Quotations from a Greek Bishop

Here are some quotations from a Greek Bishop.  Most of us think of heresy in  a way different than he defines it.  In his writings, he makes clear that herasy is diluding or polluting the medicine.  This only becomes clear when Orthodoxy is viewed as a thearputic science, a medicine that cures.  This is what he has to say: 

In the Holy tradition of the Orthodox Church at the centre of Orthodox spirituality is the heart and the nous. It is this centre which needs to be treated so that man’s complete psychosomatic constitution is cured. Moreover as the Lord said: “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God” (Matt. 5, 8). In order to see what the heart and nous are we must begin by examining the soul…

The adjective “orthodox” comes from the noun “orthodoxy” and shows the difference between the Orthodox Church and every other Christian denomination. The word “Orthodoxy” manifests the true knowledge about God and creation. This is the definition St. Athanasios of Sinai offers.

 

The term Orthodoxy consists of two words: “orthos” (true, right) and “doxa”. “Doxa” means, on the one hand, belief, faith, teaching and on the other, praise or doxology. These two meanings are closely connected. The true teaching about God incorporates the true praise of God; for if God is abstract, then prayer to this God is abstract as well. If God is personal then prayer assumes a personal character. God has revealed the true faith, the true teaching. Thus we say that the teaching about God and all matters associated with a person’s salvation are the Revelation of God and not man’s discovery…

 Now is a quote from a Greek scholar.  His website containts many valuable insights, as well as some historical conspiracy theories which may or may not be true.

In regard to the doctrine of original sin as contained in the Old Testament and illumnated by the unique revelation of Christ in the New Testament, there continues to reign in the denominations of the West–especially since the development of scholastic presuppositions–a great confusion, which in the last few centuries seems to have gained much ground in the theological problematics of the Orthodox East. In some circles this problem has been dressed in a halo of mystifying vagueness to such an extent that even some Orthodox theologians seem to expect one to accept the doctrine of original sin simply as a great and profound mystery of faith (e.g., Androutsos, Dogmatike, pp. 161-162). This has certainly become a paradoxical attitude, especially since these Christians who cannot point their fingers at this enemy of mankind are the same people who illogically claim that in Christ there is remission of this unknown original sin. This is a far cry from the certitude of St. Paul, who, of the devil himself, claimed that “we are not ignorant of his thoughts” (noemata).

If one is to vigorously and consistently maintain that Jesus Christ is the unique Savior Who has brought salvation to a world in need of salvation, one obviously must know what is the nature of the need which provoked this salvation.

 It would, indeed, seem foolish to have medical doctors trained to heal sickness if there were no such thing as sickness in the world. Likewise, a savior who claims to save people in need of no salvation is a savior only unto himself.

Undoubtedly, one of the most important causes of heresy is the failure to understand the exact nature of the human situation described by the Old and New Testaments, to which the historical events of the birth, teachings, death, resurrection and second coming of Christ are the only remedy. The failure to understand this automatically implies a perverted understanding of what it is that Christ did and continues to do for us, and what our subsequent relation is to Christ and neighbor within the realm of salvation. The importance of a correct definition of original sin and its consequences can never be exaggerated. Any attempt to minimize its importance or alter its significance automatically entails either a weakening or even a complete misunderstanding of the nature of the Church, sacraments and human destiny.

The temptation facing every inquiry into the thought of St. Paul and the other Apostolic writers is to approach their writings with definite, although many times unconscious, presuppositions contrary to the Biblical witness. If one approaches the Biblical testimony to the work of Christ and the life of the primitive community with predetermined metaphysical notions concerning the moral structure of what most would call the natural world, and, by consequence, with fixed ideas concerning human destiny and the needs of hte individual and humanity in general, he will undoubtedly take from the faith and life of the ancient Church only such aspects as fit his own frame of reference. Then, if he wishes to be consistent in representing his own interpretation of the Scriptures as authentic, he will necessarily proceed to exaplain away everything extraneous to his concepts as secondary and superficial, or simply as the product of some misunderstanding on the part of certain Apostles or a group of Fathers, or even the whole primitive Church in general.

A proper approach to the New Testament teaching of St. Paul concerning original sin cannot be one-sided. It is incorrect, for example, to emphasize, in Romans 5:12, the phrase, eph’ho pantes hemarton, by trying to make it fit any certain system of thought concerning moral law and guilt without first establishing the importance of St. Paul’s beliefs concerning the powers of Satan and the true situation not only of man, but of all creation. It is also wrong to deal with the problem of the transmission of original sin within the framework of dualistic anthropology while at the same time completely ignoring the Hebraic foundations of St. Paul’s anthropology. Likewise, and attempt to interpret the Biblical doctrine of the fall in terms of a hedonistic philosophy of happiness is already doomed to failure because of its refusal to recognize not only the abnormality but, more important, the consequences of death and corruption.

A correct approach to the Pauline doctrine of original sin must take into consideration St. Paul’s understanding of (1) the fallen state of creation, including the powers of Satan, death and corruption, (2) the justice of God and law, and (3) anthropology and the destiny of man and creation. These divisions are not meant to suggest that each topic is to be dealt with here in detail; rather, they shall be discussed only in the light of the main problem of original sin and its transmission according to St. Paul.

Operation Nappy

Police who go undercover in Gloucester restaurants say that Operation Nappy is a success – even though they avarage just one arrest per month.  Operation Nappy was conducted in Indian and Chinese restaurants in Gloucester England when British hate crimes units enjoyed expensive four course meals, replete with wine and our’douvres, while listening for supposedly racist comments from other diners.  It is unclear weather Operation Nappy continues since media attention has drawn so much criticism from free speech and advocacy groups.  It is speculated that Operation Nappy has now gone underground or goes by a different name. 

“The Operation has been soiled by public outcry,” one police official said.  “The motivations for the actions were overlooked during the media furor.  Operation Nappy was not supposed to have these leaks.” This comes on the heels of  journalists having been leaked the minutes of the last Bilderberg meeting where the prosecution of ideological subversion is agreed to be a priority for the worlds’ police forces.  The special British Hate Crimes Unit is a national unit and thus not answerable to the police administrations in any particular city.  For this reason, they are free to wander about the country with little oversight and can be employed on a whim, choosing whichever assignments appeal to their fancy, like these four course dinners at ethnic restaurants.

Paul Joseph Watson recently reported on prisonplanet.com/articles/november2006/141106pcmad.htm that the football manager Mike Newell is under investigation after having made “sexist” comments during a football match.  “We have a problem in this country with political correctness,” he said, “and bringing women into the game is absolutely beyond belief,” referring to a controversial decision made by a female referee.  Now he may lose his job.  Prisonplanet also reported that in Manchester England, a 14-year old girl was arrested for “racism” after refusing to work with Asian classmates on a science project, complaining that they didn’t speak English.  And the Oxford student Sam Brown was jailed after saying to a mounted policeman, “Excuse me, do you realize your horse is gay?”  news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/oxfordshire/4606022.stm

For those living in America, it is easy to dismiss this as a distinctively British eccentricity.  But as a new article by Kurt Nimmo on prisonplanet.comshows, thought control is just around the corner in the U.S. as well.  The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), an arm of the Pentagon, is planning “a stunningly ambitious research project designed to gather every conceivable bit of information about a person’s life, index all the information and make it searchable,” according to a press report in the last few days.  This is a new program, but an outgrowth of previous one’s that had names such as Total Information Awareness and Homeland Surveillance. Greg Palast has reported that the FBI is involved in similar programs of spying on Americans but has subcontracted the work out to ChoicePoint because of the illegal nature of the data-mining.  Mr. palast has, in the past, reported on the illegal vote-rigging activity of this company and is now reporting that ChoicePoint has actually hired ex-KGB operatives to assist in gathering personal information about ordinary Americans.  Does this soudn like George Orwell on steroids?  Let me repeat.  The FBI has hired ChoicePoint to gather personal information about Americans and ChoicePoint recruited ex-KGB agents for the job.   When a financial agency wanted to contact me a few years ago and all they had was an address from a trailer in Southern California, they hired ChoicePoint to find me.  And find me they did.  Right now every phone call, every email, every fax, every electronic message period is sucked up via satellite and routed to one of the many U.S. listening stations around the world, called Project Echelon, and then filtered through complicated algorithms and sorted for “risk potential.”  If Anne Frank could hide in a Netherlands attic for two years before being caught by the Nazis, who monitered people using paper ID’s and food tickets, imagine how long American citizens will be able to resist the soldiers of the New World Order intent on vaccinating and RFID chipping everyone.  The answer is: they won’t.  The fact that the Bush administration has already been waging a war on children, very similar to what is happening in England, arresting toddlers for lack of political correctness, should demontrate that the above cases, although hilarious, are not mere British quirks.  In another article this year on Alex Jones’ website (www.prisonplanet.com) titled The Bush Administrations’ War on Toddlers, Paul Joseph Watson detailed case after case where school age children are rounded up, disciplined or threatened with arrest.  These are five year old kids getting kicked out of school for kissing or touching their teachers and classmates’ breasts.  It’s unlikely that these five and six year olds even know what a breast is, much less have any carnal thoughts in mind.  It does reveal something about the vanity of the teachers that would be so touchy as to choose to report this activity.  Right here in Portland, The Oregonian featured a series of front-page exposes about two boys, 12 and 14 years old who were the special attention of a zealous district attorney.  They faced juvenile detention, permanent expulsion from school, and a lifetime of being required to register as a sex offender.  Their crime: playfully swatting girls bottoms during lunch hour.  The girls themselves later appeared in court and begged the charges to be dropped, which finally were after so much media attention.  The other victims of this DA weren’t so lucky.  America has the reputation, among Americans, as being a country obsessed with sex.  That may be true.  But not as popularly thought.  Our obsession is a puritanical and perverted one, with myriads of nonsensical laws which would make large percentages of other countries’ population sex offenders if they were ever applied. 

This preceeding information should not be discouraging.  What looks like a coming Orwellian nightmare is not a foregone conclusion.  Many things are not going as planned for those who would enslave us.  Just the fact that the internet is alive with real information, putting newspapers and telivision news out of business, is a sign that the counter-revolution is happening.  It took 40 years for a majority of the population to believe the JFK assasination was an inside job.  Now most of Europe and Canada, along with a third of the United States—according to recent polls, know 9/11 was an inside job.  Programs like Coast to Coastam cover these topics every night to an audience of millions in every major city in the U.S. and Canada.  And the internet so far has been a tool the elites have been unable to control  The Bilderbergs, in pushing for a North American alliance, may be overreaching themselves.  So there is hope, but it is a hope that must be harnessed by turning ourselves into activists.  Even for those who may previously not have considered themselves activists, events now require that they too step up to the plate.  The simple act of buying brown eggs from local producers instead of supermarket one’s, is a form of activism and makes a difference.  So shop consciously.  Women need to realize that they have the power.  Only they teach the young and can instill in them ideas of peace and sustainability. 

Quote for today

If the grace of God comes, everyone and everything changes; however, in order for it to come, we must humble ourselves first.

— Elder Porphyrios

I am currently facing a “humbling” experience.  I have a European friend who is Pentecostal.  He is very polite and tuned in to his emotional nature, certainly never rude.  But I am increasingly finding myself on the verge of saying things like, “I don’t care what the bible says,” or “I don’t want to hear about Jesus anymore,” just because of the constant chatter from him about spiritual things.  It actually sounds profane to me when I hear people like him constantly using the name of Jesus throughout the day.  The idea that someone without University training, knowing virtually nothing about church history, a peasant and a former soldier, would feel qualified to go around the towns and villages of his country pointing the people to a better way, a more spiritual path, while  dismissing as “demonic” the 2000 years of church tradition present in those towns and villages, seems to me completely ludicrously.  Is this the fruit of spiritual gifts?  Is this where speaking in tongues, so called, leads?  I am not in a position to judge, although I find the intensity of his devoutness quite draining and find myself feeling increasingly like a non-believer when I’m on the verge of saying things like, “I don’t want to hear about Jesus anymore” and “I don’t care what the bible says.”

