The Truth Will Set You Free

Simply sunnah Blog by Mai

2011-02-28T06:31:00.000-06:00

To all my muslim and non muslim readers I would like to invite you to a blog called Simply sunnah. A beautiful blog that focuses on the sunnah of Islam. Its a great read for non muslims as well because you can learn more about the beauty of Islam and differentiate between culture and Islam.

http://simplysunnah.blogspot.com/2011/02/how-to-distinguish-between-sunnah-and.html

2010-08-04T07:55:00.000-05:00

Islam the Misunderstood Religion

2010-05-07T01:32:00.000-05:00

Regardless of your religious background, everyone can benefit by educating themselves about Islam. The media portrays Islam as an extreme, oppressive religion yet the word islam means Submission (to Allah) and is derived from a word meaning Peace. I welcome you to watch the following video by Abdur-Raheem Green, a convert to Islam and learn more about the beauty of Islam.

Disinformation Tactics: The Methods Used To Keep You In The Dark

2010-03-26T07:47:00.001-05:00

Truth can be defined as

1. A fact that has been verified

2. conformity to reality or actuality

3. A true statement

"There was a time, not too long ago (relatively speaking), that governments and the groups of elites that controlled them did not find it necessary to conscript themselves into wars of disinformation. Propaganda was relatively straightforward. The lies were much simpler.
The control of information flow was easily directed. In fact, during the early Middle-Ages in most European countries commoners were not even allowed to own a Bible, nor was the Bible allowed to be interpreted from Latin to another language, let alone any other tome that might breed “dangerous ideas”. This was due in large part to the established feudal system and its hierarchy of royals and clergy. Rules were enforced with the threat of property confiscation and execution for anyone who strayed from the rigid socio-political structure. Those who had theological, metaphysical, or scientific information outside of the conventional and scripted collective world view were tortured and slaughtered. The elites kept the information to themselves, and removed its remnants from mainstream recognition, sometimes for centuries before it was rediscovered.

With the advent of anti-feudalism, and most importantly the success of the American Revolution, elites were no longer able to dominate information with the edge of a blade or the barrel of a gun. The establishment of Democracies (and Democratic Republics), with their philosophy of open government and rule by the people, compelled Aristocratic minorities to plot more subtle ways of obstructing the truth and thus maintaining their hold over the world without exposing themselves to retribution from the masses. Thus, the complex art of disinformation was born. The technique, the “magic” of the lie, was refined and perfected. The mechanics of the human mind and the human soul became an endless obsession for the elites.

The goal was malicious, but socially radical; instead of expending the impossible energy needed to dictate the very form and existence of the truth, they would allow it to drift, obscured in a fog of contrived data. They would wrap the truth in a “Gordian Knot” of misdirections and fabrications so elaborate that they felt certain the majority of people would surrender, giving up long before they ever finished unraveling the deceit. The goal was not to destroy the truth, but to hide it in plain sight.

In modern times, and with carefully engineered methods, this goal has for the most part been accomplished. However, these methods also have inherent weaknesses. Lies are fragile. They require constant attentiveness to keep them alive. The exposure of a single truth can rip through an ocean of lies, evaporating it instantly. In this article, we will examine the methods used to fertilize and promote the growth of disinformation, as well as how to identify the roots of disinformation and effectively cut them, starving out the entire system of fallacies once and for all.

Media Disinformation Methods

The mainstream media, once tasked with the job of investigating government corruption and keeping elitists in line, has now become nothing more than a PR firm for corrupt officials and their Globalist handlers. The days of the legitimate “investigative reporter” are long gone, and journalism itself has deteriorated into a rancid pool of so called “TV Editorialists” who treat their own baseless opinions as supported fact.

The elitist co-opting of news has been going on in one form or another since the invention of the printing press, however, the first methods of media disinformation truly came to fruition under the supervision of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who believed the truth was “subjective” and open to his personal interpretation. Hearst’s legacy of lies and sensationalism lives on in the Hearst published magazine ‘Popular Mechanics’, who accuse the growing 9/11 Truth Movement of outrageous “conspiracy theory” while at the same time consistently publishing articles about UFO sightings and secret government flying saucer programs.

As we will show, this strange juxtaposition of mixed signals and hypocritical accusations is characteristic of all purveyors of disinformation.

Some of the main tactics used by the mainstream media to mislead the masses are as follows:

Lie Big, Retract Quietly

Mainstream media sources (especially newspapers) are notorious for reporting flagrantly dishonest and unsupported news stories on the front page, then quietly retracting those stories on the very back page when they are caught. In this case, the point is to railroad the lie into the collective consciousness. Once the lie is finally exposed, it is already too late, and a large portion of the population will not notice or care when the truth comes out. A good example of this would be the collusion of the MSM with the Bush administration to convince the American public after 9/11 that Iraq had WMDs, even though no concrete evidence existed to prove it. George W. Bush’s eventual admission that there had never been any WMDs in Iraq (except chemical weapons which the U.S. actually sold to Saddam under the Reagan / Bush administration) was lightly reported or glazed over by most mainstream news sources. The core reason behind a war that has now killed over a million people was proven to be completely fraudulent, yet I still run into people today who believe that Iraq had nukes…

Unconfirmed Or Controlled Sources As Fact

Cable news venues often cite information from “unnamed” sources, government sources that have an obvious bias or agenda, or “expert” sources without providing an alternative “expert” view. The information provided by these sources is usually backed by nothing more than blind faith. A recent example of this would be the Osama Bin Laden audio tapes which supposedly reveal that the Christmas “Underwear Bomber” was indeed Al-Qaeda:

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/osama-bin-laden-addresses-president-obama-audio-tape/story?id=9650267

The media treats the audio tape as undeniable fact in numerous stories, then at the same time prints a side story which shows that the White House cannot confirm that the tape is even real:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60N16I20100124

If the White House cannot confirm the authenticity of the tape, then why did the media report on its contents as if it had been confirmed?

Calculated Omission

Otherwise known as “cherry picking” data. One simple piece of information or root item of truth can derail an entire disinfo news story, so instead of trying to gloss over it, they simply pretend as if it doesn’t exist. When

the fact is omitted, the lie can appear entirely rational. This tactic is also used extensively when disinformation agents and crooked journalists engage in open debate.

Distraction, and the Manufacture of Relevance

Sometimes the truth wells up into the public awareness regardless of what the media does to bury it. When this occurs their only recourse is to attempt to change the public’s focus and thereby distract them from the truth they were so close to grasping. The media accomplishes this by “over-reporting” on a subject that has nothing to do with the more important issues at hand. Ironically, the media can take an unimportant story, and by reporting on it ad nauseum, cause many Americans to assume that because the media won’t shut-up about it, it must be important! An example of this would be the recent push for an audit of the Federal Reserve which was gaining major public support, as well as political support. Instead of reporting on this incredible and unprecedented movement for transparency in the Fed, the MSM spent two months or more reporting non-stop on the death of Michael Jackson, a pop idol who had not released a decent record since “Thriller,” practically deifying the man who only months earlier was being lambasted by the same MSM for having “wandering hands” when children were about.

Dishonest Debate Tactics

Sometimes, men who actually are concerned with the average American’s pursuit of honesty and legitimate fact-driven information break through and appear on T.V. However, rarely are they allowed to share their views or insights without having to fight through a wall of carefully crafted deceit and propaganda. Because the media knows they will lose credibility if they do not allow guests with opposing viewpoints every once in a while, they set up and choreograph specialized T.V. debates in highly restrictive environments which put the guest on the defensive, and make it difficult for them to clearly convey their ideas or facts.

TV pundits are often trained in what are commonly called “Alinsky Tactics.” Saul Alinsky was a moral relativist, and champion of the lie as a tool for the “greater good;” essentially, a modern day Machiavelli. His “Rules for Radicals” were supposedly meant for grassroots activists who opposed the establishment, and emphasized the use of any means necessary to defeat one’s political opposition. But is it truly possible to defeat an establishment built on lies, by use of even more elaborate lies, and by sacrificing one’s ethics?

Today, Alinsky’s rules are used more often by the establishment than by its opposition. These tactics have been adopted by governments and disinformation specialists across the world, but they are most visible in TV debate. While Alinsky sermonized about the need for confrontation in society, his debate tactics are actually designed to circumvent real and honest confrontation of opposing ideas with slippery tricks and diversions. Alinsky’s tactics, and their modern usage, can be summarized as follows:

1) Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.
We see this tactic in many forms. For example, projecting your own movement as mainstream, and your opponent’s as fringe. Convincing your opponent that his fight is a futile one. Your opposition may act differently, or even hesitate to act at all, based on their perception of your power.
2) Never go outside the experience of your people, and whenever possible, go outside of the experience of the enemy.
Don’t get drawn into a debate about a subject you do not know as well as or better than your opposition. If possible, draw them into such a situation instead. Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty in your opposition. This is commonly used against unwitting interviewees on cable news shows whose positions are set up to be skewered. The target is blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address. In television and radio, this also serves to waste broadcast time to prevent the target from expressing his own positions.
3) Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
The objective is to target the opponent’s credibility and reputation by accusations of hypocrisy. If the tactician can catch his opponent in even the smallest misstep, it creates an opening for further attacks.
4) Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.
“Ron Paul is a crackpot.” “Dennis Kucinich is short and weird.” “9-11 twoofers wear tinfoil hats.” Ridicule is almost impossible to counter. It’s irrational. It infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage. It also works as a pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.
5) A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
The popularization of the term “Teabaggers” is a classic example, it caught on by itself because people seem to think it’s clever, and enjoy saying it. Keeping your talking points simple and fun keeps your side motivated, and helps your tactics spread autonomously, without instruction or encouragement.
6) A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
See rule number 6. Don’t become old news. If you keep your tactics fresh, its easier to keep your people active. Not all disinformation agents are paid. The “useful idiots” have to be motivated by other means. Mainstream disinformation often changes gear from one method to the next and then back again.
7) Keep the pressure on with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.
Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. Never give the target a chance to rest, regroup, recover or re-strategize. Take advantage of current events and twist their implications to support your position. Never let a good crisis go to waste.
The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
This goes hand in hand with Rule #1. Perception is reality. Allow your opposition to expend all of its energy in expectation of an insurmountable scenario. The dire possibilities can easily poison the mind and result in demoralization.
9) The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.
The objective of this pressure is to force the opposition to react and make the mistakes that are necessary for the ultimate success of the campaign.
10) If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside.
As grassroots activism tools, Alinsky tactics have historically been used (for example, by labor movements) to force the opposition to react with violence against activists, which leads to popular sympathy for the activists’ cause. Today, false (or co-opted) grassroots movements use this technique in debate as well as in planned street actions. The idea is to provoke (or stage) ruthless attacks against ones’ self, so as to be perceived as the underdog, or the victim. Today, this technique is commonly used to create the illusion that a certain movement is “counterculture” or “anti-establishment.”
11) The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
Never let the enemy score points because you’re caught without a solution to the problem. Today, this is often used offensively against legitimate activists, such as the opponents of the Federal Reserve. Complain that your opponent is merely “pointing out the problems.” Demand that they offer a solution.
12) Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. The targets supporters will expose themselves. Go after individual people, not organizations or institutions. People hurt faster than institutions.

The next time you view an MSM debate, watch the pundits carefully, you will likely see many if not all of the strategies above used on some unsuspecting individual attempting to tell the truth.

Internet Disinformation Methods

Because the MSM’s bag of tricks has been so exhausted over such a long period of time, many bitter and enraged consumers of information are now turning to alternative news sources, most of which exist on the collective commons we call the internet. At first, it appears, the government and elitists ignored the web as a kind of novelty, or just another mechanism they could exploit in spreading disinformation. As we all now well know, they dropped the ball, and the internet has become the most powerful tool for truth history has ever seen.

That being said, they are now expending incredible resources in order to catch up to their mistake, utilizing every trick in their arsenal to beat web users back into submission. While the anonymity of the internet allows for a certain immunity against many of Saul Alinsky’s manipulative tactics, it also allows governments to attack those trying to spread the truth covertly. In the world of web news, we call these people “disinfo trolls.” Trolls are now being openly employed by governments in countries like the U.S. and Israel specifically to scour the internet for alternative news sites and disrupt their ability to share information.

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Raw_obtains_CENTCOM_email_to_bloggers_1016.html

http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090104/FOREIGN/882042198/1002

http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/10793-twitterers-paid-to-spread-israeli-propaganda-internet-warfare-team-unveiled.html

Internet trolls, also known as “paid posters” or “paid bloggers,” are increasingly being employed by private corporations as well, often for marketing purposes. In fact, it is a rapidly growing industry.

Trolls use a wide variety of strategies, some of which are unique to the internet, here are just a few:

1) Make outrageous comments designed to distract or frustrate: An Alinsky tactic used to make people emotional, although less effective because of the impersonal nature of the web.
2) Pose as a supporter of the truth, then make comments that discredit the movement: We have seen this even on our own forums — trolls pose as supporters of the Liberty Movement, then post long, incoherent diatribes so as to appear either racist or insane. Here is a live example of this tactic in use on Yahoo! Answers.
The key to this tactic is to make references to common Liberty Movement arguments while at the same time babbling nonsense, so as to make those otherwise valid arguments seem ludicrous by association.
In extreme cases, these “Trojan Horse Trolls” have been known to make posts which incite violence — a technique obviously intended to solidify the false assertions of the notorious MIAC report and other ADL/SPLC publications which purport that constitutionalists should be feared as potential domestic terrorists.
3) Dominate Discussions: Trolls often interject themselves into productive web discussions in order to throw them off course and frustrate the people involved.
4) Prewritten Responses: Many trolls are supplied with a list or database with pre-planned talking points designed as generalized and deceptive responses to honest arguments. 9/11 “debunker” trolls are notorious for this.
5) False Association: This works hand in hand with item #2, by invoking the stereotypes established by the “Trojan Horse Troll.”
For example: calling those against the Federal Reserve “conspiracy theorists” or “lunatics”. Deliberately associating anti-globalist movements with big foot or alien enthusiasts, because of the inherent negative connotations. Using false associations to provoke biases and dissuade people from examining the evidence objectively.
6) False Moderation: Pretending to be the “voice of reason” in an argument with obvious and defined sides in an attempt to move people away from what is clearly true into a “grey area” where the truth becomes “relative.”
7) Straw Man Arguments: A very common technique. The troll will accuse his opposition of subscribing to a certain point of view, even if he does not, and then attacks that point of view. Or, the troll will put words in the mouth of his opposition, and then rebut those specific words. For example: “9/11 truthers say that no planes hit the WTC towers, and that it was all just computer animation. What are they, crazy?”

Sometimes, these strategies are used by average people with serious personality issues. However, if you see someone using these tactics often, or using many of them at the same time, you may be dealing with a paid internet troll.

Government Disinformation Methods

Governments, and the globalists who back them, have immense assets — an almost endless fiat money printing press — and control over most legal and academic institutions. With these advantages, disinformation can be executed on a massive scale. Here are just a handful of the most prominent tactics used by government agencies and private think tanks to guide public opinion, and establish the appearance of consensus:

1) Control The Experts: Most Americans are taught from kindergarten to ignore their instincts for the truth and defer to the “professional class” for all their answers. The problem is that much of the professional class is indoctrinated throughout their college years, many of them molded to support the status quo. Any experts that go against the grain are ostracized by their peers.
2) Control The Data: By controlling the source data of any investigation, be it legal or scientific, the government has the ability to engineer any truth they wish, that is, as long as the people do not care enough to ask for the source data. Two major examples of controlled and hidden source data include; the NIST investigation of the suspicious 9/11 WTC collapses, in which NIST engineers, hired by the government, have kept all source data from their computer models secret, while claiming that the computer models prove the collapses were “natural”. Also, the recent exposure of the CRU Climate Labs and their manipulation of source data in order to fool the public into believing that Global Warming is real, and accepting a world-wide carbon tax. The CRU has refused to release the source data from its experiments for years, and now we know why.
3) Skew The Statistics: This tactic is extremely evident in the Labor Department’s evaluations on unemployment, using such tricks as incorporating ambiguous birth / death ratios into their calculation in order to make it appear as though there are less unemployed people than there really are, or leaving out certain subsections of the population, like those who are unemployed and no longer seeking benefits.
3) Guilt By False Association: Governments faced with an effective opponent will always attempt to demonize that person or group in the eyes of the public. This is often done by associating them with a group or idea that the public already hates. Example: During the last election, they tried to associate Ron Paul supporters with racist groups (and more recently, certain Fox News anchors) in order to deter moderate Democrats from taking an honest look at Congressman Paul’s policies.
4) Manufacture Good News: This falls in with the skewing of statistics, and it also relies heavily on Media cooperation. The economic “Green Shoots” concept is a good example of the combination of government and corporate media interests in order to create an atmosphere of false optimism based on dubious foundations.
5) Controlled Opposition: Men in positions of power have known for centuries the importance of controlled opposition. If a movement rises in opposition to one’s authority, one must usurp that movement’s leadership. If no such movement exists to infiltrate, the establishment will often create a toothless one, in order to fill that social need, and neutralize individuals who might have otherwise taken action themselves.

During the 1960’s and 70’s, the FBI began a secretive program called COINTELPRO. Along with illegal spying on American citizens who were against the Vietnam conflict or in support of the civil rights movement, they also used agents and media sources to pose as supporters of the movement, then purposely created conflict and division, or took control of the direction of the movement altogether. This same tactic has been attempted with the modern Liberty Movement on several levels, but has so far been ineffective in stopping our growth.
The NRA is another good example of controlled opposition, as many gun owners are satisfied that paying their annual NRA dues is tantamount to actively resisting anti-gun legislation; when in fact, the NRA is directly responsible for many of the compromises which result in lost ground on 2nd amendment issues. In this way, gun owners are not only rendered inactive, but actually manipulated into funding the demise of their own cause.
6) False Paradigms: Human beings have a tendency to categorize and label other people and ideas. It is, for better or worse, a fundamental part of how we understand the complexities of the world. This component of human nature, like most any other, can be abused as a powerful tool for social manipulation. By framing a polarized debate according to artificial boundaries, and establishing the two poles of that debate, social engineers can eliminate the perceived possibility of a third alternative. The mainstream media apparatus is the key weapon to this end. The endless creation of dichotomies, and the neat arrangement of ideologies along left/right lines, offers average people a very simple (though hopelessly inaccurate) way of thinking about politics. It forces them to choose a side, usually based solely on emotional or cultural reasons, and often lures them into supporting positions they would otherwise disagree with. It fosters an environment in which beating the other team is more important than ensuring the integrity of your own. Perhaps most importantly, it allows the social engineer to determine what is “fair game” for debate, and what is not.
Alinsky himself wrote: “One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other.”
One merely needs to observe a heated debate between a Democrat and a Republican to see how deeply this belief has been ingrained on both sides, and how destructive it is to true intellectual discourse.

The best way to disarm disinformation agents is to know their methods inside and out. This gives us the ability to point out exactly what they are doing in detail the moment they try to do it. Immediately exposing a disinformation tactic as it is being used is highly destructive to the person utilizing it. It makes them look foolish, dishonest, and weak for even making the attempt. Internet trolls most especially do not know how to handle their methods being deconstructed right in front of their eyes, and usually fold and run from debate when it occurs.

The truth, is precious. It is sad that there are so many in our society that have lost respect for it; people who have traded in their conscience and their soul for temporary financial comfort while sacrificing the stability and balance of the rest of the country in the process. The human psyche breathes on the air of truth, without it, humanity cannot survive. Without it, the species will collapse in on itself, starving from lack of intellectual and emotional sustenance. Disinformation does not only threaten our insight into the workings of our world; it makes us vulnerable to fear, misunderstanding, and doubt, all things that lead to destruction. It can lead good people to commit terrible atrocities against others, or even against themselves. Without a concerted and organized effort to diffuse mass-produced lies, the future will look bleak indeed."

source:

http://orwellsdreams.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/disinformation-tactics-the-methods-used-to-keep-you-in-the-dark/

Desert Rose

2010-03-04T05:06:00.000-06:00

Poetry by Lena Winfrey Seder

I began my journey the day I was born.
My name told my destiny.
Yet, it remained hidden for me to discover.
I traveled a long time to get to this moment.
So many cactuses I stumbled over in the dark.
No star lighted my path-- I was not yet awake.
Naivety guided me into sandstorms that made wounds in my soul.
Ignorance blinded me as the cactus' thorns scratched me.
However, these wounds propelled me forward and kept me on
a certain path.
One day, when I looked ahead, I saw an oasis.
A mirage, I thought, so I slowly walked towards it-- expecting
to be fooled again.
When I reached the mirage, I found a rose.
I touched it and found it was no dream.
Entranced by this rose, I placed it in the vase of my heart.
As it took root, it became a part of me.
My blindness lifted, for I could see the true Light.
Faith rested in my heart.
My desert rose led me to this destiny.
When I stray-- its paper thorns remind me to come back to
the straight path.
Each day it continues growing, it strengthens my heart and
my soul.
I water it with my prayers, my charity, my fasting.
This rose is here to stay--
It guides me to an eternal Garden.
My thoughts, my goals, my actions are preparing my place in
that Garden.
That is where I will rest my roots--
As long as this rose remains in my heart.

To understand How the U.S. chooses which countries to invade under the pretense of nuclear weapons or terrorism, first we must understand where the Oil is.

2010-03-02T08:30:00.001-06:00

Children 'over-exposed to sexual imagery'

2010-02-26T05:24:00.000-06:00

Source: By Dominic Casciani, BBC News

Children are being increasingly exposed to sexual imagery and their parents have limited opportunities to stop it, a report for the Home Office warns.

The report calls for tougher regulation of sexual imagery in adverts and a ban on selling "lads' mags" to under-16s.

It also recommends selling mobile phones and games consoles with parental controls automatically switched on.

Author Dr Linda Papadopoulos said there was a clear link between sexualised imagery and violence towards females.

Her report said the material children were being exposed to included the growth of lads' mags and pornography on mobile phones, through to big-name fashion brands using sexual imagery to advertise clothes targeted at young teenagers.

