In the days of Ancient Persia, talk about the weather would have been understood as deeds of the gods and somebody who had nothing interesting to say about the weather would have been deemed boring. The ancient Persians took note of weather when people were born as an expression of 'Divine Thought' allocated to that child. Steiner says that it would be a definite advance if humanity talked about the weather, not whether it is good or bad, but again to reach the stage where weather is related spiritually to events; where it is determined what natural phenomena are connect to which outer events."
-- Thanks for this to Michael Roboz, North Vancouver BC Canada
Michael Roboz (B.Sc. Biochemistry; P.B.D. Environmental Toxicology/ Pest Management) received an Environmental Stewardship Award presented by the City of North Vancouver in June.

FLUORIDE IN OUR WATER

When will Ireland wake up and feel free enough to choose the good influences of America and England, and reject the bad ones...why is it so bound to the materialism throttling all social instinct? Why does it distance itself from the laws of the European Union that it is a part of?

Fluoridation...a poison in our waters. No one knows how much or how little, it is not under the jurisdiction of local governments but of the 'State' and it follows Western industrial dictates, buying up a toxic chemical waste product and pouring it into us, under the pretext that it does something for teeth.

It is a disaster waiting to happen. Last June 2000 fish were killed in a stream that passes close by houses in Dingle, fluoride leaking from a faulty pump in the treatment plant, fluoride that otherwise goes into our kitchens and bathrooms undetected. What does it do to our air, to the hardening of our bones, our brains? When will a faulty pump kill 2000 of us, or will continued dosing just slowly, inexorably, make us ill? Fluoride is much more deadly even than chlorine and unlike chlorine it cannot be smelled or tasted.

Almost every European country rejects fluoridation for safety reasons as well as for ethical and medical reasons. Mass medication is a horrific thing.

Who will write me and give me some comfort in this?

Hell and Paradise

One day a Mandarin consciously crossed the threshold. The first place he visited was Hell. There he saw lots of people sitting at tables with bowls of rice in front of them. But they all were suffering pangs of hunger because their chopsticks were two metres long, so they were unable to feed themselves. The next place he visited was Heaven. There too he saw lots of people sitting at tables with bowls of rice in front of them And all of them were very happy and in good health. They too held in their hands chopsticks that were two metres long. However, here everyone used their chopsticks to feed the person sitting opposite.

This quote was taken from the Park Attwood Clinic newsletter. Have a look at their website. It is an extraordinary place of recovery at times of illness...everything one could wish for and often doesn't find.

Two Views--the healer and the earth

1. Dr Olaf Koob is a medical doctor in Germany who has lectured and written extensively on health and illness from an anthroposophical approach. Here a recent quote from the magazine Info3, September 2007, translated for this blog:

"The perspective on health is very much reduced if regarded solely as a mechanical/physical phenomenon. There is so much more to it than simply taking a pill. For me it is too one-sided if healthy thoughts and feelings about man and the world, destiny and the essence of illness are lacking. Sometimes I tell my patients: "As far as I'm concerned, the meeting between patient and physician is like a kind of soup. We both cook it, but you, the patient, do most of the cooking. And the medicine is added like salt or spice.
"There is a saying by Rudolf Steiner, from 1922, that in future human life forces will have become so 'woody' that remedies, even if they are the right ones, will be less effective because the body can no longer react to them. So we must develop totally different modalities, for example by prescribing art so patients can become alive in their feelings and progress from a fixed to a more flexible way of thinking. This can then work back on their symptoms.

"I am always preoccupied with the question: how can we arrive at a view of life that is healing for us? And that includes the physician. If I imagine I were bound exclusively to a materialistic world view and had only chemical substances at my disposal, I would become impoverished in soul and spirit."

2. In 1924 Rudolf Steiner was asked by a group of farmers to give a course on agriculture which introduced a new approach to farming. Coming back to Dornach, Switzerland, he reported on the course, and said the following, among other remarks:
"We began by discussing the basic principles and relationships, which are especially relevant nowadays because, under the influence of our modern philosophy of materialism, it is agriculture--believe it or not--that has deviated furthest from any truly rational principles. Indeed, not many people know that during the last few decades the agricultural products on which our life depends have degenerated extremely rapidly...This degeneration can be confirmed statistically and is the subject of discussion in agricultural organizations, and yet it seems that nothing can be done about it. Even (regular) farmers...can calculate in approximately how many decades their products will have degenerated to such an extent that they can no longer serve as human nourishment. It will certainly be within this century. This is a cosmic issue as well as an earthly issue. Precisely from the example of agriculture, we can see how necessary it is to derive forces from the spirit, forces that are as yet quite unknown. This is necessary not only for the sake of improving agriculture, but so that human life on Earth can continue at all, since as physical beings we depend on what the earth provides..."