Just Shocking!!

Memory, both individual and collective, turns out to be the greatest shock absorber of all.  These words were written by Neomi Klein.  The sad fact is that we don’t know our history of the last 60 years.  In Spain, where the memory of Franco is still very much alive, they voted out the government of Jose Maria Asnar because he reminded them of fascism.  Knowing history is the antidote to the economic shock therapy of the disaster capitalists. 

The brutal regimes that implemented the Chicago School ideas in the seventies understood that, for their idealized new nations to be born in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, whole categories of people and their cultures would need to be pulled up “from the root.”  In the countries that suffered the political cleansings, there have been collective efforts to come to terms with this violent history — truth commissions, excavations of unmarked graves and the beginnings of war crimes trials for the perpetrators.  But the Latin American juntas did not act alone; they were propped up before and after the coups by Washington, as has been amply documented.

On a side note, economic hitman John Perkins, tells the story in his new book about a boyfriend and girlfriend who just graduated from college and went to work for an NGO providing “aid” to Africa.  They were assinged the task of going into a village and teaching the inhabitants how to grow genitically modied corn.  They wrote him that they had never done anything that felt so patronizing in their life.  The village they were assigned to had an agricultural history going back thousands of years.  As it turned out, the farmers there knew more about planting seeds then even they did.  Now these two people are working against imperalism and for a sustainable and subsistive economy.

Some articles about British Christianity

Okay…it’s thirty-seven degrees outside right now.  That’s sad, because it is 12:45.   We joked in Portland this year that we had an “alleged summer”.  A friend of mine travelling to Moscow tommorow told me she had to buy clothes for Moscow but now was just buying clothes for Portland. 

   

The following articles are about British Christianity.  I read a small book a few years ago about St. Mungo which REALLY captured my imagination.  The author tied him into the Authorian legends and seemed to blur the line between miracles and magic during that era.  Unfortunately, all I found on the internet to post was pretty sparce compared with that book.

 

I don’t agree with everything in the following article.  I’m going to keep it up for a few days, though, to introduce the following two British Saints: St. Mungo and St. Colomba.  To suggest that we should strive against having English liturgies in the venacular because the anti-christ will someday speak in English is—to me—totally absurd.  Of course it rests on the assumption that there is to be such an historical figure, no small leap of logic since the fathers of the church saw the book of Revelation as alligorical and first century Christians saw “the beast” as the Roman Empire.  That’s just one disagreement I have with the following article.  His comments about Cypress are totally misinformed.  Having spent many hours recently with a native Cypriat, I can attest to the fact that the binary logic of Greeks against Turks is completely wrong and totally not the most important issue facing the people of that Island today.  The article is up, though, briefly and hopefully will mean something to someone because it does have some valuable insights, if a little short sighted in many places.  It is called Reversing Conquests.

This twenty-ninth issue of Orthodox England is much concerned with dates and questions of England and Europe, Orthodox and Non-Orthodox – not unlike the concerns of the secular world at the time of writing.

On the one hand this issue contains the second and concluding part of our Life of St Boniface, the English Apostle of the Germanies, ‘the Greatest Englishman’, martyred twelve hundred and fifty years ago, on 5 June 754. This was 150 years after the repose of both the Apostles of the English, St Gregory the Great and St Augustine of Canterbury (+ 604). It was St Boniface who brought northern Europe under the sway of the Apostolic Roman Orthodox See, out of the hands of the barbarian Franks.

Unfortunately, he was not to know that three hundred years after his martyrdom, nine hundred and fifty years ago, on 15 July 1054, the selfsame Franks, under their leader Humbert, were to separate the Roman Papacy from the Orthodox Church. That symbolic date was tragically to lead to the separation of the whole of Western Europe, and then the whole Western world, from the Orthodox Church. For their seizure of Roman Apostolic power was to become definitive – unto this day.

One of the very first results of 1054 was the slaughter on another historic date – that of 14 October 1066. This date marks the anniversary of ‘the Greatest Defeat’ ever suffered by England and the English – that at the Battle of Senlac, known as Hastings, a day when English – and Welsh and Scottish and Irish – flags should be flown at half-mast. For that defeat affected not only England, but all the Isles, whose early purity and spiritual unity we hear of in our section ‘From the Depths of the Isles’.

The defeat of 1066 was to affect not only England and all the Isles, but indeed much of the world. This is made clear in the extract we publish by an American historian who asks the question ‘What if?’ (the English had won at Hastings). As another recent historian has put it, ‘Britain made the modern world’. All would agree that the making of the modern world would certainly have been different, had Hastings been an English victory and not a defeat. In certain respects, that Britain made the modern world may be something to be proud of, but in other respects it is also something to be ashamed of: whatever languages Antichrist will speak, modern English will be the main one. All the more reason to cultivate a beautiful and different liturgical English for our services.

And in thinking of the invasion and defeat of England in 1066, from which this country has never recovered, one cannot help but think of another historic date, nearly 400 years after the Papal Schism – 29 May 1453. This was the date of the invasion and defeat of Europe which took place in 1453. This was when Muslim forces, having crossed from Asia, occupied the Christian Capital of Europe at New Rome, Constantinople, which they barbarously renamed Istanbul. The defeat and occupation of Europe at Constantinople was itself just another later result of 1054. A Europe faithful to the Orthodox Church, would never have allowed Muslims to occupy the City.

Indeed, 1453 would never have happened if the Muslims had not been aided and abetted in their occupation of Orthodox Europe by Roman Catholic Europe. That Europe had undermined Constantinople after its barbarous sacking of the City on 13 April 1204. As they tore to pieces the altar and icon-screen in the Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom and sat harlots on the Patriarch’s throne, little wonder that the Eastern Roman Christians came to prefer the mercy and kindness of Muslims to the barbarism of certain Roman Catholics (1). Although on Bright Tuesday, 13 April 2004, the eight hundredth anniversary of the sacking of 1204, the Greek Patriarch Bartholomew accepted the apology of Pope John-Paul II, it was 800 years too late to do anything other than say words.

For whatever the words (and not acts) for something 800 years old, modern ‘politically correct’ Western Europe will do nothing to remove the Muslim invaders from modern Constantinople and indeed did its level best to prevent it happening on two more recent occasions. Firstly, one hundred and fifty years ago, in 1854, through siding with Turkey in the Crimean War, when the Cardinal of Paris Mgr Sibour (later murdered by a priest in a sordid affair) wrote:

‘The war which France is starting with Russia is not a political war, but a holy war; it is not a war of state against state, of a people against a people, but purely a religious war … The true reason for this war is in the need to cast off the heresy of Photius, to crush it, to trample it underfoot; such is the open aim of this crusade, such was the aim of all the crusades, even though those who took part did not recognise it’ (2).

The second occasion was more recent when, through exporting the mass murderer Lenin by sealed train and so fomenting the Russian Revolution of 1917, the West guaranteed that Russia would not free Constantinople, as the Russian monarchy had planned in 1914. Indeed, the West guaranteed a bleak future for itself throughout the rest of the twentieth century. Yes, the last liturgy in the Church of the Holy Wisdom has not yet been completed.

And whatever crocodile tears are shed over 1204, the modern West will certainly do nothing to prevent the illegal occupation of Palestine and see its Orthodox population expelled all over the world. It will do nothing to prevent the thirty years of the illegal invasion and occupation of northern Cyprus by Muslims and their desecration of its churches and monasteries. It will do nothing to stop its own theft of countless Orthodox churches in Croatia, Bosnia, Slovakia and the Ukraine and the continuing propagation of the fraud of Uniatism. And the modern West will certainly stand by while Muslim terrorists and drug-runners occupy and pillage southern Serbia – 150 churches destroyed so far:

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! … Ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them. Truly ye bear witness that ye allow the deeds of your fathers; for they indeed killed them, and ye build their sepulchres … That the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation … Woe unto you, lawyers! For ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.

(Luke 11, 44-52).

604. 754. 1054. 1204. 1854. All anniversaries this year. Of course we cannot wind back the clock: we cannot physically reverse history. But on the other hand, we can reverse conquests spiritually, we can win the spiritual Hastings and the spiritual Constantinople, the spiritual England and the spiritual Europe, we can defilioquize, denormanize and dewesternize – but only by starting with ourselves and uncovering the True West that lies beneath.

As the Cardinal of Paris rightly said, none of the problems that we have listed above is racial or political. The Normans, for example, were racially akin to the English. And there are a fair number of Albanians and even some Turks, who are Orthodox. Just as you can find English and Germans, and people of Serbian and Greek blood, who are Muslims, like the Greek Cypriot singer, Cat Stevens, now Youssef Islam (3). No, all these problems are spiritual and religious problems, they are problems of spiritual impurity, of spiritual blindness. 1054 and 1066, 1204 and 1453 are all dates which mark invasions of Europe, not primarily military ones, but spiritual ones.

And the date 2004 is no different. The battle today, our battle, is the battle for spiritual vision, for spiritual purity, the cleansing of the hearts of Englishmen and Europeans, of Asians and Australasians, of Americans and Africans, that the doors of perception may be opened, that the eyes of souls may see, that we may be transfigured. As one nineteenth-century American wrote of a very different battle:

St. Mungo

St Mungo was one of the most important characters in the Church in Britain in the 6th and early 7th centuries. He was active in what is now central and southern Scotland, northern England and Wales, founding both Glasgow (he is its patron) and St Asaph’s. He supposedly knew St David of Wales, possibly St Columba and was even supposed to be related to King Arthur, apparently being his great-nephew.

Unfortunately, the surviving written material relating to him dates only from the 12th century, and it is difficult to determine what is fact and what is fiction. There are two Lives, one by a monk called Jocelin of Furness, and an another, possibly earlier, which is anonymous and incomplete; they were written at a time when Saints were expected to perform at least three miracles before breakfast to be entitled to be thus described. There are, however, numerous references to him in early mediaeval arthurian chronicles, as well as in the Welsh Troiads and the Welsh Annals. Moreover, many of the oldest churches in the north-west of England are dedicated to him, indicating his activity in the area.

We are told in the two Lives that he was the son of Tenew (later venerated as St Tenew), daughter of King Llew or Loth, after which Lothian was named. Mungo’s father is variously put either as Owain, son of Urien, the Prince of Rheged, or as Urien himself, who was Loth’s brother. (There is a problem accepting Owain, who later turns up in mediaeval Arthurian literature as a knight, as the father; Mungo, who died a very old man on 13th January 613, must have been born before 550. From the rough dates we can work out about the life of Owain (he died c.593), he was probably born about much the same time as Mungo. Given a choice of fathers, it seems much more logical to accept Urien of Rheged, whose principality covered present-day Cumbria and Dumfriesshire, as the father of Mungo.

According to Jocelin of Furness, Tenew had an affair (he says with her cousin, Owain). When her father found that she was pregnant, he was obliged to follow the law of the times, which was that sex outside marriage was a capital offence, and kill her. (Jocelin says that Loth was pagan. But all the Arthur stories point to Loth being Christian). He decided to throw her off Traprain Law, a large hill outside Edinburgh and which at the time was still used a fortified settlement. However, she survived the fall. That apparently was not enough for Loth or his subjects, who were in two minds as to whether she might be a witch. So she was then caste adrift in a coracle.

The vessel drifted to the coast of Fife, landing at Culross, where St Serf ran a religious establishment. There, on the beach, she gave birth to Mungo, or Kentigern as his proper name is. (Mungo is the nickname given by St Serf, but there is debate as to what it means. Some say “My Hound”, others “my dear heart”. Kentigern means “Chief Lord”.) Needless to say mother and child were discovered by St Serf and housed in his establishment; there Mungo was brought up and educated.

The story is almost certainly some sort of gloss on the fact that Mungo was illegitimate.