'Distorting perceptions'

The report said this "drip-drip" exposure was distorting young people's perceptions of themselves, encouraging boys to become fixated on being macho and dominant, while girls in turn presented themselves as sexually available and permissive.

One outcome had been the rise of sexual bullying in which girls felt compelled to post topless or naked pictures on social networks, it added.

"Both the images we consume and the way we consume them are lending credence to the idea that women are there to be used and that men are there to use them"

Linda Papadopoulos

"Unless sexualisation is accepted as harmful, we will miss an important opportunity… to broaden young people's beliefs about where their values lies," said Dr Papadopoulos, a psychologist.

The report's 36 recommendations include calling for games consoles, mobile phones and some computers to be sold with parental controls already switched on.

This would allow families to automatically filter which on-demand services and online material their children can use.

Other recommendations include:

A ban on "sexualised" music videos before the TV watershed
A ban on Jobcentres advertising positions in lap-dancing clubs and massage parlours
Internet service providers to block access to pro-bulimia and pro-anorexia websites
The creation of a website where parents can report any "irresponsible marketing" they believe sexualises young children.

Dr Papadopoulos said there should also be symbols to show when a published photograph had been digitally altered - such as pictures of celebrities manipulated to make them appear thinner.

She also recommends giving the Advertising Standards Authority the power to act against sexualised imagery appearing within commercial websites, such as provocative photo-shoots used by clothing chains targeting teenagers.

Teenagers talk about the pressures they face over sex and image

Dr Papadopoulos said: "The evidence gathered in the review suggests a clear link between consumption of sexualised images, tendency to view women as objects and the acceptance of aggressive attitudes and behaviour as the norm.

"Both the images we consume and the way we consume them are lending credence to the idea that women are there to be used and that men are there to use them."

The review forms part of the Home Office's broader attempts to have a louder public debate about how to combat violence against women and girls.

Both Labour and the Conservatives are examining the issues. Tory leader David Cameron said earlier this month that he would clamp down on irresponsible advertising targeted at children.

He also mooted the idea that parents should be able to complain about offensive marketing tactics used by companies, via a specially set-up website.

Such moves were needed to stop children being "bombarded" with inappropriate material, he said.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson said: "We know that parents are concerned about the pressures their children are under at a much younger age, which is why we have already committed to a number of the recommendations in this report.

Parental control

"Changing attitudes will take time but it is essential if we are going to stop the sexualisation which contributes to violence against women and girls."

Deputy Children's Commissioner for England, Sue Berelowitz, said the report was excellent, but said responsibility did not only lie with the media.

"Parents need to be stepping in and taking control, they need to be imposing good boundaries, they need to know what their children are watching, people need to be really careful about children having private access to the internet in their bedrooms," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at Kent University, said society as a whole and adults were to blame.

He said: "The whole of society is hypersexualised - sex becomes the common currency through which adults make their way in the world and continually send a signal to children that sex is all that matters.

"One of the big problems that we are faced with is that increasingly adults have lost the capacity to draw a line between their own attitudes and those of children and increasingly we're recycling adult attitudes about sex through the prism of children."

Hamas man's son Mosab Hassan Yousef 'was Israeli spy'

2010-02-26T05:12:00.000-06:00

Source:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8533952.stm

The son of a jailed Hamas leader who converted to Christianity and moved to California has gone public to say that he spied for Israel.

Speaking before the release of a book about his life, Mosab Hassan Yousef made the assertion in an interview for Israel's Haaretz newspaper.

A former deputy head of Israel's Shin Bet intelligence service told BBC World Service he had been one of its agents.

But a Hamas leader dismissed the report as a slander on the Islamist group.

Mr Yousef, 32, is a son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a senior Hamas figure in the West Bank, who is currently serving a six-year prison sentence in an Israeli prison.

" He provided very important information like hundreds of others fighting against terror"

Gideon Ezra
Former deputy leader of Shin Bet

If the younger Yousef's revelations are true, and he did play a role in preventing Hamas attacks on Israel, it will be an embarrassment for the group, which prides itself on its tight discipline and shuns the Palestinian Authority because of its peace negotiations with Israel.

While the Yousef case dates back several years, there have been suggestions the group was betrayed more recently when Hamas figure Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was assassinated in Dubai on 20 January.

'Slander and lies'

Mosab Hassan Yousef converted to Christianity and moved to the US in 2007.

The book he co-wrote, Son of Hamas, is due to be published there shortly.

Shin Bint:

Referred to officially as Shabak in Hebrew or the Israel Security Agency in English

Charged with defending against terrorism, subversion and espionage

Interrogates suspected militants at special centres across Israel

Has been accused of using torture against Palestinians

"He provided very important information like hundreds of others fighting against terror," Gideon Ezra, formerly deputy leader of Shin Bet and now a member of the Knesset for the Kadima party, told BBC World Service.

Mr Ezra said the younger Yousef had been persuaded to spy for Israel while being held in prison himself.

Earlier, senior Hamas leader Ismail Radwan condemned Haaretz's report as "baseless slander" aimed at the elder Yousef.

"The Palestinian people have great confidence in Hamas and its struggle and they will not be fooled by this slander and these lies of the Israeli occupation," he told AFP news agency.

Haaretz journalist Avi Issacharoff, who wrote the original article, told the BBC Mr Yousef was not prepared to give any further media interviews as of Wednesday morning.

News of his religious conversion in 2008 shocked many Muslims in the Gaza Strip and he was condemned by some for his "apostasy".

'Prized source'

Mosab Hassan Yousef was considered Shin Bet's most reliable source in the Hamas leadership, earning himself the nickname "the Green Prince" because of the colour of the group's flag and his pedigree as the son of one of the movement's founders, Haaretz writes.

"I wish I were in Gaza Now" Mosab Hassan Yousef

One of his Israeli "handlers" told the paper that he had saved many lives, with one of his insights "worth 1,000 hours of thought by top experts".

"The amazing thing is that none of his actions were done for money," the handler, named in the book as "Captain Loai", added.

Speaking to the newspaper by phone from California, Mr Yousef appeared to be still brimming with enthusiasm for Israel's fight against Hamas.

"I wish I were in Gaza now," he was quoted as saying. "I would put on an army uniform and join Israel's special forces in order to liberate [Israeli hostage] Gilad Shalit."

Gideon Ezra told the BBC that it was not easy for Israel to penetrate Hamas but it was "doing its best".

His country, he argued, had no choice but to recruit agents within Palestinian militant groups in order to avoid attacks, though he added that the security situation in the West Bank had improved under the Palestinian Authority from Israel's perspective.

Asked about his own experience of recruiting Palestinian agents, he said there were many motives for them to turn spy.

"It depends on each person," he added. "You can't do it through threats. If they don't do it willingly, you can't force them to be your informant."

Top Misconceptions about Islam

2010-02-25T13:30:00.002-06:00

Misconception # 1

Muslims are violent, terrorists, and extremists!
This is the biggest misconception in Islam, no doubt resulting from the constant stereotyping and bashing the media gives Islam. When a gunman attacks a mosque in the name of Judaism, a Catholic IRA guerrilla sets off a bomb in an urban area, or Serbian Orthodox militiamen rape and kill innocent Muslim civilians, these acts are not used to stereotype an entire faith. Never are these acts attributed to the religion of the perpetrators. Yet how many times have we heard the words 'Islamic, Muslim fundamentalist. etc.' linked with violence.

Politics in so called Muslim countries" may or may not have any Islamic basis. Often dictators and politicians will use the name of Islam for their own purposes. One should remember to go to the source of Islam and separate what the true religion of Islam says from what is portrayed in the media. Islam literally means 'submission to God' and is derived from a root word meaning 'peace'.

Islam may seem exotic or even extreme in the modern world. Perhaps this is because religion doesnt dominate everyday life in the West, whereas Islam is considered a 'way of life' for Muslims and they make no division between secular and sacred in their lives. Like Christianity, Islam permits fighting in self-defense, in defense of religion, or on the part of those who have been expelled forcibly from their homes. It lays down strict rules of combat which include prohibitions against harming civilians and against destroying crops, trees and livestock.

NOWHERE DOES ISLAM ENJOIN THE KILLING OF INNOCENTS... The Quran says: "Fight in the cause of God against those who fight you, but do not transgress limits. God does not love transgressors." (Quran 2:190) "If they seek peace, then seek you peace. And trust in God for He is the One that heareth and knoweth all things." (Quran 8:61) War, therefore, is the last resort, and is subject to the rigorous conditions laid down by the sacred law. The term 'jihad' literally means 'struggle'. Muslims believe that there are two kinds of jihad. The other 'jihad' is the inner struggle of the soul which everyone wages against egotistic desires for the sake of attaining inner peace.

# 2

Islam oppresses women:
The image of the typical Muslim woman wearing the veil and forced to stay home and forbidden to drive is all too common in most peoples thoughts. Although some Muslim countries may have laws that oppress women, this should not be seen as coming from Islam. Many of these countries do not rule by any kind of Shari'ah (Islamic law) and introduce their own cultural standpoints on the issue of gender equity.

Islam on the other hand gives men and women different roles and equity between the two is laid down in the Quran and the example of the Prophet (peace be upon him). Islam sees a woman, whether single or married, as an individual in her own right, with the right to own and dispose of her property and earnings. A marriage gift is given by the groom to the bride for her own personal use, and she keeps her own family name rather than taking her husband's. Both men and women are expected to dress in a way which is modest and dignified. The Messenger of God (peace be upon him) said: "The most perfect in faith amongst believers is he who is best in manner and kindest to his wife."

Violence of any kind towards women and forcing them against their will for anything is not allowed. A Muslim marriage is a simple, legal agreement in which either partner is free to include conditions.

Marriage customs thus vary widely from country to country. Divorce is not common, although it is acceptable as a last resort. According to Islam, a Muslim girl cannot be forced to marry against her will: her parents simply suggest young men they think may be suitable.

#3

Muslims worship a different God:
Allah is simply the Arabic word for God. Allah for Muslims is the greatest and most inclusive of the Names of God, it is an Arabic word of rich meaning, denoting the one and only God and ascribing no partners to Him. It is exactly the same word which the Jews, in Hebrew, use for God (eloh), the word which Jesus Christ used in Aramaic when he prayed to God. God has an identical name in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; Allah is the same God worshiped by Muslims, Christians and Jews. Muslims believe that Allah's sovereignty is to be acknowledged in worship and in the pledge to obey His teaching and commandments, conveyed through His messengers and prophets who were sent at various times and in many places throughout history.

#4

Islam was spread by the sword and is intolerant of other faiths:
Many social studies textbooks for students show the image of an Arab horseman carrying a sword in one hand and the Qurâ€™an in the other conquering and forcibly converting. This, though, is not a correct portrayal of history. Islam has always given respect and freedom of religion to all faiths. The Quran says: "God forbids you not, with regards to those who fight you not for [your] faith nor drive you out of your homes, from dealing kindly and justly with them; for God loveth those who are just." (60:8) Freedom of religion is laid down in the Quran itself: "There is no compulsion (or coercion) in the religion (Islam). The right direction is distinctly clear from error". (2:256)

Christian missionary, T.W. Arnold had this opinion on his study of the question of the spread of Islam: "... Of any organized attempt to force the acceptance of Islam on the non-Muslim population, or of any systematic persecution intended to stamp out the Christian religion, we hear nothing. Had the caliphs chosen to adopt either course of action, they might have swept away Christianity as easily as Ferdinand and Isabella drove Islam out of Spain, or Louis XIV made Protestantism ..."

It is a function of Islamic law to protect the privileged status of minorities, and this is why non-Muslim places of worship have flourished all over the Islamic world. History provides many examples of Muslim tolerance towards other faiths: when the caliph Omar entered Jerusalem in the year 634, Islam granted freedom of worship to all religious communities in the city.

Proclaiming to the inhabitants that their lives, and property were safe, and that their places of worship would never be taken from them, he asked the Christian patriarch Sophronius to accompany him on a visit to all the holy places. Islamic law also permits non-Muslim minorities to set up their own courts, which implement family laws drawn up by the minorities themselves. The life and property of all citizens in an Islamic state are considered sacred whether the person is Muslim or not.

Racism is not a part of Islam, the Quran speaks only of human equality and how all peoples are equal in the sight of God. "O mankind! We created you from a single soul, male and female, and made you into nations and tribes, so that you may come to know one another. Truly, the most honored of you in God's sight is the greatest of you in piety. God is All-Knowing, All- Aware." (49:13)

#5

All Muslims are Arabs:
The Muslim population of the world is around 1.4 billion. 1 out of 4 people in the world is a Muslim. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the World and North America. They are a vast range of races, nationalities, and cultures from around the globe--from the Philippines to Nigeria--they are united by their common Islamic faith. Only about 18% live in the Arab world and the largest Muslim community is in Indonesia. Most Muslims live east of Pakistan. 30% of Muslims live in the Indian subcontinent, 20% in Sub-Saharan Africa, 17% in Southeast Asia, 18% in the Arab world, and 10% in the Soviet Union and China. Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan make up 10% of the non-Arab Middle East. Although there are Muslim minorities in almost every area, including Latin America and Australia, they are most numerous in Russia and its newly independent states, India and central Africa. There are about 8 million Muslims in the United States.

#6

The Nation of Islam is a Muslim group:
Islam and the so called Nation of Islam'" are two different religions. Muslims consider this group to be just one of many cults using the name of Islam for their own gain. The only thing common between them is the jargon, the language used by both. "The Nation of Islam" is a misnomer; this religion should be called Farrakhanism, after the name of its propagator, Louis Farrakhan.

Islam and Farakhanism differ in many fundamental ways. For example, Farrakhan followers believe in racism and that the 'black man' was the original man and therefore superior, while in Islam there is no racism and everyone is considered equal in the sight of God, the only difference being in one's piety. There are many other theological examples that show the 'Nation's teachings have little to do with true Islam. There are many groups in America who claim to represent Islam and call their adherents Muslims.

Any serious student of Islam has a duty to investigate and find the true Islam. The only two authentic sources which bind every Muslim are 1. The Quran and 2. Authentic or sound Hadith. Any teachings under the label of "Islam" which contradict or at variance with the direct understanding of fundamental beliefs and practices of Islam form the Quran and authentic Hadith should be rejected and such a religion should be considered a Pseudo-Islamic Cult. In America there are many pseudo-Islamic cults, Farrakhanism being one of them. An honest attitude on the part of such cults should be not to call themselves Muslims and their religion Islam. Such an example of honesty is Bahaism which is an off-shoot of Islam but Bahais do not call themselves Muslims nor their religion, Islam. In fact Bahaism is not Islam just as Farrakhanism is not Islam.

#7

All Muslim men marry four wives:
The religion of Islam was revealed for all societies and all times and so accommodates widely differing social requirements. Circumstances may warrant the taking of another wife but the right is granted, according to the Quran, only on condition that the husband is scrupulously fair. No woman can be forced into this kind of marriage if they do not wish it, and they also have the right to exclude it in their marriage contract.

Polygamy is neither mandatory, nor encouraged, but merely permitted. Images of "sheikhs with harems" are not consistent with Islam, as a man is only allowed at most four wives only if he can fulfill the stringent conditions of treating each fairly and providing each with separate housing etc. Permission to practice polygamy is not associated with mere satisfaction of passion. It is rather associated with compassion toward widows and orphans. It was the Quran that limited and put conditions on the practice of polygamy among the Arabs, who had as many as ten or more wives and considered them "property".

It is both honest and accurate to say that it is Islam which regulated this practice, limited it, made it more humane and instituted equal rights and status for all wives. What the Qur'anic decrees amount to, taken together is discouragement of polygamy unless necessity for it exists.

It is also evident that the general rule in Islam is monogamy and not polygamy. It is a very tiny percentage of Muslims that practice it over the world. However, permission to practice limited polygamy is only consistent with Islam's realistic view of the nature of man and woman and of various social needs, problems and cultural variations. The question is, however far more than the inherent flexibility of Islam; it also is the frank and straightforward approach of Islam in dealing with practical problems. Rather than requiring hypocritical and superficial compliance, Islam delves deeper into the problems of individuals and societies, and provides for legitimate and clean solutions which are far more beneficial than would be the case if they were ignored. There is no doubt that the second wife legally married and treated kindly is better off than a mistress without any legal rights or expermanence.

#8

Muslims are a barbaric, backwards people:
Among the reasons for the rapid and peaceful spread of Islam was the simplicity of its doctrine-Islam calls for faith in only one God worthy of worship. It also repeatedly instructs man to use his powers of intelligence and observation. Within a few years, great civilizations and universities were flourishing, for according to the Prophet (pbuh), 'seeking knowledge is an obligation for every Muslim man and woman'.

The synthesis of Eastern and Western ideas and of new thought with old, brought about great advances in medicine, mathematics, physics, astronomy, geography, architecture, art, literature, and history.

Many crucial systems such as algebra, the Arabic numerals, and also the concept of the zero (vital to the advancement of mathematics), were transmitted to medieval Europe from Islam. Sophisticated instruments which were to make possible the European voyages of discovery were developed, including the astrolabe, the quadrant and good navigational maps

#9

Muhammad was the founder of Islam and Muslims worship him:
Muhammad (pbuh) was born in Mecca in the year 570. Since his father died before his birth, and his mother shortly afterwards, he was raised by his uncle from the respected tribe of Quraysh. As he grew up, he became known for his truthfulness, generosity and sincerity, so that he was sought after for his ability to arbitrate in disputes. The historians describe him as calm and meditative. Muhammad (pbuh) was of a deeply religious nature, and had long detested the decadence of his society.

It became his habit to meditate from time to time in the Cave of Hira near Mecca. At the age of 40, while engaged in a meditative retreat, Muhammad (pbuh) received his first revelation from God through the Angel Gabriel. This revelation, which continued for 23 years, is known as the Quran. As soon as he began to recite the words he heard from Gabriel, and to preach the truth which God had revealed to him, he and his small group of followers suffered bitter persecution, which grew so fierce that in the year 622 God gave them the command to emigrate.

This event, the Hijra 'migration', in which they left Mecca for the city of Medina, marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar. After several years, the Prophet and his followers were able to return to Mecca, where they forgave their enemies and established Islam definitively. Before the Prophet saw dies at the age of 63, the greater part of Arabia was Muslim, and within a century of his death Islam had spread to Spain in the West and as far East as China. He died with less than 5 possessions to his name.

While Muhammad (pbuh) was chosen to deliver the message, he is not considered the "founder" of Islam, since Muslims consider Islam to be the same divine guidance sent to all peoples before. Muslims believe all the prophets from Adam, Noah, Moses, Jesus etc. were all sent with divine guidance for their peoples. Every prophet was sent to his own people, but Muhammad (pbuh) was sent to all of mankind.

Muhammad is the last and final messenger sent to deliver the message of Islam. Muslims revere and honor him (pbuh) for all he went through and his dedication, but they do not worship him. "O Prophet, verily We have sent you as a witness and a bearer of glad tidings and a warner and as one who invites unto God by His leave and as an illuminating lamp." (33:45-6).

#10

Muslims don't believe in Jesus or any other prophets:
Muslims respect and revere Jesus, upon him be peace, and await his Second Coming. They consider him one of the greatest of God's messengers to mankind. A Muslim never refers to him simply as 'Jesus', but always adds the phrase 'upon him be peace' (abbreviated as (u) here). The Quran confirms his virgin birth (a chapter of the Quran is entitled 'Mary'), and Mary is considered the purest woman in all creation. The Quran describes the Annunciation as follows: "Behold!" the Angel said, "God has chosen you, and purified you, and chosen you above the women of all nations. O Mary, God gives you good news of a word from Him whose name shall be the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, honored in this world and the Hereafter, and one of those brought near to God. He shall speak to the people from his cradle and in maturity, and shall be of the righteous." She said: "O my Lord! How shall I have a son when no man has touched me?" He said: "Even so; God creates what He will. When He decrees a thing, He says to it, "Be!" and it is" (Quran 3:42-47)

Jesus (u) was born miraculously through the same power which had brought Adam (u) into being without a father: "Truly, the likeness of Jesus with God is as the likeness of Adam. He created him of dust, and then said to him, 'Be!' and he was." (3:59) during his prophetic mission Jesus (u) performed many miracles. The Quran tells us that he said: " I have come to you with a sign from your Lord: I make for you out of clay, as it were, the figure of a bird, and breathe into it and it becomes a bird by God's leave. And I heal the blind, and the lepers, and I raise the dead by God's leave." (3:49) Neither Muhammad (pbuh) not Jesus (u) came to change the basic doctrine of the brief in One God brought by earlier prophets, but to confirm and renew it.

In the Quran Jesus (u) is reported as saying that he came: "To attest the law which was before me. And to make lawful to you part of what was forbidden you; I have come to you with a sign from your Lord, so fear God and obey Me. (3:50) The Prophet Muhammad(pbuh) said: "Whoever believes there is no god but God, alone without partner, that Muhammad(pbuh) is His messenger, that Jesus is the servant and messenger of God, His word breathed into Mary and a spirit emanating from Him, and that Paradise and Hell are true, shall be received by God into Heaven. "(Hadith related by Bukhari)

source: www.beconvinced.com

Swiss antagonist of minarets embraces Islam

2010-02-02T09:25:00.001-06:00

source: http://www.nation.com.

RENOWNED Swiss politician Daniel Streich, who rose to fame for his campaign against minarets of mosques, has embraced Islam.
A member of the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) and a well-known politician, Daniel Streich was the first man who had launched a drive for imposition of ban on mosques minarets, and to lock the mosques in Switzerland. The proclamation of Streich’s conversion to Islam has created furore in Swiss politics, besides causing a tremor for those who supported ban on construction of mosques minarets.

Streich propagated his anti-Islamic movement far and wide in the country, sowed seeds of indignation and scorn for Islam among the people, and paved way for public opinion against pulpits and minarets of mosques.
But now Streich has become a soldier of Islam. His anti-Islam thoughts finally brought him so close to this religion that he embraced Islam. He is ashamed of his doings now and desires to construct the most beautiful mosque of Europe in Switzerland.