We are now in the new century and food has been 'propped up' by agrichemical means, with genetic engineering as another crutch. So it is still feeding us albeit how nourishing it is can be questioned. As far as we know, no one in agribusiness circles has managed to look to the influences and interconnectedness of the cosmos, or if they have they don't talk about it.

Meanwhile biodynamic farmers have gone to the corners of the earth, showing how to renew the land and grow living vegetables. If you look, you will find them, and if you step into their farms and gardens you will immediately see a difference and experience the incredible healthy atmosphere there. So here are two instances of 'woody' thinking being refocused and made flexible.

TARA

from the webgsite http://www.savetara.com/

Open Letter to from Kathy Sinnott to John Gormley, Minister for the Environment
Dear John Gormley,
At our meeting on Wednesday 27th. June, you told the Petitions Committee that you would make the entire Tara file public. I as Vice-President of the Committee and my fellow members have been waiting to receive a copy, but as yet you have not provided one.When do you intend to do this? Had it been done sooner we would have known that the Government has been put on notice by the European Commission that the Environmental Impact Assessment for the whole M3 project is no longer valid thus making it unlawful.Further, the European Commission has informed you it is challenging the National Monuments Act on which the continuation of the M3 project in its present route is based. Had you opened the file as promised and in a timely manner rather than leaving me to unearth the truth only recently, the public would have discovered that the government is in the European Court of Justice this autumn over the current illegality of the M3 project and clearly road works should be halted until the ECJ makes its ruling. The NRA would also have been unable to claim ignorance of the illegality of the project as they are currently doing.With this in mind, I must demand that you open the entire Tara/M3 file to the public as promised and that you do so now. In the interest of the transparency and dedication to our environment we all hoped your party would bring to this government, I insist that you release the Tara/M3 file to the public, the petitions committee and to me.Tara is a treasure which cannot be replaced, I would have hoped that you would move heaven and earth to preserve it. If you are willing to sacrifice Tara, what hope have we of preserving anything else?
Yours in hope,Kathy Sinnott,Member of the European Parliament,Tel: 021 4888793,
20th. July 2007

Pure ugliness is another form of environmental blight. Ireland has the most beautiful landscape and yet nobody seems to care that it is blemished with more and more fengshui-opposed telephone poles. Those poles should be removed as they have been in most European towns and villages. Yet, driving back to Dingle from Tralee, along the stretch that is being repaved there are even more poles waiting to be set up, instead of using the opportunity to bury the wires while repaving the road. Electricity belongs underground; we are surely not healthier for being under its crisses and crosses. And our unseeing eyes, tho' used to the spectacle and so shutting it out, still suffer from the sight. A great Native American once foresaw the future which he described as people wandering about under endless spider webs. Fie on the planning!

Tara

They buried Tara underneath the grass

And herded bullocks o'er the graves of Kings

And cursed us for the memory that clings

To our dead lions, not their living ass.

They joyed to see the Celtic culture pass

And all its glories, song and art, take wings

And now the dogs they do pretend it stings,

Souls hidden in impenetrable brass,

Because some passing alien steals the name

Not they but we held sacred...hush you dogs--

Sorrows divine can touch you not, you may

Never be champions of our island's fame

Who changed its harp notes for the grunts of hogs

Your Tara is...

Tara-de-boom-de-ray

This poem was written by Geoge Russell (AE) the almost forgotten hero of the Irish Renaissance. One would do well to look into his works.