The next point in the story is Mungo’s election as a bishop. Jocelin tells us that he was Bishop of the whole of the Kingdom of the North Britons and that he established his See in Glasgow. In fact this did not happen at this point, and Jocelin (who was writing his story at the command of the then Bishop of Glasgow (also called Jocelin) is merely being partisan. Tradition relates that Mungo’s base at this early period was at Hoddom in Dumfriesshire, which was within the principality of Rheged, and where the foundations of a 6th-century stone church was recently discovered during gravel excavations (scandalously, the foundations were demolished). It would seem therefore that Mungo’s first episcopate was to the inhabitants of his father’s/grandfather’s territory. There is nothing unusual in this. It was normal throughout the western Christian world at this period (and for a long time to come) for senior clerics to be part of the ruling establishment. Few, apart from ruling families and those around them, were able to have their children educated (and education was a Church preserve). Many younger offspring and presumably illegitimate offspring inevitably entered its service. Equally inevitably, these were the people who were then chosen as bishops, abbots and abbesses. Columba, for example, was a royal prince. So too were many of the other Celtic saints – and Anglo-Saxon ones as well. What we are seeing in Mungo’s case is the illegitimate son’s reconciliation with his family.

At some point thereafter, Jocelin tells us that a new King, Morken, came to power and that a dispute subsequently arose between Mungo and Morken and that the bishop had to flee. It is known from other sources, however, that Morken, who was either a ruler in the region of Ayr or in the Newcastle area (probably the latter), murdered Urien and then incorporated Rheged into his own lands. Mungo’s flight was probably all too necessary. As a member of the ousted ruling family, his life would have been in danger.

He went south, first into the southern part of Rheged, into what is now Cumbria, where there are many churches dedicated to him, and then to what is now Wales. There, after meeting with St David, he was asked by a ruler in north Wales to act as bishop to his own people. The result was Mungo’s second episcopate. Like most bishops of the period, he set up a religious settlement away from the power centre, where clergy could be trained and others taught. This was at St Asaph’s, one of the Welsh sees. St Asaph was in fact Mungo’s assistant there (and his successor when he left).

Meanwhile, back in the north of Britain, Morken was overthrown by Redderech, who was either the ruler of Dumbarton or had had a claim to the throne of Dumbarton. In taking over Morken’s realm, he created a new and powerful kingdom, known subsequently as the Kingdom of Strathclyde, which stretched from the top of Loch Lomond to the borders of present-day Cheshire. Redderech asked Mungo to return. This he did, first going back to Hoddom, but then further north to the real seat of power, Dumbarton. This was his third episcopate.

However, although Dumbarton was the official capital, peace meant that royal residences could operate outside the confines of an armed camp. Redderech and his wife Queen Languoreth (who may well have been the model for the Gwenevere of the mediaeval Arthurian writers) had palaces at Govan and at Rutherglen, now both parts of Glasgow. As bishop, Mungo was given his own estate in which to establish a religious and educational community. This was done on the site of what is now Glasgow Cathedral. As such, this makes Mungo founder of Glasgow. When Mungo died, he was buried in his own community, making the site one of pilgrimage and importance. Around it arose a township, and by the 12th century it was a cathedral city. Through the centuries, it continued to grow, in importance, in wealth, in status and in population. But it all started because of a religious settlement, and both the city’s coat of arms and his motto relate directly to the founding father, whose remains are still buried in the crypt of the Cathedral. The motto is now “Let Glasgow flourish” but it used to be “Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the Word” an expression that is ascribed to Mungo himself.

The city’s coat of arms, which was the same as that of the old pre-reformation diocese (for the simple reason that the bishop was the civil power in the city until the 17th century), shows the saint at the top and, like the mediaeval seal at the head of this Web page, contains elements linked directly to Mungo. There is his bell. The bird and the salmon with a ring refer to two of his miracles. The bird, a robin, had been a pet of St Serf, but some fellow classmates, jealous of Mungo, killed it, hoping to pin the blame on him. Mungo restored it to life.

The salmon and the ring relat to Queen Longuoreth’s adultery with a young soldier and Mungo’s saving of the Queen. She had presented her lover with a ring which given to her by Redderech. However, a servant informed the king of the affair. Although Redderech did not want to believe the tale, the sight of ring on the young soldier’s hand convinced him. He then laid a plot to denounce his wife publicly. He invited the soldier to go hunting with him and then, when the young man fel asleep (Redderech presumably got him drunk), he slipped up the ring off his finger and threw it into the Clyde. He then went back and demanded that his wife show him the ring. She, of course, could not get it back from her lover because it was now lost. As a result she was then denounced and thrown into prison to await execution, despite the efforts of the courtiers to have her pardoned. (There is much in this story that relates to those of Gwenevere and Lancelot).

In prison, she sends a messenger to Mungo asking for forgiveness and aid. When the messenger arrives, he is immediately told by the bishop to go fishing in the Clyde and to bring back straightway the first fish he catches. This is a salmon, which, on being cut open, is seen to contain the ring. This is then taken to the queen who presents it to the King, who, understandably, cannot understand what has happened but nonetheless forgives her. Jocelin cannot desist in informing his readers that she then berates Redderech for doubting her in the first place, but that nonethelessshe forgives him. Jocelin also tells us that she made sure that there was no repetition of such behaviour on her part and that she never revealed the truth of what happened until after her husband’s death. One could therefore say that Mungo’s participated in a major deception, but it all came right in the end.

Despite what Jocelin says elsewhere, Mungo should not be seen as a missionary saint. He was brought up and lived his entire life in a predominantly Christian milieu. Lothian, Rheged, Wales, Strathclyde had been Christian long before he was born. At Govan, where Redderech and Languoreth lived, there has been a church since the 6th century, dedicated to St Constantine (not the Roman emperor) who had been a ruler in the area in the early 6th century. Dumbarton had had a Christian ruler, one Corotech, at the time of St Patrick, a good century earlier; (Patrick wrote to him, denouncing him for capturing and enslaving Irish Christians whom he had baptised, the inference being that this was not acceptable practice for a Christian.)

Exactly what gave Mungo his reputation will not be known this side of the grave. Suffice it to say that there was clearly something in the man – maybe it was great holiness – that made the memory of him endure through the centuries.

He died on 13th January, 613, and there is a final interesting point in Jocelin’s Life. Jocelin admits that he used earlier written sources but that he edited them because he found some of the stories incomprehensible. He tells us however, that on the Octave of the Feast of the Epiphany (13th January), Mungo entered a vessel filled with warm water and then, encircled by his brethren, “yielded up his spirit”. It has been suggested that Jocelin was unaware that he was distorting a more credible story involving an a mass Epiphany baptism. The suggestion is that at Epiphany Mungo conducted such a baptism, which at the time was still done by complete immersion. In early January it is still rather cold in Glasgow, and even today it is customary in the locality to warm up water for baptism. The thesis is that Mungo went into warmed up water to administer baptism but then caught a cold and died a week later. The date of his death is kept as his feast day.

You say you are Orthodox? And what did you say your baptismal namewas? I am a Northern Irish convert to Orthodoxy who regularly findshimself working and going to church in places which are much closer to thetraditional heartland of eastern Christianity. So I am often asked, by gingerlyGreeks or sceptical Serbs, about my path to Orthodoxy and in particularmy patronal saint. When I give the answer, the scepticism sometimesdeepens. And so – if the conversation is worth pursuing at all – I find myselfattempting to explain the Christian heritage of the place where I grew up,and my own relationship to that place. Sometimes people are interested;sometimes I can watch their eyes glaze over. But since my story is the storyof many western Orthodox Christians, I shall try telling it in print.When I had the joy of being received into the Orthodox Church just overseven years ago, I took the name of Columba, the saint of Ireland andenlightener of Scotland. The process whereby priest and catechumen settleon a name is always a mysterious one; but in my case the decision to acceptthe name and seek the protecting guidance of Columba seemed to accordwell with my own cultural origins; and also with the calling I had felt, howeverdimly, to another Kingdom, in which all national and cultural differencesare set aside.I was brought up in the north of Ireland, in a family of keen seafarers; thenorth and northwestern coasts of Ireland, and the Western Isles of Scotland,were the locus of my childhood. While my father and brother had a fascinationwith the business of boating itself – sails, winds, tides, charts, navigational aids and so on – I was always more interested in the places we sailedto, and the way they spoke there. From my earliest consciousness I wasintrigued with words, written or spoken, in almost any tongue; one of myclearest boyhood memories is of sailing to small Scottish islands and tryingout my few phrases of self-taught Gaelic on bemused shopkeepers and postmen.These islands, the stepping-stones between Scotland and Ireland, werethe country of Columba, who stands out among the saints as a navigator anda scribe: a gifted boat-handler and master of the written and spoken wordwho wrote poetry himself, was an accomplished calligrapher and masteredLatin as well as his native Gaelic. He made many voyages through thisstretch of water, but one journey in particular has always been regarded asthe great turning-point in his life: the one he made in or around 563 AD,when he left his native Ireland and set out with a dozen companions to establisha monastery on the tiny island of Iona. He lived for another 34 years onthe island; by the time he reposed in great holiness in 597 AD, the monasteryhad become one of the leading centres of Christian asceticism and learningin western Europe. Columba’s spiritual children continued to train kings,produce beautiful manuscripts and above all worship God for another twocenturies, before the community was wiped out by the Vikings.As an Orthodox catechumen, I remembered at least these elementaryfacts of Columba’s life because of a landmark event in my own family history:in 1963, when I was just four, my father skippered and led an AnglicanChurch project which recreated the saint’s voyage from Ireland to Scotland,in a small wood-framed sailing and rowing-boat. As far as possible, the vesselwas designed to resemble the craft which Columba would have used; itwas a kind of boat known as a curragh, lined with leather, canvas, and tar,which Irish fishermen were still using in the 20th century. At one level, the1963 voyage had been a boisterous and enjoyable historical pageant; but atanother level, I knew, it had been a deep spiritual experience for all the participants.Whenever I heard my father and other veterans of the voyagereminisce about the experience, I realized it had been a pilgrimage as wellas a sailing-trip. So for all those reasons, it was a great and awesome privilegefor me to receive the sacraments under the name of Columba and toseek Columba’s protection in my daily prayers. Then, as my gushing convert’s enthusiasm waned a little, I ran into a difficultyin my Orthodox life: or rather two, inter-related difficulties. One wasthat as I travelled round the traditionally Orthodox countries – Russia,Georgia, the Balkans – I ran into a wall of popular scepticism about thelegitimacy of western saints, even pre-schism ones, as Orthodox baptismalnames. “No, there must have been some mistake, you can’t have been baptisedproperly,” I was told more than once. In reply, I would rehearse thewell-known (and perfectly correct) arguments: Columba and the other greatsaints of the early Christian West are part of the common heritage of theundivided Church, and so they have a well-deserved place among the treasuresof Orthodoxy. But for good reason, people from the old Orthodoxworld are reluctant to be taught new tricks by upstart converts from strangecountries; so more than once I found myself put down rather sharply. Theother difficulty I encountered was with western Christians: “We know theRoman Catholics have an interest in the early Celtic Church,” they wouldsay, “and so do the Scottish Presbyterians and the Anglicans – but whatpossible connection can there be between Gaelic saints like Columba andthe eastern Orthodox?”So to satisfy both schools of questioners – the eastern and the western – Ifound myself asking, at times rather desperately: where, if anywhere, is theOrthodox Saint Columba? I clutched rather feverishly, and gratefully, at anystraws of reassurance I could find. It was a joy to find that Alpha i Omega,a Russian quarterly journal published in Moscow with the blessing of thePatriarch, had featured a very competent article on Saint Columba in 1997;and better still to discover a good little book on Columba and the Celtic saintswritten in Greek by Thanasis Papathanasiou. It was comforting to hear ofseveral Orthodox priests, and at least one nun, with the name of Columba.Even more important was the discovery of the various connecting threadsbetween Christianity on Europe’s western fringe and the early ChristianEast. For example, I came across the beautiful Gaelic hymn of praise to SaintColumba, written very shortly after his repose, which describes him as agreat follower of Saints Basil the Great and John Cassian. The latter saint, asI remembered, was a great teacher of the Egyptian and Palestinian monastictradition to the Christian West; it made perfect sense that Columba was, at least indirectly, his spiritual child. Then people pointed out to me the uncannyresemblances between the stone carving and illuminations of the Celticworld and the art of Christian Egypt or Armenia. I also heard of the tantalizingreferences to “a vine transplanted from Egypt” or to “seven monks fromEgypt” in the surviving fragments of liturgical language from early ChristianIreland. Then there was the fact that Columba’s saintly biographer Adomnanwas quite an authority on the sacred geography of the Christian East. Withthe help of a wandering priest who washed up on Iona’s shore, Adomnanpenned a remarkable account of Christian Jerusalem during the early yearsafter the Arab conquest. Adomnan was an excellent linguist whose Latin waspeppered with Greek-derived words. So for all these reasons, it seemedentirely legitimate, after all, for an Orthodox Christian to try walking, howeverinadequately, in Columba’s giant foot-steps.But is Orthodoxy simply one among many competitors for a slice of theColumba heritage? Reading the ecclesiastical history of the British Isles inthe 19th century, you can trace the almost comical way in which one Christian denomination after another tried to lay claim to the saintlyenlightener of Scotland. Roman Catholics tried to proclaim Columba as aloyal servant of the Pope, while the non-conformists stressed the differencesof practice between Rome and the early Celtic Church, making the saint intoan early anti-Papist hero. In the 20th century, a charismatic Presbyterianchurchman, George McLeod, founded a community on Columba’s islandwhich modelled itself on the saint’s gritty practicality: it was supposed tocombine religious practice with engagement with the problems of the worldat its most sordid and grimy. Since then, the Iona community has becomeinter-denominational and, from an Orthodox perspective, far more politicalthan spiritual. There is also an Anglican retreat house on the island and asof quite recently, a RomanCatholic one. So are theOrthodox, who have beenorganizing pilgrimages to Ionasince 1997, simply johnniescome-lately who want to planttheir own flag on Columba’sIona, along with all the others?And where do the Orthodoxstand in the contest betweenmany different constituencies(by no means all religious) toclaim a piece of Columba’sheritage? Ecologists call him an early green, Scottish nationalists call him aproto-patriot, feminists see him and the Celtic Church as pioneers of genderequality. So does it make sense, then, for an Orthodox Christian to ask:which is “our bit” of Saint Columba?In the end, it is only the saint himself who can answer that question.Reading the Life of Columba, a vivid and often intensely moving narrativepenned about a hundred years after his repose, many things are strange, andmany are uncannily familiar to an Orthodox Christian. The world in whichhe lived could hardly be more different from our own. The Celtic lands hadnever been part of the Roman empire; there were no roads, no towns, nomoney, no stone buildings or monuments. There was perpetual warfarebetween petty tribal leaders, and life had a high probability of ending violently.Every sea voyage had a good chance of ending in shipwreck. A chance encounter with another human being was an occasion of deadly danger,rather than mild curiosity.So the external circumstances in which Columba lived are so far removedfrom our own – even if we live in one of the planet’s wilder corners – thatwe can hardly imagine them. But reread his life, and there are momentswhich are so close to the ongoing Orthodox tradition of asceticism that theymight have been written yesterday – or any other time in the last 2,000years. Above all, Columba was gifted with a mixture of compassion and discernmentwhich cut across the barriers of time, space, life and death – invery much the same way as the contemporary elders of the Greek church,such as Fathers Porphyrios and Iakovos. From his cell on Iona, Columbawas aware of the fellow monastics who were in peril on the sea hundreds ofmiles away; of a pregnant woman in Ireland who was undergoing the painsof labour; and of the spiritual war being waged over the souls of the newlydeparted. This was no clairvoyant trick, it was a gift which flowed naturallyfrom his own spiritual struggles to free himself from the sins of pride and