The most interesting thing in this regard is that at present there are four mosques in Switzerland and Streich wants to lay the foundation for the fifth one. He wishes to seek absolution of his sin of proliferating venom against Islam. He is thinking of a movement contrary to his previous one to promote religious tolerance and peaceful cooperative living, in spite of the fact that ban on mosques minarets has gained a legal status.
This is the greatest quality of Islam that it comes up with even greater vigour, when it is faced with confrontation.

Abdul Majeed Aldai, the president of OPI, an NGO, working for the welfare of Muslims, says that Europeans have a great desire to know about Islam. Some of them want to know about the relationship between Islam and terrorism; same was the case with Streich.
During his confrontation, Streich studied the Holy Quran and started understanding Islam.
He wished to be hard to Islam, but the outcome was otherwise. Aldai further says.
Recently the question of ban on minarets was put to voting in Switzerland, wherein the Swiss nationals gave the issue a legal status.

As per voting results 42.5 per cent people voted in favour of the minarets and 57.5 per cent supported the ban, while the Muslim population in Switzerland is only 6 per cent. The most wondrous thing in this regard, therefore, is the support of 42.5 per cent of population for only six per cent Muslims.
The analysts claim that ban on minarets and Islamic rituals has attracted the people towards Islam.

Streich was an important member of the Swiss People’s Party (SVP). His importance could be estimated from his influence on party’s policy making, in which he always had a prominent role. His movement against minarets was aimed at gaining political attention and interest. He won the slot of military instructor in the Swiss Army due to his popularity.
Born in a Christian family, Streich had a comprehensive study of Islam merely to malign and confront, but Islamic teachings had a deep impact on him. Eventually he de-linked himself from political activities and he embraced Islam. Streich has termed the SVO activities against the Muslims as satanic.

He says that he used to read the Bible and often went to chapel, but now he recites the Holy Quran and offers his prayers five times a day. He further says that he cancelled his party membership and made public his conversion. Streich says that he has found the truth of life in Islam, which he could not find in Christianity.

On the other hand the Swiss military authorities have feared that Streich, who was once a military instructor, might reveal army secrets to the Muslims.
An SVP National Council member says that Streich as military instructor could be dangerous.
However, a spokesman of Swiss Army while rejecting this impression said that the performance of our military was more important than that who instructed it.
However, from within their own ranks, a man is now working for the promotion of Islam and its teachings. The law of a country can ban minarets but not minds and hearts.
- Newsdesk

One Flaw in Women

2010-01-27T08:21:00.000-06:00

Women have strengths that amaze men.

They bear hardships and they carry burdens,

but they hold happiness, love and joy.

They smile when they want to scream

They sing when they want to cry.
They cry when they are happy

and laugh when they are nervous.

They fight for what they believe in.

They stand up to injustice.

They don't take "no" for an answer
when they believe there is a better solution.
They go without so their family can have.
They go to the doctor with a frightened friend.
They love unconditionally.

They cry when their children excel

and cheer when their friends get awards.
They are happy when they hear about
a birth or a wedding.
Their hearts break when a friend dies.
They grieve at the loss of a family member,

yet they are strong when they

think there is no strength left.

They know that a hug and a kiss

can heal a broken heart.

Women come in all shapes, sizes and colors.

They'll drive, fly, walk, run or e-mail you
to show how much they care about you.
The heart of a woman is what

makes the world keep turning.

They bring joy, hope and love.
They have compassion and ideas.
They give moral support to their
family and friends.
Women have vital things to say
and everything to give.
HOWEVER, IF THERE IS ONE FLAW IN WOMEN,
IT IS THAT THEY FORGET THEIR WORTH.

New Blog

2010-01-19T04:22:00.001-06:00

For all the ladies out there, I have created a new blog titled ¨Shopping For 2"

The blog address is www.baby-express.blogspot.com

For all the google lovers

2010-01-10T13:26:00.001-06:00

For everyone who uses google, which I am assuming is everyone, google the following (dont push enter just type it exactely as I have written it and look at everything underneath it)

Judaism is

Christianity is

Hinduism is

Buddhism is

and last but not least

Islam is

Any thoughts?

Why Don't the Amish Have Autistic Children?

2009-12-31T07:24:00.001-06:00

The Age of Autism: The Amish anomaly

By Dan Olmsted

UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL

Lancaster, PA, Apr. 18 (UPI) -- Part 1 of 2.

Where are the autistic Amish? Here in Lancaster County, heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country, there should be well over 100 with some form of the disorder.

I have come here to find them, but so far my mission has failed, and the very few I have identified raise some very interesting questions about some widely held views on autism.

The mainstream scientific consensus says autism is a complex genetic disorder, one that has been around for millennia at roughly the same prevalence. That prevalence is now considered to be 1 in every 166 children born in the United States.

Applying that model to Lancaster County, there ought to be 130 Amish men, women and children here with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Well over 100, in rough terms.

Typically, half would harbor milder variants such as Asperger's Disorder or the catch-all Pervasive Development Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified -- PDD-NOS for short.

So let's drop those from our calculation, even though "mild" is a relative term when it comes to autism.

That means upwards of 50 Amish people of all ages should be living in Lancaster County with full-syndrome autism, the "classic autism" first described in 1943 by child psychiatrist Leo Kanner at Johns Hopkins University. The full-syndrome disorder is hard to miss, characterized by "markedly abnormal or impaired development in social interaction and communication and a markedly restricted repertoire of activities and interests," according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Why bother looking for them among the Amish? Because they could hold clues to the cause of autism.

The first half-dozen articles in this ongoing series on the roots and rise of autism examined the initial studies and early accounts of the disorder, first identified by Kanner among 11 U.S. children born starting in 1931.

Kanner wrote that his 1938 encounter with a child from Mississippi, identified as Donald T., "made me aware of a behavior pattern not known to me or anyone else theretofore." Kanner literally wrote the book on "Child Psychiatry," published in 1934.

If Kanner was correct -- if autism was new and increasingly prevalent -- something must have happened in the 1930s to trigger those first autistic cases. Genetic disorders do not begin suddenly or increase dramatically in prevalence in a short period of time.

That is why it is worth looking for autistic Amish -- to test reasoning against reality. Largely cut off for hundreds of years from American culture and scientific progress, the Amish might have had less exposure to some new factor triggering autism in the rest of population.

Surprising, but no one seems to have looked.

Of course, the Amish world is insular by nature; finding a small subset of Amish is a challenge by definition. Many Amish, particularly Old Order, ride horse-and-buggies, eschew electricity, do not attend public school, will not pose for pictures and do not chat casually with the "English," as they warily call the non-Amish.

Still, some Amish today interact with the outside world in many ways. Some drive, use phones, see doctors and send out Christmas cards with family photos. They all still refer to themselves as "Plain," but the definition of that word varies quite a bit.

So far, from sources inside and outside the Amish community, I have identified three Amish residents of Lancaster County who apparently have full-syndrome autism, all of them children.

A local woman told me there is one classroom with about 30 "special-needs" Amish children. In that classroom, there is one autistic Amish child.

Another autistic Amish child does not go to school.

The third is that woman's pre-school-age daughter.

If there were more, she said, she would know it.

What I learned about those children is the subject of the next column.

PART 2: The Age of Autism: Julia

UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL

Leola, PA, Apr. 19 (UPI) -- Part 2 of 2.

Three-year old Julia is napping when I arrive at the spare, neat, cheerful house on Musser School Road near the town of Leola in Lancaster County.

She is the reason I have driven through the budding countryside on this perfect spring day, but I really do not need to meet her.

In the last column, I wrote about trying to find autistic Amish people here in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country, and noted there should be dozens of them -- if autism occurs at the same prevalence as the rest of the United States.

So far, there is evidence of only three, all of them children, the oldest age 9 or 10. Julia is one of them. I found out about her through a pediatrician in Richmond, Va., Dr. Mary Megson. I had been asking around for quite some time about autism and the Amish, and she provided the first direct link.

Megson said she would give my name to this child's mother, who could call if she chose. A few days later the phone rang. It was Stacey-jean Inion, an Amish-Mennonite woman. She, her husband Brent and their four children live simply, but they do drive a vehicle and have a telephone. After a few pleasantries, I told her about my trying to find autistic Amish.

Here is what she said, verbatim:

"Unfortunately our autistic daughter -- who's doing very well, she's been diagnosed with very, very severe autism -- is adopted from China, and so she would have had all her vaccines in China before we got her, and then she had most of her vaccines given to her in the United States before we got her.

"So we're probably not the pure case you're looking for."

Maybe not, but it was stunning that Julia Inion, the first autistic Amish person I could find, turned out to be adopted -- from another country, no less. It also was surprising that Stacey-jean launched unbidden into vaccines, because the Amish have a religious exemption from vaccination and presumably would not have given it much thought.

She said a minority of Amish families do, in fact, vaccinate their children these days, partly at the urging of public health officials.

"Almost every Amish family I know has had somebody from the health department knock on our door and try to convince us to get vaccines for our children," she said. "The younger Amish more and more are getting vaccines. It's a minority of children who vaccinate, but that is changing now."

Did she know of any other autistic Amish? Two more children, she said.

"One of them, we're very certain it was a vaccine reaction, even though the government would not agree with that."

Federal health officials have said there is no association between vaccinations and autism or learning disabilities.

"The other one I'm not sure if this child was vaccinated or not," she added.

During my visit to their home, I asked Stacey-jean to explain why she attributed the first case to vaccines.

"There's one family that we know, their daughter had a vaccine reaction and is now autistic. She was walking and functioning and a happy bright child, and 24 hours after she had her vaccine, her legs went limp and she had a typical high-pitched scream. They called the doctor and the doctor said it was fine -- a lot of high-pitched screaming goes along with it.

"She completely quit speaking," Stacey-jean said. "She completely quit making eye contact with people. She went in her own world."

This happened, Stacey-jean said, at "something like 15 months." The child is now about 8.

For similar reasons, Julia Inion's Chinese background is intriguing. China, India and Indonesia are among countries moving quickly to mass-vaccination programs. In some vaccines, they use a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal that keeps multiple-dose vials from becoming contaminated by repeated needle sticks.

Thimerosal was phased out of U.S. vaccines starting in 1999, after health officials became concerned about the amount of mercury infants and children were receiving. The officials said they simply were erring on the side of caution, and that all evidence favors rejection of any link between Autism Spectrum Disorders and thimerosal, or vaccines themselves.

Julia's vaccinations in China -- all given in one day at about age 15 months -- may well have contained thimerosal; the United States had stopped using it by the time she was born, but other countries with millions to vaccinate had not.

Stacey-jean said photographs of Julia taken in China before she was vaccinated showed a smiling alert child looking squarely at the camera. Her original adoptive family in the United States, overwhelmed trying to cope with an autistic child, gave Julia up for re-adoption. The Inions took her in knowing her diagnosis of severe autism.

I tried hard -- and am still trying -- to find people who know about other autistic Amish. Of the local health and social service agency personnel in Lancaster, some said they dealt with Amish people with disabilities, such as mental retardation, but none recalled seeing an autistic Amish.

Still, I could be trapped in a feedback loop: The Amish I am likeliest to know about -- because they have the most contact with the outside world -- also are likeliest to adopt a special-needs child such as Julia from outside the community, and likeliest to have their children vaccinated.

Another qualifier: The Inions are converts to the Amish-Mennonite religion (Brent is an Asian-American). They simply might not know about any number of autistic Amish sheltered quietly with their families for decades.

It also is possible the isolated Amish gene pool might confer some kind of immunity to autism -- which might be a useful topic for research.

Whatever the case, Stacey-jean thinks the autistic Amish are nowhere to be found.

"It is so much more rare among our people," she said. "My husband just said last week that so far we've never met a family that lives a healthy lifestyle and does not vaccinate their children that has an autistic child. We haven't come across one yet."

"Everywhere I go (outside the Amish community) I find children who are autistic, just because I have an autistic daughter -- in the grocery store, in the park, wherever I go. In the Amish community, I simply don't find that."

UPI researcher Kyle Pearson contributed to this article.

This ongoing series on the roots and rise of autism aims to be interactive with readers and welcomes comment, criticism and suggestions. E-mail: dolmsted@upi.com

Watch this before you or your loved ones get vaccinated

2009-12-29T05:30:00.000-06:00

Vaccines Do Not Work: They Cause the Disease

Dr.Lorraine Day reveals that Vaccines Do Not Work.Vaccinations don't work at all.

Vaccines Do Not Work

Video: A Christian Minister's Conversion to Islam Dr.Jerald Dirks

2009-12-29T04:39:00.002-06:00

Dr. Dirks is a former minister (deacon) of the United Methodist Church. He holds a Master's degree in Divinity from Harvard University and a Doctorate in Psychology from the University of Denver. He is on TheDeenShow this week to share his story on Why he accepted Islam(Submission to one God ALone in peace). I found his story to be very inspiring and educational. I would recommend muslims and non muslims to listen to story and his journey from christianity to Islam!

Part 1

Part 2

Sex Slavery

2009-12-27T12:46:00.001-06:00

The sad fact is that sex slavery is very much a reality in this world. Often it is young women who have been kidnapped and sold into bondage. Grown men leave their comfortable western homes and commit acts of atrocities in so-called third world countries that they would never attempt at home. Some of these men believe that because theses girls have a smile on their faces that they are happy about the ~~exchange~~ rape

But anyone inclined to take the girls’ smiles at face value should talk to Sina Vann, who was once one of those smiling girls.
Sina is Vietnamese but was kidnapped at the age of 13 and taken to Cambodia, where she was drugged. She said she woke up naked and bloody on a bed with a white man — she doesn’t know his nationality — who had purchased her virginity.

After that, she was locked on the upper floors of a nice hotel and offered to Western men and wealthy Cambodians. She said she was beaten ferociously to force her to smile and act seductive.
“My first phrase in Khmer,” the Cambodian language, “was, ‘I want to sleep with you,’ ” she said. “My first phrase in English was” — well, it’s unprintable.

These men see their vacation time as an opportunity commit rape. With the prevalence on reporting of sex slavery, they cannot be oblivious to the nature of the crime that they are committing. This means that they are knowingly raping women.

Feminists have said over and over again that we live in a rape culture. This is not something that is specific to western countries as patriarchy respects no boundaries. Wherever men and women cohabit men seek to assert their dominance by any means necessary. This is about power. These so called sexual voyeurs are using their money to claim a body solely to provide sexual pleasure. These women are little more than tools to these men and forgotten in less time that it will take to read this post.

As if their assaults are not criminal enough many of these women end up with STD's. Imagine after spending your teen years serving mens sexual proclivities dying from AIDS, or any number of untreated diseases. What needs to be acknowledged is that sex slavery equals a death sentence..It is a life of being raped repeatedly by nameless faceless men that ends in a death sentence. This is not some Shakespearean tragedy, this is the life of many women across the globe.

Western nations are often smug and self righteous in an effort to paint its citizens as somehow more evolved. We live in a society that supposedly respects things like individual autonomy, frowns upon violence, and respects women. These are the lies our leaders tell everyday while western citizens get on planes to commit these vicious crimes. We don't want to believe that this comes from us. Such savage behaviour is something we tell ourselves happens elsewhere, such evil acts are committed by the "others".

We don't want to tell ourselves about the illegal brothels in every major city that warehouse women for male sport. We would rather take the express trains back to the suburbs, ignoring the crimes that are happening within our midst. It's not our problem we tell our selves, those are not our women. We may shake our head when we read the occasional story in the newspaper, or frown when an expose shows up on the local news put in truth we consider this someone else's problem.

The daily rape of women cannot and should not be ignored. These men that we share our lives with that feel that their daily tourist trips to the dark side are dangerous criminals. Simply because their crimes are largely hidden from view does not mean that their actions are not scurrilous. We must find a way to join forces with the governments and women of other countries to bring an end to this. Child rape or sexual slavery is a criminal offense and the guilty need to pay. No ones life should be spent in misery and cut short because some feel the need to express power over another.

source: http://www.womanist-musings.com/2009/01/sex-slavery.html

For more information visit
http://priceofsex.org/content/price-sex-women-speak
http://andreawendel.theworldrace.org/?filename=the-face-of-slavery
http://www.stopvaw.org/Trafficking_in_Women.html
http://www.innocenceatlanta.org/content/new-documentary-playground-tackles-child-sex-trade-america

Heart Surgeon Admits Huge Mistake

2009-12-27T06:57:00.000-06:00

We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong. So, here it is I freely admit to being wrong. As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries, today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact.

I trained for many years with other prominent physicians labeled “opinion makers.” Bombarded with scientific literature, continually attending education seminars, we opinion makers insisted heart disease resulted from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol.

The only accepted therapy was
prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice.

It Is Not Working!
These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible. The discovery a few years ago that inflammation in the artery wall is the real cause of heart disease is slowly leading to a paradigm shift in how heart disease and other chronic ailments will be treated.

The long-established dietary recommendations have created epidemics of obesity and diabetes, the consequences of which dwarf any historical plague in terms of mortality, human suffering and dire economic consequences.

Despite the fact that 25% of the population takes expensive statin medications and despite the fact we have reduced the fat content of our diets, more Americans will die this year of heart disease than ever before.

Statistics from the American Heart Association show that 75 million Americans currently suffer from heart disease, 20 million have diabetes and 57 million have pre-diabetes. These disorders are affecting younger and younger people in greater numbers every year.

Simply stated, without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes. Without inflammation, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body as nature intended. It is inflammation that causes cholesterol to become trapped.

Inflammation is not complicated — it is quite simply your body’s natural defense to a foreign invader such as a bacteria, toxin or virus. The cycle of inflammation is perfect in how it protects your body from these bacterial and viral invaders.

However, if we chronically expose the body to injury by toxins or foods the human body was never designed to process, a condition occurs called chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation is just as harmful as acute inflammation is beneficial.

What thoughtful person would willfully expose himself repeatedly to foods or other substances that are known to cause injury to the body? Well, smokers perhaps, but at least they made that choice willfully.

The rest of us have simply followed the recommended mainstream diet that is low in fat and high in polyunsaturated fats and carbohydrates, not knowing we were causing repeated injury to our blood vessels. This repeated injury creates chronic inflammation leading to heart disease, stroke, diabetes and obesity.

Let me repeat that. The injury and inflammation in our blood vessels is caused by the low fat diet that has been recommended for years by mainstream medicine.

What are the biggest culprits of chronic inflammation? Quite simply, they are the overload of simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them) and the excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many processed foods.

Dwight Lundell, MD

Take a moment to visualize rubbing a stiff brush repeatedly over soft skin until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding. Let’s say you kept this up several times a day, every day for five years. If you could tolerate this painful brushing, you would have a bleeding, swollen infected area that became worse with each repeated injury. This is a good way to visualize the inflammatory process that could be going on in your body right now.

Regardless of where the inflammatory process occurs, externally or internally, it is the same. I have peered inside thousands upon thousands of arteries. A diseased artery looks as if someone took a brush and scrubbed repeatedly against its wall. Several times a day, every day, the foods we eat create small injuries compounding into more injuries, causing the body to respond continuously and appropriately with inflammation.

While we savor the tantalizing taste of a sweet roll, our bodies respond alarmingly as if a foreign invader arrived declaring war. Foods loaded with sugars and simple carbohydrates, or processed with omega-6 oils for long shelf life have been the mainstay of the American diet for six decades. These foods have been slowly poisoning everyone.

How does eating a simple sweet roll create a cascade of inflammation to make you sick?

Imagine spilling syrup on your keyboard and you have a visual of what occurs inside the cell. When we consume simple carbohydrates such as sugar, blood sugar rises rapidly. In response, your pancreas secretes insulin whose primary purpose is to drive sugar into each cell where it is stored for energy. If the cell is full and does not need glucose, it is rejected to avoid extra sugar gumming up the works.

When your full cells reject the extra glucose, blood sugar rises producing more insulin and the glucose converts to stored fat.

What does all this have to do with inflammation?
Blood sugar is controlled in a very narrow range. Extra sugar molecules attach to a variety of proteins that in turn injure the blood vessel wall. This repeated injury to the blood vessel wall sets off inflammation. When you spike your blood sugar level several times a day, every day, it is exactly like taking sandpaper to the inside of your delicate blood vessels.

While you may not be able to see it, rest assured it is there. I saw it in over 5,000 surgical patients spanning 25 years who all shared one common denominator - inflammation in their arteries.

Let’s get back to the sweet roll. That innocent looking goody not only contains sugars, it is baked in one of many omega-6 oils such as soybean. Chips and fries are soaked in soybean oil; processed foods are manufactured with omega-6 oils for longer shelf life. While omega-6’s are essential -they are part of every cell membrane controlling what goes in and out of the cell - they must be in the correct balance with omega-3’s.

If the balance shifts by consuming excessive omega-6, the cell membrane produces chemicals called cytokines that directly cause inflammation. Today’s mainstream American diet has produced an extreme imbalance of these two fats. The ratio of imbalance ranges from 15:1 to as high as 30:1 in favor of omega-6. That’s a tremendous amount of cytokines causing inflammation. In today’s food environment, a 3:1 ratio would be optimal and healthy.

To make matters worse, the excess weight you are carrying from eating these foods creates overloaded fat cells that pour out large quantities of pro-inflammatory chemicals that add to the injury caused by having high blood sugar. The process that began with a sweet roll turns into a vicious cycle over time that creates heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and finally, Alzheimer’s disease, as the inflammatory process continues unabated.

There is no escaping the fact that the more we consume prepared and processed foods, the more we trip the inflammation switch little by little each day. The human body cannot process, nor was it designed to consume, foods packed with sugars and soaked in omega-6 oils.