A spiritual perspective on climate change
Tomás Bonek
an abbreviated translation, reprinted from Das Goetheanum Nr.5.07

for the complete article see the summer issue of LILIPOH

In primeval times the people regarded climate change as a result of their own actions, as we do today. In many cultures this was portrayed in legends of the flood. The immense water disaster described in Genesis was not only destructive—Noah became the founder of a new culture. From destruction and chaos a new world and a new humanity were born. The end of the ice age which is identified with the flood brought fundamental climate change, which allowed the development of modern mankind in the different cultural epochs. We are also in a time of global climate change. Much that was learned about weather during the past centuries seems not quite to apply anymore. The sun was never as active during the past 12,000 years as it has been since the 30s of the 20th Century. It is a sign of the times that even experts find it hard to predict the next developments. As against this we are obviously embedded in a larger cosmic order. Maria Thun, interestingly, can predict the main climate trends in any given year by her study of the planets and constellations (see her Bd Sowing & Planting Calendar 2007). This past winter for example she predicted that there would not be any real winter weather in Central Europe until the middle of January, and she was correct. Can we consider that climate change may be influenced by us but that its movements are also part of a cosmic evolution? If so, we can say: 'humanity influences climate ' and likewise: 'climate influences humanity. ' Although it may have been understood very differently in ancient times this still seems to be a relevant maxim. Indeed, while the question of how to arrest these changes is justified, it appears that the larger natural system is no longer stable—and therefore not in our complete control. So the question ought rather to be: 'how do we learn to live in and with the changed situation?

A fascinating aspect of our times is that there is fundamental change in three areas at once. So-called globalization is an immense 'climate change'. Subjectively the earth has never been as ‘small’ as it is now. Never before have so many people felt homeless--inwardly and outwardly--and yet so connected with one another. Never have time-honoured traditions come under such scrutiny before and never was there such worldwide insecurity regarding the future.

All three changes—in the heavens, the elements, and among people—are described in the Gospel: ' And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring [...] for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.' However, an important motif is added: ' And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. (Luke: 21) When the solid earth starts to disappear under one's feet and everything comes into a state of flux, people are especially open to the spirit. Then it is time to consider the message behind the phenomena. If the world is unstable tomorrow the question will no longer be how and why it is happening, rather how we will react to it. Everyone clinging to the experiences of the past will be helpless. For the future, a living understanding of the present will be crucial. Those learning to love their destiny in the midst of all change, and who can look inward with a newly awakend conscience and outward with compassion will prevail. Only then can we hope that chaos will not end in catastrophe, and that we will be raised to a heightened/etheric rather than a destructive/merely biological, condition of life.

Tomás Bonek is a priest of the Christian Community in the Czech Republic

Sources: Earthly and Cosmic Man, R.Steiner

An Outline of Occult Science, R.Steiner

BEES DISAPPEARED WITHOUT A TRACE
As reported in US media, thousands of beekeepers have found their hives empty following the winter season. There is no clue as to the whereabouts of the bees. It is believed that the bee population has been reduced by 60-70% The cost of crop failure due to lack of pollination is calculated in the billions of dollars. To a lesser degree bees have been dying in Europe but nothing to the extent of the United States. Walter Haefeker of the Council of German Beekeepers (Deutschen Imkerbundes) suspects a connection with the extensive genetically altered maize production (comprising roughly 40% of all plantings). Two years ago researchers in the University Jena (Germany) found links between genetically modified corn and immune weakened bees, but the resources to continue their studies were not made available. Source: www.info3.de Nr 4 April 2007 photo courtesy wikipedia

Believe It or Not

On 25/02/07 David Fairclough wrote:
In the last few weeks, two new stars have appeared in the constellation of Scorpius. The first named Nova Scorpii 2007 was discovered on 6 February while it was only visible by telescope, then brightened until 13 February when it became visible to the naked eye. The star brightened further, but has since faded slightly although it is still (just) visible in the pre dawn skies in the southeast, just south of Jupiter.
The second star "appeared" on 21 February, a mere 3 degrees from the first. It is not as bright as the first "nova", but it is visible with binoculars.
The following text is from R. Steiner's The Festivals and their Meaning, No.3, Ascension and Pentecost). It is significant in that it shows the universe to be ensouled ('astral'), alive ('etheric'), and in close interaction with us, as was well known in earlier stages of humanity but is often regarded as unscientific or worse today.
"Every star that we see in the heavens is in reality a gate of entry for the astral. Wherever the stars glitter in towards us, there glitters and shines the astral. Look at the starry heavens in their manifold variety; in one part the stars are gathered in clusters; in another they are scattered far apart. In all this wonderful configuration of radiant light, the invisible and super-sensible astral body of the cosmos makes itself visible to us.
For this reason we should not consider the world of stars unspiritually. To speak of worlds of burning gases is just as though—forgive the apparent absurdity of the comparison, but it is precisely true—someone who loves you were gently stroking you, holding their fingers slightly apart, and you were to say that it felt like so many ribbons drawn across your cheek. It is no more untrue that ribbons are laid across your cheek when someone strokes you, than that there exist up there in the heavens those material entities of which modern physics tells. It is the astral body of the universe which is perpetually wielding its influences on the etheric organism of the Cosmos. The etheric Cosmos is organised for very long duration; it is for this reason that a star has its quality of fixity, representing a perpetual influence on the cosmic ether by the astral universe. It lasts far longer than the stroking of your cheek. But in the Cosmos things do last longer, for there we are dealing with gigantic measures. Thus in the starry heavens that we actually behold an expression of the soul-life of the cosmic astral world. An immense, unfathomable life, yet, at the same time, a soul-life, a real and actual life of the soul, is brought into the Cosmos. Think how dead the Cosmos appears to us when we look into the far spaces and see nothing but burning gaseous bodies. Think how living it all becomes when we know that the stars are an expression of the love with which the astral Cosmos works upon the etheric Cosmos—for this is to express it with perfect truth. Think then of those mysterious processes when certain stars suddenly light up at certain times—processes which have only been explained to us by means of physical hypotheses that do not lead to any real understanding. Stars that were not there before, light up for a time, and disappear again. For it is true indeed that in epochs when divine Beings desire to work in a special way from the astral world into the etheric, we behold new stars light up and fade away again. Illustration: V van Gogh, Night Sky