self-centredness and hence to share the travails of others, both far and near.

 

Modern applications of just-war theory generally fail to recognize the “hidden” cultural forces which, because they are amplified by mass media, easily distort public perception of political reality.  Applying ‘Augustinian’ (or other) just-war criteria to any modern political situation without taking such distortion into account amounts to reading Augustine in a hall of mirrors, where much of the symmetry between pirates and super-powers is skewed beyond recognition.  Failure to apply a hermeneutic of this order to just-war theory risks allowing it to be subverted by right-wing apologists in order to justify what are essentially crusades.

  

This quotation is from Robert Dodero’s “Pirates or Superpowers: Reading Augustine in a Hall or Mirrors”

Goodbye dollar

The internal minutes of Bilderberg meetings and their subgroups like the Trilateral commission clearly state the desire to collapse the American dollar so Americans will beg for a new currency.  Then comes the Amero, a north American currency encompassing Mexico, The United States and Canada.  Vincenti Fox of Mexico already devalues the peso and has been actively speaking out in Europe in favor of the North American Union.  Fox has for years advocated giving Mexicans living in the United States voting rights in Mexico even after they have become United States Citizens.  When I talk to people about the dollar crises, which is happening very fast under our noses, almost no one thinks the current administration bears any culpability and that this is just market forces.  Most people don’t even know a dollar crises is happening.  In my last post, I talked about the problems Argentina faced when their currency plummeted.  One difference though: they had a tradition of growing their own food and were relatively a self-sufficient economy.  We have so regulated food on the micro level, while deregulating food on the macrolevel, that any hope of turning to local producers is nill.  Much of our food comes from China along with led and other poisons.  We are simply not prepared culturally or socially to handle what Argentina went through and our leaders would undoubtedly use such a crisis as an opportunity to bring more totalitarian control to American society.  The North American Union is happening as generals from all three countries, business leaders, diplomats and our heads of state continue meeting behind closed doors.  The journalists who have managed to subpoena the documents from those meetings are astonished at what they find, nothing short of a full plan to integrate the three countries into a freetrade zone with open borders, a common currency and a common military.  It has rightly been called a Nafta on Steroids.  The administration is culpable for the dollar crash and its effect on the middle class because they set the economic policy.  They allow The Federal Reserve to continue exercising undemocratic control.  The Fed prints fiat money that isn’t based on anything.  Two months before John F. Kennedy was assassinated, he threatened to abolish the Federal Reserve and started printing parallel currency.  All our income tax goes to the Federal Reserve, not essential services.  The Federal Reserve is an offshore corporation, a private banking cartel that is accountable to no one.  Former President Wildral Wilson after allowing the Federal Reserve to be created said, “I have unwittingly ruined my country.” 

Quote for today

What is grace? It is the blessed power of God. . the power that cleanses, sanctifies, enlightens, that helps in doing good and withdraws from evil, that comforts and gives courage in misfortunes, sorrows, and sickness; that is a pledge of receiving the everlasting blessings, prepared by God in heaven for His chosen ones.

— Saint John of Kronstadt

Neomi Klein

Neomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine, spoke to a crowd upwards of 800 people in the center of Portland Friday night at the First Unitarian Church.  She had just returned from Spain.  She asked people there why, in response to their own terrorist bombings, they had voted out Jose Maria Asnar in favor of a socialist candidate.  They said, “Because he reminded us of Franco.” The memory of fascism was still very much alive.  Neomi Klein said that knowing history is our antidote to this poison of the savage capitalism.  I had to leave the gathering, just like I had to skip over those portions in her book when she started showing video footage of the CIA torturing opponents of capitalism.  The video ran the gamut of 60 years.  In fact, the CIA has developed such excruciating torture techniques, which combine pain with psychological torture, that it puts crucifixion to shame.  The amount of torture done by the CIA has been increasing steadily over the last 60 years. She makes the point admirably in her book’s introduction that people don’t see these crimes as crimes of capitalism, with the ideology baring culpability, in the same way people do the crimes which were the distortions of communist theory.  Why not? she asks.  The prisoners in Guantanamo bay, she reports, have cracked from the torture.  These men now stand on their beds loudly shouting baby songs, they wrap sheets around themselves and roll around on the ground sucking their thumbs and they are now incontinent and unable to string two sentences together.

  

We don’t know our history of the last 60 years.  For those of us who have been living in collective denial, The Shock Doctrineserves as a wakeup call.  It is rare for a book on this subject to possess her stylistic qualities of understatement.  For example, there is an elegance to her writing that Chomsky doesn’t possess.

  

What we are seeing, all over the world—at the point of a gun, is the elimination of the public sphere.  In the name of free-markets and free-trade, small farmers are going out of business.  Under pressure from American business, certain social services that were previously immune to privatization are now being taken away from the public sphere and being put into company hands: fire departments, tap-water resources, the military, city police forces, education, health-care…all these, and more, are being privatized here and abroad.  The agenda of these savage capitalists is to break the state, to eliminate the state and the public sphere.  The collection of quotes Neomi Klein has amassed in her book from the horses mouth, should leave no doubt about the nefariousness of the project.  Some of the right-wingers she quotes are saying things like, “Drowning government in the bathtub; setting off nuclear bombs in the economies; purpusly causing inflation; cutting one hundred social services per day; making the economy scream in the name of tough love,” etc, etc.  Neomi Klein advocates charging tarrufs on imports to encourage subsistive and sustainable economies away from the neoliberal and free-trade model which has caused poverty on a massive scale in the third world and is now being called Global Apartheid.  In short, the gap between the haves and the have-nots has expanded to epidemic levels in the last 30 years.  She has actually been criticized by the left for being too Kensenyan and not wanting to abolish capitalism altogether.  They say she is only taking on a certain strain of capitalism.  I don’t agree with these criticisms.  During her speech she said, “All of these (referring to recent Latin American government movements like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Evo Moralis in Bolivia) are variations ofn Social Democracies.  In the book, I tried to show an alternative between authoritarian communism on one hand and complete leazre-faire free market on the other.”  I believe it is this balance, the understatement and the practicality of her solutions (something lacking in Chomsky…and others)  that is making The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism have such an impact.

 

Another memorable thing in her speech was her description of the way the policies of the IMF and the Worldbank have failed.  She said they have been tried in every country in the world except North Korea, Cuba and the middle-east and so the army is now sent into the middle-east.  And where they have been tried, they have failed.  She lived in Argentina for a year around the time their crash happened.  “They followed the policies of neoliberalism to the letter and their economy literally imploded,” she said. 

 

In Argentina they followed the prescriptions of the IMF and Worldbank, massive privatizations, cuts to social services, torturing communists, it caused their economy to literally implode, she said.  Inflation was so high that Argentine restaurants used paper money for wallpaper because it was cheaper than real wallpaper.  In a few years Argentina went from being the most prosperous of the south American countries, with a vibrant middle-class, to one of the poorest.  Before the era of the military dictatorships, the Argentine Peron government put tarrifs in imports.  This was called communism and they were overthrown and then the economic shock treatment started, as well as less metaphorical forms of shock treatment met the writhing bodies of opponents to the extreme right.

 

John Perkins in his book the Confessions of An Economic Hit-Man explains how developing countries are coerced into accepting large lones which the lenders know in advance the countries will not be able to repay.  It is called “trade” but the money usually never leaves the United States.  The lones which Panama and Ecuador paid for never go to Panama or Ecuador.  They are called “exports and imports” but it is really just transferring money from one American bank to another.  He talks about how third-world countries are flooded with cheep subsidies, even causing agrobusiness to take losses, to force them away from growing crops for them and growing cheep GM crops for the global market.  I’m reminded of the words an Indian women told an Indian activist living in the United States. “Tell the people in the United States that every time they drink a coca-cola, they are drinking the blood of my people.”  We don’t know the history that is going on right under our noses.  That is why it is allowed to happen.  If American people knew what was happening, they would stop it…just like that, I’m convinced.

 

“The brutal regimes that implemented Chicago School ideas in the seventies,” Klein writes, “understood that for their idealized new nations to be born in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, whole categories of people and their cultures would need to be pulled up “from the root” (this phrase is from the internal documents of the disaster capitalists) In the countries that suffered the political cleansings, there have been collective efforts to come to terms with this violent history — truth commissions, excavations of unmarked graves and the beginnings of war crimes trials for the perpetrators.  But the Latin American juntas did not act alone; they were propped up before and after the coups by Washington, as has been amply documented.”