There is but one answer to quieting inflammation, and that is returning to foods closer to their natural state. To build muscle, eat more protein. Choose carbohydrates that are very complex such as colorful fruits and vegetables. Cut down on or eliminate inflammation-causing omega-6 fats like corn and soybean oil and the processed foods that are made from them. One tablespoon of corn oil contains 7,280 mg of omega-6; soybean contains 6,940 mg. Instead, use olive oil or butter from grass-fed beef.

Animal fats contain less than 20% omega-6 and are much less likely to cause inflammation than the supposedly healthy oils labelled polyunsaturated. Forget the “science” that has been drummed into your head for decades.

The science that saturated fat alone causes heart disease is non-existent.

The science that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol is also very weak. Since we now know that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the concern about saturated fat is even more absurd today.

The cholesterol theory led to the no-fat, low-fat recommendations that in turn created the very foods now causing an epidemic of inflammation. Mainstream medicine made a terrible mistake when it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favor of foods high in omega-6 fats. We now have an epidemic of arterial inflammation leading to heart disease and other silent killers.

What you can do is choose whole foods your grandmother served and not those your mom turned to as grocery store aisles filled with manufactured foods. By eliminating inflammatory foods and adding essential nutrients from fresh unprocessed food, you will reverse years of damage in your arteries and throughout your body from consuming the typical American diet.

The Twinkie: Ingredients Revealed

2009-12-27T06:38:00.000-06:00

I dont know about you but growing up I absolutely loved Twinkies! It wasn't until a few years ago that I came across a book that dissected the Twinkie and discusses all the ingredients that go into this yummy desert, including rocks!

Below is an article I found on twinkies, a must read for those junk food addicts out there!

Source: http://www.divinecaroline.com/22107/35281%20?CMP=DA_HSE_23

This got my attention. However, it only got worse when I discovered that the ingredients come from phosphate mines in Idaho, gypsum mines in Oklahoma, and oil fields in China. Okay, so now I was wondering if I was watching a real news story—come to find out, I was.

The Twinkie, which was created during the Depression, contains thirty-nine ingredients. One of those ingredients is a preservative, sorbic acid. Sorbic acid is an ingredient I see on many packages, and I have never thought twice about it. But author Steve Ettlinger did. He found that sorbic acid is actually derived from natural gas.

If that isn’t shocking enough, he goes on to talk about other ingredients like cellulose gum, Polysorbate 60, and calcium sulfate. Apparently, these ingredients are also used in sheet rock, shampoo, and rocket fuel. No wonder Twinkies make kids run around like crazy and have even been used as a defense for murder!

Mr Ettlinger also found that the vitamins, artificial colors, and flavorings in Twinkies

come from petroleum.

I started to wonder how this tasty treat made from gas and rocks can be so light and airy. In comes Mr. Ettlinger again. Apparently, it’s limestone that makes Twinkies light. And that tasty cream center—it’s got to be milk, right? No. It’s made of shortening; there is absolutely no cream in the cream.

I have to say I was curious to know what Hostess, the makers of the Twinkie, thought about Mr. Ettlinger’s claims. Well, here’s the quote that ran in my newscast:

Deconstructing the Twinkie is like trying to deconstruct the universe. We think the millions of people … would agree that Twinkies just taste great.—David Leavitt, Vice President Snack Marketing at Hostess.

The news story was inspired by Steve Ettlinger’s new book, Twinkie Deconstructed. Ettlinger uses the Twinkie to demonstrate where our processed food ingredients come from. Since the Twinkie is the product leader—yes, it’s a product and apparently, barely a food—it served as the perfect tool to show consumers what goes into our food.

Want a Burger that never goes bad? Not even 12 years later? Try a burger from McDonalds

2009-12-26T16:21:00.000-06:00

How long can a burger from Mcdonalds last without going bad? Apparently 12 years or more!

source: http://bestwellnessconsultant.com/2008/09/23/1996-mcdonalds-hamburger-karen-hanrahan-best-of-mother-earth.aspx

This is a hamburger from McDonalds that I purchased in 1996.

That was 12 years ago.

Note that it looks exactly like it did the very day I bought it.

The flecks on the burger are crumbs from the bun.

The burger is starting to crumble a bit.

It has the oddest smell.

People always ask me - what did you do to preserve it ?

Nothing - it preserved itself.

Ladies, Gentleman, and children alike - this is a chemical food. There is absolutely no nutrition here.

Not one ounce of food value. Or at least value for why we are eating in the first place.

The burger on the right, off the paper is a 2008 burger. I had to buy it to get the groovy paper and bag.

The meat is a tad darker, the bun a little less golden but in 12 years it will look exactly like that too.

Do you find this horrifying?

McDonalds fills an empty space in your belly. It does nothing to nourish the cell, it is not a nutritious food.

It is not a treat.

I marvel at how McDonalds has infiltrated our entire world. A hamburger here tastes exactly the same in China or some around the world place.

It's cloned.

Makes you wonder doesn't it?

¨The True Furqan¨ exposed

2009-12-25T09:58:00.002-06:00

Some persons, who may be individuals or agencies, have created a book titled THE TRUE FURQAN. It purports to be an authentic copy of the HOLY QURAN, which is a book respected by Muslims the world over as a text revealed by God himself to Prophet Mohammad, may peace be upon him. The TRUE FURQAN is a book which distorts the teachings of the HOLY QURAN and is the handiwork of elements who are inimical to Islam.

Christian Missionaries use it to deceive poor, uneducated Muslims and to appeal to them which is why they have made the book look like the Quran. The book is a way for christian missionaries to make uneducated muslims believe that the trinity is in the Quran to mislead muslims and people who are interested in learning about islam. Please click on the following link to read more about thi. I have also added a link to read more about the author who was exposed and went to jail.

If christianity is the true religion, why the need to create fake books to convert non christians to your religion?

http://forum.netmuslims.com/showthread.php?t=8692
http://www.islamnewsroom.com/news-we-need/500-fakequranfurqan3

Female Genital Mutilation

2009-12-25T00:45:00.000-06:00

According to womenshealth.gov two million girls and women are victims of FGM/C every year. Today a total of 130 million have undergone such a procedure. How is culture related to the prevalence of female genital mutilation, cutting and fistula?

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is a cultural practice that started in Africa approximately 2000 years ago. It is primarily a cultural practice, not a religious practice. But some religions do include FGM as part of their practices. This practice is so well ingrained into these cultures, it defines members of these cultures. In order to eliminate the practice one must eliminate the cultural belief that a girl will not become a women without this procedure.

What is Female Genital Mutilation?

Female Genital Mutilation is the term used for removal of all or just part of the external parts of the female genitalia. There are three varieties to this procedure.

Sunna Circumcision - consists of the removal of the prepuce(retractable fold of skin, or hood) and /or the tip of the clitoris. Sunna in Arabic means "tradition".
Clitoridectomy - consists of the removal of the entire clitoris (prepuce and glands) and the removal of the adjacent labia.
Infibulation(pharonic circumcision)-- consists of performing a clitoridectomy (removal of all or part of the labia minora, the labia majora). This is then stitched up allowing a small hole to remain open to allow for urine and menstrual blood to flow through.

In Africa 85% of FGM cases consist of Clitoridectomy and 15% of cases consist of Infibulation. In some cases only the hood is removed.

The age the procedure is carried out varies from just after birth to some time during the first pregnancy, but most cases occur between the ages of four and eight. Most times this procedure is done with out the care of medically trained people, due to poverty and lack of medical facilities. The use of anesthesia is rare. The girl is held down by older women to prevent the girl from moving around. The instruments used by the mid-wife will vary and could include any of the following items; broken glass, a tin lid, razor blades, knives, scissors or any other sharp object. These items usually are not sterilized before or after usage. Once the genital area for removal is gone, the child is stitched up and her legs are bound for up to 40 days.

This procedure can cause various side effects on the girls which can include death. Some of the results of this procedure are serious infections, HIV, abscesses and small benign tumors, hemorrhages, shock, clitoral cysts. The long term effects may also include kidney stones, sterility, sexual dysfunction, depression, various urinary tract infections, various gynecological and obstetric problems.

In order to have sexual intercourse the women have to be opened up in some fashion and in some cases cutting is necessary. After child birth some women are re-infibulated to make them (tight) for their husbands.

Is this practice a cultural or religious practice?

In an FGM society, a girl can not be considered to be an adult until she has undergone this procedure. As well as in most cultures a women can not marry with out FGM. The type of procedure used will vary with certain conditions and these conditions could include the females ethic group, the country they live in, rural or urban areas, as well as their socioeconomic provenance.

FGM is a culture identity practice. The fact that the procedure helps to define who is the group, is obvious in cultures that carry out this procedure as an initiation into

womanhood. Most FGM societies feel that unless a girl has this procedure done she is not a woman as well as removal of these practices would lead to the demise of their culture.

FGM societies have many claims of why this procedure should be done and these are as follows:

In most FGM societies one important belief is that this procedure will reduce a women's desire for sex and in doing so will reduce the chance of sex outside the marriage. This is vital to this society as her honor for the family is depended on her not to be opened up prior to marriage.
Some view the clitoris and the labia as male parts on a female body, thus removal of these parts enhances the femininity of the girl.
It is also believed that unless a female has undergone this procedure she is unclean and will not be allowed to handle food or water.
Some groups believe that if the clitoris touches a man's penis the man will die. As well as the belief that if a baby's head touches the clitoris that the baby will die or the breast milk will be poisonous.
The belief that an unmutilated female can not conceive, therefore the female should be militated in order to become fertile.
Bad genital odors can only be eliminated by removing the clitoris and labia minora.
Prevents vaginal cancer.
An unmodified clitoris can lead to masturbation or lesbianism.
Prevents nervousness from developing in girls and women.
Prevents the face from turning yellow.
Makes a women's face more beautiful.
Older men may not be able to match their wives sex drive.
Intact clitoris will generate sexual arousal and in women if repressed can cause nervousness.

FGM does predate Islam, but most Muslims do not practice this. FGM was also practice by Falasha (Ethiopian Jews). The remaining FGM society's follow traditional Animist religions. To see a list of groups click here.

In countries where Muslim's practices FGM, they can justify it, in the words of the Prophet Mohammed, in these two controversial sayings that are found in the Sunnah (words and actions of Mohammed)

A discussion was recorded between Mohammed and Um Habibah (or Um'Alyyah), a women performed infibulation on slaves. She said that she would continue the procedure "unless it is forbidden and you order me to stop doing it". He replied (according to one translation) "Yes it is allowed. Come closer so I can teach you: if you cut, do not over do it, because it brings more radiance to the face and it is more pleasant for the husband."

Mohammed is recorded as speaking of the Sunna circumcision to Ansar's wives saying: "Cutting slightly with out exaggeration, because it is more pleasant for your husbands."

These passages are regarded to have little credibility or authenticity with in the Muslim religion and is contradiction in the Qur'an:

God apparently created the clitoris for the sole purpose of generating pleasure. It has no other purpose. There is no instructions in the Qur'an or in the writings of the Prophet Mohammed which require that the clitoris be surgically modified. Thus God must approve of its presence. And also, it should not be removed or reduced in size or function.

the Qur'an promotes the concept of a wife being given pleasure by her husband during sexual intercourse. Mutilated genitalia reduces or eliminates a women's pleasure during the act.

There is an estimated 135 million girls and women that have gone through this procedure with an additional 2 million a year at risk. This procedure is practiced in Africa (28 countries), Middle East, parts of Asia as well as in North America, Latin America, and as well as in Europe. It is now believed that the practice originated in Africa and is a cultural practice. Follow this link to see some indicators supporting this conclusion.

Amnesty International now has taken up the fight to do away with this practice that mutilates millions of girls each year. Today FGM is seen as a human rights issue and is recognized at an international level. FGM was in the universal framework for protection of human rights that was tabled in the 1958 united Nation agenda. It was during the UN Decade for Women (1975-1985) that a UN Working Group on

Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children was created. This group helped to develop and aided to the development of the 1994 Plan of Action for the Elimination of Harmful Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of women and Children. the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children's' Fund and the Untied Nations Population Fund, unveiled a plan in April 1997 that would bring about a major decline in FGM within 10 years and the complete eradication of the practice within three generations.

Nahld Toubia, MD, a physician from Sudan and assistant clinical professor in CSPH's center for Population and Family Health states: "Female circumcision is the physical marking of the marriage ability of women, because it symbolizes social control of their sexual pleasure-- clitoridectomy--and their reproduction--infibulation," Toubia also believes that female circumcision raises numerous human right issues, including reproductive rights, the protection from violence, women's rights and especially children’s rights since most circumcisions take place on girls who are four to ten years of age. Even though there is no theological basis for the practice of FGM, it will be hard to eradicate, until we have a better understanding of the cultural beliefs.

Professor Stephen Isaacs, J.D, who specializes in human rights issues states "Human rights transcend cultural relativism by definition," and goes on to also state "But the cultural-religious argument has to be taken into consideration for implementation of policy."

But with this Toubia maintains that the goal in ending FGM must never be compromised. "No ethical defense can be made for preserving a cultural practice that damages women's health and interferes with their sexuality," "It is only a matter of time before all forms of female circumcision in children will be made illegal in Western countries and, eventually, in Africa." Toubia states.

Scientology Church Convicted Of Fraud

2009-12-23T07:42:00.001-06:00

2009-10-27 12:09pm

The Church of Scientology has been convicted of fraud in a French court and handed down fines and a suspended jail sentence for the group's head in France.

The conviction follows complaints from two women, one of whom said she was manipulated into buying more than 20,000 euros worth of life-improvement courses and health products in the 1990s. The second woman alleged the Scientologists dismissed her from her job after she refused to sign up to courses and be tested.

A judge ordered the Church to pay a 600,000-euro fine, with the group's head in France Alain Rosenberg given a two-year suspended jail sentence and fined 30,000 euros.

Three other members of the group were also fined.

Science fiction writer L Ron Hubbard founded the Church of Scientology in 1954 and members includes Hollywood stars such as Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

Prosecutors had sought heavier fines and wanted the group disbanded but this was not possible due to a legal loophole.

French officials have designated Scientology as a sect and not a religion.

(C) NewsRoom 2009

Top Scientologist escapee gives insight into shady "celebrity religion"

2009-12-23T07:04:00.000-06:00

London, Nov 4 (ANI): With most wondering what the Scientology religion is all about, a top Scientologist escapee has come out and revealed just what goes on in the shady "celebrity religion", in his book.

While A-list followers like Tom Cruise, Kirstie Alley, and John Travolta have credited their faith in the religion as the secret of their success, common man John Duignan said that it cost him everything and everyone he held dear.

Duignan, 45, who had lost everything when he became a leading figure in the church's British branch, revealed that he was so brainwashed that he would have killed for Scientology.

In the book, in which he reveals about his nightmare with the cult, he also penned down about how another member was driven to a suicide bid when she was "rehabilitated" after trying to leave.Duignan, who had never heard of Scientology, revealed how it all began in 1985 when he was approached in the street by a pretty girl who offered him a free personality test."The test is a clever recruitment device because it appeals to people who are searching for something. I was unhappy and latched on to the prospect of gaining confidence. I probably needed proper psychological counselling but I got nothing of the sort. The result of my initial test was Urgent Action Required," the Sun quoted him as saying.

"These friendly people seemed to have the answer in Scientology and I surrendered myself to it," he said.

After he joined the religion, he was taken through a gruelling regime, during which he was grounded in the Scientology doctrine, with sleep deprivation, brainwashing and so-called counselling, as its way of teaching.

"On one occasion I sat on the floor while others shouted in my face and flicked things into my eyes," he said.

"It went on for hours. I wasn't allowed to react or blink. You're suppressing your natural reactions and that helps Scientology creep in to take over your mind.

"I saw myself as a soldier for Scientology. I believed it was the only route out of oblivion for mankind.

"The doctrine teaches a human's body doesn't matter because it is the Thetan, or soul, which survives.

"If I'd been told someone had to be eliminated because they were a threat to Scientology I could have justified the killing. They'd just lose their body, which isn't needed," he stated.

The harsh conditions Duignan endured were in stark contrast to the luxury enjoyed by stars at the glittering Scientology Celebrity Centre down the road.

It was until a chance encounter with actor Tom Cruise that Duignan started questioning the religion and his faith.

"In 2004 Tom was welcomed to the annual International Association Of Scientologists Gala Ball as the Most Dedicated follower," he said.

"I was working in the grounds and Tom came out wearing a bad fake beard. It was pathetic.

"Scientologists look upon Tom Cruise as one of their best assets, but it was him who made me think twice about the cult.

"I was earning 15 pounds a week, doing my best to spread the word. I had no privacy or time to relax and was afraid or stressed all the time.

"Yet I wasn't as dedicated as Cruise? It hurt," he stated.

When he made his escape bid two years later, Duignan knew that he would be hunted by the sect's intelligence wing, the Office of Special Affairs (OSA).

"Members who try to leave Scientology are subjected to the Rehabilitation Project Force," he said.

Despite the risks he still went ahead with the plan and managed to escape to Dublin, and rebuilt his life in his native Co Cork.

"I gained nothing. I still bear the scars of my time in the church," he said.

"But I'm now studying for an arts degree, getting to know my family and putting the past behind me," he added

source: http://www.newstrackindia.com/newsdetails/33834

What Do Levi Johnston, Evangelicals and Oprah Have in Common? They All Blind Us to What Really Matters

2009-12-22T06:11:00.000-06:00

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig.

Our obsessions revolve around the trivial and the absurd, while the course of human history is changing. Those who choose reality over fantasy are derided as pessimists.

Will Tiger Woods finally talk to the police? Who will replace Oprah? (Not that Oprah can ever be replaced, of course.) And will Michaele and Tareq Salahi, the couple who crashed President Barack Obama’s first state dinner, command the hundreds of thousands of dollars they want for an exclusive television interview? Can Levi Johnston, father of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s grandson, get his wish to be a contestant on “Dancing With the Stars”?

The chatter that passes for news, the gossip that is peddled by the windbags on the airwaves, the noise that drowns out rational discourse, and the timidity and cowardice of what is left of the newspaper industry reflect our flight into collective insanity. We stand on the cusp of one of the most seismic and disturbing dislocations in human history, one that is radically reconfiguring our economy as it is the environment, and our obsessions revolve around the trivial and the absurd.

What really matters in our lives -- the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the steady deterioration of the dollar, the mounting foreclosures, the climbing unemployment, the melting of the polar ice caps

and the awful reality that once the billions in stimulus money run out next year we will be bereft and broke—doesn’t fit into the cheerful happy talk that we mainline into our brains. We are enraptured by the revels of a dying civilization. Once reality shatters the airy edifice, we will scream and yell like petulant children to be rescued, saved and restored to comfort and complacency. There will be no shortage of demagogues, including buffoons like Sarah Palin, who will oblige. We will either wake up to face our stark new limitations, to retreat from imperial projects and discover a new simplicity, as well as a new humility, or we will stumble blindly toward catastrophe and neofeudalism.

Celebrity worship has banished the real from public discourse. And the adulation of celebrity is pervasive. The frenzy around political messiahs, or the devotion of millions of viewers to Oprah, is all part of the yearning to see ourselves in those we worship. We seek to be like them. We seek to make them like us. We are waiting for our cue to walk onstage and be admired and envied, to become known and celebrated. Nothing else in life counts.

We yearn to stand before the camera, to be noticed and admired. We build pages on social networking sites devoted to presenting our image to the world. We seek to control how others think of us. We define our worth solely by our visibility. We live in a world where not to be seen, in some sense, is to not exist. We pay lifestyle advisers to help us look and feel like celebrities, to build around us the set for the movie of our own life. Martha Stewart constructed her financial empire, when she wasn’t engaged in insider trading, telling women how to create a set design for the perfect home.

The realities within the home, the actual family relationships, are never addressed. Appearances make everything whole. Plastic surgeons, fitness gurus, diet doctors, therapists, life coaches, interior designers and fashion consultants all, in essence, promise to make us happy, to make us celebrities. And happiness comes, we are assured, with how we look, with the acquisition of wealth and power, or at least the appearance of it. Glossy magazines like Town & Country cater to the absurd pretensions of the very rich to be celebrities. They are photographed in expensive designer clothing inside the lavishly decorated set pieces that are their homes. The route to happiness is bound up in how skillfully we present ourselves to the world. We not only have to conform to the dictates of this manufactured vision, but we also have to project an unrelenting optimism and happiness. Hedonism and wealth are openly worshiped on Wall Street as well as on shows such as “The Hills,” “Gossip Girl,” “Sex and the City,” “My Super Sweet 16” and “The Real Housewives of (whatever bourgeois burg happens to be in vogue).”

The American oligarchy -- 1 percent of whom control more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined -- are the characters we most envy and watch on television. They live and play in multimillion-dollar mansions. They marry models or professional athletes. They are chauffeured in stretch limos. They rush from fashion shows to movie premieres to fabulous resorts. They have surgically enhanced, perfect bodies and are draped in designer clothes that cost more than some people make in a year. This glittering life is held before us like a beacon. This life, we are told, is the most desirable, the most gratifying. And this is the life we want. Greed is good, we believe, because one day through our acquisitions we will become the elite. So let the rest of the bastards suffer.

The working class, comprising tens of millions of struggling Americans, are locked out of television’s gated community. They are mocked, even as they are tantalized, by the lives of excess they watch on the screen in their living rooms. Almost none of us will ever attain these lives of wealth and power. Yet we are told that if we want it badly enough, if we believe sufficiently in ourselves, we too can have everything. We are left, when we cannot adopt these impossible lifestyles as our own, with feelings of inferiority and worthlessness. We have failed where others have succeeded.

