UPDATE: CPS Takes Child Away After Parents Question Doctor, Seek Second Opinion

     The lesson seems to be that, in the eyes of the government bureaucracy, the judiciary, and corporate health care, our children belong to the collective.  A Sacramento County judge ruled today that baby Sammy must be transported to the Stanford Medical Center immediately for a third-party analysis of his condition.  The parents may accompany him, but the judge ordered them not to take their child from Stanford "without proper medical discharge."  Again, the default position is that experts don't just make recommendations to parents, they make the decisions instead of parents--the goal being control, not empowerment. You don't realize until it happens to you just how difficult it is to get out of "the system" once you are in it.  Read and watch more from Sacramento's News 10.
Also more from 4/30/13 here.

A Good Week for Us 'Conspiracy Theorists'

     Let's start with Matt Taibbi's article "Everything is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever" in Rolling Stone.  Let me quote:
     You may have heard of the Libor scandal, in which at least three – and perhaps as many as 16 – of the name-brand too-big-to-fail banks have been manipulating global interest rates, in the process messing around with the prices of upward of $500 trillion (that's trillion, with a "t") worth of financial instruments. When that sprawling con burst into public view last year, it was easily the biggest financial scandal in history – MIT professor Andrew Lo even said it "dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scam in the history of markets."
     That was bad enough, but now Libor may have a twin brother. Word has leaked out that the London-based firm ICAP, the world's largest broker of interest-rate swaps, is being investigated by American authorities for behavior that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Libor mess. Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have worked with up to 15 of the world's largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps.
     "It's a double-conspiracy," says an amazed Michael Greenberger, a former director of the trading and markets division at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and now a professor at the University of Maryland. "It's the height of criminality."  Read the article here.

     Next, a study led by a senior research scientist from MIT announced in a peer-reviewed paper that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, may be "the most biologically disruptive chemical in our environment, being responsible for a litany of health disorders and diseases including inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, depression, ADHD, autism, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, multiple sclerosis, cancer, cachexia, infertility, and developmental malformations."
      The herbicide's "Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body," they write.  Keep reading...

 

   

CPS Takes Child After Parents Question Doctor, Seek Second Opinion

     Incredibly, this incident is happening right now here in Sacramento. It all started on Thursday when Anna Nikolayev and her husband Alex took a trip to Sutter Memorial Hospital over some flu-like symptoms that their 5-month-old son was experiencing.  Intended to be a visit centered around ensuring the health of their child, they were met with resistance when questioning the treatment their young son was receiving. In fact, simply asking why their son was being given antibiotics, which absolutely destroys the small amounts of beneficial gut bacteria in children, was unacceptable.
      So what did Anna do? What any reasonable person who cares about their child would do, get the heck out of the hospital prescribing 5-month-old children antibiotics for flu-like symptoms. Before this, the Sutter Hospital doctors actually went a step further. Beyond the antibiotic dosing, they actually admitted the couple’s son Sammy into the ICU and started discussing the possibility of heart surgery. Sammy has been receiving treatment for a heart murmur since birth.

     To Anna, this was yet another step that was not explained and not making much sense. As a result, she pulled Sammy from the hospital and headed over to find a doctor at Kaiser Permanente who could offer a second opinion.  This doctor found that the parents should simply continue to monitor the child at home.

     In short, Child Protective Services arrived Friday with police officers and forcibly removed the baby. Watch the video here from News 10 via Natural Society and a shorter version from News 10 in Sacramento here.

     In 2010, I had a similar experience when my daughter was being treated for cancer.  I told the then head of pediatric oncology at the UC Davis Medical Center, Sacramento, that I wanted to stop chemotherapy and  take her home.  He acted at first like I must be joking, then told me if I stopped treatment and removed my daughter from the hospital I could be arrested, my daughter placed in foster care, and he would proceed with the chemotherapy treatments anyway.  I'll follow up with an account of the catastrophic results of that decision later.

Today: Three Years of Healthiness

     My teenaged daughter left the hospital after five months of anguish and returned home three years ago today. Her battle against and healing from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma inspired many, many changes in our family. It was my inspiration for starting this blog. The prayers of many, a modified version of the Gerson Diet, holistic supplements, and regular visceral massage healed her while surgeries and chemotherapy continually damaged her.
Psalm 103:1-5 (NASB Version) 
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
And all that is within me, bless His holy name.
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
And forget none of His benefits;
Who pardons all your iniquities,
Who heals all your diseases;
Who redeems your life from the pit,
Who crowns you with lovingkindness and compassion;
Who satisfies your years with good things,
So that your youth is renewed like the eagle.
 

AqauBounty is already celebrating, but...