  

Whatever faith I may have had in the ability of capitalism and markets “to work”, after reading The Shock Doctrine, it is completely down the tube.  This book has not been advertised very much.  Yet it is now on the New York Times bestseller list.  Neomi Klein’s appearance in Portland was not promoted, yet one of the administraters of the event told me he stopped counting after 800 people.  There is a reason why The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism is doing so well.  There is a hunger to know the history of the last 60 years.  Knowing our history is the antidote to this horror because, with a historical memory, when these things come up we can recognize it and see it for what it is.  People in Spain voted out Jose Maria Asnar because he reminded them of Franco.  We have had periods of American history before which have been just as dark, just as fearful, but we don’t have a context for them and so these events repeat.  If people knew their history and remembered, they would recognize the signs immediately: the disapperances, the arbitrary search and seizure, the attack on the public sphere.  Argentines draw swastikas on the side of buildings and right over it Nunca mas…never again.  In Spain they remember Franco and watch for the signs of fascism.   If we use this dark period of American history to gain a collective memory then the next time the signs of fascism appear we can also say Nunca mas so there is never another Reagan, another Bush or another Nixon.

 

Whatever faith one may have had in capitalism and markets in the past will surely be down the tube after reading The Shock Doctrine.    “Memory, both individual and collective, turns out to be the greatest shock absorber of all,” she writes.

I am very sad with what has happened to my country.  Last week I met with a Spanish tutor from Ecuador.  There are two largest cities in Equador: Guayaquil and Quito.  Her family is from Guayaquil.  To drive to Quito from Guayaquil takes eight hours through steep and winging mountain roads.  There is nothing equivlent to the interstate highway system.  There is poverty in Equador.  Yet she told me that 3 or 4 times a year her family drives or takes the eight hour bus trip from Gauyaquil to Quito just to have fun, shop and eat in the cafes and bars.  Can you imagine an American family taking a vacation 3 or 4 times a year?  There is such a sense of family and an emotional solidarity that comes with that.  Do Americans just not know how to relate to each other.  I was talking with an activist yesterday and she was telling me the differenct way Spain dealt with their terrorist attacks than we did here.  She had lived in Spain and had some insight into the culture.  This is what she said, “When they are not working, they are with friends and family talking.  If you aren’t at work, you are with friends and family talking, talking, talking.”  Much of this takes place in bars, or cafeterias as they are called.  It is not uncommon for families after they have had dinner to go to loud smokey bars.  Many Americans would cry “abuse” if they heard about fathers dragging their wives and infants out to loud smokey bars after 11pm, but in Spain that is the norm.  Many other things are different in Latin American countries as well.  Last year my Spanish teacher told me that when she was five years old, her mother started giving her large canasters of coffee and milk when she would go out and play with her cousins.  “You will say bad mother,” she said, “No, it is cultural.”  People from those cultures may see American poor families treating their kids to sodas and candy bars and think it is abuse.  It is not surprising that most people in the global south want to have socialism and have the state control most of the resources and large companies.  We are so politically immature here.  Neomi Klein, in her new book The Shock Doctrine, gives an alternative between authoritarian communism on one side and complete free-market capitalism on the other.  She shows that it is possible to have a public sphere that is safe from the free-market.  She shows that countries do better for all people when tarruffs are charged in all imports.  I went and saw her speak Friday night and there were AT LEAST 800 people there.  I got up an asked a question about 9/11 because her book is about 9/11 and other crises that bring in “disaster capitalism.”  I was really nervoues and couldn’t say just exactly what I wanted to say, though people afterwards said I’d done a good job.  One of the reasons I was so nervoues was right before I asked my question Barry had disrupted the meeting and started yelling, “Look at the evidence,” and holding up a sign that said, “9/11 truth now.”  This Barry, for a few readers, is not the legendary left-wing hoboe who comes around my church.   The whole lead up to the question and answer period saw very subtle refernces to “conspiracy” and “the lively question and answer period that is going to come up.”  After Michael asked challenged her about 9/11, she said, “But there’s not proof.  I only report on things I can prove and there’s not proof and if there is, I haven’t seen it.”  That’s when Barry stood up and said loudly, “There is Neomi, there is!  Look at the evidence!”  She said, “Okay, you’re being rude.  I’m not being rude, but you’re being rude.”  Afterwards Barry and some others told me they missed me at the group and wanted me to come back.  “We need you,” they said.  After my conflict with some of the senior members of the group, I had made myself scarce.  Now I realize how much I missed those friends I had made, some of which are deep thinkers and students of the bible as well.

There are some in the Portland who think these heavy-handed tactics are very bad and discredit us.  I’m not one of those.  It’s not my style, but it sure gets our point across.  There is nothing more important right now than the crime of 9/11 and its cover up.  Any attempt to get the truth out into the public should be commended.

I may be going to Ecuador in the new year.  I have had a series of few job interviews recently and am debating weather I want to just work full-time in the new year and save up money to go.  I don’t feel right about going to Mexico to study.  Ecuador is the cheepest Latin American country right now and cheeper than PSU.  One of the problems I face, however, with work is the pain that I have in my feet which even a walk to the bus stop aggrivates.  They are much better since starting super-feet insoles but the insoles need now to be replaced and they are expensive.  I am worried that so much time on my feet as these jobs require (both interviews were for clothing stores) would cause the pain to be unbearable.  I don’t feel safe in this country and would wish to immigrate, yet there are problems.  Although it is very easy for Americans to get into universities in Ecuador and I already have a one-year visa promised me, there is no Orthodox church there and this would create extreme conflicts of interests.  On the other hand, I don’t want to have to choose between going to jail or vaccinating my children.  Or paying for private school because my future children aren’t allowed to go to public school without being vaccinated with mercury and strains of sexually transmitted deseases.  I no longer feel safe in this country and would like to go away for just a few years to watch how things turn out.  When I am talking about politics on the phone, it invariably cuts off.  This never happens to me except when I am talking about politics on the phone.  Something is happening and may happen that is very bad.  Why is the military buying tens of thousands of tents and trailers?  Could these be used to potentially vaccinate people?  Vaccinations cause sterility, which fits in well with the Bilderberg agenda of eugenics and mass birth control.  Having healthy children is the best way to give the finger to these Bilderberger tyrants. 

NO HEAT IN WINTER!!

Yesterday it was snowing in Portland.  A friend of mine getting ready to fly to Moscow was going shopping for clothes and jokingly told me that now she was going shopping for Portland clothing rather than Moscow clothing.  Today I am making a complaint to the owners of the apartment building.  The manager does not run the heat.  Why, when it is snowing outside.  I am having difficulty sleeping because I am shivering all night.  Other people in the apartment building are incredulous and we talk among ourselves of this scandal.  For two months we have had to deal with this.  The heat is included in the price of our rent.  It is ridiculous!!  He does run it, though, by waking us up at 4:00 in the morning by hot water causing the pipes to explode.  It should not be up to him to decide when it is cold enough to run the heat or not because every apartment unit has the option to turn it on or turn it off.  But right now we don’t have the option to turn it on.  Yesterday was probably the coldest day of the year and it didn’t come on until after midnight.  That is why other tenants and myself talk excitedly among us.  Our apartment manager isn’t one to inspire warmth, however, and wouldn’t understand. 

What is more, he has tried to pressure me into signing a year lease and threatened, if I don’t, to raise my rent.  Is this legal?  I dont’ have my original contract and may request a copy of it from him but I am sure once we move in they are not allowed to just arbitrarily raise the rent or else nobody would move into those apartments. 

STAY AWAY FROM ANTI-DEPRESENTS

I am not a doctor.  I am a health journalist.  I report what doctors are saying.  Most of the time medical science deals in half truths and when people have problems they are somewhat effective in treating them.  Certain things stand out, though as obvious frauds, like mercury in the vaccines and flushots and flouride in our water.  SSRI drugs is one of these obvious frauds.  SSRI drugs, of which prosak and most anti-depresents and anti-anxiety medications are a class, are bad, bad bad and cause depression.  Certain psychological medications like vallume, amphetamines and pain-killers are “okay”.  The person who created these seretonin based drugs later said, “I’ve created monsters.”  My research has slowly led me to the conclusion that these drugs should be considered a continuation of the CIA mind control experiments of the 50’s and 60’s.  They have some of the same ingredients as LSD and PSP, created in CIA labs, and dislocate the soul.  100 percent of the school shootings, Columbine, the recent shopping mall masacre last week, 100 percent of the university shooting sprees.  100 percent of the time these people are on SSRI drugs like prosak and paxal and zoloft.  No exceptions.  Everytime a mother drowns her kids in a bathtup or a father guns down his whole family, 100 percent of the time they are on SSRI seritonin drugs.  The evidence is out that these drugs cause depression.  In Utah, where Morminism prevents people from drinking alcohal and coffee, they eat a lot of sugar and it is the highest state for depression.  Alcohal and coffee are actually good because they prevent sugar cravings.  Women in south america take their babies to loud smoky bars after midnight.  We need to get over our puritanical sensibilities, excersise and stop eating sugar and this will prevent depression.

One of the worst things anyone can do is to go off SSRI drugs cold turkey.  One needs to go off these drugs with the supervision of a doctor.  It took me years to understand certain experiences I had in southern California.  It didn’t help that the doctors at the time wanted to pressure me into a diagnosis and even threatened me with violence.  I now believe it can be explained through my abrupt stopping of SSRI drugs.  No matter how bad people feel, these drugs should never be taken and the old-fashioned vallum and pain killers, even though they are addictive, are better.

The Fluoride Deception   Order a copy of The Fluoride Deception The Fluoride Deception by Christopher Bryson with a foreword by Dr. Theo Colborn Seven Stories Press, May 2004 NEW, April 2006: A paperback edition of the book has been released! The new edition features an introduction discussig the recent developments on fluoride and bone cancer. To order a copy, click here See: Video Interview with author Reviews of The Fluoride Deception: “Bryson marshals an impressive amount of research to demonstrate fluoride’s harmfulness, the ties between leading fluoride researchers and the corporations who funded and benefi ted from their research, and what he says is the duplicity with which fluoridation was sold to the people. The result is a compelling challenge to the reigning dental orthodoxy, which should provoke renewed scientific scrutiny and public debate.” – PUBLISHERS WEEKLY “The arguments have raged for more than forty years, and in The Fluoride Deception, Christopher Bryson raises the stakes by reporting a great deal of relevant and often alarming research, and by telling a series of human stories… [A] thought-provoking and worthwhile book.” – NATURE, “A Chemical Conspiracy?” March 17, 2005

say ‘no’ to vaccinations and mercury flu shots

Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, DO
September 14, 2005
NewsWithViews.com

By way of introduction, I like to tell people I’m a physician by training and a compulsive researcher by inclination. To be specific, I’ve invested more than seven-thousand hours investigating the under-reported health hazards associated with vaccinations, along with the attendant ethical and legal issues.

What started as a fairly modest research exercise has turned into a second full-time career. I’ve discussed vaccination hazards on more than 50 radio and television programs, addressed hundreds of professional, political, and trade groups, produced two informational DVDs, and authored numerous articles for both print publications and Internet sites. In addition, I’m scheduled to produce two books relating to the subject over the next year.

 

The risk of vaccination must be considered as important—and potentially more serious—than the risk of a childhood disease. Years of experience and thousands of hours of research have lead to conclusions that are not uniformly accepted: the importance of legally ensuring vaccine exemptions in each State and the right to refuse Nationally mandated vaccinations.

 

Vaccination is a procedure and vaccines are medications….and both have risks and side effects which are often ignored by the media and, worse, by many in the medical profession. As a population, we are against being forcibly medicated. We value our right to choose what is done to our bodies.