We consume these countless lies daily. We believe the false promises that if we spend more money, if we buy this brand or that product, if we vote for this candidate, we will be respected, envied, powerful, loved and protected. The flamboyant lives of celebrities and the outrageous characters on television, movies, professional wrestling and sensational talk shows are peddled to us, promising to fill up the emptiness in our own lives. Celebrity culture encourages everyone to think of themselves as potential celebrities, as possessing unique if unacknowledged gifts. Faith in ourselves, in a world of make-believe, is more important than reality. Reality, in fact, is dismissed and shunned as an impediment to success, a form of negativity. The New Age mysticism and pop psychology of television personalities and evangelical pastors, along with the array of self-help best-sellers penned by motivational speakers, psychiatrists and business tycoons, peddle this fantasy. Reality is condemned in these popular belief systems as the work of Satan, as defeatist, as negativity or as inhibiting our inner essence and power. Those who question, those who doubt, those who are critical, those who are able to confront reality, along with those who grasp the hollowness and danger of celebrity culture, are condemned for their pessimism or intellectualism.

The illusionists who shape our culture, and who profit from our incredulity, hold up the gilded cult of Us. Popular expressions of religious belief, personal empowerment, corporatism, political participation and self-definition argue that all of us are special, entitled and unique. All of us, by tapping into our inner reserves of personal will and undiscovered talent, by visualizing what we want, can achieve, and deserve to achieve, happiness, fame and success. This relentless message cuts across ideological lines. This mantra has seeped into every aspect of our lives. We are all entitled to everything. And because of this self-absorption, and deep self-delusion, we have become a country of child-like adults who speak and think in the inane gibberish of popular culture.

Celebrities who come from humble backgrounds are held up as proof that anyone can be adored by the world. These celebrities, like saints, are examples that the impossible is always possible. Our fantasies of belonging, of fame, of success and of fulfillment are projected onto celebrities. These fantasies are stoked by the legions of those who amplify the culture of illusion, who persuade us that the shadows are real. The juxtaposition of the impossible illusions inspired by celebrity culture and our “insignificant” individual achievements, however, is leading to an explosive frustration, anger, insecurity and invalidation. It is fostering a self-perpetuating cycle that drives the frustrated, alienated individual with even greater desperation and hunger away from reality, back toward the empty promises of those who seduce us, who tell us what we want to hear. The worse things get, the more we beg for fantasy. We ingest these lies until our faith and our money run out. And when we fall into despair we medicate ourselves, as if the happiness we have failed to find in the hollow game is our deficiency. And, of course, we are told it is.

I visited former manufacturing towns where for many the end of the world is no longer an abstraction. Many have lost hope. Fear and instability have plunged the working class into profound personal and economic despair, and, not surprisingly, into the arms of demagogues and charlatans of the radical Christian right who offer a belief in magic, miracles and the fiction of a utopian Christian nation. Unless we rapidly re-enfranchise these dispossessed workers, insert them back into the economy, unless we give them hope, these demagogues will rise up to take power. Time is running out. The poor can dine out only so long on illusions. Once they grasp that they have been betrayed, once they match the bleak reality of their future with the fantasies they are fed, once their homes are foreclosed and they realize that the jobs they lost are never coming back, they will react with a fury and vengeance that will snuff out the remains of our anemic democracy and usher in a new dark age.

"We Can Make Him Disappear": Immigration Officials Are Holding People In Secret, Unmarked Jails

2009-12-22T05:53:00.000-06:00

By Jacqueline Stevens, The Nation. Posted December 19, 2009.

"If you don't have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he's illegal, we can make him disappear." Those chilling words were spoken by James Pendergraph, then executive director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Office of State and Local Coordination, at a conference of police

and sheriffs in August 2008. Also present was Amnesty International's Sarnata Reynolds, who wrote about the incident in the 2009 report "Jailed Without Justice" and said in an interview, "It was almost surreal being there, particularly being someone from an organization that has worked on disappearances for decades in other countries. I couldn't believe he would say it so boldly, as though it weren't anything wrong."

Pendergraph knew that ICE could disappear people, because he knew that in addition to the publicly listed field offices and detention sites, ICE is also confining people in 186 unlisted and unmarked subfield offices, many in suburban office parks or commercial spaces revealing no information about their ICE tenants -- nary a sign, a marked car or even a US flag. (Presumably there is a flag at the Veterans Affairs Complex in Castle Point, New York, but no one would associate it with the Criminal Alien Program ICE is running out of Building 7.) Designed for confining individuals in transit, with no beds or showers, subfield offices are not subject to ICE Detention Standards. The subfield office network was mentioned in an October report by Dora Schriro, then special adviser to Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security, but no locations were provided.

I obtained a partial list of the subfield offices from an ICE officer and shared it with immigrant advocates in major human and civil rights organizations, whose reactions ranged from perplexity to outrage. Andrea Black, director of Detention Watch Network (DWN), said she was aware of some of the subfield offices but not that people were held there. ICE never provided DWN a list of their locations. "This points to an overall lack of transparency and even organization on the part of ICE," said Black. ICE says temporary facilities in field or subfield offices are used for 84 percent of all book-ins. There are twenty-four listed field offices. The 186 unlisted subfield offices tend to be where local police and sheriffs have formally or informally reached out to ICE. For instance, in 2007 North Carolina had 629,947 immigrants and at least six subfield offices, compared with Massachusetts, with 913,957 immigrants and one listed field office. Not surprisingly, before joining ICE Pendergraph, a sheriff, was the Joe Arpaio of North Carolina, his official bio stating that he "spearheaded the use of the 287(g) program," legislation that empowers local police to perform immigration law enforcement functions.

A senior attorney at a civil rights organization, speaking on background, saw the list and exclaimed, "You cannot have secret detention! The public has the right to know where detention is happening."

Alison Parker, deputy director of Human Rights Watch, wrote a December comprehensive report on ICE transit policies, "Locked Up Far Away." Even she had never heard of the subfield offices and was concerned that the failure to disclose their locations violates the UN's Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the United States is a signatory. She explained that the government must provide "an impartial authority to review the lawfulness of custody. Part and parcel is the ability of somebody to find the person and to make their presence known to a court."

The challenge of being unable to find people in detention centers, documented in the Human Rights Watch report, is worsened when one does not even know where to look. The absence of a real-time database tracking people in ICE custody means ICE has created a network of secret jails. Subfield offices enter the time and date of custody after the fact, a situation ripe for errors, hinted at in the Schriro report, as well as cover-ups.

ICE refused a request for an interview, selectively responded to questions sent by e-mail and refused to identify the person authorizing the reply -- another symptom of ICE thwarting transparency and hence accountability. The anonymous official provided no explanation for ICE not posting a list of subfield office locations and phone numbers or for its lack of a real-time locator database.

It is not surprising to find that, with no detention rules and being off the map spatially and otherwise, ICE agents at these locations are acting in ways that are unconscionable and unlawful. According to Ahilan Arulanantham, director of Immigrant Rights for the ACLU of Southern California, the Los Angeles subfield office called B-18 is a barely converted storage space tucked away in a large downtown federal building. "You actually walk down the sidewalk and into an underground parking lot. Then you turn right, open a big door and voilà, you're in a detention center," Arulanantham explained. Without knowing where you were going, he said, "it's not clear to me how anyone would find it. What this breeds, not surprisingly, is a whole host of problems concerning access to phones, relatives and counsel."

It's also not surprising that if you're putting people in a warehouse, the occupants become inventory. Inventory does not need showers, beds, drinking water, soap, toothbrushes, sanitary napkins, mail, attorneys or legal information, and can withstand the constant blast of cold air. The US residents held in B-18, as many as 100 on any given day, were treated likewise. B-18, it turned out, was not a transfer area from point A to point B but rather an irrationally revolving stockroom that would shuttle the same people briefly to the local jails, sometimes from 1 to 5 am, and then bring them back, shackled to one another, stooped and crouching in overpacked vans. These transfers made it impossible for anyone to know their location, as there would be no notice to attorneys or relatives when people moved. At times the B-18 occupants were left overnight, the frigid onslaught of forced air and lack of mattresses or bedding defeating sleep.

The hours of sitting in packed cells on benches or the concrete floor meant further physical and mental duress.

Alla Suvorova, 26, a Mission Hills, California, resident for almost six years, ended up in B-18 after she was snared in an ICE raid targeting others at a Sherman Oaks apartment building. For her, the worst part was not the dirt, the bugs flying everywhere or the clogged, stinking toilet in their common cell but the panic when ICE agents laughed at her requests to understand how long she would be held. "No one could visit; they couldn't find me. I was thinking these people are going to put me and the other people in a grinder and make sausages and sell them in the local market."

Sleep deprivation and extreme cold were among the "enhanced interrogation" techniques promoted by the Bush White House and later set aside by the Justice Department because of concerns that they amounted to torture. Although without the intent to elicit information, ICE under the Obama administration was holding people charged with a civil infraction in conditions approaching those no longer authorized for accused terrorists.

According to Aaron Tarin, an immigration attorney in Salt Lake City, "Whenever I have a client in a subfield office, it makes me nervous. Their procedures are lax. You've got these senior agents who have all the authority in the world because they're out in the middle of nowhere. You've got rogue agents doing whatever they want. Most of the buildings are unmarked; the vehicles they drive are unmarked." Like other attorneys, Tarin was extremely frustrated by ICE not releasing its phone numbers. He gave as an example a US citizen in Salt Lake City who hired him because her husband, in the process of applying for a green card, was being held at a subfield office in Colorado. By the time Tarin tracked down the location of the facility that was holding the husband when he had called his wife, the man had been moved to another subfield office. "I had to become a little sleuth," Tarin said, describing the hours he and a paralegal spent on the phone, the numerous false leads, unanswered phones and unreturned messages until the husband, who had been picked up for driving without a license or insurance, was found in Grand Junction, Colorado, held on a $20,000 bond, $10,000 for each infraction. "I argued with the guy, 'This is absurd! Whose policy is this?'" Tarin said the agent's response was, "That's just our policy here."

Rafael Galvez, an attorney in Maine, explained why he would like ICE to release its entire list of subfield office addresses and phone numbers. "If they're detaining someone, I will need to contact the people on the list. If I can advocate on a person's behalf and provide documents, a lot of complications could be avoided."

Cary, a suburb of Raleigh, North Carolina, has a typical subfield office at the rear of CentreWest Commons, an office park adjacent to gated communities, large artificial ponds and an Oxford University Press production plant. ICE's low-lying brick building with a bright blue awning has darkened windows, no sign and no US flag. People in shackles and handcuffs are shuffled in from the rear. The office complex has perhaps twenty other businesses, all of which do have signs. The agents, who are armed, might not wear uniforms and drive their passengers in unmarked, often windowless white vans. Even Dani Martinez-Moore, who lives nearby and coordinates the North Carolina Network of Immigrant Advocates, did not know people were being held there until she read about it on my blog.

In late October 2008, Mark Lyttle, then 31, was held in the Cary office for several hours. Lyttle was born in North Carolina, and the FBI file ICE had obtained on him indicated he was a US citizen. Lyttle used his time in the holding tank attempting to persuade the agents who had plucked him out of the medical misdemeanor section of a nearby prison, where he had been held for seventy-three days, not to follow through on the Cary office's earlier decision to ship him to Mexico. Lyttle is cognitively disabled, has bipolar disorder, speaks no Spanish and has no Mexican relatives. In response to his entreaties, a Cary agent "told me to tell it to the judge," Lyttle said. But Lyttle's charging document from the Cary office includes a box checked next to the boilerplate prohibition: "You may not request a review of this determination by an immigration judge."

Lyttle made enough of a fuss at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, that the agents there arranged for him to appear before a judge. But the checked box in the Cary paperwork meant he never heard from the nonprofit Legal Orientation Program attorneys who might have picked up on his situation. William Cassidy, a former ICE prosecutor working for the Executive Office of Immigration Review, ignored Lyttle's pleas and in his capacity as immigration judge signed Lyttle's removal order. According to Lyttle, Cassidy said he had to go by the sworn statements of the ICE officers.

Meanwhile, Lyttle's mother, Jeanne, and his brothers, including two in the Army, were frantically searching for him, even checking the obituaries. They were trying to find Lyttle in the North Carolina prison system, but the trail went cold after he was transferred to ICE custody. Jeanne said, "David showed me the Manila envelope [he sent to the prison]--'Refused'--and we thought Mark had refused it." Jeanne was crying. "We kept trying to find out where he was." It never crossed their minds that Mark might be spending Christmas in a shelter for los deportados on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande.

ICE spokesman Temple Black first told me the list was "not releasable" and that it was "law enforcement sensitive," but coordinator for community outreach Andrew Lorenzen-Strait e-mailed me a partial list of addresses and no phone numbers. I then obtained a more complete list, including telephone numbers, in response to a FOIA request. That list, received in November and dated September 2009, is about forty locations shy of the 186 subfield offices mentioned in the Schriro report and omits thirty-nine locations listed in an August ICE job announcement seeking applicants for immigration enforcement agents. These include ICE postings in Champlain, New York; Alamosa, Colorado; Pembroke Pines, Florida; and Livermore, California. The anonymous ICE official neither answered questions about why I was sent an incomplete list nor accounted for the disparity in official explanations of the list's confidentiality.

ICE obscures its presence in other ways as well. Everyone knows that detention centers are in sparsely populated areas, but according to Amnesty International's Reynolds, policy director of migrant and refugee rights, "Quite a lot of communities don't know they're detaining thousands of people, because the signs say Service Processing Center," not Detention Center, although the latter designation is used for privately contracted facilities. The ICE e-mail stated that the "service processing" term was first used when the centers were run by the predecessor agency Immigration and Naturalization Service, "because these facilities were used to process aliens for deportation," ignoring the fact that these structures were and are distinctive for confining people and not the Orwellian "processing."

Even the largest complexes, which are usually off side roads from small highways, are visible only if you drive right up to the entrance. Unlike federal prisons, detention centers post no road signs to guide travelers. The anonymous ICE official would not provide a reason for this disparity.

ICE agents are also working in hidden offices in one of the grooviest buildings in one of the hottest neighborhoods in Manhattan. Tommy Kilbride, an ICE detention and removal officer and a star of A&E's reality show Manhunters: Fugitive Task Force, is part of the US Marshals Fugitive Task Force, housed on the third floor of the Chelsea Market, above Fat Witch Bakery and alongside Rachael Ray and the Food Network. Across the street are Craftsteak and Del Posto, both fancy venues for two other Food Network stars, Tom Colicchio and Mario Batali. Above their restaurants are agents working for the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Someone who had been working in that building for about a year said he had heard rumors of FBI agents, though he didn't see one until nine months later when a guy was openly carrying a gun through the lobby. In November, at midday, he saw two men in plain clothes walk a third man in handcuffs through a side-street door behind Craftsteak. "It was weird, creepy," he said, adding that the whole arrangement made him uncomfortable. "I don't like it. It makes you wonder, what are they hiding? Is it for good reasons or bad reasons?"

Natalie Jeremijenko, who lives nearby and is a professor of visual arts at New York University, pointed out the "twisted genius" of hiding federal agents in the "worldwide center of visuality and public space," referring to the galleries and High Line park among these buildings. Jeremijenko was incensed. "For a participatory democracy to work, you need to have real-time visual evidence of what is going on" and not just knowledge by professors who file a FOIA request or even readers of a Nation article.

In response to a question about the absence of signs at subfield offices, the ICE e-mail stated, "ICE attempts to place signs wherever possible, however there are many variables to consider such as shared buildings, law enforcement activities, zoning laws, etc." Except for "law enforcement activities," the reasons did not apply to the facilities listed here, as evidenced by signs on adjacent businesses.

The Obama administration continued to ignore complaints about the LA subfield office known as B-18 until April 1, when Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder, as well as ICE officials, were named as defendants in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and the National Immigration Law Center. In September, the parties reached a settlement. The ACLU's Arulanantham said, "I never understood what [ICE] had to gain. The fact that after we filed the suit they completely fixed it makes it more mysterious" as to why their months of earlier negotiation brought few results. At the time of the lawsuit, he said, the nearby Mira Loma Detention Center had space. When I asked if ICE was trying to punish people by bringing them to B-18, Arulanantham said, "No, no one was targeted," adding, "If it were punitive, it would be less disturbing."

rulanantham's response is, alas, more than fodder for a law school hypothetical about whether intentional or unintentional rights violations are more egregious. In 2006 ICE punished several Iraqi hunger strikers in Virginia--they were protesting being unlawfully held for more than six months after agreeing to deportation--by shuffling them between a variety of different facilities, ensuring that they would not encounter lawyers or be found by loved ones. This went on from weeks to months, according to Brittney Nystrom, senior legal adviser for the National Immigration Forum. "The message was, We're going to make you disappear."

As an alternative to the system of unmarked subfield offices and unaccountable agents, consider the approach of neighborhood police precincts, where dangerous criminals are held every day and police carry out their work in full view of their neighbors. Not only can citizens watch out for strange police actions, and know where to look if a family member is missing; local accountability helps discourage misconduct. ICE agents' persistent flouting of rules and laws is abetted by their ability to scurry back to secret dens, avoiding the scrutiny and resulting inhibitions that arise when law enforcement officers develop relationships with the communities they serve.

Indeed, the jacket Kilbride wears during arrests says POLICE in large letters. Working out of a heretofore secret location -- Manhunters has no exterior shots -- one that his supervisor had requested I not reveal, gives their operation the trappings of a secret police. An attorney who had a client held in a subfield office said on background, "The president released in January a memorandum about transparency, but that's not happening. He says one thing, but we have these clandestine operations, akin to extraordinary renditions within the United States. They're misguided as to what their true mission is, and they are doing things contrary to the best interests of the country."

And They'll Call This Health-Care Reform: How Three Senators Are Extorting You For Their Big-Time Buddies

2009-12-22T05:40:00.000-06:00

By Robert Reich Posted December 18, 2009.

"Don't make the perfect the enemy of the better," says the president and congressional insiders when confronted with the sorry spectacle of a health-care bill whose scope and ambition continue to shrink, and whose long-term costs to typical Americans continue to grow. They're right, of course. But by the same logic, neither the White House nor congressional Democrats will be able to celebrate the emerging legislation as a "major overhaul" or "fundamental reform." At best, it's likely to be a small overhaul containing incremental reforms.

Real reform has moved from a Medicare-like public option open to all, to a public option open to 6 million without employer coverage (still in the House bill), to a public option open only to those same people in states that opt for it, or about 4 million (the original Harry Reid version of the Senate bill), to no public option but expanded Medicare (the Senate compromise) to no expanded Medicare at all (the deal with Joe "I love all the attention" Lieberman).

In other words, the private insurers are winning and the public is losing.

Pharmaceutical companies are winning as well. Yesterday, proposals to allow US pharmacies and wholesalers to import prescription drugs from Europe and Canada were defeated in the Senate. No matter that American consumers pay up to 55 percent more for their prescription drugs than Canadians, or that the measure would have saved the government at least $19.4 billion over 10 years (according to the Congressional Budget Office). Big Pharma's argument that the safety of such drugs couldn't be assured was belied by the defeat of another proposed amendment that would have allowed drug imports only if their safety and economic benefits were certified by the secretary of Health and Human Service.

Doctors and hospitals are also winning. More and more of the putative "savings" from health care reform ("savings" should really be understood as projected costs that are under the wildly-escalating costs projected without such savings) rely on constraints on future Medicare spending. But the details of such constraints keep vanishing, while ever more of the messy work of coming up with them is assigned to a so-called Medical Advisory Board that will supposedly recommend them later on. What no one wants to admit is that Congress never actually implements promised Medicare savings. When crunch time comes, it caves in to the American Medical Association and the AARP. In a few years time, when boomers swell the ranks of seniors, and the political power of the AMA and AARP together rival that of Wall Street, the cave-ins will be boggling.

Meanwhile, opponents of abortion are winning, too. Ben Nelson (a Nebraska Democrat who enjoys being the spoiler even as much as Joe Lieberman) is holding out for even more restrictions.

The political reality right now is that Harry Reid will do anything to get sixty votes -- which means Lieberman, Nelson, and even Olympia Snowe are able to use extortion on behalf of Big Insurance, Big Pharma, the AMA, and abortion foes. The president, meanwhile, remains eerily above the fray. Having closed deals months ago with Big Insurance, Big Pharma, and the AMA -- in order to get their support in exchange for guaranteeing them big profits -- his only apparent interest is keeping the deals going while helping Reid corral sixty votes for just about anything. (The deals have caused some awkwardness for the White House. Drug importation would have cost Big Pharma far more than the $80 billion price tag it agreed to, forcing the White House to oppose importation even though the president had publicly supported it during his presidential campaign last year, and even though John McCain supported yesterday's amendment.)

Is the effort worth still worth it? Yes, but just. Private insurers will have to take anyone, regardless of preconditions. And some 30 million people who don't now have health insurance will get it. But because Big Insurance, Big Pharma, and the AMA will come out way ahead, the legislation will cost taxpayers and premium-payers far more than it would otherwise. Cost controls are inadequate; in fact, they barely exist. If Wall Street's top brass are "fat cats," as the president described them last weekend, the top brass of Big Insurance, Big Pharma, and the AMA are even fatter. While they don't earn as much, they're squeezing the public for even more.

The "Business" of Birthing

2009-12-22T05:12:00.001-06:00

FACT
Each year, the U.S. spends over $50 billion dollars on childbirth. This is more than any other nation in the world. (This number does not include babies in the NICU or readmissions during the first month.)

FACT
Birthing is the largest source of income for American hospitals.

FACT
The U.S. ranks 37th in the world for the quality of its health care.

FACT
Over HALF of all hospital admissions in America are for maternity.

FACT
Hospitals are NOT the safest place to have a baby. 25 infectious strains exist that are resistant to ALL known antibiotics. These are found primarily in hospitals.

FACT
75 years of routine hospital birth have produced NO studies to show it is safer than having a baby at home with a skilled birth attendant.

FACT
Both homebirth and birth centers have been scientifically proven to be as safe or safer than hospitals with a skilled labor attendant (i.e. midwives, not doctors).

FACT
The more technology used in childbirth, the more dangerous it becomes.

FACT
The larger the hospital, the greater the risks to both mother and baby.

FACT
Of the 4.3 million babies born annually in the U.S., a mere 5% represent natural childbirth.

FACT
America has the 29th highest infant mortality rate in the entire world.

FACT
The U.S.A. has the 14th highest maternal mortality ratio among developed nations.