From Food Democracy Now: 

      Right now President Obama and the Food and Drug Administration are preparing to approve genetically engineered salmon on the market. We have less than 24 hours to tell the Obama administration that you oppose the approval of the world's first genetically engineered, transgenic, animal.

     Unfortunately, the company behind GMO salmon, AquaBounty Technologies, is already celebrating its pending approval. Two days ago in a Reuters' story, AqauBounty CEO Ronald Stotish said that he fully expected the FDA to appove AquaBounty's GMO salmon in 2013.animal for human consumption.

     Tell President Obama and the FDA to put a halt on any approval of AquaBounty’s GMO salmon. Every voice counts!

http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/738?t=6&akid=838.542863.3Ef7Xf

     Already more than 1.3 million comments have been collected by our partners and allies to stop GMO salmon. We need your help today to help get that number over 1.5 million voices strong in the next 24 hours! If you don't want GMO salmon on your plate, please act today!

     The comment period ends this Friday, April 26, 2013.

"We The Sheeple:" Lockdown Means Rescuing Us?

      Remember this date:  Friday, April 19, 2013.  The American experiment may be finished.  Police can order us to stay in our homes or order us out of them at gunpoint...and we thank them for it.  No warrants needed, and probable cause now extends to every house on the block...for over 20 blocks!
      One more note about insignia: soldiers have their name, rank, and unit clearly marked on their uniforms; all the "officers" in the lockdown have only Boston Police Department insignia--no names or badge numbers.  No accountability for individuals.  Mob mentality rules.
     Look at this "officer" drawing a bead on residents in their own house: They probably thanked him for it.

Nothing is Real: Welcome to American Totalitarianism

Which of these "individuals" is a soldier in Afghanistan and which is an FBI agent in Boston?  Readers familiar with military insignia will know the answer; unfortunately, the answer is almost irrelevant.
     You may also know this trivial detail: the term "lockdown" is not from the military--it comes from 'correctional facilities.'  So what did that make the citizens of greater Boston this week if not prison inmates?
     "...the lessons that come from the events in Boston this past week are that the police state we live in is unable to protect the people of this country. Furthermore, the people seem content to live in these circumstances and are actually thankful to do so. Here's to hoping that at least a few more people saw this for what it really was – totalitarianism – and will begin to question the motives and tactics of those involved."
     "Totalitarian" by Joel Poindexter at Lew Rockwell's blog is an article I highly recommend.

Connecting the Dots: Innocent Watertown Family Ripped from Their Home at Gunpoint

     Where is the outrage?  Why aren't American citizens storming city hall, the police departments, newspaper and television outlets to protest being treated this way by their own government?  Why didn't every neighbor on this block pour into the street demanding an explanation from the police?
     The Boston bombings were horrendous and tragic, but so is the emasculation of our nation.  People have forgotten that they have a God-given right and responsibility to defend themselves against criminals and authoritarianism!
     Depending on these incompetent, undisciplined thugs for safety is a mouse trap; people will give up all their rights only to find that the government can't defend them. After all this chaos and abuse, the lone teen-aged suspect was found by an unarmed resident out for a smoke in his backyard.

Nothing is Real: Land of the Free and Home of the Brave?

     The alternative media may have become our only lifeline to truth and liberty.  I present here a collection of evidence indicating that the mainstream media is under virtually complete government/corporate control:

1. "This Is What Martial Law Looks Like."  An absolutely surreal collection of photos submitted to social media by citizens of the greater Boston area. Click the link to see more. Let me know if you see these images in a corporate media outlet!




2. "Contractors" at Boston Marathon Private military "contractors" or mercenaries are photographed standing near where the bombs exploded before detonation and just a few meters away after detonation.  The mainstream media, as far as I can tell, refuses to publish these images!

3. "FBI Tells America: 'Believe Us and No One Else'"
Yesterday, at a heralded press conference, seen by millions around the world, Richard DesLauriers, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston division, produced photos and video of two suspects in the Marathon bombing.
He stated: “…these images should be the only ones, I emphasize, the only ones that the public should view to assist us. Other photos should not be deemed credible, and they unnecessarily divert the public’s attention in the wrong direction, and create undo work for vital law-enforcement resources.”

What happened to the "free press?"

 "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin

Ron Paul launches Institute for Peace and Prosperity!