 

Humans are intrinsically healthy and tend to remain so if they are given nutritious, non-GMO foods, fresh air, and clean water. We have been blessed with God-given protective barriers against infectious diseases, including our skin and immune system.

 

Knowing that these facts are true for all members of the human species, how did we come to embrace the idea that injecting solutions of chemically-treated, inactivated viruses, parts of bacteria, traces of animal tissue and heavy metals, such as mercury and aluminum, was a reasonable strategy for keeping human beings—babies, children and adults—healthy?

 

If a “dirty bomb” exposed a large segment of US citizens simultaneously to Hepatitis B, Hepatitis A, tetanus, pertussis, diphtheria, Haemophilus influenza B, three strains of polio viruses, 3 strains of influenza viruses, measles, mumps, and rubella viruses, the chickenpox virus, and 7 strains of Streptococcus bacteria, we would declare a national emergency. We would call it an “extreme act of BIOTERRORISM”. The public outcry would be immense and our government would act accordingly. And yet, those are the very organisms that we inject through vaccines into our babies and our small children, with immature, underdeveloped immune systems. Many are given all at the same time. But instead of bioterrorism, we call it “protection.” Reflect a moment on that irony.

 

Vaccine injuries are reported to be “rare”, but only because very few reactions are “accepted” by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Institutes of Medicine (IOM) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as being caused by vaccines. I have frequently said that when a vaccine is given, and a bad reaction occurs, “ANYTHING BUT” the vaccine is “blamed” for the reaction.

   

Here is a direct quote from the 6th edition of Epidemiology & Prevention of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases called “The Pink Book”, published by the CDC: “There is no distinct syndrome from vaccine administration, and therefore, many temporally associated adverse events probably represent background illness rather than illness caused by the vaccine…The DTaP may stimulate or precipitate inevitable symptoms of underlying CNS disorder, such as seizures, infantile spasms, epilepsy or SIDS. By chance alone, some of these cases will seem to be temporally related to DTaP.” I have to admit, the first time I read that, I cried. Instead of blaming the vaccine for causing the problem, we blame the children for somehow being defective and the “defect” shows up after we inject them. Another example of not blaming the vaccine for a reaction comes directly from the National Vaccine Injury compensation table. Only a handful of injuries are covered by this program; if your injury isn’t on the table, you don’t qualify for compensation. The government says “there is no proof”—no causal association—that the problem that was experienced, the seizure, for example, was caused by the vaccine. And timing of the injury is important too. For example, the Injury Compensation Table states that if the baby manifests the symptoms of encephalopathy –or brain swelling—within 3 days of being given a DTaP shot, the injury is probably related to the vaccine. If the complication develops on the 4th day—or the 5th, 6th or 7th day—it is not considered to be “causally related” and the parent is ineligible to apply for compensation. Sort of like saying the black and blue foot you have today had nothing to do with the frozen turkey you dropped on it last week, because the discoloration didn’t show up within the time allowed to “prove causation.” Side effects and complications from vaccines are considered inconsequential because their numbers are supposedly “statistically insignificant.” This conclusion comes from epidemiological research involving large numbers of participants and has nothing to do with the individual person. Population-based conclusions go against one of the most basic tenants of all of medicine: to treat each person as an individual and believe them when they tell you something went wrong after a vaccine. A “one in a million” reaction may be rare, but if you are “the one”, it is 100% to you. And even if the one-in-a-million reactions are considered “rare” by the CDC, the health care costs associated with those “rare” reactions are not insignificant. Here’s one example. One recognized complication of the flu shot is a condition called Gullian-Barre Syndrome (GBS). Guillian-Barre is disorder characterized by progressive paralysis, beginning in the feet and advancing up the body, often causing paralysis of the diaphragm and breathing muscles within a matter of hours or days. Nearly all patients with GBS are hospitalized because of paralysis. The prognosis of GBS varies. Up to 13 percent die and 20 percent more are left significantly disabled, defined, for these purposes, as unable to work for at least a year. The CDC reports this side effect to be “rare, perhaps 1 or 2 per million flu shots given.” Using the numbers determined from a variety of sources—including medical journals and government documents, it can reasonably be assumed that the flu shot may cause 40 cases of GBS per year. The Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) database reveals that the average hospital charge per person for GBS is nearly $70,000. Add another $40,000 per person for rehabilitation costs after months of paralysis. Therefore the cost to healthcare for this “rare” complication can be approximated to be at least $4.4 million. This conservative estimate doesn’t include lost wages, reduced standards of living for patients who returned to work but had to take a lower paying job because of their illness. And of course, there is no price tag for the “human cost” of being paralyzed and away from your family for months. The advantageous cost-benefit relationship is one of the main rationalizations given for supporting the national vaccination program at all levels, infants through the elderly. But has anyone seriously analyzed the cost of caring for vaccine complications? This example of Guillian-Barre represents the cost of just ONE complication. What if the costs for healthcare from all acknowledged side effects were calculated and added to the cost of the National Vaccination programs? What if we add in the parent-observed complications, such as refractory seizures? Are we getting our money’s worth financially? Are we getting our money’s worth in terms of a “healthier” nation? What about other not-so-obvious costs incurred by vaccine mandates—increased taxes and increased health insurance premiums to pay for the shots? Increased administrative costs to track that they have been given?

   

There are many others, but I’ll stop there. There are three things to take away from this introduction: 1. Low infection rates and high vaccination rates should not be the cornerstone of our public health policy. Vaccine reactions should not be discounted, whatever their numbers. Further, the true cost-benefit of the vaccination program must be considered, and what has been presented is barely the tip of the iceberg.2. Parents, and all adults, must retain their right to refuse vaccines. They are not without risk, and those “rare” complications can result in significant costs, both economic and in terms of human life.3. Children, and all adults, who refuse to be vaccinated are being discriminated against. They are losing their rights:a. Rights and access to a public education.
b. Rights to access to health care, as doctors discharge them as patients.
c. Rights to food because often moms on Medicaid are refused food stamps.These rights—including the right to refuse—must be ensured. When we give government the power to make medical decisions for us—and force us to vaccinate and medicate our children in the name “health” and “policy” and for “the greater good” we, in essence, accept that the state owns our bodies, and, apparently, our children.[To order Dr. Sherri Tenpenny's latest video, click here: "Vaccines, The Risks, The Benefits, The Choices

When I first came across this passage as a student more than forty years ago, I said to myself: That is the only view of hell that makes any sense to me.  God is love, St. Isaac tells us, and this divine love is unchanging and in inexhaustible.  God’s love is everywhere and embraces everything: “If I go down to hell, There are there also”.  Thus even those in hell are not cut off from the love of God.  Love acts, however, in a twofold way: it is joy to those who accept it but torture to those who shut it out.  In the words of George MacDonald, “The terror of God is but the other side of His love; it is love outside, that would be inside.”  

 

Thus those in hell feel as agonizing pain that which the saints feel as unending delight.  God does not inflict torment upon those in hell, but it is they who torment themselves through their willful refusal to respond to His love.  As George Bernanos observes, “hell is not to love anymore.”  “The love of God,” writes Vladimir Lossky, “will be an intolerable torment to those who have not acquired it within themselves.”  

Bishop Kallistos Ware of Oxford England

Quote for today

As to those people who are good and kind but are not believers, we cannot and must not judge them. The ways of the Lord are inscrutable; let us leave these good people entirely to His judgment and to the grace of His Providence. He alone knows how and why He has built the argosy of humanity, and the small boat of each one of us, such as it is.

— Saint Macarius of Optina

A declined invitation: an example of paradmigmatic thinking

Recently I wrote to an Orthodox mission organization in Mexico which runs an orphanage.  I asked if I could volanteer for a good long time and offered to pay my way.  The administrator asked me to come and seemed excited about the prospect.  He explained that they lived near a town and it was quite easy to take a bus into the city to go shopping.  I explained to him that I had some food intolerance’s and would need to do my own cooking.  I explained that I grew extremely silk if I had milk products, wheat, soy, and even rice.  I said I was used to buying and preparing my own food wherever I went.  He said everyone eats together and so basically not an option, don’t come.  Wow!  This is an extreme example of paradigmatic thinking.  With many people I know, vegetarianism and veganism is an ideology that goes beyond common sense.  Because it is assumed a-priori that meat is bad, they reason, soy is good.  The assumption is: meet is bad and let all the discussion bafterwards be based on that assumption.  So why are these friends and acquaintances getting so sick all the time?  All I hear about within these circles is one illness after another so that sometimes monasteries are forced into hospitals.  Soy causes homosexuality and makes men effeminate and unable to have children or think clearly.  Americans are deprived of fat.  In Buenos Aires where they eat steak every night, usually very rare—they are relatively free from the deaseses which plague Americans.  I ate cow throat last weekend with Gregory and it was unbelievable.  It is a delicacy in Argentina but cheep here because it’s only being discovered.  Some naturalpathic physicians give cow throat, pig eyes and cow brains to people who have week throats and week brains and week eyes.  This form of therapy is extremely effective.  The medicine that is practiced at the conventional doctors offices and hospitals is based on the scientific method, on statistics and on math and science and you know what…it doesn’t work.  It is not effective for treating people.  I know from personal experience.  There are alternative ways of treating people but you have to search.  The administrator for the Orthodox orphanage in Mexico who didn’t want me to come if I wasn’t going to eat bread, soy and milk products is an example of paradigmatic thinking.  I’ve often heard people say, “Americans eat so much more meat and fatty foods than other people.”  So not only is it a spectacular propaganda achievement that fat is bad, it also that Americans prefer meat and fat.  It goes against all common sense and yet people actually believe this. Compared with countries like Argentina, we are a relatively fat-free society.  Yet I’m not able to bring this up around my many friends and acquaintences (getting sicker and sicker and sicker) who advocate the health effects of veganism.  Maybe if more people spent time getting to know eachother in bars and cafes, we would be able to have these discussions without people attacking the messenger.          I have now heard back from the administrator and he welcomed me to come.  They don’t check their emails so often in south American and Mexico, I have noticed.  The words COULD be relevent, though, with people who don’t understand about food intolerences and many of the other observations are relevent and so I am keeping this up.  Nobody reads my blog anyway.

Turn off that electricity!!!

Yesterday afternoon and evening the electricity went off over all Northwest Portland.  I walked down to the busy intersection where I lived and watched traffic.  The streetlights were all off.  No horns were blowing, no cars crashing.  I was impressed by how polite everyone suddenly became and how quiet my neighborhood was.  The traffic was self-moderating.  Benjamen Franklin, who, invented the traffic lights had a lot of strange ideas, like everyone needing to show up on time.  He thought time was money, advocated tough love and a bunch of other nonsense.   He wrote many maxims to illustrate his philosophy, the most quoted one being ”Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”  Franklin’s autobiography was quoted a lot in the famous book by Max Webber The Spirit of Capitalism and the Protestant Work Ethic because it seemed so perfect an example of the ideology Webber was calling out.  Hard work is good, don’t get me wrong, but there are limits.  For example,  I live in a neighborhood where after work everyone comes home and sits in front of their computers and telivisions.  In South America, women go to bars at night with their babies and stay up late.   Bars are family affairs.  In Spain, after the family has dinner, they hit the streets for a drink and some discotecas don’t even open until sunrise.  There might be another reason, though, why everyone started being so relaxed and considerate when the electricity went off yesterday.  Our bodies were not fitted for the extreme amount of electric stimulation that is always present.  We cannot see electromagentic polution but it is present…increasingly so now with the advent of cell phones and wireless internet (so called “Wi FI”).  One of the first things I noticed was how RELAXED I felt.  I got out my candles, played the piano and had a blast.  The electricity should stay off!!  But then all our satalites would be out of commission and there would be bacteria in the water, someone might say.  Well, would that really be so bad.  Perhaps the least known cause of electromagnetic pollution is outside Fairbanks Alaska, the covert HAARP project which has as its sole purpose the goal of bouncing billions of watts of electricity off the ionosphere every single day.  Is is called an Ionospheric Heater and maybe doing more to contribute to global warming in a month than all the C2 ommsisions cars put out in ten years.  It has been speculated that HAARP, and other devises like it, around the world are involved in manipulation the weather. One thing is certain: Are bodies were not designed to withstand the stress brought about through so much exposure to electromagnetic waves.  Mozart wrote his music by candle-light.  Through simple changes, like watching less television and going out at night with friends, we can put more positive energy into the world.