In order to penetrate ever further into their subjects, the host of specialists narrow their field and dig down deeper and deeper till they can't see each other from hole to hole. But the treasures their toil brings to light they place on the ground above. A different kind of specialist should be sitting there, the only one still missing. He would not go down any hole, but would stay on top and piece all the different facts together. -- Thor Heyerdahl, Aku-Aku

Fluoride...it doesn't go away

Look at this fluoride crystal, beautiful and yet disturbing. Seen one way it reminds of a hardened old man, pointing; frozen in a 'Lot's wife' gesture.
Every time an article appears anywhere discussing the problems connected with fluoride in our water supply you can be sure that a few weeks later there will be a counter article with 'scientific evidence' of its merits.
Such a recent article appeared in the Irish Examiner, Friday, 15 November, and it was an affront to intelligence. It was expected; a month or so before there had been an announcement that the percentage of fluoride in our water would be reduced.
The article was titled Fluoride in water reduces tooth decay. It cited a study commissioned by the government called North South Survey of Children's Oral Health in Ireland. However it omitted to mention which organization or company had been commissioned to do the study or what their interest might be. The article stated that children from 1984 to the present were compared, as though the addition of fluoride to water had been the only change in childrens' lives during that time. The article was also obscure in other ways, quoting the Irish Dental Association as questioning 'the department's credibility on dental issues.'
We need to know that there are only three countries left in the EU that continue to fluoridate their water supply, Ireland, the UK and Spain. Of these Ireland is the most heavily fluoridated. All other countries have found fluoridation to be ineffective at best and harmful at worst. We also need to know that recycling fluoride, a waste product of the chemical industry, is a lucrative business.
Switzerland has not had fluoridation with the exception of the city of Basel which ended its use in 2003 by overwhelming vote. To quote the GSK (Basel Health and Social Commission):
..serious doubts had arisen about the effectiveness of water fluoridation. Adding to these doubts were recent findings showing that tooth decay had risen in Basel's children since 1996, coupled with an absence of any evidence showing Basel to have a lower rate of tooth decay than other Swiss cities.
According to Board member Tobias Studer, 'the freedom of the individual to choose the appropriate prophylaxis method was also a major point in the debate.'
As noted in the GSK report, 'only a minimal part of so-called drinking water is used for drinking and cooking.' The GSK estimated that 'over 99% of the fluoride' added to water is never consumed by humans, leading in turn to 'an unnecessary load on the environment...Fluoride is a poison that loads our rivers.'
It was supposed that fluoridation of table salt has a much higher efficiency.
Moreover, when a medicinal product is added to the water supply there is an inability on the part of governments to control the dose each individual receives, due to the wide variation that exists not only in individual water consumption but also in exposures to fluoride from other sources. The inability to control the dose is particularly important considering:
* Exposure to fluoridated water doesn't just last a week or a month, but an entire lifetime.
* Individual susceptibilities to fluoride vary greatly (eg those with impaired kidney function or nutritional deficiencies are more vulnerable to fluoride's toxic effects).
*The margin of safety between the range of fluoride exposures typically found in fluoridated communities and the range of exposures associated with fluoride-related health problems (such as arthritis and bone fracture) are poorly defined and, if existent, remarkably narrow.
In the United States water fluoridation is touted by government authorites as being 'one of the top 10 public health achievements of the 20th century.' The Centers for Disease Control state that water fluoridation has been the key factor in the decline of cavities among US children during the past 50 years. Based on such statements from the US Government one could be forgiven for assuming that Western Europe has somehow suffered higher rates of tooth decay by not fluoridating its water.
However, according to extensive data compiled by the World Health Organization, unfluoridated countries in Western Europe including countries with little or no salt fluoridation have experienced, without exception, the same general decline in tooth decay over the past 30 to 50 years, as that experienced in the US...children today in unfluoridated countries such as Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands and Sweden have as low--or even lower--levels of tooth decay as US children.
The evidence from Europe, therefore, suggests that water fluoridation is an entirely replaceable and unnecessary means of reducing tooth decay--a fact consistent with the Basel Health and Social Commission's conclusions, but at profound odds with the massive promotion campaign by the US Government to fluoridate more water in the US.
The above information was reported by Michael Connett and can be accessed at http://fluoridealert.org/basel.htm
This brings us back to the beginning of this post and the wizened fellow in the photo. Fluoride is a powerful poison. It hardens, and not only teeth. Over time it will affect the hypermineralization of bone (NIA Workshop on Aging and Bone Quality, 1992, Bethesda Maryland) and who knows what hardening effect it has on the brain or other tissues. Such studies may perhaps exist, or they may not. In any case it is not responsible to inflict this poison on Ireland's water supply.

Contemplations on Politie

The writer, poet and ‘myriad man’ George Russell (AE) wrote in 1912:

I fear that (even) without State socialism we may yet get worship of the State and belief in its powers, developed to such an extent that the community will place itself completely in the hands of the government to the utter destruction of self-reliance, initiative and independence of spirit. When a man becomes feeble-minded his friends place him in a home. When a people grow decadent and feeble-minded they place themselves in the hands of the State…

If an individual, ignoring the wise warning of the Gospels, condemns any one over much, what he condemns is meted out to him. If he says some one is very vain, vanity blooms all over him as he speaks, for the remark implies that the speaker believes he is stainless so far as this fault is concerned. If he says some one else is a most irritable person, he grows irritated himself, and so on through the whole range of emotions.

Any philosopher who studied Irish problems calmly, if such a thing were possible, and seeing the intense hatred of the Irish of any government they had to deal with, could have prophesied they were bringing upon themselves the fate of being the most governed people on the face of the earth. Already one in every forty persons in Ireland is in the employment of the State and the demand for more government departments is increasing with feverish intensity. Within only the last couple of years demands have been made for a department with a million a year to develop industries. Forestry eagerly claimed a department all to itself. Next the railways were to be bought by the State and departmentalized also. Another demand was for State banking, and the income of the already existing departments has never been sufficient to satisfy either the departments or the people. They always ought to be doubled. The State is rapidly becoming a kind of fetish in Ireland, a fetish which is kicked and prayed to alternately, the kicking testifying to as much belief as the prayers.

We complain quite justly that we are the most expensively governed people in Europe and we go on asking for more expensive government departments. If we got all the things we ask for those who asked for them would instantly count up the cost, add it to that of already existing departments to prove still more conclusively that the solar system could not possibly contain a more expensively governed race and this would be put forward as a new reason why still more departments should be founded to balance or redress the wrong. Any one who has the misfortune I have of being forced every week to read a great number of country papers will bear me out when I say that nothing is more common than the demand in every parish meeting, board of guardians, rural or urban council, for State aid or State subsidies in some form of other. It is the tragedy of the decline and fall of the human will in the people we are witnessing, a far worse tragedy than the emigration which is deplored so much. The will is growing powerless to act without partnership with its fetish or idol the State…

…The forms which a social order may take are many. The best is that which produces the finest type of human being, with the social or kindly instincts most strongly developed. The worst thing which can happen to a social community is to have no social order at all, where every man is for himself and the devil may take the hindmost. Generally in such a community he takes the front rank as well as the stragglers. The phrase ‘Every man for himself, is one of the maxims in the gospel according to Beelzebub. The devil’s game with men is to divide and conquer them. Isolate your man from obligations to social order and in most cases his soul drops into the pit like a rotten apple from the Tree of Life. Fine character in a race is evolved and not taught.