     Although Ron Paul retired from politics, he hasn’t left the conversation: the former Texas congressman has launched his new think tank – an institute that will carry on his ideals to the younger generations. 
     “If we have no more wars, we’ll be successful,” Paul told a crowd of reporters after announcing the launch of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity on Wednesday. The think tank will take a hard look at key political issues, including the future of freedom and the human race, and US domestic and foreign affairs. Its main argument is that war and poverty go hand-in-hand, while peace and prosperity also come together.
     The announcement of Paul’s think tank comes about two weeks after the launch of the Texas Republican’s homeschooling curriculum for students K-12, which he said will “play a significant role in the revolutionary reforms needed to build a free society with constitutional protections.”
     The website, ronpaulinstitute.org, will also feature congressional scorecards that will grade and assess votes and rank lawmakers on their support or opposition to peace.

An Open Orthodoxy: Open Theism and Eastern Orthodoxy

     "An Open Orthodoxy" is a new blog by two Evangelical theologians who embrace Open Theism and who are also attracted to Eastern Orthodoxy: 
     "An Open Orthodoxy is a conversation in pursuit of the ancient and the new, the traditional and the novel, the orthodox and the open. We are friends, Tom Belt and Dwayne Polk, exploring the relationship between open theism and Eastern Orthodox theology. We wonder what would come of a conversation between the two. So we aim to clarify open theism’s theological values, define its core claims and convictions, establish its diversities, and situate it relative to the values, experience and vision of the ancient Eastern Fathers. It’s our conviction that both can learn something from the other."
     From their "Defining Claim and Core Convictions:" page:
      "To summarize, then. God is love, and he creates for benevolent purposes which include creation’s coming to participate in and reflect the love that he is. This glorifies God, and this glory is the end for which all things are created. To fulfill this end, God endowed us with a certain freedom, and this freedom in turn entails certain risks. Open theists reason from these three core convictions — divine love and a free and risky creation — to the conclusion that God knows the open future as a branching of possible ways or paths the world might and might not take. But from the open theist’s point of view, these core convictions are the heart and soul of the view. The conclusion that God doesn’t eternally foreknow in every conceivable detail precisely how the world’s possibilities will unfold (which claim has received all the attention) is — to put it surprisingly but perhaps more accurately — the most uninteresting thing about the view. For us it’s not particularly about foreknowledge; it’s about freely becoming what God purposed us to be. It’s about theosis. The foreknowledge piece turns out to be just the most consistent way we know to express it."
 

Breathtaking Conformity: 'Gay Marriage' is a Victory Only for the Elite

    From MercatorNet:
     "Gay marriage is a victory for cultural elites who are enforcing conformity through pressure and ridicule."
     “Public opinion does not change this fast in free societies. Either opinion is not changing as fast as it appears to be, or society is not as free.”
     "...the extraordinary rise of gay marriage speaks, not to a new spirit of liberty or equality on a par with the civil-rights movements of the 1960s, but rather to the political and moral conformism of our age; to the weirdly judgmental non-judgmentalism of our PC times; to the way in which, in an uncritical era such as ours, ideas can become dogma with alarming ease and speed; to the difficulty of speaking one’s mind or sticking with one’s beliefs at a time when doubt and disagreement are pathologised."
     "Gay marriage brilliantly shows how political narratives are forged these days, and how people are made to accept them. This is a campaign that is elitist in nature, in the sense that, in direct contrast to those civil-rights agitators of old, it came from the top of society down; and it is a campaign which is extremely unforgiving of dissent or disagreement, implicitly, softly demanding acquiescence to its agenda."
     "So for all the comparisons of the gay-marriage movement to the civil-rights movement, in fact the most striking thing about gay marriage is its origins among the elite."
     Keep reading...

Study Reveals Global Warming Not to Blame for Drought of 2012

     A new federal study reveals that global warming is not to blame for last year’s extreme drought that crippled the central Great Plains.  The study conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Drought Task Force places the blame on natural variations in weather patterns that caused the “flash drought.”
     “This is one of those events that comes along once every couple hundreds of years,” lead author Martin Hoerling, a research meteorologist at NOAA, said. “Climate change was not a significant part, if any, of the event.”
     Other scientists have linked recent changes in the jet stream to shrinking Arctic sea ice, but Hoerling and study co-author Richard Seager of Columbia University said those global warming connections are not valid.
Hoerling used computer simulations to see if he could replicate the drought using man-made global warming conditions. He couldn’t. So that means it was a random event, he said.
     Keep reading...

Three Key Lessons from the Obama Administration's Drone Lies

     From Glenn Greenwald's Guardian article of the same name:

1. The Obama administration often has no idea who they are killing.
2. Whistleblowers have become vital for transparency and accountability, which is precisely why the Obama administration is waging a war on them.
3. Secrecy ensures both government lies and abuses of power.

     For years, senior Obama officials, including the president himself, have been making public claims about their drone program that have just been proven to be categorically false. The evidence of this falsity is so conclusive that even establishment sources are using unusually harsh language - including "lies" - to describe Obama's statements. McClatchy's national security reporter, Jonathan Landay, obtained top-secret intelligence documents showing that "contrary to assurances it has deployed US drones only against known senior leaders of al-Qaida and allied groups, the Obama administration has targeted and killed hundreds of suspected lower-level Afghan, Pakistani and unidentified 'other' militants in scores of strikes in Pakistan's rugged tribal area."
     This administration has broadened the term "militant" into meaninglessness.
     Keep reading...

Mental Illness and Jumping From A Burning Building

Ann Voskamp wrote this piece in the wake of the suicide of Rick Warren’s son. It’s disheartening to hear so many thoughtless and cruel comments by other Christians when tragedies like this strike. But here is a voice of knowing and compassion. Here is love.
From Ann’s blog post:

I once heard a pastor tell the whole congregation that he had lived next to the loonie bin and I looked at the floor when everyone laughed and they didn’t know how I loved my mama. I looked to the floor when they laughed, when I wanted them to stand up and reach through the pain of the flames and say:
Our Bible says Jesus said, “It is not those who are healthy who need a doctor, but those who are sick.” Jesus came for the sick, not for the smug. Jesus came as doctor and He makes miracles happen through medicine and when the church isn’t for the suffering, then the Church isn’t for Christ.

From "A Holy Experience" via "ReKnew."
 

God's Aikido Way of Defeating Evil

     As I've said before, what he lacks in style he makes up for in his teaching abilities. Greg Boyd continues his thoughts on the way God uses the evil intentions and actions of his enemies to bring about good. Because this strategy is based in love, the demons who encountered Christ could not possibly imagine what he was up to. They ended up participating in their own demise and our redemption.

Connecting the Dots: Your Children Belong to the Community

     MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry says your children are not yours – they are owned by the community:
     “We have to break through our private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families,” says the professor of political science at Tulane University, where she is founding director of the Anna Julia Cooper Project on Gender, Race, and Politics in the South. Kids belong to whole communities, she insists, and once we realize this we’ll make “better investments” in government indoctrination of children.
     Harris-Perry urges us to “break through” the “private idea” that individuals own themselves. Like Marx, she believes the individual is a “communal being” and all human worth is intractably linked to the community, the collective, and the state is the ultimate manifestation of the collective will.
     Keep reading...
 

Nothing is Real: Even China More Concerned with Rule of Law than Obama

     The suspect in a heinous mass-murder of Chinese nationals on the Mekong River, Naw Kham,  successfully hid for months in the Laotian jungles and mountains.  As he was continually abetted by local drug lords and corrupt foreign officials and populace, Chinese security forces considered using a drone strike to kill Kham.  Citing international law and national sovereignty issues, Chinese officials eventually abandoned the idea and opted instead to be patient and wait to capture Kham.  Subsequent to his arrest, Kham received a nationally televised trial complete with an appeals process, before finally being executed by lethal injection.
     Certainly any story from China needs to be treated with suspicion, but the fact remains that the U.S., at least for now, is the only nation to embrace the drone assassination model.
     Another critical angle to this story is the complicity of the New York Times in framing  the events so that President Obama would not suffer in comparison to the Chinese.  As Glenn Greenwald writes, either China or Russia will finally kill someone in another country with a drone, and U.S. political and media circles will erupt with condemnation.
     Read the Greenwald article from "The Guardian" here.
 
    

Man with Stage 3 Colon Cancer Refuses Chemo and Cures Himself with Vegan Diet

     Chris Wark of Memphis, Tennessee, was diagnosed with Stage 3 Colon Cancer in 2003, at 26 years old.  He had surgery but refused chemo. Instead, he used nutrition and natural therapies, combined with prayer and meditation on the Scriptures, to heal himself.  By the grace of God, he's alive and kicking and cancer-free!
     Read about it and listen to him at "GreenMed" here,, visit his web site "Chris Beat Cancer" here, and find out more from AACI here.

Top Senator Apologizes for Monsanto Protection Act

     From "Natural Society": 
     "Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland has released a public statement apologizing to the public for the passing of the Monsanto Protection Act, stating that the legislation was buried deep within a government spending bill that was required to ‘prevent a government shutdown’.
     "Mikulski is the Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman, one who was ultimately responsible for passing the bill that contained the notorious Monsanto Protection Act — a legislative ‘rider’ that grants biotech juggernaut Monsanto immunity from federal courts when it comes to their GMO crops. Although ‘written’ by Senator Roy Blunt, who actually gave Monsanto the ability to write their own Monsanto Protection Act and has received over $60,000 from Monsanto, Mikulski has taken serious flak for the passing of the rider."
Keep reading...