Former Italian President Tells Newspaper 9/11 Inside Job

Former Italian President and the man who blew the whistle on Operation Gladio (Nato’s terrorist network) Francesco Cossiga, has told an Italian newspaper that 9/11 was carried out by the CIA with help from Zionists.

“all the intelligence services of America and Europe … now know well that the disastrous attack has been planned and realized from the CIA American and the Mossad with the aid of the Zionist world in order to put under accusation the Arabic Countries and in order to induce the western powers to take part … in Iraq [and] Afghanistan.”

Many former government officials have come out about 9/11, from Russian generals to the former German defence ministers—and the leaders of Cuba and Venezuala and their vice Presidents respectively, but this may be the person with the most clout on the world stage so far to denounce the Bush administration for the deaths of three thousand people on 9/11.

Germboys, Executive orders and Vaccines

I am reposting this article I wrote a few weeks ago because I think it may be one of the most important pieces of news, because of what it means.  Last night Steve Quale www.stevequale.com was interviewed on Coast to Coast, a worldwide radio program that has more listeners than any other radio talk show.  He talked about weather wars and giants.  He said vaccines steralize people and cause autism.  His son became autistic after taking a vaccine.  The sterilization fits well with the Bilderberg agenda which is no more children and enforced birth control.  The military is currently buying tens of thousands of tents and trailers which could potentially be used to vaccinate people.  But this is the situation now: Will I have to choose between going to jail or getting my future children vaccinated?  Will it mean that they will not be able to go to public school because only private schools allow unvaccinated children.  Steve Quale said a 4 star military general told him there was a plan to kill 200 million Americans.  People who have worked in the underground bases have become whistle blowers and speak of huge gulags being built where torture chambers contain people and are already opperational in the United States and Britian.  I hear it all on Coast to Coast.  There are pictures of the 600 above ground prison camps fully opperational while more are being built.  Most of the top microbiologists in the world, from government microbiologists to university microbiologists, have all been systematically murdered in the last few years.  Why?  Steve Quale speculates that it may have something to do with the virus the illumanati is getting ready to unleash.  The point is America is no longer safe.  He says that weather wars are going on and there is currently an attempt to explode a volcanoe that will cause a title wave in the pacific ocean that will burry the east coast.  We need to pray, go to church and start binding together into tribes because that is the only thing that will save us when the time comes, hopefully later rather than sooner.

—-A beautiful baby!  

John and Samantha were so excited when they brought their baby home from the hospital.  Samantha was Canadian and so, even though John had a job in the United States, they traveled to Canada to have the baby.  They were poor and couldn’t afford the high costs of hospital fees.  Their new daughter was named Sarah, after the most beautiful women in the bible.  When home, Sarah drank unpasteurized milk from her mother, made all the more nutritious by the quality food from their garden Sarah’s mother ate.  There was always a smile on Sarah’s face which caused John and Samantha to wonder if their baby might not be the happiest one of all their acquaintance. Whenever she did cry, they changed her or nursed her until she was happy again. When Sarah was six months old, they took her to church to be baptized.  Everything seemed complete.  Five years later John and Samantha were told Sarah couldn’t enter public school.  Why…because she hadn’t been vaccinated. 

Sound like fiction?  This is exactly what is facing 2,300 parents in Maryland where, according to the Washington Post, they may now face jail time and costly fines for refusing to have their children vaccinated.  The children are not allowed to start school until the inoculations take place.  The jail time for the parents is for “truancy”, although this has been identified as vaccination through the backdoor.  Some colleges and universities are now making childhood vaccines a requirement for entry while the sheer number of vaccines now being recommended is steadily growing.  Parents aren’t taking it quietly.

 

“Doctors are charging parents extra for bringing up the subject,” says Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, who heads up the Osteo Med II clinic in Ohio, a center providing alternative and traditional medicine.  Speaking on the popular radio program Coast to Coast am this week, she said  “Doctors have adopted a paternalistic attitude towards their patients,” she said.  “They complain that parents think they know best and have started fining them—or walking out—for bringing up vaccines.”  [this is a paraphrase of her words based on memory]

 

Time Magazine and Newsweek have said parents think they know better than their doctors. Parents who choose a diet for their children, even if not an ideal diet, are more informed about health than those families which do not eat consciously at all. Conversely, parents who decide which vaccines they want their children to have, and which ones they don’t, are going to be more informed than parents who don’t ask any questions at all. Moreover, our whole legal system relies on the ability of lay people to evaluate claims of competing experts.  There is simply no basis to assert that parents—or journalists—-are incapable of educating themselves on this matter and making an informed decision.

Dr. Sherri Tenpenny has been working for years to educate parents about the dangers and health risks associated with vaccines.  She says that vaccines often do not work, contain dangerous chemicals (formaldehyde) and metals (mercury and aluminum), and work to suppress the immune system.  She writes:

If a “dirty bomb” exposed a large segment of US citizens simultaneously to Hepatitis B, Hepatitis A, tetanus, pertussis, diphtheria, Haemophilus influenza B, three strains of polio viruses, 3 strains of influenza viruses, measles, mumps, and rubella viruses, the chickenpox virus, and 7 strains of Streptococcus bacteria, we would declare a national emergency. We would call it an “extreme act of BIOTERRORISM”. The public outcry would be immense and our government would act accordingly. And yet, those are the very organisms that we inject through vaccines into our babies and our small children, with immature, underdeveloped immune systems. Many are given all at the same time. But instead of bioterrorism, we call it “protection.” Reflect a moment on that irony.

   —-Do vaccines contain mercury?   

Dr. Joseph Mercola, who runs a natural health website and is the author of Take Control of Your Health, has repeatedly stated that flu vaccines contain mercury and urged people not to receive flu shots, which many still do annually.  Other health experts have repeated similar concerns about the way mercury is used in medical science, including its widespread use in dentistry.  Many of the ingredients in vaccines are proprietary and new legislation has legalized pharmaceutical company’s determination to never disclose the ingredients.  New laws make them immune from lawsuits.  For this reason, it is hard to say exactly what is in many of the vaccines.  But are they helping?  Are grade-school children now free from contracting Hepatitis B (a disease only associated with sexual intercourse and intravenous drug use)? 

 

According to an article in the Oregonian this year, one in every 150 kids is now born with some form of Autism.  Some argue that these numbers, astonishing if they are to be believed, are because of the expanding definition of autism and the autism spectrum disorders.  If this is so, it is only because we now seek words to explain a disease that was unheard of 100 years ago.  We now have to seriously ask if vaccines are maybe creating an emergency unprecedented in our nations history.  Is a health emergency facing us because of the medical establishment’s obsession with getting everyone inoculated? Many books and articles have been written on the mercury/autism connection and the vaccines that perhaps facilitate autism although categorical evidence is lacking.  But there are other diseases associated with getting vaccinated.

 

Gulf war syndrome is a generic word describing a whole host of symptoms plaguing our armed forces from chronic fatigue to multiple chemical sensitivity.  It is interesting that military men and women receive many vaccines, lining up in a row to receive one after the other, including inoculations against anthrax.  There have been many cases of sudden and serious illness following these shots.  The amount soldiers’ children born with autism and birth defects is shocking.  Gulf War Syndrome is not, however, a recognized medical ailment as that would make these soldiers eligible for free care in VA hospitals.

 

 

—–Germboys and Bolsheviks

 

 

It is ironic that parents are not now allowed to choose what is best for their children after educating themselves, and depicted as fools in the corporate media when they do, but politicians are. New laws passed by congress and executive orders passed by the White House, allow for mandatory vaccines in the event of an unspecified emergency or bird-flu.  The legislation states clearly that an emergency is one that is defined by the executive branch and those who refuse these potential vaccines, as these parents do now in Maryland, can be quarantined.  Similar proposals by members of Bush Administration, such as one put forward by the now indicted Lewis I “Skooter” Libby, allow for low flying aircraft to administer vaccines to whole cities in the new American century.  This aid to the Vice President was so obsessed with getting everyone immunized that he was known to Bush’s cabinet as Germboy.  He even wrote a novel about a smallpox epidemic which required governments to take action and implement a mass vaccination program.  Scooter Libby advocated—along with others in the present government, using race based bioweapons as a tool of warfare, in a secret document that was leaked to the New York Times, after which Scooter Libby did not deny being one of the signatories.   Libby was present, along with New York Times reporter Judith Miller—who went to jail in the case which finally indicted Libby, when the Vice President oversaw a war game dealing with a bioterror attack.  The possibility of a pandemic is real and caution is needed.  But only after we face the hazard arising from the many bioweapons labs and disease experiments that go on in this country will we be in a position to deal effectively—or even talk—about any pandemic mother nature may send.  We have just finished a couple years hype about bird-flu.  It faded just as quickly as the SARS scare.  The weekend before a possible bird-flu first hit the news, and Eastern Europeans started slaughtering their birds in response, there was a front page article in the New York Times, which might as well have been on the last page.  It said that United States government scientists had travelled to Alaska to dig up the frozen remains of some men who had died in the great flu epidemic of 1917 and were preparing to recreate the virus in a laboratory.  It is a truth that our government has, in the past, experimented on its people.  That is admitted now in declassified documents. There is no basis to assume our government isn’t capable of unleashing a virus to consolidate its power.  And when you look at this present government, there is every reason to believe they could—and would—be capable of creating a problem to bring in the predetermined solution.

 

 

 —A New Paradigm in Health 

 

 

Weston Price, when he traveled around the world looking at the diets of various healthy cultures known for their longevity, found that the unchlorinated, unfluoridated water the children drank had trace amounts of polio and other childhood diseases which acted as a natural inoculation.  Alternative health experts have observed that our immune systems are too pure and need the stimulation from bacteria and germs found in unpasteurized dairy products and water from many third world countries.  A recent study printed in National Geographic confirmed this.  It found that children who had grown up with barnyard animals in the house had fewer cases of adult illness and the flu.  Moreover, the basis of good health, according to naturopathic physician and yoga instructor Laura Washington, who practices in Portland, OR—where I live, is the autonomic nervous system.  The established medical community doesn’t even recognize the existence of the autonomic nervous system, but it is the basis for feeling good.  She has explained to me that having an autonomic nervous system on track allows everything else to freely function.  It could be as simple as giving up a food, or naturally correcting some deficiency in the endocrine system.  Oftentimes people assume that they just don’t feel good because of other factors, such as depression or temperament, and don’t look further.  The presupposition of the prevailing medical doctrine is that illnesses and mental afflictions have no real cause and cannot be treated.  This ignorance even prevails among many alternative health professionals.  The Paradigm of health that Weston Price discovered and wrote about is the answer to all the illnesses facing us today, and it is enjoyable.  He says that animal fat is good and that meet is good, along with everything that is natural.  We can have death by diet, or health by diet, according to Weston Price.  Real food, however, is becoming scarce.

 

 

It will be uphill work for anyone who wants to implement Weston Price’s findings in their lives. The case in Maryland may be a test for the resolve of these parents who now face jail time for refusing to have their children vaccinated.  New hurdles await even after a possible victory in this Maryland case, which is by no means yet certain now that colleges and universities are requiring students to show vaccinations before entry and the immigration requirements in this regard are also becoming more strict. 

 

 

Recently a similar case arose in Texas when Governor Rick Perry signed an executive order demanding all 11 and 12 years old girls to get vaccinated for cervical cancer, a sexually transmitted disease.  He was forced to rescind the directive after a popular outcry.  That laws are now being passed mandating vaccination of children against sexually transmitted diseases (cervical cancer and hepatitis B); that healthy college kids should be required to go back and receive childhood vaccines, shows an inoculation ideology separated from any real health concerns.