FACT
Over 90% of all infants in the U.S. are born with drugs (e.g. narcotics from epidurals, pitocin, acetaminophen, etc) in their systems. NONE of these drugs have been tested for safe use in infants.

FACT
A 24-hour hospital stay, uncomplicated delivery in the U.S.A. costs anywhere from $8,000-10,000. This cost DOUBLES for a c-section.

FACT
ALL families in the U.S. are charged newborn nursery charges, even if the baby NEVER leaves the mother's room. This "routine" charge amounts to about $1.3 billion dollars annually, for services that are NOT
rendered. (I'm not quite sure why this doesn't constitute insurance fraud - billing for services not rendered.)

FACT
Every year, 1 million, or about 20%, full-term, healthy infants are sent to the NICU for "observation" for an average stay of 3 days, totaling a whopping $6,000.

FACT
For newborns suspected to have serious medical conditions, the same NICU stay totals $20,000.

FACT
1 in 3 American women has an episiotomy. Episiotomies are medically indicated for less than 10% of all women. Over 1 million unnecessary episiotomies are performed annually in the U.S.

FACT
1 in 5 births in the U.S.A. are induced. 44% of women surveyed in 2002 reported their doctor wanted to induce. Only 16% reported medically-indicated reasons.

FACT
American women who elect epidurals are FOUR times as likely to have cesarean sections.

FACT
31.8% of American babies (nearly 1 in 3) in 2007 were delivered by cesarean section. The World Health Organization recommends a c-section rate of less than 10-15% as acceptable.

FACT
U.S. hospital policies for routine tests, practices, policies and procedures are based on financial considerations, which include malpractice insurance costs. They are not based on evidence, research, or appropriateness of care.

The true horror comes in the fact that these views are being exported across the world. As the U.S. is such a powerhouse of marketing, more impressionable regions are adapting to these customs, despite the overwhelming evidence that the U.S. approach to childbirth IS SERIOUSLY FLAWED!

American obstetricians are taught to view birth as "a disaster waiting to happen." The average delivery in the U.S. is neither natural nor healthy. We have embraced a cascading system of successively more intense, unneeded interventions termed "active management" or the "standard of care".

Meatrix: Before you take another bite, watch this short film

2009-12-21T09:16:00.001-06:00

http://www.meatrix1.com/

SUBSTANTIATED TRUE FACTS

2009-12-21T05:35:00.004-06:00

The odds are 1 in 582 (.0017%) that you will be injured in a traffic accident due to "driver distraction". - The Week Magazine, 10/16/09

Niger (Africa) has the world's highest fertility rate - 7.1 children per mother. - Newsweek, 10/19/09

By 2040, 40% of Japan's population will be senior citizens. - Newsweek, 10/19/09

Print shop operator Al Fischer recently donated his 320th pint of blood. That brings his lifetime total to 40 gallons. - The Week Magazine, 9/18/09

On average (in July 2009), there are six job seekers for each job opening in the United States. - Fortune, 10/26/09

If you're an American, the odds are 1 in 40 (2.46%) that you're currently in the U.S. criminal justice system (incarcerated, on parole, or on probation). - The Week Magazine, 9/25/09

Unmarried women now account for 40% of births. - Newsweek, 10/19/09

Women give birth to triplets (or higher multiples) five times more frequently than in 1972. - Time Magazine, 10/26/09

47% of all U.S. households will owe no federal income tax in 2009. - The Week Magazine, 10/16/09

South Carolina state attorney Roland Corning was busted with a stripper, sex toys and Viagra in a Columbia, South Carolina cemetery recently. - Newsweek, 11/9/09

Prostitutes in Chicago, Illinois are more likely to have sex with a police officer than be arrested by one. - Newsweek, 11/9/09

The odds are 1 in 39 (2.56%) that you will hit a deer with your car this year, if you drive in West Virginia. - The Week Magazine, 10/9/09

An IMAX projector's bulb is so powerful that if it was pointed upward, it could be seen by astronauts on the International Space Station. - Discover Magazine, 6/09

Drug investigators raided a Polk County, Florida home in a search for drugs. They were caught on a security camera playing Wii bowling for nine straight hours. - The Week Magazine, 10/9/09

The frozen head of baseball great Ted Williams was in a cryonic company's freezer on a used cat food (tuna) can. When an employee was transferring the head from one location to another, he tried to remove the tuna can, but it wouldn't budge. So he grabbed a monkey wrench, heaved a mighty swing but missed the can - hitting the head "dead center". Tiny pieces of frozen head sprayed across the room. - San Diego Union, 10/3/09

A recent study shows that weight gain may depend on when you eat as well as what you eat. If you eat when your body thinks it should be sleeping, you might be doing "double damage". - The Week Magazine, 9/25/09

A South African company tested its Internet Service Provider. It took 2 hours, 7 minutes to download data over a fifty mile distance. The same data took a carrier pigeon, carrying a flash drive, fifty minutes less. - Time Magazine, 9/28/09

The odds are 1 in 33 (3%) that you have been a target of sexual advances by a priest, minister, rabbi or other religious leader (if you're a woman). - The Week Magazine, 9/25/09

22,000 Americans die annually because they lack health insurance. - Newsweek, 9/21/09

Chinese officials have smeared butter along a 1,000-foot-long steel bridge to prevent people from jumping off it. - The Week Magazine, 9/11/09

The United States is the only developed nation where medical bankruptcies occur. - Newsweek, 9/21/09

The Ellen DeGeneres Show is being sued by four of the world's biggest record companies, accused of using more than 1,000 songs without permission. - The Week Magazine, 9/25/09

34,000,000 pounds of Parmesan cheese are being held in Italian bank vaults as collateral from cheese makers struggling through the recession. The cheese is valued at $187,000,000. - Newsweek, 9/14/09

Australian 16-year-old Jessica Watson launched her yacht to become the youngest person to sail solo, non-stop and unassisted around the world. 24 hours later, she crashed into a freighter. - The Week Magazine, 9/25/09

The United States has 2,300,000,000 square feet of space in self-storage units. This is 7 square feet per citizen. - The Week Magazine, 9/18/09

Having an obese spouse raises the risk of becoming obese by 37%. If a friend became obese, the risk skyrockets to 171%. - Wired Magazine, 10/09

The odds are 1 in 71 (1.4%) that your bag arrived at your destination at a different time than you did when flying commercial airlines. - The Week Magazine, 8/28/09

There are twice as many ATMs in Antarctica than there are permanent residents. - Wired Magazine, 9/09

Ten Swine Flu Lies Told by the Mainstream Media

2009-12-04T06:50:00.011-06:00

Article by: Mike Adams

The mainstream media is engaged in what we Americans call “bald faced lies” about swine flu. It seems to be true with this issue more than any other, and it became apparent to me recently when a colleague of mine — a nationally-syndicated newspaper columnist — told me their column on natural defenses for swine flu was rejected by newspapers all across the country. Many newspapers refused to run the column and, instead, ran an ad for “free vaccine clinics” in the same space.




	The media is so deeply in bed with the culture of vaccinations that they will do almost anything to keep the public misinformed.

The media, it seems, is so deeply in bed with the culture of vaccinations that they will do almost anything to keep the public misinformed. And that includes lying about swine flu vaccines.

There are ten key lies that continue to be told by the mainstream media flu vaccines. (MSM) about swine flu and swine

Lie #1 – There are no adjuvants used in the vaccines

I was recently being interviewed by a major U.S. news network when the reporter interviewing me came up with this humdinger: There are no adjuvants being used in the swine flu vaccines, he said!

I assured him that adjuvants were, indeed, a crucial part of the vaccine recipe, and they were being widely used by drug companies to “stretch” the vaccine supply. It’s no secret. But he insisted he had been directly told by a drug company rep that no adjuvants were being used at all. And he believed them! So everything being published by this large news network about swine flu vaccines now assumes there are no adjuvants in the vaccines at all.

Lie #2 – The swine flu is more dangerous than seasonal flu

This lie is finally starting to unravel. I admit that in the early days of this pandemic, even I was concerned this could be a global killer. But after observing the very mild impact the virus was having on people in the real world, it became obvious that this was a mild flu, no more dangerous than a seasonal flu.

The MSM, however, continues to promote H1N1 swine flu as being super dangerous, driving fear into the minds of people and encouraging them to rush out and get a vaccine shot for a flu that’s really no more likely to kill them than the regular winter sniffles. Sure, the virus could still mutate into something far worse, but if it does that, the current vaccine could be rendered obsolete anyway!

Lie #3 – Vaccines protect you from swine flu

This is the biggest lie of all, and the media pushes it hard. Getting a vaccine, they insist, will protect you from the swine flu. But it’s just flat-out false. Even if the vaccine produces antibodies, that’s not the same thing as real-world immunity from a live virus, especially if the virus mutates (as they often do).

As I pointed out in a recent article, statistically speaking the average American is 40 times more likely to be struck by lightning than to have their life saved by a swine flu vaccine. (http://www.naturalnews.com/026955_s…)

Lie #4 – Vaccines are safe

And how would any journalists actually know this? None of the vaccines have been subjected to real-world testing for any meaningful duration. The “safety” of these vaccines is nothing more than wishful thinking.

The MSM also doesn’t want you to know what’s in the vaccines. Some vaccines are made from viral fragments grown in diseased African monkeys. If that sounds incredible, read the true story here: http://www.naturalnews.com/026779_s…

Lie #5 – The vaccine isn’t mandatory

You hear this lie all the time: The swine flu vaccine shot is voluntary, they say. But it’s not true if you’re an employee at a place where vaccines are being mandated. Millions of Americans are now being told by their employers that if they don’t get vaccine shots, they will be effectively fired from their jobs. It’s especially true with health care workers, day care employees and school teachers.

Lie #6 – Getting a vaccine shot is a good bet on your health

In reality, a vaccine shot is far more likely to harm you than help you. According to one viral expert, the actual mortality rate of the swine flu virus is estimated to be as low as .007 percent (http://www.reuters.com/article/heal…). That means H1N1 swine flu kills less than one person in 100,000. Even if the vaccine works, let’s say, 10 percent of the time, you’d have to vaccine one million people to prevent one death from swine flu.

And in vaccinating one million people, you would inevitably harm or kill several people, simply from the vaccine side effects! Your net risk of death is increased by getting a swine flu vaccine.

Lie #7 – The vaccine isn’t made with “attenuated live virus”

When the swine flu vaccines were first being announced several months ago, they were described as being made with “attenuated live virus.” This was directly mentioned in CDC documents, among other places.

This term apparently freaked out the American news consumer, and it has since been all but erased from any discussion about vaccines. Now, journalists will actually argue with you and insist the vaccines contain no attenuated live viruses whatsoever.

Except they’re wrong. The vaccines are, indeed, made with “attenuated live viruses.” That’s how you make a vaccine: You take live viruses, then you weaken them (”attenuate”) and inject them into people.

Lie #8 – Wash, wash, wash your hands (to avoid exposure)

This idea of washing your hands a hundred times a day is all based on the assumption that you can avoid exposure to the swine flu virus. But that’s impractical. The virus is now so widespread that virtually everyone is certain to be exposed to it through the air if not other means. This whole idea of avoiding exposure to the swine flu virus is nonsense. The conversation should shift to ways to survive exposure via a healthy immune system.

Of course, hand washing is a very good idea in a hospital setting. Recent news reveals that doctors are too busy to wash their own hands, resulting in the rampant spread of superbugs throughout most large hospitals in first world nations.

Lie #9 – Children are more vulnerable to swine flu than adults
This is just a flat-out lie, but it makes for good vaccine sales. Vaccines are right now being targeted primarily to schoolchildren.

But the truth is that swine flu is extremely mild in children. “It’s mildest in kids,” says Dr Marc Lipsitch of Harvard University. “That’s one of the really good pieces of news in this pandemic.” Reuters actually had the guts to report this story, but most of the larger media outlets are still reporting that children are the most vulnerable.

Lie #10 – There is nothing else you can do beyond a vaccine and Tamiflu

This is where the media lies by omission. The mainstream media absolutely refuses to print just about any story that talks about using vitamin D, anti-viral herbs or natural remedies to protect yourself from swine flu. In the MSM, there are two options and only two: Vaccines and Tamiflu. That’s it. No other options exist in their fictional reality.

Why is the mainstream media so afraid to print the truth these days? Why can’t reporting on swine flu see the light of day… literally, with a mention of sunlight and vitamin D? Apparently, Big Pharma has such a tight grip on mainstream newspapers that no true story on swine flu can ever make it past the editor’s desk.

Killing stories, deceiving the public

It must really be depressing to work for the mainstream media. Even the reporters I know can’t stand it. The truth, they admit, rarely makes it into print.

Over the last few years, I’ve had a couple of job offers from large media outlets. They want to pay me a six-figure salary and stick me behind a desk where they can control what I report. Needless to say, I routinely reject those offers. If I can’t write the truth like I do here on NaturalNews.com, there’s no point writing at all. In too many ways, the mainstream media has become little more than a corporate mouthpiece, whoring itself out to the highest bidder / advertiser.

It’s no fault of the frontline reporters who actually work there. For the most part, they agree with what I’m saying. It’s the fault of the profit-oriented corporate mindset where news is about selling newspapers rather than actually informing the public.

Important news stories get killed every day in the newsrooms across America. They get killed not because they are poorly investigated or poorly written, but because they upset advertisers and corporate string pullers who shape the news and reject any stories that threaten their own financial interests.

Here in 2009, the distorted reporting on the swine flu vaccine has been one of the greatest media frauds ever perpetrated. The media has in every way contributed to the widespread ignorance of the American people on the subject of vitamin D and natural immune-boosting defenses that could reduce swine flu fatalities. Rather than informing readers, the MSM has made it a point to keep the people stupid, and in doing so, the media has failed its only mission and betrayed the very audience is claims to serve.

source: http://www.infowars.com/ten-swine-flu-lies-told-by-the-mainstream-media/

I would also highly recommend visiting www.thedoctorwithin.com and reading the chapters on swine flu, the history of swine flu and vaccines. A must read!

Video:The Sexist and Racist teaching of the Talamud: Jewish Holy Book

2009-11-26T06:19:00.015-06:00

Reflect on the following passages from the Talmud, the Jewish Holy Book after the Torah.

Menahoth 43b-44a. ¨A Jewish man is obligated to say the following prayer every day: Thank you God for not making me a gentile, a woman or a slave.¨

It is permitted to have sexual intercourse with a girl three years old and one day" (Sanhedrin 55b,p.37

"Every Jew, who spills the blood of the godless (non-Jews), is doing the same as making a sacrifice to God."
Talmud: Bammidber raba c 21 & Jalkut 772

A few days ago i came across a post at http://sacrifice4allah.blogspot.com/and was inspired to post a video and information about the Talamud (jewish holy book that was written by jewish rabbis.) 6).

The talamud is filled with hatred toward non-jews, racisim and sexism not only toward non-jewish women but toward women in general. zionist christians who have made it their mission to back Israel and help the zionist Jews should take a moment to reflect on the teachings of the Talamud. Where else would you find the mother of jesus refered to a ¨whore¨than in the talamud? According to the Talamud gentiles are worse than animals and should be killed.

Video: Zeitgeist Documentary, what the government doesnt want you to know...

2009-11-25T05:00:00.007-06:00

Zeitgeist: Truth about 9/11 and the federal reserve. Its time you learned the truth

Media Lies & The War Drive Against Iran

2009-11-23T07:08:00.007-06:00

By John Pilger

14 October, 2009
Johnpilger.com.

In 2001, the London Observer published a series of reports claiming an “Iraqi connection” to al-Qaeda, even describing the base in Iraq where the training of terrorists took place and a facility where anthrax was being made as a weapon of mass destruction.

It was all false.

Supplied by US intelligence and Iraqi exiles, planted stories in the British and US media helped then-US president George Bush and then-British prime minister Tony Blair launch an illegal invasion that has caused, according to the most recent study, 1.3 million deaths.

Something similar is happening over Iran: the same syncopation of government and media “revelations”, the same manufacture of a sense of crisis.

“Showdown looms with Iran over secret nuclear plant”, declared the British Guardian on September 26. “Showdown” is the theme.

High noon. The clock ticking. Good versus evil.

Add a smooth new US president who has “put paid to the Bush years”. An immediate echo is the notorious May 22, 2007 Guardian front page: “Iran’s secret plan for summer offensive to force US out of Iraq”.

Based on unsubstantiated claims by the Pentagon, the writer Simon Tisdall presented as fact an Iranian “plan” to wage war on, and defeat, US forces in Iraq by September of that year — a demonstrable falsehood for which there has been no retraction.

The official jargon for this kind of propaganda is “psy-ops”, the military term for psychological operations. In the Pentagon and Whitehall, it has become a critical component of a diplomatic and military campaign to blockade, isolate and weaken Iran by hyping its “nuclear threat”: a phrase now used incessantly by US President Barack Obama and British PM Gordon Brown, and parroted by the BBC and other broadcasters as objective news.

And it is fake.

On September 16, Newsweek disclosed that major US intelligence agencies had reported to the White House that Iran’s “nuclear status” had not changed since the National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007, which stated with “high confidence” that Iran had halted in 2003 the programme it was alleged to have developed.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has backed this, time and again.

The current propaganda-as-news derives from Obama’s announcement that the US is scrapping missiles stationed on Russia’s border. This serves to cover the fact that the number of US missile sites is actually expanding in Europe and the “redundant” missiles are being redeployed on ships.

The game is to mollify Russia into joining, or not obstructing, the US campaign against Iran.

“President Bush was right”, said Obama, “that Iran’s ballistic missile programme poses a significant threat [to Europe and the US].”

That Iran would contemplate a suicidal attack on the US is preposterous. The threat, as ever, is one-way, with the world’s superpower virtually ensconced on Iran’s borders.

Iran’s crime is its independence. Having thrown out the US’s favourite tyrant, Shah Reza Pahlavi, Iran remains the only resource-rich Muslim state beyond US control. As only Israel has a “right to exist” in the Middle East, the US goal is to cripple the Islamic Republic.

This will allow Israel to divide and dominate the region on Washington’s behalf, undeterred by a confident neighbour. If any country in the world has been handed urgent cause to develop a nuclear “deterrence”, it is Iran.

As one of the original signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran has been a consistent advocate of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. In contrast, Israel has never agreed to an IAEA inspection, and its nuclear weapons plant at Dimona remains an open secret.

Armed with as many as 200 active nuclear warheads, Israel “deplores” UN resolutions calling on it to sign the NPT. Just as it deplored the recent United Nations report charging it with crimes against humanity in Gaza and just as it maintains a world record for violations of international law.

It gets away with this because great power grants it immunity.

Obama’s “showdown” with Iran has another agenda. On both sides of the Atlantic the media have been tasked with preparing the public for endless war.

The US/NATO commander General Stanley McChrystal says 500,000 troops will be required in Afghanistan over five years, NBC reported. The goal is control of the “strategic prize” of the gas and oilfields of the Caspian Sea, central Asia, the Gulf and Iran — in other words, Eurasia.

But the war is opposed by 69% of the British public, 57% of the US public and almost every other human being.

Convincing “us” that Iran is the new demon will not be easy. McChrystal’s spurious claim that Iran “is reportedly training fighters for certain Taliban groups” is as desperate as Brown’s pathetic echo of “a line in the sand”.

During the Bush years, the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said a military coup took place in the US, and the Pentagon is now ascendant in every area of US foreign policy.

A measure of its control is the number of wars of aggression being waged simultaneously and the adoption of a “first-strike” doctrine that has lowered the threshold on nuclear weapons — together with the blurring of the distinction between nuclear and conventional weapons.

All this mocks Obama’s media rhetoric about “a world without nuclear weapons”. In fact, he is the Pentagon’s most important acquisition. His acquiescence with its demand that he keep on Bush’s secretary of “defence” and arch war-maker, Robert Gates, is unique in US history.

He has proved his worth with escalated wars from south Asia to the Horn of Africa. Like Bush’s America, Obama’s America is run by some very dangerous people.

We have a right to be warned. When will those paid to keep the record straight do their job?

The Truth Seekers

2009-11-16T05:21:00.001-06:00

Updated list of scientists dead in suspicious circumstances since autumn 2001

Global Elite – January 14, 2005

Korean Jeong H. Im a protein chemist from the University of Missouri is just the latest in a long line of scientists that have died in suspicious circumstances. Full chronological list below.

November 6, 2001: Jeffrey Paris Wall's body was found sprawled next to a three-story parking structure near his office. Mr. Wall, 41, had studied at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was a biomedical expert who held a medical degree, and he also specialized in patent and intellectual property. It had been alleged that Jeffrey Wall had a connection to Biofem.

November 16, 2001: Dr. Don Wiley, 57, disappears during a business trip to Memphis, Tennessee. He had just bought tickets to take his son to Graceland the following day. Police found his rental car on a bridge outside Memphis. His body was later found in the Mississippi River. Wiley was one of the world's leading researchers of deadly viruses, including HIV and the Ebola virus. He was an expert on the immune system's response to viral attacks.

November 21, 2001: World-class microbiologist and high-profile Russian defector Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik, 64, dies of a stroke. Pasechnik, who defected to Britain in 1989, succeeded in producing an aerosolized plague microbe that could survive outside the laboratory. He was connected to Britain's spy agency and recently had started his own company. "In the last few weeks of his life he had put his research on anthrax at the disposal of the [British] Government, in the light of the threat from bioterrorism.

November 24, 2001: Three more dead microbiologists: A Swissair flight from Berlin to Zurich crashes during its landing approach; 22 are killed and nine survive. Among those killed are Dr. Yaakov Matzner, 54, dean of the Hebrew University school of medicine; Amiramp Eldor, 59, head of the haematology department at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv and a world-recognized expert in blood clotting; and Avishai Berkman, 50, director of the Tel Aviv public health department and businessman.

December 10, 2001: Dead microbiologist: "Dr. Robert Schwartz, 57, was stabbed and slashed with what police believe was a sword in his farmhouse in Leesberg, Va. His daughter, who identifies herself as a pagan high priestess, and three of her fellow pagans have been charged." [Globe and Mail, 5/4/02] All were part of what they called a coven, and interested in magic, fantasy and self-mutilation. The police have no motive as to why they would have wanted to kill Schwartz, who was a single parent and said to be very close to his children. Schwartz worked at Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology on DNA sequencing and pathogenic microorganisms.

December 14, 2001: Dead microbiologist: Nguyen Van Set, 44, dies in an airlock filled with nitrogen in his lab in Geelong, Australia. The lab had just been written up in the journal Nature for its work in genetic manipulation and DNA sequencing. Scientists there had created a virulent form of mousepox. "They realized that if similar genetic manipulation was carried out on smallpox, an unstoppable killer could be unleashed,"

January 2002: Two dead microbiologists: Ivan Glebov and Alexi Brushlinski. Glebov died as the result of a bandit attack and Brushlinski was killed in Moscow. Both were well known around the world and members of the Russian Academy of Science.

February 9, 2002: Dead microbiologist: Victor Korshunov, 56, is bashed over the head and killed at the entrance of his home in Moscow, Russia. He was the head of the microbiology sub-faculty at the Russian State Medical University and an expert in intestinal bacteria.

February 11, 2002: Dead microbiologist: Dr. Ian Langford, 40, is found dead, partially naked and wedged under a chair in his home in Norwich, England. When found, his house was described as "blood-spattered and apparently ransacked." He was one of Europe's leading experts on environmental risk.

February 28, 2002: Two dead microbiologists in San Francisco: While taking delivery of a pizza, Tanya Holzmayer, 46, is shot and killed by a colleague, Guyang Huang, 38, who then apparently shot himself. Holzmayer moved to the US from Russia in 1989. Her research focused on the part of the human molecular structure that could be affected best by medicine. Holzmayer was focusing on helping create new drugs that interfere with replication of the virus that causes AIDS. One year earlier, Holzmayer obeyed senior management orders to fire Huang.

March 24, 2002: Dead microbiologist: David Wynn-Williams, 55, is hit by a car while jogging near his home in Cambridge, England. He was an astrobiologist with the Antarctic Astrobiology Project and the NASA Ames Research Center. He was studying the capability of microbes to adapt to environmental extremes, including the bombardment of ultraviolet rays and global warming.

March 25, 2002: Dead microbiologist: Steven Mostow, 63, dies when the airplane he was piloting crashes near Denver, Colorado. He worked at the Colorado Health Sciences Centre and was known as "Dr. Flu" for his expertise in treating influenza, and expertise on bioterrorism. Mostow was one of the country's leading infectious disease experts.

November 12 2002: Dr. Benito Que, 52, was "an expert in infectious diseases and cellular biology at the Miami Medical School. Police originally suspected that he had been beaten on in a carjacking in the medical school's parking lot. Strangely enough, though, his body showed no signs of a beating.

June 24, 2003: Dr. Leland Rickman, a UC San Diego expert on infectious diseases and, since Sept. 11, 2001 a consultant on bioterrorism. He was 47. Rickman died while on a teaching assignment in Lesotho, a small country bordered on all sides by South Africa. He had complained of a headache, but the cause of death was not immediately known. The physician had been working in Lesotho with Dr. Chris Mathews, director of the UC San Diego Medical Center's Owen Clinic, teaching African medical personnel about the prevention and treatment of AIDS.Rickman, the incoming president of the Infectious Disease Assn. of California, was a multidisciplinary professor and practitioner with expertise in infectious diseases, internal medicine, epidemiology, microbiology and antibiotic utilization.

July 18, 2003: David Kelly, a British biological weapons expert, was said to have slashed his own wrists while walking near his home. Kelly was the Ministry of Defence's chief scientific officer and senior adviser to the proliferation and arms control secretariat, and to the Foreign Office's non-proliferation department. The senior adviser on biological weapons to the UN biological weapons inspections teams(Unscom) from 1994 to 1999, he was also, in the opinion of his peers, pre-eminent in his field, not only in this country, but in the world.

November 20, 2003: Scientist Robert Leslie Burghoff, 45 was killed by a hit and run driver that jumped the kerb and ploughed into him in the 1600 block of South Braeswood, Texas. He was studying the virus plaguing cruise ships. April 2004: Mohammed Munim al-Izmerly, a distinguished Iraqi chemistry professor dies in American custody from a sudden hit to the back of his head caused by blunt trauma. It was uncertain exactly how he died, but someone had hit him from behind, possibly with a bar or a pistol. His battered corpse turned up at Baghdad's morgue and the cause of death was initially recorded as "brainstem compression". It was discovered that US doctors had made a 20cm incision in his skull.

May 5, 2004: A Russian scientist at a former Soviet biological weapons laboratory in Siberia died after an accident with a needle laced with ebola. Scientists and officials said the accident had raised concerns about safety and secrecy at the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology, known as Vector, which in Soviet times specialized in turning deadly viruses into biological weapons. Vector has been a leading recipient of aid in an American programme.

May 14, 2004: Dr. Eugene F. Mallove, a Norwich Free Academy graduate, 56, died after being beaten to death during an alleged robbery. Mallove was well respected for his knowledge of cold fusion. He had just published an “open letter” outlining the results of and reasons for his last 15 years in the field of “new energy research.” Dr. Mallove was convinced it was only a matter of months before the world would actually see a free energy device.

June 22, 2004: Astronomer and physicist, Austrian born Thomas Gold famous over the years for a variety of bold theories that flout conventional wisdom died of heart failure. Gold’s theory of the deep hot biosphere holds important ramifications for the possibility of life on other planets, including seemingly inhospitable planets within our own solar system. He was Professor Emeritus of Astronomy at Cornell University and wass the founder (and for 20 years director) of Cornell Center for Radiophysics and Space Research. He was also involved in air accident investigation.

July 3, 2004: Dr Paul Norman, 52, of Salisbury, Wiltshire, was killed when the single-engine Cessna 206 he was piloting crashed in Devon. He was married with a 14-year-old son and a 20-year-old daughter, and was the chief scientist for chemical and biological defence at the Ministry of Defence’s laboratory at Porton Down, Wiltshire. The crash site was examined by officials from the Air Accidents Investigation Branch and the wreckage of the aircraft was removed from the site to the AAIB base at Farnborough.

July 21, 2004: Dr Bassem al-Mudares' mutilated body was found in the city of Samarra, Iraq*. He was a phD chemist and had been tortured before being killed.

July 29, 2004: 67-year-old John Mullen, a nuclear research scientist with McDonnell Douglas dies from a huge dose of poisonous arsenic. Police investigating will not say how Mullen was exposed to the arsenic or where it came from. At the time of his death he was doing contract work for Boeing.

August 12, 2004: Professor John Clark, head of the science lab which created Dolly the sheep, was found hanging in his holiday home. Prof Clark led the Roslin Institute in Midlothian, one of the world’s leading animal biotechnology research centres. He played a crucial role in creating the transgenic sheep that earned the institute worldwide fame. Prof Clark also founded three spin-out firms from Roslin - PPL Therapeutics, Rosgen and Roslin BioMed.

September 5, 2004: Mohammed Toki Hussein al-Talakani Iraqi nuclear scientist* was shot dead in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad. He was a practising nuclear physicist since 1984.

December 21, 2004: Taleb Ibrahim al-Daher Iraqi nuclear scientist was shot dead north of Baghdad by unknown gunmen. He was on his way to work at Diyala University when armed men opened fire on his car as it was crossing a bridge in Baqouba, 57 km northeast of Baghdad. The vehicle swerved off the bridge and fell into the Khrisan river. Al-Daher, who was a professor at the local university, was removed from the submerged car and rushed to Baqouba hospital where he was pronounced dead.

January 7, 2005: Korean Jeong H. Im, retired research assistant professor at the University of Missouri - Columbia and primarily a protein chemist, died of multiple stab wounds to the chest before firefighters found in his body in the trunk of a burning car on the third level of the Maryland Avenue Garage. MUPD with the assistance of the Columbia Police Department and Columbia Fire Department are conducting a death investigation of the incident. A person of interest described as a male 6’ – 6’2” wearing some type of mask possible a painters mask or drywall type mask was seen in the area of the Maryland Avenue Garage.

*More than 310 Iraqi scientists are thought to have perished at the hands of Israeli secret agents in Iraq since fall of Baghdad to US troops in April 2003.

http://www.global-elite.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=390

Last updated 30/01/2005

Muslims Green Clinic

2009-11-13T07:26:00.003-06:00

I have started a new blog called Muslims Green Clinic. The blog is dedicated to health and alternative medicine. A lot of the remedies and foods found on the site come straight from the Quran and hadiths! Enjoy

http://www.muslimsgreenclinic.blogspot.com

Pharmaceutical companies, what you did and didnt know...

2009-11-12T10:24:00.002-06:00

The main principles governing the pharmaceutical “business with disease.” It is not in the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry to prevent common diseases – the maintenance and expansion of diseases is a precondition for the financial growth of this industry.

1 The pharmaceutical industry is an investment industry driven by the profits of its shareholders. Improving human health is not the driving force of this industry.

2 The pharmaceutical investment industry was artificially created and strategically developed over an entire century by the same investment groups that control the global petrochemical and chemical industries.

3 The huge profits of the pharmaceutical industry are based on the patenting of new drugs. These patents essentially allow drug manufacturers to arbitrarily define the profits for their products.

4 The marketplace for the pharmaceutical industry is the human body – but only for as long as the body hosts diseases. Thus, maintaining and expanding diseases is a precondition for the growth of the pharmaceutical industry.

5 A key strategy to accomplish this goal is the development of drugs that merely mask symptoms while avoiding the curing or elimination of diseases.

This explains why most prescription drugs marketed today have no proven efficacy and merely target symptoms.

6 To further expand their pharmaceutical market, the drug companies are continuously looking for new applications (indications) for the use of drugs they already market. For example, Bayer’s pain pill Aspirin is now taken by 50 million healthy US citizens under the illusion it will prevent heart attacks.

7 Another key strategy to expand pharmaceutical markets is to cause new diseases with drugs. While merely masking symptoms short term, most of the prescription drugs taken by millions of patients today cause a multitude of new diseases as a result of their known long-term side effects. For example, all cholesterol-lowering drugs currently on the market are known to increase the risk of developing cancer – but only after the patient has been taking
the drug for several years.

8 The known deadly side effects of prescription drugs are the fourth leading cause of death in the industrialized world, surpassed only by the number of deaths from heart attacks, cancer and strokes (Journal of the American Medical Association,April 15, 1998). This fact is no surprise either, because drug patents are primarily issued for new synthetic molecules.

All synthetic molecules need to be detoxified and eliminated from the body, a system that frequently fails and results in an epidemic of severe and deadly side effects.

9 While the promotion and expansion of diseases increase the market of the pharmaceutical investment industry - prevention and root cause treatment of diseases decrease long-term profitability; therefore, they are avoided or even obstructed by this industry.

10 Worst of all, the eradication of diseases is by its very nature incompatible with and diametrically opposed to the interests of the pharmaceutical investment industry. The eradication of diseases now considered as potential drug markets will destroy billions of investment dollars and eventually will eliminate this entire industry.

11 Vitamins and other effective natural health therapies that optimize cellular metabolism threaten the pharmaceutical “business with disease” because they target the cellular cause of today’s most common diseases - and these natural substances cannot be patented.

12 Throughout the more than one hundred year existence of the pharmaceutical industry, vitamins and other essential nutrients, with defined functions as cofactors in cellular metabolism, have been the fiercest competition and the greatest threat to the long-term success of the pharmaceutical investment business.

13 Vitamins and other effective natural health therapies that effectively prevent diseases are incompatible with the very nature of the pharmaceutical “business with disease.”

14 To protect the strategic development of its investment business against the threat from effective, natural and non-patentable therapies, the pharmaceutical industry has – over an entire century - used the most unscrupulous methods, such as:

(1) Withholding life-saving health information from millions of people.

It is simply unacceptable that today so few know that the human body cannot produce vitamin C and lysine, two key molecules for connective tissue stability and disease prevention.

(2) Discrediting natural health therapies. The most common way is through global PR campaigns organized by the Pharma-Cartel that spread lies about the alleged side effects of natural substances – molecules that have been used by Nature for millennia.

(3) Banning by law the dissemination of information about natural health therapies. To that end, the pharmaceutical industry has placed its lobbyists in key political positions in key markets and leading drug export nations.

15 The pharmaceutical “business with disease” is the largest deception and fraud business in human history. The product “health” promised by drug companies is not delivered to millions of patients. Instead, the “products” most often delivered are the opposite: new diseases and frequently, death.

16) The survival of the pharmaceutical industry is dependent on the elimination by any means of effective natural health therapies. These natural and non-patentable therapies have become the treatment of choice for millions of people despite the combined economic, political and media opposition of the world’s largest investment industry.

The Awakening

2009-11-11T07:17:00.001-06:00

A time comes in your life when you finally get…when, in the midst of all your fears and insanity, you stop dead in your tracks and somewhere the voice inside your head cries out…ENOUGH1 Enough fighting and crying and blaming and struggling to hold on. Then, like a child quieting down after a tantrum, you blink back your tears and begin to look at the world through new eyes.

This is your awakening.

You realize it’s time to stop hoping and waiting for something to change, or for happiness, safety and security to magically appear over the next horizon.

You realize that in the real world there aren’t always fairy tale endings, and that any guarantee of “happily ever after” must begin with you…and in the process a sense of serenity is born of acceptance.

You awaken to the fact that you are not perfect and that not everyone will always love, appreciate or approve of who or what you are…and that’s OK. They are entitled to their own views and opinions.

You learn the importance of loving and championing yourself…and in the process a sense of new found confidence is born of self-approval.

Your stop complaining and blaming other people for the things they did to you – or didn’t do for you – and you learn that the only thing you can really count on is the unexpected.

You learn that people don’t always say what they mean or mean what they say and that not everyone will always be there for you and everything isn’t always about you.

So, you learn to stand on your own and to take care of yourself…and in the process a sense of safety and security is born of self-reliance.

You stop judging and pointing fingers and you begin to accept people as they are and to overlook their shortcomings and human frailties…and in the process a sense of peace and contentment is born of forgiveness.

You learn to open up to new worlds and different points of view. You begin reassessing and redefining who you are and what you really stand for.

You learn the difference between wanting and needing and you begin to discard the doctrines and values you’ve outgrown, or should never have bought into to begin with.

You learn that there is power and glory in creating and contributing and you stop maneuvering through life merely as a “consumer” looking for you next fix.

You learn that principles such as honesty and integrity are not the outdated ideals of a bygone era, but the mortar that holds together the foundation upon which you must build a life.

You learn that you don’t know everything, it’s not you job to save the world and that you can’t teach a pig to sing.

Then you learn about love. You learn to look at relationships as they really are and not as you would have them be. You learn that alone does not mean lonely.

You stop trying to control people, situations and outcomes. You learn to distinguish between guilt and responsibility and the importance of setting boundaries and learning to say NO.

You also stop working so hard at putting your feelings aside, smoothing things over and ignoring your needs.

You learn that your body really is your temple. You begin to care for it and treat it with respect. You begin to eat a balanced diet, drinking more water, and take more time to exercise.

You learn that being tired fuels doubt, fear, and uncertainty and so you take more time to rest. And, just food fuels the body, laughter fuels our soul. So you take more time to laugh and to play.

You learn that, for the most part, you get in life what you deserve, and that much of life truly is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You learn that anything worth achieving is worth working for and that wishing for something to happen is different than working toward making it happen.

More importantly, you learn that in order to achieve success you need direction, discipline and perseverance. You learn that no one can do it all alone, and that it’s OK to risk asking for help.

You learn the only thing you must truly fear is fear itself. You learn to step right into and through your fears because you know that whatever happens you can handle it and to give in to fear is to give away the right to live life on your own terms.

You learn to fight for your life and not to squander it living under a cloud of impending doom.

You learn that life isn’t always fair, you don’t always get what you think you deserve and that sometimes bad things happen to unsuspecting, good people…and you lean not to always take it personally.

You learn that nobody’s punishing you and everything isn’t always somebody’s fault. It’s just life happening. You learn to admit when you are wrong and to build bridges instead of walls.

You lean that negative feelings such as anger, envy and resentment must be understood and redirected or they will suffocate the life out of you and poison the universe that surrounds you.

You learn to be thankful and to take comfort in many of the simple things we take for granted, things that millions of people upon the earth can only dream about: a full refrigerator, clean running water, a soft warm bed, a long hot shower.

Then, you begin to take responsibility for yourself by yourself and you make yourself a promise to never betray yourself and to never, ever settle for less than you heart’s desire.

You make it a point to keep smiling, to keep trusting, and to stay open to every wonderful possibility.

You hang a wind chime outside your window so you can listen to the wind.

Finally, with courage in you heart, you take a stand, you take a deep breath, and you begin to design the life you want to live as best as you can.

The sad life of a circus animal...

2009-11-10T12:27:00.003-06:00

Behind the scenes, elephant trainer Tim Frisco instructs would-be trainers how to dominate elephants and make them perform circus tricks. “Sink that hook into ’em. When you hear that screaming, then you know you got their attention.” An elephant trumpets in agony as Frisco’s bullhook, with its sharp metal hook and spiked end, tears through her sensitive skin.

The fact is, animals do not naturally ride bicycles, stand on their heads, balance on balls, or jump through rings of fire. To force them to perform these confusing and physically uncomfortable tricks, trainers use whips, tight collars, muzzles, electric prods, bullhooks, and other painful tools of the trade.

Using animals in circuses is an unnecessary and inhumane practice that's harmful to both the animals and the public. Unlike the human performers who choose to work in circuses, exotic animals are forced to take part in the show. They are involuntary actors in a degrading, unnatural spectacle.

While many people associate the circus with "safe, wholesome, family fun" — an association promoted aggressively by the circus PR machine — the truth is much darker. Government inspection reports reveal ongoing mistreatment of animals in circuses, as well as failures to provide the basic minimal standards of care required by law. Animals used in circuses have been injured and killed, and have injured and killed humans.

Circuses that exploit animals make lofty claims about their "educational" value and their contributions to "conservation." But the real message that these circuses send to children is that it's acceptable to abuse animals for amusement and profit.

And the conservation claims made by many circuses are merely veiled attempts to justify the exploitation of animals for commercial gain. Endangered animals born in circus "conservation" programs have never been released into the wild — they are doomed, instead, to life in captivity.

Four Reasons You Should Not Attend Animal Circuses

1. The care and treatment of animals in circuses is shameful:

The tricks that animals are forced to perform, night after night, are frightening, unnatural, and even painful. Standard circus industry practice is to use bullhooks and other objects to poke, prod, strike, shock, and hit animals in order to "train" them — all for a few moments of human amusement.

Circus representatives often claim that only "positive reinforcement" is used in handling animals — and this may indeed be the style of interaction that audiences see in the ring and in carefully-controlled public tours. The industry also claims that it only trains animals to do the types of tricks they might naturally perform in their native habitat. But common sense dictates that elephants in the wild don't eagerly stand on their heads and that tigers don't naturally jump through hoops.

Animals in circuses spend about 11 months of the year traveling. For thousands of hours, over long distances, they may be chained while not performing, transported in vehicles that lack climate control, and forced to stand or lie in their own waste.

In the wild, elephants live in large, sociable herds and walk up to 25 miles every day. Most other wild animals found in circus settings, including lions and tigers, are also constantly on the move in their native habitats. In addition to the physical mistreatment that the animals face, depriving these creatures of the freedom to roam and to engage in other instinctual behaviors is inherently cruel.

2. Animals in circuses pose threats to public health and safety:

Animals in circuses are forced into lives far different from the ones nature intended. The conflict between their instincts and the harsh realities of captivity — as well as training methods that utilize violence, fear, and intimidation — cause wild animals tremendous amounts of stress. It is little wonder that some animals literally are driven mad and rebel in rampages that injure and kill people.

Animals in circuses have escaped from their enclosures and freely roamed outside the property from where they are performing. Escaped circus animals pose serious threats to public safety. In addition to causing major property damage, they can place local residents at risk from potential injury.

Elephants in the circus may carry tuberculosis (TB), and can infect humans with the bacterial disease. Public records show that many circuses have a history of tuberculosis in their elephants, and that many have used TB-positive elephants in public performances.

3. Federal and state laws do not adequately regulate circuses:

It might be reasonable to assume that legal safeguards are in place to protect animals in circuses. But while some regulatory protections do exist, these regulations are neither sufficiently specific nor adequately enforced. Circuses and traveling shows must comply with the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA) and any applicable state and/or local laws — all of which are minimal at best and do not provide adequate protections against abuse and mistreatment.

Every major circus that uses animals has been cited for violating the Animal Welfare Act. See our fact sheets about specific circuses.

Officials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (which enforces the AWA) have repeatedly ignored obvious physical trauma to animals, eyewitness accounts of mistreatment, and sworn testimony from former circus employees who report mistreatment of elephants.

4. Circuses do not conserve endangered species

Endangered animals born in circus "conservation" programs have never been released into the wild; most are slated to become "replacement" performers. Conservation is used as a cover: Captive breeding programs do nothing to address the real threats endangered animals face in the wild, such as poaching, trophy hunting, loss of habitat, and loss of prey, and the bred animals were never meant to be released into the wild.

In the wild, native species are at risk due to environmental threats brought about by human behavior, not because the animals have difficulty breeding. While circuses line their pockets with money from the ticket prices, wild animal populations continue to atrophy due to a lack of funding and support for enforcement of protection laws, educational programs, and habitat preservation in the animals' native lands.

Despite circuses' high-minded claims, they are entertainment, not education. Watching wild animals perform unnatural tricks does not teach our children respect or appreciation for animals, nor does it help animals in the wild. Circuses teach children that it's acceptable to exploit and mistreat animals for amusement. Further, no research has shown that attending circuses increases public concern about the population status of a species or what steps are being taken to ensure its survival in the wild

The story of the Eagle....

2009-11-09T05:54:00.005-06:00

Is Apperance Everything?

2009-11-05T06:43:00.004-06:00

Much public attention has been given to discrimination based on race, creed, color, national origin and age. But there is a form of discrimination that is still a taboo in the workplace. It is seldom ever addressed, yet it is perhaps the most obvious form of favoritism when it comes to job hiring, promotions and social acceptance -- both on the job and in society in general.

Consider the following:

Attractive people are 2-5 times more likely to be hired
Attractive people earn 12 to 16 percent more
Attractive people are 2 to 7 times more likely to date and make friends
Attractive people are significantly more likely to attain elected office.

Consider the following:

Unattractive people are 2 to 6 times more likely to be laid off

Unattractive people are 2 to 5 times more likely to be convicted of a crime

Unattractive people are 2 to 3 times more likely to commit a crime

Unattractive people are significantly more likely to be abused as children

Unattractive people are extremely likely to be passed over for promotions.

Things that come in Fours....

2009-11-05T06:27:00.005-06:00

The Holy Prophet (Peace be upon him & his progeny) Said:

Four things that make your body sick:
a) Excessive talking
b) Excessive sleeping
c) Excessive eating and
d) Excessive meeting other people
Four things that destroys the body:
a) Worrying
b) Sorrow (Sadness/Grief)
c) Hunger
d) Sleeping late in the night
Four things that dry the face & take away its happiness:
a) Lying
b) Being disrespectful / impudent (insisting on something wrong knowingly)
c) Arguing without adequate knowledge & Information.
d) Excessive immorality (doing something wrong without fear)
Four things that increases the wetness of face & its happiness:
a) Piety
b) Loyalty
c) Generosity (being kind)
d) To be helpful to others without he/she asking for that
Four things that stop the Rizq (Sustenance):
a) Sleeping in the morning (from Fajr to sunrise)
b) Not Performing Namaz or Ir-regular in Prayers
c) Laziness / Idleness
d) Treachery / Dishonesty
Four things that bring / increase the Rizq:
a) Staying up in the night for prayers
b) Excessive Repentance
c) Regular Charity
d) Zikr (Remembrance of Allah / God)

Chronological Map of Islam

2009-11-05T06:24:00.002-06:00

view Islamic History from the early days of Islam to the 21st Century. This includes all the major events that have shaped the Muslims and the world around them. See how Islamic Theology and world politics went side by side and how they, now have taken different paths.

http://www.classicalislam.com/pages/history/chronological.htm

I have rights!!!!

2009-11-04T06:51:00.006-06:00

I am often approached by non Muslims who assume i am oppressed because
1. I'm a Muslim woman
2. I wear Hijab and Abayah

Therefore they conclude that i must be Arabic (majority of non muslims assume that every woman in a hijab is arab), i dont speak english (i have had men and women approach me and speak slowly and with elaborate hand gestures even though i speak english fluently...i should since i am american and was born in america!) and im uneducated. They also assume that i am a slave to my husband and i live and breathe each day to serve him and cater to his every need, neglecting my own needs......

The first question i am usually asked is in reference to my Hijab and abayah. When i wear black I am usually approached by non muslims because they assume i am a nun. On a few occasions i have had both men and women approach me stating that their sister is also a nun and asking which convent i am with. When i state that i am not a nun they look puzzled and take in my hijab and abayah and that is when their expression changes. The realization that i am not a nun but instead a muslim dissapoints them and that is when the questions begin.

Had i been a nun, no one would question if i was oppressed. No one would question why i wear a hijab and abayah....Along with the topic of hijab comes the question of women s rights. There are a lot of cultural muslims who unfortunately ruin the beauty of Islam for the rest of us. Cultural men who deny their wives their rights and oppress them.

What i have done is compiled a list of a Muslim womans rights, rights she is intitiled to, reglardless if she is married to a man who tries to tell her otherwise.

In a truely Islamic society women have the following rights in Islam:

1. The right and duty to obtain education.

2. The right to have their own independent property.

3. The right to work to earn money if they need it or want it.

4. Equality of reward for equal deeds.

5. The right to express their opinion and be heard.

6. The right to provisions from the husband for all her needs and more.

7. The right to negotiate marriage terms of her choice.

8. The right to obtain divorce from her husband, even on the grounds that she simply can't stand him. (pls note that God deeply frowns upon divorce as a solution unless there is hardly any other alternative but it does not mean that men have more right to divorce their wives than women do.)

9. The right to keep all her own money (she is not responsible to maintain any relations).

10. The right to get sexual satisfaction from her husband.

11. custody of their children after divorce.

12. to refuse any marriage that does not please them

and more...

Nor are women expected to do the housework. If they have not been used to doing it, the husband is obliged to provide domestic help within his means, and to make sure that the food gets to his wife and children, already cooked. The Prophet* himself used to help with the domestic work, and mended his own shoes. How many times do we see cultural men ordering their wives to cook, clean and cater to their every need. They make fun of their food, complain that its not good enough and throw tantrums if the woman doesnt bring it to him right away. Women are not even obliged in all cases to suckle their own children. If a divorcing couple mutually agree, they can send the baby to a wet-nurse and the husband must pay for the suckling. If the mother decides to keep the baby and suckle it herself, he must pay her for her trouble!

This is laid down in the Qur'an itself, (2:233):

The mothers shall give suck to their offspring for two whole years, if the father desires to complete the term, but he shall bear the cost of their food and clothing on equitable terms...If they both decide on weaning, by mutual consent, and after due consultation, there is no blame on them. If ye decide on a foster-mother for your offspring, there is no blame on you, provided ye pay what ye offered on equitable terms ...

What basis does all this leave for the male attitude that women are only fit for maternal and household duties?

Husbands are expected to treat their wives kindly during marriage and even during and after divorce. Allah says in the Qur'an:

... Live with them on a footing of kindness and equity. If ye take a dislike to them, it may be that ye dislike a thing, and Allah brings about through it a great deal of good.

Qur'an 4:19

The Prophet* said:

The most perfect believers are the best in conduct and the best of you are those who are best to their wives.

Then there are the contemporary women of the Prophet's household, his wives and daughters. One of his wives, Umm Salamah, complained to him that the Qur'an was addressed only to men, and then a long passage was revealed to the Prophet* addressed clearly to men and women in every line, which states clearly the equal responsibilities and rewards for Muslim men and women.

For Muslim men and women - for believing men and women, for devout men and women, for true men and women, for men and women who are patient and constant, for men and women who humble themselves, for men and women who give in charity, for men and women who fast (and deny themselves), for men and women who guard their chastity, and for men and women who engage much in God's praise - for them has God prepared forgiveness and great reward.

(Qur'an 33:35) Aishah, his youngest wife, caused a scandal when she went out into the desert to look for a necklace she had lost there and got left behind by the caravan. She was rescued by a young man and came back with him and rumours spread that she had been dallying with him. This caused great pain to her and to the Prophet and it was a long time before they were relieved by another revelation (24:4), demanding that people making such accusations against chaste women must produce four eye witnesses to the act or suffer a flogging themselves and have their evidence rejected ever after.

Islamic law makes no demand that women should confine themselves to household duties. In fact the early Muslim women were found in all walks of life. The first wife of the Prophet, mother of all his surviving children, was a businesswoman who hired him as an employee, and proposed marriage to him through a third party; women traded in the marketplace, and the Khalifah Umar, not normally noted for his liberal attitude to women, appointed a woman, Shaff'a Bint Abdullah, to supervise the market. Other women, like Laila al-Ghifariah, took part in battles, carrying water and nursing the wounded, some, like Suffiah bint Abdul Muttalib even fought and killed the enemies to protect themselves and the Prophet* and like Umm Dhahhak bint Masoud were rewarded with booty in the same way as the men. Ibn Jarir and al-Tabari siad that women can be appointed to a judicial position to adjudicate in all matters, although Abu Hanifah excluded them from such weighty decisions as those involving the heavy hadd and qisas punishments, and other jurists said that women could not be judges at all. The Qur'an even speaks favourably of the Queen of Sheba and the way she consulted her advisors, who deferred to her good judgement on how to deal with the threat of invasion by the armies of Solomon. (Qur'an 27:32-35):

She (the Queen of Sheba) said, `O chiefs, advise me respecting my affair; I never decide an affair until you are in my presence.' They said, `We are possessors of strength and possessors of mighty prowess, and the command is thine, so consider what thou wilt command.' She said, `Surely the kings, when they enter a town, ruin it and make the noblest of its people to be low, and thus they do. And surely I am going to send them a present, and to see what (answer) the messengers bring back.'

So, to conclude, these are the ideals to which Muslim women can aspire and frequently have done in the past. In a truly Islamic society, they are guaranteed
- personal respect,
- respectable married status,
- legitimacy and maintenance for their children,
- the right to negotiate marriage terms of their choice,
- to refuse any marriage that does not please them,
- the right to obtain divorce from their husbands, even on the grounds that they can't stand them (Mawdudi),
- custody of their children after divorce,
- independent property of their own,
- the right and duty to obtain education,
- the right to work if they need or want it,
- equality of reward for equal deeds,
- the right to participate fully in public life and have their voices heard by those in power,
and much more besides.
What other religion, political theory, or philosophy has offered such a comprehensive package?

Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow...

2009-10-30T09:32:00.003-05:00

I, Me, You, What!?

2009-10-30T09:26:00.003-05:00

From the time you are born, you are taught to identify your ego as the “I”. You learn that “my name is ________” , and soon you proceed to “this is my toy car” and “I am upset”. You identify yourself with things and if you did not get what you wanted, you get angry. You experience suffering. You also identify yourself with your gender, race, religion and country. All these make up “me and my story”. From young, you are already conditioned in your thinking.

If you break the “me and my story” down, you will find that they are comprised of thoughts. Know what mind clutter is? It is very possible that you go through life, never having a break in the stream of your thoughts. One thought follows another. There is no space between them. You become completely identified with the unending stream of thoughts that go on inside your head. Your beliefs are the thoughts that you repeat over and over again in your mind and those which become charged with emotion. You will even go to war if anyone dares to challenge your beliefs

Thought after thought is really a collection of past memory. It is not about the here and now. The moment you think, you are already in the past. A mind that is constantly occupied is not free or open. It cannot be joyous because it does not know spontaneity. It only thinks that the self is joyful, which is therefore an illusion because it falls short in the experiencing. You can only be happy when you feel joyous in the now and not when you think you are joyous.

The stream of thoughts become the voice in your head. You find yourself having inner conversations with this voice. You become your thinking mind. You also associate intelligence with a mind that is analytical and critical. It is a dichotomy that having good grades or a high paying job, a benefit from having a thinking mind, do not necessarily make you happy.

Me, Me and Me

The ego is strengthened with a “me” or an “I” in almost every thought, every emotion. There is a “me” in my relationship with the rest of the world. Your ego wishes to be whole. It is not whole when it is incomplete or threatened. Its root driver is that “I am not enough” and therefore it seeks to find ways to fill the gap. It invests itself with a “me” from thought to thought.

The ego aims to make the self complete through possessions. It therefore has a great need to attach. It equates Having with Being. It is about “I have and therefore I am”. My possessions make me who I am. My possessions add color, variety and spice to the story about my being.

The ego thrives on comparison, on superiority. If everyone owns a big house including yourself, then your ego is no longer happy. It needs to have a bigger house, a nicer car, a fatter wallet, etc. How others perceive of you affects how you perceive yourself. Having the same amount of material wealth or being of equal status or social standing does not make your ego feel better. On the other hand when the perceived value of what you have rises in comparison to others, your sense of self worth goes up! You cannot be in a greater state of delusion!

When your ego is diminished, there is a need to defend or react. You get consumed by your anger or rage when you think “he or she did this to me” repeatedly in your head. Your life mission becomes one of making others wrong, simply because they do not share the same beliefs. It is always someone else’s fault! If there is no human you can point a finger at, there is always a non-physical entity â€“ such as God - to blame. With so much negativity, it is no wonder your life has been pretty miserable so far!

Dissolving the Ego

To attempt to let go of the ego is not quite possible. What you can do is to create awareness that it is your ego that attaches. In reality, your essence is not your ego. Your essence is of the same consciousness as everyone else’s. In form, you may look different from another human; but at source, you are One and the same.

Your true essence is therefore separate from your ego. You can recognize your ego. You know it through its attachments to physical possessions or thoughts. You are attached to a material thing, when you experience the fear of loss. When you become anxious, upset or frustrated, you are also attached to the “I am”.

Albert Einstein referred to the “I” as an “optical illusion of consciousness”. When you recognize illusion as illusion, it dissolves. Its survival is dependent on you perceiving it as a reality. As soon as your illusion dissolves, you are at the beginning phases of transformation.

It is important to clarify that there is also nothing truly wrong with feeling a sense of pride, in the strengthening of the ego. What you need to be aware of is not whether the ego is right or wrong. To say that it is “right” or “wrong” is once again applying judgment, a doing of the ego. More importantly, it is about recognizing that the ego is simply unconscious. Awakening arises when you realize that you have been going through life sleepwalking!

Yes, I am a Muslim!

2009-10-30T09:18:00.003-05:00

Time to Cleanse... Your liver that is!

2009-10-29T14:09:00.007-05:00

I´ve been meaning to detox, the past few times i succumbed to my desires and gave up... This time, im determined to stick with it! The best way to cleanse it is to fast. Why a liver cleanse you ask? For starters, an unhealthy liver causes chronic illnesses and disorders. The liver also protects our body from toxins. Therefore you can imagine what happens when our liver stops functioning properly and is sick. Your body becomes lethally toxic! For those of you, myself included looking to lose weight and finding it hard if not impossible to shed pounds, most likely your liver is not functioning properly.

Below you will find the directions on how to perform the fast and for how long. Thank God I love beets and apples. Guess i better stock up! As for the olive oil, eh, i cant imagine drinking 6oz of olive oil. That should be interesting...

Begin by Fasting

Step 1
For 3 days eat only the fresh organic apples and beets, as much or as little as you like. You may juice them (do not drink more than 8 oz. of fresh apple juice at a time to prevent stomach upset) or chop the beets into a salad adding apple cider vinegar for dressing. Drink plenty of distilled water. Do not eat anything else.
Step 2
On the third day, take 2 level tsp. of epsom salts dissolved in 8 oz. of water and the juice of one small lemon as soon as you awake and repeat every 8 hours for a total of three times.
Step 3
At bedtime on the third day drink 6 oz. of cold-pressed olive oil followed by 8 oz. of distilled water and the juice of one lemon.
Step 4
Go to bed immediately.
Step 5
Lay on your right side with knees drawn up. If you have to go to the bathroom, get right back in bed in the same position. You may feel bile rush through your liver into your bowel, and you may see many soft fatty "stones" in the toilet. The flush can be repeated in 2 weeks.

Squatting to poop...is it healthy?

2009-10-29T07:47:00.003-05:00

Your running late to a meeting and all of a sudden you feel a strong urge to go to the bathroom. You find a public bathroom and place toilet paper on the seat. There is no way you are going to sit without protection! Just the thought of all the germs that are sitting on the seat make you squirm.

You quickly finish, wash your hands and leave. At work, you run into an old colleague who happens to be from Pakistan. She invites you to her house later for dinner. When you arrive, the urge to go to the bathroom returns. You excuse yourself and head to the bathroom. Once inside you look around in confusion. Where is the toilet? Instead, there is a spot on the ground for your feet and a hole in the center. Your friend cant be serious? How in the world does she expect you to go to the bathroom? Does she really expect you to squat? This is so unhygienic!!!........squatting cant be good for you, can it?

For all you toilet lovers, i know what your thinking!!!! Squatting to go to the bathroom opposed to sitting on a nice toilet is appalling and uncivilized! Your living in the 21st century not the 10th century, right! The first time i tried the squatting method was in Morocco. It takes some time getting used to, but in the end i found i preferred it to sitting. Sure it can be annoying to take your pants off and have to hold it while you squat and hold yourself so you dont fall over....however its a lot more sanitary that toilets and healthier for your body.. I found an article that discusses why squatting is better for you than sitting........

Straining

squatting opens up the recto-anal angle, allowing the squatter to be a bit more lax when handling business. Sitting down to poop, on the other hand, constricts the passageways and requires more straining to push things through. The Israeli researcher Dr. Berko Sikirov, an especially adamant proponent of the squat method, identified the “underlying mechanism” behind constipation: “the obstructive nature of the recto-anal angle” in the sitting position. Constipation often leads to excessive straining (“at least three-fold more than in a squatting posture”), which has been fingered as a probable cause of colonic diverticulosis by Sikirov.

Hemorrhoids

Hemorrhoids are another fixture of Western society that don’t enjoy the same prevalence in “squatting” countries. Sikirov assumed the defecation posture might be the culprit, so he gathered a relatively small group of hemorrhoid sufferers – twenty of them, to be exact – and “treated” them with the squatting method. The results were noteworthy: more than half showed marked improvement within weeks or days, while the rest took a bit longer. Everyone improved. Unfortunately for us, the necessary follow up research (on account of the small sample size) has yet to be conducted. The American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons don’t seem interested in the possible therapeutic value of squatting. In fact, you might even say Sikirov is the butt of their jokes.

Other Claims

Colon cancer is relatively rare in third-world countries, and now that the fiber hypothesis is all but dead, some suggest chronic constipation (possibly from sitting to poop) is to blame. These claims seem a bit more dubious, judging from this study’s (PDF) conclusion: that aberrant crypt foci (ACF) is the most likely cause of colorectal cancer, and that a cause-and-effect relationship between constipation and cancer cannot be established. Squatting may help clear the road, but I doubt it’s the key to preventing colon cancer.

Proponents also claim that seated toilet-induced “fecal stagnation” causes appendicitis and Crohn’s disease, both of which are rare in traditional cultures and relatively common in westernized cultures. I lean toward diet being the general cause, but I admit defecation positions and their possible health ramifications aren’t my area of expertise, so I’ll relay the information all the same. The appendix, seen here right next to the ceceum, may be vulnerable to fecal blockage (which is actually one of the official possible causes of appendicitis when waste is eliminated from a sitting position. In a stunning display of disturbing imagery, the folks at Nature’s Platform liken it to squeezing a toothpaste tube in the center and seeing both the bottom and top inflate with paste: when sitting, the ceceum cannot be completely vacated and the contents spill out haphazardly, presumably into the adjacent appendix and small intestine, causing appendicitis and Crohn’s disease. When one squats, however, the ceceum is squeezed empty from its base by the right thigh.

disturbing facts about women and body image....

2009-10-28T15:43:00.008-05:00

As a woman i know how hard it is to live up to what the media considers ¨healthy¨ Healthy in T.V. land is 30 pounds underweight....When you walk into a department store to buy clothes, the clothing shown on the mannequins are for a woman who is a size zero... What woman who doesnt starve herself is naturally a size zero? Why dont department stores make mannequins who resemble a real womans body, which is more of a size 6-8....

I found some disturbing facts about women and body image that i thought i would share....Enjoy!

1. The average American woman is 5’4” tall and weighs 140 pounds. The average American model is 5’11” tall and weighs 117 pounds.

2. The average size of the “ideal” woman, as portrayed by models, has become progressively thinner over the years and has stabilized at around 20% below the average weight. This thin ideal is unachievable for most women. A 1995 study found that three minutes spent looking at models in a fashion magazine caused 70% of women to feel depressed, guilty, and ashamed

3. It is estimated that 40-50% of American women are trying to lose weight at any point in time.

4. One out of every four college aged women has an eating disorder.

5. Almost half of all women smokers smoke because they see it as the best way to control their weight. Of these women, 25% will die of a disease caused by smoking.

6. At age thirteen, 53% of American girls are “unhappy with their bodies.” This grows to 78% by the time girls reach seventeen.

7. In a sample of male and female high school students, girls had higher body dissatisfaction scores than boys on all measures. Girls reported magazines as their primary source of information regarding diet and health. Boys reported their parents as their primary source of information. These are the typical messages girls can expect to get from women’s magazines:

8. A majority of girls in a 1999 study (59 percent) reported dissatisfaction with their body shape, and 66 percent expressed a desire to lose weight. Only 29 percent of the girls were overweight.

9. At 5′9” tall and weighing 110 lbs, Barbie would have a BMI of 16.24 which is considered severely underweight. Because of her ridiculous proportions (39” bust, 18” waist, 33” thighs and a size 3 shoes!), if she was a real woman, she wouldn’t be able to walk upright – she would have to walk on all fours. Note that the target market for Barbie Doll sales are girls ages 3 to 12.

10. Nearly 11.7 million cosmetic surgical and nonsurgical procedures were performed in the United States in 2007. Women had nearly 10.6 million cosmetic procedures, 91% percent of the total.

´Worlds Most secluded houses

2009-10-28T10:59:00.003-05:00

Beautiful, however i cant imagine wanting to live that far away from civilization!

Real therat to Americans...

2009-10-16T08:17:00.000-05:00

http://stpeteforpeace.org/what.kills.americans.july07website2.jpg

Whats on TV

2009-10-16T08:07:00.002-05:00

Funny, but true....Check out whats on T.V.

http://www.madatoms.com/site/blog/whats-on-tv/

food vs reality

2009-10-16T07:55:00.004-05:00

Here is what you really get.....

This is what is advertised.....big difference, huh?

Mcondalds, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Panera Bread and company all spend millions of dollars on advertisements each year. When you walk into your local fast food joint you gaze at the board advertising the different meal options and make your selection based ont he picture. Once you receive the food, you take one look at it and another at the board and wonder if its even the same thing...

I found a great link that looks at food ads compared with reality. Take a look!!!

http://www.hungry-girl.com/externalink.php?frameurl=http://www.thewvsr.com/adsvsreality.htm

how the news works

2009-10-13T13:29:00.004-05:00

National Priorities project, cost of war

2009-10-13T06:30:00.000-05:00

http://www.stumbleupon.com/s/#2QYis9/costofwar.com//