 

 

This worries me.  Will my future children not be able to attend public school unless they are first vaccinated?  I don’t want any vaccines for my future children.  Will I go to jail for feeding raw goats’ milk to my children?   Already the Environmental Protection Agency shows up on organic farms with guns to close down the raw milk operations.  What about the rights of the consumer?  Will I have to raise my children in another country because the land of my birth has grown unsafe?  Do we even want to live in a country so Leninist?  Is the idyllic story of John and Samantha bringing their baby home and allowing God and nature to do the rest only a pipe dream?  American people are too quiescent.  Laws such as Congress’ Biodefence and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005 and the many Executive orders dealing with the subject, to which I have alluded, only occur if we let them.  These laws should not be surprising in a country where the President says to members of congress that he thinks “the constitution is just a god-damn piece of paper.”  The reaction of the American people, or non-reaction, however, is quite shocking. We have the power.  For example, if the American people had have started demanding raw milk when health food stores first become in-vogue, there might now be a thriving raw milk industry.  The same is true for vaccines. It is time to stand up and demand our rights. 

A Modest Proposal

In a few weeks two public figures will be descending on our friendly city for public events. One is an enlightened and elegant Canadian who, though sincere, has unwittingly become, in some respects, a left-gatekeeper. The other is a viper…a Bilderberger and very, very bad. While different in the challenges and opportunities they present, both offer a unique chance to gain visibility for the 9/11 truth movement and it is toward this end that the following proposal is directed. Noemi Klein is at the very forefront of left-wing thought today and someone who could potentially be on our side and with whom therefore every effort should be made to express solidarity. Although she has characterized our work as “conspiracy theorist”, it is probable she has never encountered the evidence for the inside job hypothesis. We have an opportunity to confront her with evidence about false-flag terrorism and maybe knock down some of the gates people like her have erected around this issue. After her speech there will be a brief question and answer period. This is an opportunity to educate and provoke curiosity in her audience as well, which will probably consist of many in the Portland peace community. I propose a few of us sit near the front. We should be prepared to ask the first questions and follow up so if she cuts off one of us, another can start. This technique has worked well in the past and lets her and everyone else present know that 9/11 truth isn’t going away by ignoring it. After her speech, we should have pamphlets and cards about 9/11 ready to hand her, possibly even books. Neomi Klein has, unintentionally, found herself in the position of someone on the left who keeps people from going too far. She has the entire worldwide alternative press listening to her right now and people look up to her and pay attention to what she says. Having her throw her weight behind this issue could really break it wide open. Her latest book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism already shows an understanding of how elites use terrorism to further their own agenda. In fact, she writes that Chicago school capitalists pray for terror as Christian/Zionists/Endtimers pray for the rapture (paraphrase). She is close to the truth about 9/11, let us gently bring her the rest of the way.

Guerrilla news tactics are required for our next guest and, if recent events are anything to go by, it may be dangerous and we should be prepared to deal with violence from security. Bilderberg luminary Norman Podhorowitz is coming to Portland to speak and do a book signing. He is an adviser for the campaign of the Butcher of 9/11, Rudolph Giuliani, and has consistently called for the U.S. to attack Iran. A recent speech by Bill Clinton in Minessotta that was disrupted should serve as a model. It was when the former President began to speak of the 7/7 London bombings as the work of disenchanted British Muslims that young men shouted, “That’s a fraud” and “Inside Job.” By all appearances, Bill Clinton was caught very off guard. In front of two thousand people, the young men then shouted “Why don’t you talk about 9/11?” and “What about Bilderberg?” When one of these young men was thrown out by security, another waited a little and then shouted “Are you a member of the Bohemian club?” thus giving the appearance of being unrelated and of there being popular support for these conspiratorial views. The former president replied that he had never been to the Bohemian club because that’s where rich Republicans ran around naked urinating on redwood trees. The whole thing was captured on television and made national news. These events should inspire us and serve as a model. Let me say, among ourselves, I’m all in favor of astroterfing the grassroots.

The illuminists that control our government and pray for crisis in order to employ their Hagelian dialectic needto disrupted by the truth. Noam Chomsky said, “The millions of Americans who believe George Bush planned the Sep 11th attacks don’t seem very bothered by it.” Here is a chance to demonstrate the truth of our convictions and show that we are very bothered by the attack by ourselves on ourselves. The Phoenix that arises from the next false-flag attack would be a further entrenchment of the North American Union and a big step on the march for world government. The very sovereignty of our country is at stake. Roughly confronting Bilderbergers and gently challenging gatekeepers should be the task of all Portlanders. To that end let us organize our efforts. Anyone who is not prepared to engage in this minimal and relatively riskless activity is an appeaser and should have the name Neville Chamberlain tattooed on their arm.

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

There is a new book out by Neomi Klein called The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.  It is rare indeed for a book like this to be written in such an elegant and sensitive way.  But then there has never been a book quite like this. Her critique of capitalism and free-markets is unique, yet one senses her reserve and this makes The Shock Doctrine all the more credible.  She unpacks the underlying philosophies and sick motivations of capitalism in a way that only a Neomi Klein could. (thankyou computer for not working and italicizing everything) This is one of a handful of the most important books in the social sciences written in the last 100 years. 

It was a misinterpretation of communist theory—and a particular authoritarian strain—that led to the perversions of Stalin, Mao and Cestaclou, she writes.  In the same way, it is the perversion of a particularly virulent form of capitalism, she writes, which has produced the Bush nightmare.  Is the ideology blameless? Is the ideology to blame for Bush and Reagan’s torture gulags in the United States, Latin America and elsewhere? That is the logic we apply to communism, and rightly, she says.  Any change is a change in topic. These are radical questions, like the one’s asked by Colorado Professor Ward Churchhill in his book The Justice of Roosting Chickens that produced a hysterical response from television pundits.  Ward Churchhill asked if the people who died in the Twin Towers were “innocent victims” when they, in fact, participated in a national security state which was waging genocide on Latin America and elsewhere (in another book by Churchhill called A Little Matter of Genocide,  he compared the U.S. run death camps in Central America and Asia to the toll wrought on the Jews by the Nazis, which, he said, wasn’t unique).  Churchhill said that the pencil pushers of the military industrial complex within the twin towers, who worked in the offices of the FBI, CIA and NSA, should be seen as equivelent to the Nazis who were hung at Nuremberg and not “innocent victims”.  Neomi Klein asks similar radical questions never asked before.  She quotes an Argentine novelist who says, “Any change is a change in topic.”  Is the capitalist ideology blameless when it produces and encourages widespread use of economic shock therapy as well as less metaphorical shock therapy?  The whole book is an answer to these questions posed in her introduction.  She concludes that capitalism is very dangerous and needs to be recognized as a dangerous ideology in the same way that communism is forever tarnished by the abuse of particular authoritarian strains of it. 

It is not Utopian.  For example, while suggesting that substantial portions of countries’ economies be turned over to the state, along with massively increased social spending, she rejects the binary argument of capitalism against communism as too simple.  She doesn’t reject all capitalism, but only particular strains of it—the Milton Freedman variety.  She suggests that small business can actually prosper better in a culture with increase regulation of the economy by the state (she suggests making oil companies, education and medicine public as well as charging high tariffs for imported goods) and gives the example of South America after world war two.  She says that Peronist Argentina and Uruguay exhibited this economic equilibrium.  Peron charged high tariffs for imported goods and Uruguay instituted healthcare and education for all.  Her book has even been criticised by the left as being too Kenseyen, as opposed to all out socialist/communist.  The Shock Doctrine refutes the idea that socialist systems are utopian and not practical.  One thing is certain: it is impossible for anyone to view capitalism in the same way after reading this Canadian journalists’ latest work. 

Some of it is very hard truths and, if you are like me, you will want to skip over all the gory descriptions of how Americans torture opponents of capitalism.  I don’t want that energy in my mind, although it is good that she puts it out in the public record because most Americans are very good people and would be shocked to learn just how widespread is the use of electric torture in the American political prisons for the last 57 years and increasingly so as now it has been formally legalized by Congress.  And until it these torturous methods are generally known they will continue. 

Most Americans aren’t even aware that we have political prisons.  Torture with electric shocks, stress positions and sensory deprivation are the special development of the CIA.  She says these CIA pioneered methods need to be acknowledged by the social sciences as an advancement in the art of killing people since the 18th century.  The CIA brought together psychologists and experiments and found something even worse than crucifixion or the inquisition.  If you doubt, just look at what Guantanamo has turned into.  A majority of prisoners have now all gone insane, become unable to speak, incontinent, screaming childish babble and rolling around on the floor sucking their thumbs.  But I’m not going into details and prefer skipping over those parts.   She makes the point, stunning, that we consider the crimes of communism to be part of the ideology and we, rightly, consider the ideology to blame.  Why not apply the same logic to capitalism.  Is the ideology blameless when it produces American gulags throughout the world and where opponents of capitalism are shocked again and again and again. She is so well-expressed!!!  It is basically a book about economics.  It is a stunning unpacking of free-trade, freemarkets and globalism.  She is in the forefront of left-wing thought today but doesn’t have the blindsided and doctrinaire qualities that characterize so many who write for magazines like The Nation or newspapers like The Guardian.  With one exception.  Only in one area is she short sighted, and that germane to her topic, disaster capitalism.  She has consistently been one to characterize the idea that the Bush regime planned 9/11 as a conspiracy theory and so chooses not to address it.  Even so, her book stands, maybe even the better, for leaving out this information.  Even with an understanding of 9/11, what is happening now needs to be seen as following what happened earlier, rather than a departure.  The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism should inform the social sciences on this issue for the next one hundred years.  There has been no book to date which chronicles the abuses of capitalism in quite the same way by giving the history and philosophy of this particular strain of free-market perversion (the Milton Freedman Chicago school of economics capitalism with the gloves off strain).  

All the time in the media we are told that democracy and markets are the wave of the future and socialism isn’t viable.  The Shock Doctrine is the antidote and should be checked out at libraries and local bookstores if just for the introduction. 

Neomi Klein will soon be in Portland to speak and sign books. 

December 7, 2007

7:00pm First Unitarian Church1011 SW 12th AvenuePortland, OR

(503) 228-6389

Bilderbergers openly advicate world government

 “We shall have World Government, whether or not we like it. The only question is whether World Government will be achieved by conquest or consent.” Paul Warburg, CFR member, and architect of the Federal Reserve.

“Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow they will be grateful!” Dr. Henry Kissinger, Bilderberger Conference, Evians, France, 1991.  A few years later the French police showed up at Kissinger’s Paris hotel to serve an international warrent for his arrest.

 “We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the work is now much more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.” David Rockefeller at a Bilderberg meeting.

“We are not going to achieve a new world order without paying for it in blood as well as in words and money.” Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Bilderberg member, wrote these words in Foreign Affairs Magazine in July and August of 1995.

American concentration camps

There over 600 prison camps in the United States, all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners. They are all staffed and even surrounded by full-time guards, but they are all empty. These camps are to be operated by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) should Martial Law need to be implemented in the United States.  There are over 100 primary and secondary concentration camps across the US. Each houses about 20,000 prisoners. Currently the largest of these facilities is the just outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. The Alaskan facility is a gigantic mental health facility and can hold approximately 2 million people. The majority of these facilities have no prisoners but are currently staffed by military personal. The camps all have have railroad facilities, as well as roads, coming and going out of them, to get there. Also quite a few are closed down military bases and are adjacent to airport facilities.  FEMA itself operates from an underground military base near Washington DC called Mount Weather.  Many executive orders have recently been passed allowing for complete martial law in the case of an unspecified emergency.  These executive orders allow for mass detention of American citizens and the seizure of all public lands, media and transportation by the government.  They also allow for the indefinite postponing of American elections.  Many of these executive orders are in the public record.  Halliburten, operating under another no-bid contract, is currently constructing many more detention facilities because obviously 600 is not enough.          And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling in terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst; the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!” - The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn