Monday, August 17, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
The Slight Edge (link to a summary)
The Slight Edge Philosophy
by Jeff Olson
This is the link to read a summary to "The Slight Edge." Its is an awesome book that teaches principles that you can apply in every aspect of your life.
http://www.topachievement.com/slightedge.html
Monday, May 18, 2009
FAITH OF OUR FATHERS
Whaddya mean, 'America is not a Christian nation'?
Congressmen challenge Obama assertion by drafting 'spiritual heritage' legislation
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: May 16, 2009
8:45 pm Eastern
By Drew Zahn
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=98369
While Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. is "no longer a Christian nation," several members of Congress have taken a stand to boldly disagree.
A bipartisan group of 25 members of the House of Representatives earlier this month submitted H.Res. 397, which calls on Congress to affirm "the rich spiritual and religious history of our nation's founding and subsequent history" and to designate the first week of May as America's Spiritual Heritage Week for "the appreciation of and education on America's history of religious faith."
Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., specifically challenged the president's claims that America is not a Christian nation in a news conference announcing the bill immediately following last week's National Day of Prayer observance.
"The overwhelming evidence suggests that this nation was born and birthed with Judeo-Christian principles," Forbes told reporters, "and I would challenge anybody to tell me that point in time when we ceased to be so, because it doesn't exist."
Read for yourself the timeless evidence of Christianity's impact on America in the freshly republished "Christianity and the American Commonwealth."
The bill itself cites over 70 historical references and quotes from past presidents, Founding Fathers and Supreme Court decisions as proof that Judeo-Christian principles have been the foundation of our nation.
H.Res. 397, which has now accumulated 41 cosponsors, not only calls on Congress to affirm the nation's spiritual heritage, but also resolves that the U.S. House of Representatives "rejects, in the strongest possible terms, any effort to remove, obscure or purposely omit such history from our nation's public buildings and educational resources."
Video of Forbes presenting his argument for the bill's passage on the floor of the House can be seen below:
(Story continues below)
The full text of H.Res. 397 begins by asserting that "religious faith was not only important in official American life during the periods of discovery, exploration, colonization and growth but has also been acknowledged and incorporated into all three branches of the federal government from their very beginning."
The bill's long list of "whereas" affirmations begins with the statement, "Whereas the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed this self-evident fact in a unanimous ruling declaring 'This is a religious people. … From the discovery of this continent to the present hour, there is a single voice making this affirmation.'"
Among the many historical proofs included in the bill were the following:
Whereas in 1777, Congress, facing a national shortage of '"Bibles for our schools, and families, and for the public worship of God in our churches," announced that they "desired to have a Bible printed under their care and by their encouragement" and therefore ordered 20,000 copies of the Bible to be imported;
Whereas in 1782, Congress pursued a plan to print a Bible that would be "a neat edition of the Holy Scriptures for the use of schools' and therefore approved the production of the first English language Bible printed in America that contained the congressional endorsement that 'the United States in Congress assembled … recommend this edition of the Bible to the inhabitants of the United States";
Whereas the 1783 Treaty of Paris that officially ended the Revolution and established America as an independent [nation] begins with the appellation "In the name of the most holy and undivided Trinity";
Whereas in 1795, during construction of the Capitol, a practice was instituted whereby "public worship is now regularly administered at the Capitol, every Sunday morning, at 11 o'clock";
Whereas in 1789, Congress, in the midst of framing the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment, passed the first federal law touching education, declaring, "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged";
Whereas by 1867, the church at the Capitol was the largest church in Washington, D.C., with up to 2,000 people a week attending Sunday service in the Hall of the House;
Whereas in 1853, the United States Senate declared that the Founding Fathers "had no fear or jealousy of religion itself, nor did they wish to see us an irreligious people. … They did not intend to spread over all the public authorities and the whole public action of the nation the dead and revolting spectacle of atheistical apathy";
Whereas in 1854, the United States House of Representatives declared "It [religion] must be considered as the foundation on which the whole structure rests. … Christianity, in its general principles, is the great conservative element on which we must rely for the purity and permanence of free institutions";
Whereas President John Adams, one of only 2 signers of the Bill of Rights and First Amendment, declared "As the safety and prosperity of nations ultimately and essentially depend on the protection and the blessing of Almighty God, and the national acknowledgment of this truth is not only an indispensable duty which the people owe to Him";
Whereas President Andrew Jackson declared that the Bible "is the rock on which our Republic rests";
Whereas President Franklin D. Roosevelt not only led the Nation in a six-minute prayer during D-Day on June 6, 1944, but he also declared, "If we will not prepare to give all that we have and all that we are to preserve Christian civilization in our land, we shall go to destruction";
Whereas President Dwight D. Eisenhower declared, "Without God there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first, the most basic, expression of Americanism. Thus, the Founding Fathers of America saw it, and thus with God's help, it will continue to be," in a declaration later repeated with approval by President Gerald Ford;
Whereas the United States Supreme Court has declared throughout the course of our Nation's history that the United States is "a Christian country," "a Christian nation," "a Christian people," "a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being," and that "we cannot read into the Bill of Rights a philosophy of hostility to religion"
Following the lengthy "whereas" section, the bill then calls on the House to resolve to affirm the spiritual history of the nation, reject efforts to cleanse that religious history and establish America's Spiritual History Week to appreciate and educate the citizenry on the country's foundations in faith.
Forbes was joined in announcing the bill's introduction by several members of Congress who spoke in favor of the bill, religious leaders like Dr. James and Shirley Dobson, professional football player Shaun Alexander, and leaders of several national education, policy and advocacy groups.
Asked last year to clarify his remarks on America's spiritual heritage, Obama repeated them to the Christian Broadcast Network: "I think that the right might worry a bit more about the dangers of sectarianism. Whatever we once were, we're no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers," Obama wrote in an e-mail to CBN News senior national correspondent David Brody.
"We should acknowledge this and realize that when we're formulating policies from the statehouse to the Senate floor to the White House, we've got to work to translate our reasoning into values that are accessible to every one of our citizens, not just members of our own faith community," wrote Obama.
Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-N.C., who serves as co-chair of the Congressional Prayer Caucus with Rep. Forbes, spoke at the press conference announcing H.Res. 397 and asserted to the contrary that it's "high time" the nation recognize and affirm the "integral part of our nation's history" that Christianity has played.
McIntyre said Americans don't know, for example, that even Ben Franklin, who "wasn't known as the most spiritual of the Founding Fathers," nonetheless looked to God as the only hope for our country:
"Ben Franklin," McIntyre said, "stood up and called the assembly of delegates to prayer, because, he said, 'Scripture teaches us that if a sparrow can't fall to the ground without his notice, is it likely that an empire will rise without his aid?' And if we don't first go to prayer, he said, 'We'll be no more successful then the builders of Babel.'"
Congressmen challenge Obama assertion by drafting 'spiritual heritage' legislation
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: May 16, 2009
8:45 pm Eastern
By Drew Zahn
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
http://wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=98369
While Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. is "no longer a Christian nation," several members of Congress have taken a stand to boldly disagree.
A bipartisan group of 25 members of the House of Representatives earlier this month submitted H.Res. 397, which calls on Congress to affirm "the rich spiritual and religious history of our nation's founding and subsequent history" and to designate the first week of May as America's Spiritual Heritage Week for "the appreciation of and education on America's history of religious faith."
Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., specifically challenged the president's claims that America is not a Christian nation in a news conference announcing the bill immediately following last week's National Day of Prayer observance.
"The overwhelming evidence suggests that this nation was born and birthed with Judeo-Christian principles," Forbes told reporters, "and I would challenge anybody to tell me that point in time when we ceased to be so, because it doesn't exist."
Read for yourself the timeless evidence of Christianity's impact on America in the freshly republished "Christianity and the American Commonwealth."
The bill itself cites over 70 historical references and quotes from past presidents, Founding Fathers and Supreme Court decisions as proof that Judeo-Christian principles have been the foundation of our nation.
H.Res. 397, which has now accumulated 41 cosponsors, not only calls on Congress to affirm the nation's spiritual heritage, but also resolves that the U.S. House of Representatives "rejects, in the strongest possible terms, any effort to remove, obscure or purposely omit such history from our nation's public buildings and educational resources."
Video of Forbes presenting his argument for the bill's passage on the floor of the House can be seen below:
(Story continues below)
The full text of H.Res. 397 begins by asserting that "religious faith was not only important in official American life during the periods of discovery, exploration, colonization and growth but has also been acknowledged and incorporated into all three branches of the federal government from their very beginning."
The bill's long list of "whereas" affirmations begins with the statement, "Whereas the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed this self-evident fact in a unanimous ruling declaring 'This is a religious people. … From the discovery of this continent to the present hour, there is a single voice making this affirmation.'"
Among the many historical proofs included in the bill were the following:
Whereas in 1777, Congress, facing a national shortage of '"Bibles for our schools, and families, and for the public worship of God in our churches," announced that they "desired to have a Bible printed under their care and by their encouragement" and therefore ordered 20,000 copies of the Bible to be imported;
Whereas in 1782, Congress pursued a plan to print a Bible that would be "a neat edition of the Holy Scriptures for the use of schools' and therefore approved the production of the first English language Bible printed in America that contained the congressional endorsement that 'the United States in Congress assembled … recommend this edition of the Bible to the inhabitants of the United States";
Whereas the 1783 Treaty of Paris that officially ended the Revolution and established America as an independent [nation] begins with the appellation "In the name of the most holy and undivided Trinity";
Whereas in 1795, during construction of the Capitol, a practice was instituted whereby "public worship is now regularly administered at the Capitol, every Sunday morning, at 11 o'clock";
Whereas in 1789, Congress, in the midst of framing the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment, passed the first federal law touching education, declaring, "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged";
Whereas by 1867, the church at the Capitol was the largest church in Washington, D.C., with up to 2,000 people a week attending Sunday service in the Hall of the House;
Whereas in 1853, the United States Senate declared that the Founding Fathers "had no fear or jealousy of religion itself, nor did they wish to see us an irreligious people. … They did not intend to spread over all the public authorities and the whole public action of the nation the dead and revolting spectacle of atheistical apathy";
Whereas in 1854, the United States House of Representatives declared "It [religion] must be considered as the foundation on which the whole structure rests. … Christianity, in its general principles, is the great conservative element on which we must rely for the purity and permanence of free institutions";
Whereas President John Adams, one of only 2 signers of the Bill of Rights and First Amendment, declared "As the safety and prosperity of nations ultimately and essentially depend on the protection and the blessing of Almighty God, and the national acknowledgment of this truth is not only an indispensable duty which the people owe to Him";
Whereas President Andrew Jackson declared that the Bible "is the rock on which our Republic rests";
Whereas President Franklin D. Roosevelt not only led the Nation in a six-minute prayer during D-Day on June 6, 1944, but he also declared, "If we will not prepare to give all that we have and all that we are to preserve Christian civilization in our land, we shall go to destruction";
Whereas President Dwight D. Eisenhower declared, "Without God there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first, the most basic, expression of Americanism. Thus, the Founding Fathers of America saw it, and thus with God's help, it will continue to be," in a declaration later repeated with approval by President Gerald Ford;
Whereas the United States Supreme Court has declared throughout the course of our Nation's history that the United States is "a Christian country," "a Christian nation," "a Christian people," "a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being," and that "we cannot read into the Bill of Rights a philosophy of hostility to religion"
Following the lengthy "whereas" section, the bill then calls on the House to resolve to affirm the spiritual history of the nation, reject efforts to cleanse that religious history and establish America's Spiritual History Week to appreciate and educate the citizenry on the country's foundations in faith.
Forbes was joined in announcing the bill's introduction by several members of Congress who spoke in favor of the bill, religious leaders like Dr. James and Shirley Dobson, professional football player Shaun Alexander, and leaders of several national education, policy and advocacy groups.
Asked last year to clarify his remarks on America's spiritual heritage, Obama repeated them to the Christian Broadcast Network: "I think that the right might worry a bit more about the dangers of sectarianism. Whatever we once were, we're no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers," Obama wrote in an e-mail to CBN News senior national correspondent David Brody.
"We should acknowledge this and realize that when we're formulating policies from the statehouse to the Senate floor to the White House, we've got to work to translate our reasoning into values that are accessible to every one of our citizens, not just members of our own faith community," wrote Obama.
Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-N.C., who serves as co-chair of the Congressional Prayer Caucus with Rep. Forbes, spoke at the press conference announcing H.Res. 397 and asserted to the contrary that it's "high time" the nation recognize and affirm the "integral part of our nation's history" that Christianity has played.
McIntyre said Americans don't know, for example, that even Ben Franklin, who "wasn't known as the most spiritual of the Founding Fathers," nonetheless looked to God as the only hope for our country:
"Ben Franklin," McIntyre said, "stood up and called the assembly of delegates to prayer, because, he said, 'Scripture teaches us that if a sparrow can't fall to the ground without his notice, is it likely that an empire will rise without his aid?' And if we don't first go to prayer, he said, 'We'll be no more successful then the builders of Babel.'"
Friday, May 8, 2009
Archbishop Slams Obama Appearance at Notre Dame
Archbishop Slams Obama Appearance at Notre Dame, Administration's Abortion Policies
One of the Vatican's highest ranked clerics and a frequent critic of President Obama says Notre Dame's giving the president an honorary degree and a platform to address graduates at its commencement next weekend is a "scandal."
FOXNews.com
Friday, May 08, 2009
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One of the Vatican's highest ranked clerics and a frequent critic of President Obama said Friday that Notre Dame is causing a "scandal" by giving the president an honorary degree and a platform to address graduates at its commencement next weekend.
'The proposed granting of an honorary doctorate at Notre Dame University to our president, who is so aggressively advancing an anti-life and anti-family agenda, is rightly the source of the greatest scandal," said Archbishop Raymond Burke, who is the prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican's highest court.
Burke, the former archbishop of St. Louis and vocal opponent of giving communion to politicians who support abortion rights, told Catholics at a national prayer breakfast in Washington, D.C., that "with unparalleled arrogance, our nation is choosing to renounce its foundation on the faithful."
He pointed to several Obama administration decisions that he said have damaged "the fundamental society that is the family," citing the repeal of the conscience clause, which prohibits health care workers from refusing to participate in abortion-related services; repeal of the Mexico City policy, which allows federal funding to be used abroad to provide abortions; presidential support of the Freedom of Choice Act, which prevents government from in any way denying or interfering with a woman's right to choose; and support of the U.S. Population Fund, which he noted supports China's one-child policy.
He blamed loose morals for legislation that would allow same-sex marriages and repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which states have implemented to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
"At the root of the confusion and error about marriage is the contraceptive mentality which would have us believe that the inherently procreative nature of the conjugal union can in practice be mechanically or chemically eliminated while the marital act remains unitive. It simply cannot be sold," Burke said.
Obama has considerable support from Catholics, having won 54 percent of the Catholic vote in the presidential election. In a Quinnipiac national poll released at the end of last month, 57 percent of Catholics said they approve of the way Obama is doing his job, while 33 percent disapproved.
By comparison, 76 percent of Jewish voters approved of Obama's performance while Protestants were the most split -- 44 percent approval to 42 percent disapproval. The poll had 2,041 registered voters
Burke noted the Catholic support, saying a majority of Catholics freely chose leadership that is now implementing decisions that conflict with the tenets of their faith.
"The path of violation of the most fundamental human rights and of the integrity of marriage and the family which our nation is traveling is not accidental," he said. "As Catholics, we cannot fail to notice with the greatest sadness the number of our fellow Catholics who cooperate fully to the advancement of a national agenda which is anti-life and anti-family."
The archbishop also slammed Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who was confirmed by the Senate last week on a 65-31 vote. Opponents cited her ties to an late-term abortion provider, George Tillman, who is a supporter of the former Kansas governor.
"The appointment of a Catholic as secretary of health and human services who has openly and consistently cooperated with the industry of procurative abortion in our nation is necessarily the source of the deepest embarrassment to Catholics and a painful reminder of the most serious responsibility of Catholics to uphold the moral law, which is the irreplaceable foundation of just relationships among the citizens of our nation," Burke said.
He added that it "grieves me to say that the support of anti-life legislation by Catholics in public office is so common that those who are not Catholics have justifiably questioned whether the church's teachings regarding the inviolable dignity of innocent human life is firm and unchanging. It gives the impression that the church herself can change the law that God has written on every human heart since the beginning of time."
After initial criticism of the invitation, Notre Dame University President Rev. John I. Jenkins called Obama an "inspiring leader" who follows in a long tradition of presidential guest speakers. He added that the invitation does not mean universal support for Obama administration policies.
"The invitation to President Obama to be our commencement speaker should not be taken as condoning or endorsing his positions on specific issues regarding the protection of human life, including abortion and embryonic stem cell research. Yet, we see his visit as a basis for further positive engagement," he said in a statement addressing the cricitism.
The White House also has heard the criticism about the president's appearance but is not deterred. The president "greatly looks forward to delivering the commencement address at Notre Dame" on May 17, said a spokesman.
"Any commencement is a very special occasion for students and families that are involved. I think Notre Dame has a strong record of healthy exchange of differing viewpoints and ideas," the spokesman said.
One of the Vatican's highest ranked clerics and a frequent critic of President Obama says Notre Dame's giving the president an honorary degree and a platform to address graduates at its commencement next weekend is a "scandal."
FOXNews.com
Friday, May 08, 2009
0
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in order to recommend a story, you must login or register.
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One of the Vatican's highest ranked clerics and a frequent critic of President Obama said Friday that Notre Dame is causing a "scandal" by giving the president an honorary degree and a platform to address graduates at its commencement next weekend.
'The proposed granting of an honorary doctorate at Notre Dame University to our president, who is so aggressively advancing an anti-life and anti-family agenda, is rightly the source of the greatest scandal," said Archbishop Raymond Burke, who is the prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican's highest court.
Burke, the former archbishop of St. Louis and vocal opponent of giving communion to politicians who support abortion rights, told Catholics at a national prayer breakfast in Washington, D.C., that "with unparalleled arrogance, our nation is choosing to renounce its foundation on the faithful."
He pointed to several Obama administration decisions that he said have damaged "the fundamental society that is the family," citing the repeal of the conscience clause, which prohibits health care workers from refusing to participate in abortion-related services; repeal of the Mexico City policy, which allows federal funding to be used abroad to provide abortions; presidential support of the Freedom of Choice Act, which prevents government from in any way denying or interfering with a woman's right to choose; and support of the U.S. Population Fund, which he noted supports China's one-child policy.
He blamed loose morals for legislation that would allow same-sex marriages and repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, which states have implemented to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
"At the root of the confusion and error about marriage is the contraceptive mentality which would have us believe that the inherently procreative nature of the conjugal union can in practice be mechanically or chemically eliminated while the marital act remains unitive. It simply cannot be sold," Burke said.
Obama has considerable support from Catholics, having won 54 percent of the Catholic vote in the presidential election. In a Quinnipiac national poll released at the end of last month, 57 percent of Catholics said they approve of the way Obama is doing his job, while 33 percent disapproved.
By comparison, 76 percent of Jewish voters approved of Obama's performance while Protestants were the most split -- 44 percent approval to 42 percent disapproval. The poll had 2,041 registered voters
Burke noted the Catholic support, saying a majority of Catholics freely chose leadership that is now implementing decisions that conflict with the tenets of their faith.
"The path of violation of the most fundamental human rights and of the integrity of marriage and the family which our nation is traveling is not accidental," he said. "As Catholics, we cannot fail to notice with the greatest sadness the number of our fellow Catholics who cooperate fully to the advancement of a national agenda which is anti-life and anti-family."
The archbishop also slammed Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who was confirmed by the Senate last week on a 65-31 vote. Opponents cited her ties to an late-term abortion provider, George Tillman, who is a supporter of the former Kansas governor.
"The appointment of a Catholic as secretary of health and human services who has openly and consistently cooperated with the industry of procurative abortion in our nation is necessarily the source of the deepest embarrassment to Catholics and a painful reminder of the most serious responsibility of Catholics to uphold the moral law, which is the irreplaceable foundation of just relationships among the citizens of our nation," Burke said.
He added that it "grieves me to say that the support of anti-life legislation by Catholics in public office is so common that those who are not Catholics have justifiably questioned whether the church's teachings regarding the inviolable dignity of innocent human life is firm and unchanging. It gives the impression that the church herself can change the law that God has written on every human heart since the beginning of time."
After initial criticism of the invitation, Notre Dame University President Rev. John I. Jenkins called Obama an "inspiring leader" who follows in a long tradition of presidential guest speakers. He added that the invitation does not mean universal support for Obama administration policies.
"The invitation to President Obama to be our commencement speaker should not be taken as condoning or endorsing his positions on specific issues regarding the protection of human life, including abortion and embryonic stem cell research. Yet, we see his visit as a basis for further positive engagement," he said in a statement addressing the cricitism.
The White House also has heard the criticism about the president's appearance but is not deterred. The president "greatly looks forward to delivering the commencement address at Notre Dame" on May 17, said a spokesman.
"Any commencement is a very special occasion for students and families that are involved. I think Notre Dame has a strong record of healthy exchange of differing viewpoints and ideas," the spokesman said.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Ten Years Later, Boy's 'Hand of Hope' Continues to Spark Debate
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
By Joshua Rhett Miller
Print ShareThis
The Armas Family
Samuel Armas, 9, proudly displays ribbons he's won for swimming. Backstroke is his best stroke, he said.
Samuel Armas, 9, proudly displays ribbons he's won for swimming. Backstroke is his best stroke, he said.
Nearly 10 years after a stunning photograph of his tiny hand traveled the world, Samuel Armas has a firm grip on what "The Hand of Hope" means to him.
"When I see that picture, the first thing I think of is how special and lucky I am to have God use me that way," Samuel told FOXNews.com. "I feel very thankful that I was in that picture."
On Aug. 19, 1999, photographer Michael Clancy shot the "Fetal Hand Grasp" — his picture of a 21-week-old fetus grasping a doctor's finger during innovative surgery to correct spina bifida. Nearly four months later, on Dec. 2, Samuel Armas was "born famous."
The photo, which first appeared in USA Today on Sept. 7, 1999, quickly spread across the globe as proof of development in the womb and was later cited during congressional debates on the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which passed in 2000.
"It's just a miracle picture, a miracle moment," Clancy told FOXNews.com. "It shows the earliest human interaction ever recorded."
• Click here for photos.
Samuel, now 9 and living in Villa Rica, Ga., said the photo likely gave countless "babies their right to live" and forced many others to debate their beliefs on abortion, something he's proud of.
"It's very important to me," Samuel said of the photograph. "A lot of babies would've lost their lives if that didn't happen."
Julie Armas, Samuel's mother, said her eldest son has a "very strong sense of right and wrong" and understands the impact of his unconventional first baby photo.
"He identifies it more in terms of a pro-life message more than anything," she told FOXNews.com. "This photo happened and God used it to show people that this baby in mom's tummy is alive. He's pleased that his photo conveyed that message."
Armas said Samuel will wear lower leg braces for the rest of his life as a result of spina bifida, which occurs when the spine fails to close properly during early pregnancy. He'll also use a wheelchair during long trips, as he did at Great Adventure earlier this week. But the mother of three said Samuel "walks great" and has been lucky enough to avoid some surgeries associated with his condition.
"He's doing extremely well," she told FOXNews.com. "We pray that he continues to be as healthy and able as he has been."
Samuel's condition hasn't slowed his activities as a decorated Cub Scout or in the swimming pool, where he took first place last weekend in a 25-yard backstroke event.
"I love to swim," Samuel said of his typical Saturday activity. "You use your arms a lot and it gives your arms great muscles."
The third-grader also loves science and animals, especially orcas, bald eagles and tigers. And he still collects bugs, something his father, Alex, revealed during a Senate hearing in 2003 to highlight advances in fetal surgery.
"Anything we see, he wants to catch and put it in a jar to watch it," Julie Armas said. "He's a great kid, he really is. He's very gentle; he's very laid-back."
Clancy, who hasn't photographed a surgery since Samuel's, recalled meeting him for just the third time in 2007 during an event for Come Alive Ministries in Atlanta.
"His eyes just lit up because he was born famous because of that picture," Clancy told FOXNews.com. "It was amazing."
Clancy, who was a freelancer for USA Today when he photographed Samuel's fully-formed hand, now works as a motivational speaker at pro-life events. Prior to the picture, Clancy said, he was pro-choice.
"And that's what I'm going to do, keep telling this story," he said. "It can change people's hearts. What started off as an assignment turned into a responsibility to keep telling the story behind it."
A crucial part of the story, Clancy argues, is whether Samuel reached through the 8-inch opening in his mother's uterus and grabbed Dr. Joseph Bruner's hand, or if the doctor manipulated the hand during surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee.
"I could see the uterus shake violently and then this little fist came out of the surgical opening," Clancy recalls. "It came out under its own power. When Dr. Bruner lifted the little hand, I fired my camera and the tighter Samuel squeezed, the harder Dr. Bruner shook his hand."
Bruner, who could not be reached for comment, has told reporters that Samuel and his mother were under anesthesia and could not move. In a Jan. 9, 2000, article in The Tennessean, he said he pulled Samuel's hand out of the uterus, further complicating the debate surrounding the photograph.
But none of that matters to Julie Armas. Samuel continues to thrive, and he is leading the way for his 3-year-old brother, Zachary, who also has spina bifida.
"I don't care, honestly," Julie Armas said. "What I felt the picture showed is that this is a child engaging in some form of interaction. I'm a labor and delivery nurse, so I understand that Samuel was anesthetized to some degree.
"So if he reached out, I don't know. If Dr. Bruner reached out, I don't know. The fact of the matter is it's a child with a hand, with a life, and that's meaningful enough."
Friday, April 24, 2009
Concern Grows Over Possible Swine Flu Pandemic
April 24, 2009: Women wear masks as they walk past a closed school in Mexico City.
MEXICO CITY — A unique strain of swine flu is the suspected killer of dozens of people in Mexico, where authorities closed schools, museums, libraries and theaters in the capital on Friday to try to contain an outbreak that has spurred concerns of a global flu epidemic.
The worrisome new virus — which combines genetic material from pigs, birds and humans in a way researchers have not seen before — also sickened at least eight people in Texas and California, though there have been no deaths in the U.S.
"We are very, very concerned," World Health Organization spokesman Thomas Abraham said. "We have what appears to be a novel virus and it has spread from human to human ... It's all hands on deck at the moment."
The outbreak caused alarm in Mexico, where more than 1,000 people have been sickened. Residents of the capital donned surgical masks and authorities ordered the most sweeping shutdown of public gathering places in a quarter century. President Felipe Calderon met with his Cabinet Friday to coordinate Mexico's response.
The WHO was convening an expert panel to consider whether to raise the pandemic alert level or issue travel advisories.
Click here for more about the swine flu.
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It might already be too late to contain the outbreak, a prominent U.S. pandemic flu expert said late Friday.
Given how quickly flu can spread around the globe, if these are the first signs of a pandemic, then there are probably cases incubating around the world already, said Dr. Michael Osterholm at the University of Minnesota.
In Mexico City, "literally hundreds and thousands of travelers come in and out every day," Osterholm said. "You'd have to believe there's been more unrecognized transmission that's occurred."
PHOTOS: Swine Flu Outbreak in Mexico
There is no vaccine that specifically protects against swine flu, and it was unclear how much protection current human flu vaccines might offer. A "seed stock" genetically matched to the new swine flu virus has been created by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, said Dr. Richard Besser, the agency's acting director. If the government decides vaccine production is necessary, manufacturers would need that stock to get started.
Related Stories
CDC: 8 Confirmed Cases of Swine Flu in U.S.
CDC Says Too Late to Contain U.S. Swine Flu Outbreak
WHO Ready to Combat Swine Flu
Authorities in Mexico urged people to avoid hospitals unless they had a medical emergency, since hospitals are centers of infection. They also said Mexicans should refrain from customary greetings such as shaking hands or kissing cheeks. At Mexico City's international airport, passengers were questioned to try to prevent anyone with flu symptoms from boarding airplanes and spreading the disease.
Epidemiologists are particularly concerned because the only fatalities so far were in young people and adults.
RELATED: 10 Mysterious Illnesses - Have You Had One?
The eight U.S. victims recovered from symptoms that were like those of the regular flu, mostly fever, cough and sore throat, though some also experienced vomiting and diarrhea.
U.S. health officials announced an outbreak notice to travelers, urging caution and frequent handwashing, but stopping short of telling Americans to avoid Mexico.
Mexico's Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordoba said 68 people have died of flu and the new swine flu strain had been confirmed in 20 of those deaths. At least 1,004 people nationwide were sick from the suspected flu, he said.
The geographical spread of the outbreaks also concerned the WHO — while 13 of the 20 deaths were in Mexico City, the rest were spread across Mexico — four in central San Luis Potosi, two up near the U.S. border in Baja California, and one in southern Oaxaca state.
Scientists have long been concerned that a new flu virus could launch a worldwide pandemic of a killer disease. A new virus could evolve when different flu viruses infect a pig, a person or a bird, mingling their genetic material. The resulting hybrid could spread quickly because people would have no natural defenses against it.
Still, flu experts were concerned but not alarmed about the latest outbreak.
"We've seen swine influenza in humans over the past several years, and in most cases, it's come from direct pig contact. This seems to be different," said Dr. Arnold Monto, a flu expert with the University of Michigan.
"I think we need to be careful and not apprehensive, but certainly paying attention to new developments as they proceed."
The CDC says two flu drugs, Tamiflu and Relenza, seem effective against the new strain. Roche, the maker of Tamiflu, said the company is prepared to immediately deploy a stockpile of the drug if requested.
Both drugs must be taken early, within a few days of the onset of symptoms, to be most effective.
Cordoba said Mexico has enough Tamiflu to treat 1 million people, but the medicine will be strictly controlled and handed out only by doctors.
Mexico's government had maintained until late Thursday that there was nothing unusual about the flu cases, although this year's flu season had been worse and longer than past years.
The sudden turnaround by public health officials angered many Mexicans.
"They could have stopped it in time," said Araceli Cruz, 24, a university student who emerged from the subway wearing a surgical mask. "Now they've let it spread to other people."
The city was handing out free surgical masks to passengers on buses and the subway system, which carries 5 million people each day. Government workers were ordered to wear the masks, and authorities urged residents to stay home from work if they felt ill.
Closing schools across Mexico's capital of 20 million kept 6.1 million students home, as well as thousands of university students. All state and city-run cultural activities were suspended, including libraries, state-run theaters, and at least 14 museums. Private athletic clubs closed down and soccer leagues were considering canceling weekend games.
The closures were the first citywide shutdown of public gathering places since thousands died in the devastating 1985 earthquake.
Mexico's response brought to mind other major outbreaks, such as when SARS hit Asia. At its peak in 2003, Beijing shuttered schools, cinemas and restaurants, and thousands of people were quarantined at home.
In March 2008, Hong Kong ordered more than a half-million students to stay home for two weeks because of a flu outbreak. It was the first such closure in Hong Kong since the outbreak of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome.
"It's great they are taking precautions," said Lillian Molina, a teacher at the Montessori's World preschool in Mexico City, who scrubbed down empty classrooms with Clorox, soap and Lysol between fielding calls from worried parents.
U.S. health officials said the outbreak is not yet a reason for alarm in the United States. The five people sickened in California and three in Texas have all recovered.
It's unclear how the eight, who became ill between late March and mid-April, contracted the virus because none were in contact with pigs, which is how people usually catch swine flu. And only a few were in contact with each other.
CDC officials described the virus as having a unique combination of gene segments not seen before in people or pigs. The bug contains human virus, avian virus from North America and pig viruses from North America, Europe and Asia. It may be completely new, or it may have been around for a while and was only detected now through improved testing and surveillance, CDC officials said.
The most notorious flu pandemic is thought to have killed at least 40 million people worldwide in 1918-19. Two other, less deadly flu pandemics struck in 1957 and 1968.
MEXICO CITY — A unique strain of swine flu is the suspected killer of dozens of people in Mexico, where authorities closed schools, museums, libraries and theaters in the capital on Friday to try to contain an outbreak that has spurred concerns of a global flu epidemic.
The worrisome new virus — which combines genetic material from pigs, birds and humans in a way researchers have not seen before — also sickened at least eight people in Texas and California, though there have been no deaths in the U.S.
"We are very, very concerned," World Health Organization spokesman Thomas Abraham said. "We have what appears to be a novel virus and it has spread from human to human ... It's all hands on deck at the moment."
The outbreak caused alarm in Mexico, where more than 1,000 people have been sickened. Residents of the capital donned surgical masks and authorities ordered the most sweeping shutdown of public gathering places in a quarter century. President Felipe Calderon met with his Cabinet Friday to coordinate Mexico's response.
The WHO was convening an expert panel to consider whether to raise the pandemic alert level or issue travel advisories.
Click here for more about the swine flu.
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qas_writeAd();
It might already be too late to contain the outbreak, a prominent U.S. pandemic flu expert said late Friday.
Given how quickly flu can spread around the globe, if these are the first signs of a pandemic, then there are probably cases incubating around the world already, said Dr. Michael Osterholm at the University of Minnesota.
In Mexico City, "literally hundreds and thousands of travelers come in and out every day," Osterholm said. "You'd have to believe there's been more unrecognized transmission that's occurred."
PHOTOS: Swine Flu Outbreak in Mexico
There is no vaccine that specifically protects against swine flu, and it was unclear how much protection current human flu vaccines might offer. A "seed stock" genetically matched to the new swine flu virus has been created by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, said Dr. Richard Besser, the agency's acting director. If the government decides vaccine production is necessary, manufacturers would need that stock to get started.
Related Stories
CDC: 8 Confirmed Cases of Swine Flu in U.S.
CDC Says Too Late to Contain U.S. Swine Flu Outbreak
WHO Ready to Combat Swine Flu
Authorities in Mexico urged people to avoid hospitals unless they had a medical emergency, since hospitals are centers of infection. They also said Mexicans should refrain from customary greetings such as shaking hands or kissing cheeks. At Mexico City's international airport, passengers were questioned to try to prevent anyone with flu symptoms from boarding airplanes and spreading the disease.
Epidemiologists are particularly concerned because the only fatalities so far were in young people and adults.
RELATED: 10 Mysterious Illnesses - Have You Had One?
The eight U.S. victims recovered from symptoms that were like those of the regular flu, mostly fever, cough and sore throat, though some also experienced vomiting and diarrhea.
U.S. health officials announced an outbreak notice to travelers, urging caution and frequent handwashing, but stopping short of telling Americans to avoid Mexico.
Mexico's Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordoba said 68 people have died of flu and the new swine flu strain had been confirmed in 20 of those deaths. At least 1,004 people nationwide were sick from the suspected flu, he said.
The geographical spread of the outbreaks also concerned the WHO — while 13 of the 20 deaths were in Mexico City, the rest were spread across Mexico — four in central San Luis Potosi, two up near the U.S. border in Baja California, and one in southern Oaxaca state.
Scientists have long been concerned that a new flu virus could launch a worldwide pandemic of a killer disease. A new virus could evolve when different flu viruses infect a pig, a person or a bird, mingling their genetic material. The resulting hybrid could spread quickly because people would have no natural defenses against it.
Still, flu experts were concerned but not alarmed about the latest outbreak.
"We've seen swine influenza in humans over the past several years, and in most cases, it's come from direct pig contact. This seems to be different," said Dr. Arnold Monto, a flu expert with the University of Michigan.
"I think we need to be careful and not apprehensive, but certainly paying attention to new developments as they proceed."
The CDC says two flu drugs, Tamiflu and Relenza, seem effective against the new strain. Roche, the maker of Tamiflu, said the company is prepared to immediately deploy a stockpile of the drug if requested.
Both drugs must be taken early, within a few days of the onset of symptoms, to be most effective.
Cordoba said Mexico has enough Tamiflu to treat 1 million people, but the medicine will be strictly controlled and handed out only by doctors.
Mexico's government had maintained until late Thursday that there was nothing unusual about the flu cases, although this year's flu season had been worse and longer than past years.
The sudden turnaround by public health officials angered many Mexicans.
"They could have stopped it in time," said Araceli Cruz, 24, a university student who emerged from the subway wearing a surgical mask. "Now they've let it spread to other people."
The city was handing out free surgical masks to passengers on buses and the subway system, which carries 5 million people each day. Government workers were ordered to wear the masks, and authorities urged residents to stay home from work if they felt ill.
Closing schools across Mexico's capital of 20 million kept 6.1 million students home, as well as thousands of university students. All state and city-run cultural activities were suspended, including libraries, state-run theaters, and at least 14 museums. Private athletic clubs closed down and soccer leagues were considering canceling weekend games.
The closures were the first citywide shutdown of public gathering places since thousands died in the devastating 1985 earthquake.
Mexico's response brought to mind other major outbreaks, such as when SARS hit Asia. At its peak in 2003, Beijing shuttered schools, cinemas and restaurants, and thousands of people were quarantined at home.
In March 2008, Hong Kong ordered more than a half-million students to stay home for two weeks because of a flu outbreak. It was the first such closure in Hong Kong since the outbreak of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome.
"It's great they are taking precautions," said Lillian Molina, a teacher at the Montessori's World preschool in Mexico City, who scrubbed down empty classrooms with Clorox, soap and Lysol between fielding calls from worried parents.
U.S. health officials said the outbreak is not yet a reason for alarm in the United States. The five people sickened in California and three in Texas have all recovered.
It's unclear how the eight, who became ill between late March and mid-April, contracted the virus because none were in contact with pigs, which is how people usually catch swine flu. And only a few were in contact with each other.
CDC officials described the virus as having a unique combination of gene segments not seen before in people or pigs. The bug contains human virus, avian virus from North America and pig viruses from North America, Europe and Asia. It may be completely new, or it may have been around for a while and was only detected now through improved testing and surveillance, CDC officials said.
The most notorious flu pandemic is thought to have killed at least 40 million people worldwide in 1918-19. Two other, less deadly flu pandemics struck in 1957 and 1968.
Monday, April 20, 2009
The Myth of 90 Percent: Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come From U.S.
While 90 percent of the guns traced to the U.S. actually originated in the United States, the percent traced to the U.S. is only about 17 percent of the total number of guns reaching Mexico.
By William La Jeunesse and Maxim Lott
FOXNews.com
Thursday, April 02, 2009
FILE: In this Nov. 7, 2008, photo a soldier stands guard during the presentation in Mexico City of arms, captured in the largest seizure of Gulf drug-cartel weapons to date, about 288 assault rifles, 500,000 rounds of ammunition, numerous grenades and several .50-caliber rifles (AP).
EXCLUSIVE: You've heard this shocking "fact" before -- on TV and radio, in newspapers, on the Internet and from the highest politicians in the land: 90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States.
-- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it to reporters on a flight to Mexico City.
-- CBS newsman Bob Schieffer referred to it while interviewing President Obama.
-- California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said at a Senate hearing: "It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors ... come from the United States."
-- William Hoover, assistant director for field operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, testified in the House of Representatives that "there is more than enough evidence to indicate that over 90 percent of the firearms that have either been recovered in, or interdicted in transport to Mexico, originated from various sources within the United States."
There's just one problem with the 90 percent "statistic" and it's a big one:
It's just not true.
In fact, it's not even close. The fact is, only 17 percent of guns found at Mexican crime scenes have been traced to the U.S.
What's true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency's assistant director, "is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S."
But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S.
"Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number on it that would make it traceable, and the U.S. effort to trace weapons really only extends to weapons that have been in the U.S. market," Matt Allen, special agent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told FOX News.
A Look at the Numbers
In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were successfully traced -- and of those, 90 percent -- 5,114 to be exact, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover -- were found to have come from the U.S.
But in those same two years, according to the Mexican government, 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes.
In other words, 68 percent of the guns that were recovered were never submitted for tracing. And when you weed out the roughly 6,000 guns that could not be traced from the remaining 32 percent, it means 83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S.
So, if not from the U.S., where do they come from? There are a variety of sources:
-- The Black Market. Mexico is a virtual arms bazaar, with fragmentation grenades from South Korea, AK-47s from China, and shoulder-fired rocket launchers from Spain, Israel and former Soviet bloc manufacturers.
-- Russian crime organizations. Interpol says Russian Mafia groups such as Poldolskaya and Moscow-based Solntsevskaya are actively trafficking drugs and arms in Mexico.
- South America. During the late 1990s, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) established a clandestine arms smuggling and drug trafficking partnership with the Tijuana cartel, according to the Federal Research Division report from the Library of Congress.
-- Asia. According to a 2006 Amnesty International Report, China has provided arms to countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Chinese assault weapons and Korean explosives have been recovered in Mexico.
-- The Mexican Army. More than 150,000 soldiers deserted in the last six years, according to Mexican Congressman Robert Badillo. Many took their weapons with them, including the standard issue M-16 assault rifle made in Belgium.
-- Guatemala. U.S. intelligence agencies say traffickers move immigrants, stolen cars, guns and drugs, including most of America's cocaine, along the porous Mexican-Guatemalan border. On March 27, La Hora, a Guatemalan newspaper, reported that police seized 500 grenades and a load of AK-47s on the border. Police say the cache was transported by a Mexican drug cartel operating out of Ixcan, a border town.
'These Don't Come From El Paso'
Ed Head, a firearms instructor in Arizona who spent 24 years with the U.S. Border Patrol, recently displayed an array of weapons considered "assault rifles" that are similar to those recovered in Mexico, but are unavailable for sale in the U.S.
"These kinds of guns -- the auto versions of these guns -- they are not coming from El Paso," he said. "They are coming from other sources. They are brought in from Guatemala. They are brought in from places like China. They are being diverted from the military. But you don't get these guns from the U.S."
Some guns, he said, "are legitimately shipped to the government of Mexico, by Colt, for example, in the United States. They are approved by the U.S. government for use by the Mexican military service. The guns end up in Mexico that way -- the fully auto versions -- they are not smuggled in across the river."
Many of the fully automatic weapons that have been seized in Mexico cannot be found in the U.S., but they are not uncommon in the Third World.
The Mexican government said it has seized 2,239 grenades in the last two years -- but those grenades and the rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) are unavailable in U.S. gun shops. The ones used in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey in October and a TV station in January were made in South Korea. Almost 70 similar grenades were seized in February in the bottom of a truck entering Mexico from Guatemala.
"Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semi-automatic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California," according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.
Boatloads of Weapons
So why would the Mexican drug cartels, which last year grossed between $17 billion and $38 billion, bother buying single-shot rifles, and force thousands of unknown "straw" buyers in the U.S. through a government background check, when they can buy boatloads of fully automatic M-16s and assault rifles from China, Israel or South Africa?
Alberto Islas, a security consultant who advises the Mexican government, says the drug cartels are using the Guatemalan border to move black market weapons. Some are left over from the Central American wars the United States helped fight; others, like the grenades and launchers, are South Korean, Israeli and Spanish. Some were legally supplied to the Mexican government; others were sold by corrupt military officers or officials.
The exaggeration of United States "responsibility" for the lawlessness in Mexico extends even beyond the "90-percent" falsehood -- and some Second Amendment activists believe it's designed to promote more restrictive gun-control laws in the U.S.
In a remarkable claim, Auturo Sarukhan, the Mexican ambassador to the U.S., said Mexico seizes 2,000 guns a day from the United States -- 730,000 a year. That's a far cry from the official statistic from the Mexican attorney general's office, which says Mexico seized 29,000 weapons in all of 2007 and 2008.
Chris Cox, spokesman for the National Rifle Association, blames the media and anti-gun politicians in the U.S. for misrepresenting where Mexican weapons come from.
"Reporter after politician after news anchor just disregards the truth on this," Cox said. "The numbers are intentionally used to weaken the Second Amendment."
"The predominant source of guns in Mexico is Central and South America. You also have Russian, Chinese and Israeli guns. It's estimated that over 100,000 soldiers deserted the army to work for the drug cartels, and that ignores all the police. How many of them took their weapons with them?"
But Tom Diaz, senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center, called the "90 percent" issue a red herring and said that it should not detract from the effort to stop gun trafficking into Mexico.
"Let's do what we can with what we know," he said. "We know that one hell of a lot of firearms come from the United States because our gun market is wide open."
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Cancer - Turn It On, Turn It OffCancer - Turn It On or Turn It Offby Raymond Francis
America has one of the highest cancer rates in the world, and cancer is the most dreaded disease in our society. Once rare, affecting less than one in a thousand, by 1900 cancer affected 30 in a thousand. Today almost 500 in a thousand will develop cancer in their lifetimes. The situation has become so bad that almost all Americans over the age of 50 have cancer! For example, it is known that after age 50, 40 percent of men have prostate cancer and 40 percent of women have breast cancer, and these are just two cancers. Cancer is also increasing among children and, after accidents, it is their biggest killer. We need to teach people how to prevent and reverse this tragic diseaseUnfortunately, modern medicine is of no help. Since 1971, when President Nixon declared “war” on cancer, we have thrown 200 billion dollars at cancer research. What has this money bought us? More cancer! The public has yet to grasp the colossal gap between how much money the cancer industry is spending, and the paltry results it is achieving. Research is only part of the billion dollar-a-day cancer industry whose treatments with drugs, surgery and radiation are not only ineffective but dangerous. These conventional treatments do nothing to address what caused the cancer, and they suppress the immune system. Suppressed immunity allows cancer to grow and metastasize—modern medicine’s treatment of cancer promotes cancer!Fortunately, we can protect ourselves. If you are over age 50, you are probably past preventing cancer, you already have it! Now you need to keep it under control. Don’t turn the cancer on, and if you already have active cancer, turn it off. Can this be done? Sure it can, and it is done every day by people who take charge of their health.Last September, businessman Paul Orberson told his story on the Beyond Health radio show. Mr. Orberson had been diagnosed with advanced kidney cancer. Given only months to live, he read my book Never Be Sick Again—and put his cancer into remission. Fifteen years ago, my brother was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer and given months to live. He, too, put his cancer into remission and is living a high-quality life. Medical school professor and author Dr. Lorraine Day reversed her highly-advanced breast cancer. There are countless such stories. To prevent and reverse cancer, it helps to understand something about what causes and promotes cancer. The cancer process occurs in three stages: initiation, promotion and metastasis.InitiationCancer begins with damaged genes. Initiation occurs when the DNA in a normal cell is damaged. If the DNA is not repaired before the cell divides to form a new cell, it results in a permanent genetic alteration in those new cells. DNA can be damaged by a variety of means, including viruses, chronic infections, foreign bodies, nutrient deficiency, radiation and toxic chemicals. Numerous natural and manmade chemicals have been identified as carcinogenic. Upon exposure, these chemicals can, in a matter of minutes, cause potentially permanent damage to DNA. Such chemicals include many common household chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, food additives, fluoride and metals such as mercury and lead. We live in a sea of carcinogens and must learn how to avoid them. Radiation is carcinogenic; it damages DNA. This is why mammograms cause breast cancer, and why medical X-rays play a major role in our cancer epidemic.Due to our exposure to carcinogenic chemicals and X-rays, most of our older population and many of our younger people have completed this initiation, and they have clusters of cancer cells throughout their bodies. This stage of cancer is not believed to be reversible. Given the right conditions, these cells will grow and then metastasize. Preventing InitiationDNA is being damaged and cancer is being initiated on a grand scale. Our best defense is to support DNA repair with good nutrition while avoiding carcinogenic chemicals and radiation. We have been irresponsibly exposed to radiation by our doctors and dentists. Decline routine X-rays. Allow only those that are absolutely necessary, and there are very few of those. We have been exposed to DNA-damaging viruses through vaccinations. Avoid vaccinations. Vaccine-induced, DNA-damaging viruses are showing up in a variety of cancers including lymph, lung, brain and bone. Avoid foods that have been heated to high temperatures, such as barbecued meat, as this causes formation of powerful carcinogens. Any food that has been blackened is dangerous, including toast. Avoid peanuts and corn products as these are often high in aflatoxins, which are potent carcinogens. Fluoride can inhibit DNA-repair enzymes. Avoid fluoridated water, toothpaste and processed foods. Beyond Health has approved a reverse osmosis system that effectively removes fluoride. Defects in DNA repair will increase the risk of developing cancer after being exposed to X-rays and chemicals. Certain nutrients are known to support the DNA repair process. These include vitamins B3, B6, B12, and folate, zinc and L-carnitine. Most Americans are deficient in one or more of these nutrients. According to the USDA, 73 percent of Americans are deficient in zinc, and 40 percent are deficient in B12. To optimize DNA repair, eat a diet rich in fresh, organic vegetables and fruits, and take high-quality nutritional supplements. Everyone should, at the very least, be on a superior vitamin/mineral formula like Perque 2.PromotionThe next step in the cancer process is promotion. This is when a small cluster of initiated cancer cells grows larger. These cells will not grow unless a precise group of conditions are met, allowing their growth-control mechanisms to be overridden. Certain foods are known to promote tumor growth and spread. Sugar, excess omega-6 oils and excess animal protein all promote cancer. Cancer cells differ from normal cells in that they are totally dependent on sugar to produce energy. So raising the sugar content of the blood feeds cancer cells and helps them grow. In addition, increased blood insulin is a powerful promoter of tumor growth and spread. Oils high in omega-6s such as corn, safflower, sunflower, peanut, soybean and canola oils are known to support cancer progression. Never eat these oils, or any of the thousands of products made with them, including baked goods and salad dressings. Perhaps the most significant factor of all is animal protein and most especially dairy protein. Animal protein, beyond what can be used for growth and daily repairs, promotes cancer, and the average American eats ten times too much. Excess animal protein is able to turn cancer on in experimental animals 100 percent of the time! A high-protein diet increases estrogen, and excess estrogen is known to promote a number of cancers.
Protein also acidifies the body and cancer thrives in an acid environment. Animal protein also contains large amounts of the amino acid methionine. Excess methionine is known to be a cancer promoter. Preventing and Reversing PromotionCancer promotion can be reversed. By eliminating cancer promoters and maximizing cancer inhibitors, it is possible to turn cancer off! We know fresh fruits and vegetables are cancer inhibitors—eat lots of them. We know that sugar, omega-6 oils and animal protein promote cancer—avoid them. Omega-6 oils not only promote cancer, they also suppress the immune system. Eat plenty of omega-3 oils to offset this effect; supplement with flax and fish oils. Turn cancer off by avoiding animal protein; this means avoiding meat, eggs, dairy and fish except in very small quantities. Avoid fruit juices; they contain too much easily-absorbable sugar. Cancer is highly iron dependent. Avoid iron-rich foods such as red meat. Avoiding fluoride is also important as fluoride can increase tumor growth by 25 percent.Fat soluble toxins bioaccumulate in the body. Their synergistic effect can be a powerful cancer promoter. The average person is accumulating hundreds of such chemicals, including pesticides, styrene, PCBs, dioxins, phthalates and fire retardants. The only reliable way to get rid of them is with regular saunas, which have become as necessary as regular exercise. (Beyond Health sells a sauna I researched and approved.)Chronic stress substantially increases free radical formation and also severely depresses the immune system. Both promote cancer. Using stress-reducing techniques such as meditation are important.MetastasisThe final stage of cancer is when it invades neighboring or distant tissues. Once again, a precise set of conditions must be met to allow this to happen. This stage of cancer causes death, but it too is reversible.
Preventing Metastasis When cancer cells enter the blood stream and get transported to other locations, they become very vulnerable to attack by the immune system. Strong immunity is critical to prevention. Cancer cells require special enzymes to invade other tissues. Studies have found that inhibiting these enzymes stops the spread of the cancer. Plant flavonols found in fruits and vegetables, such as quercitin and luteolin, are known to interfere with these enzymes.NutritionEating lots of fruits and vegetables is probably the single most important thing you can do to prevent or reverse cancer. Evidence is overwhelming that common vitamins, minerals and plant chemicals interfere with the cancer process at every level. Many chemicals found in plant foods are capable of turning cancer cells back into normal cells. Certain flavonoids found in vegetables have been found to suppress and even to kill cancer cells. In fact, food and nutritional supplements have a far more powerful effect on cancer than chemotherapy.
Since almost all Americans are deficient in vitamins and minerals, supplements are necessary. Here is a list of the nutrients known to inhibit cancer: vitamins A, all the Bs, C, D, E, beta carotene, choline, selenium, acetyl L-carnitine, alpha lipoic acid, zinc, magnesium, flavonoids and omega-3 oils.Nutrition improves immunity. Immune cells have a higher metabolic rate, and therefore, need more nutrients. Water soluble nutrients such as B vitamins and vitamin C are not stored well in the body and need constant replacement. When this does not happen, immunity is quickly affected. Whenever the immune system responds to a threat, billions of immune cells are needed quickly. These cells will be limited by the amount of nutrients available for their construction. Any vitamin or mineral deficiency will quickly be felt, impairing immunity. This is why the Beyond Health Life Essentials Comprehensive Kit, along with the Cancer Add-on Kit is a powerful anti-cancer regimen. The bad news is that cancer is an out-of-control epidemic. The good news is that cancer is a complex disease requiring the successful completion of many steps to make it happen—this provides us with multiple opportunities for its prevention and reversal. The most powerful preventive and healing tools are fresh fruits and vegetables plus high quality supplements. Raymond Francis is an M.I.T.-trained scientist, a registered nutrition consultant, author of Never Be Sick Again, host of the Beyond Health Show and an internationally recognized leader in the field of optimal health maintenance. He is the president of the San Jose, California chapter of Cancer Victors.www.beyondhealth.com - mail@beyondhealth.comCopyright 2006, Beyond Health
Protein also acidifies the body and cancer thrives in an acid environment. Animal protein also contains large amounts of the amino acid methionine. Excess methionine is known to be a cancer promoter. Preventing and Reversing PromotionCancer promotion can be reversed. By eliminating cancer promoters and maximizing cancer inhibitors, it is possible to turn cancer off! We know fresh fruits and vegetables are cancer inhibitors—eat lots of them. We know that sugar, omega-6 oils and animal protein promote cancer—avoid them. Omega-6 oils not only promote cancer, they also suppress the immune system. Eat plenty of omega-3 oils to offset this effect; supplement with flax and fish oils. Turn cancer off by avoiding animal protein; this means avoiding meat, eggs, dairy and fish except in very small quantities. Avoid fruit juices; they contain too much easily-absorbable sugar. Cancer is highly iron dependent. Avoid iron-rich foods such as red meat. Avoiding fluoride is also important as fluoride can increase tumor growth by 25 percent.Fat soluble toxins bioaccumulate in the body. Their synergistic effect can be a powerful cancer promoter. The average person is accumulating hundreds of such chemicals, including pesticides, styrene, PCBs, dioxins, phthalates and fire retardants. The only reliable way to get rid of them is with regular saunas, which have become as necessary as regular exercise. (Beyond Health sells a sauna I researched and approved.)Chronic stress substantially increases free radical formation and also severely depresses the immune system. Both promote cancer. Using stress-reducing techniques such as meditation are important.MetastasisThe final stage of cancer is when it invades neighboring or distant tissues. Once again, a precise set of conditions must be met to allow this to happen. This stage of cancer causes death, but it too is reversible.
Preventing Metastasis When cancer cells enter the blood stream and get transported to other locations, they become very vulnerable to attack by the immune system. Strong immunity is critical to prevention. Cancer cells require special enzymes to invade other tissues. Studies have found that inhibiting these enzymes stops the spread of the cancer. Plant flavonols found in fruits and vegetables, such as quercitin and luteolin, are known to interfere with these enzymes.NutritionEating lots of fruits and vegetables is probably the single most important thing you can do to prevent or reverse cancer. Evidence is overwhelming that common vitamins, minerals and plant chemicals interfere with the cancer process at every level. Many chemicals found in plant foods are capable of turning cancer cells back into normal cells. Certain flavonoids found in vegetables have been found to suppress and even to kill cancer cells. In fact, food and nutritional supplements have a far more powerful effect on cancer than chemotherapy.
Since almost all Americans are deficient in vitamins and minerals, supplements are necessary. Here is a list of the nutrients known to inhibit cancer: vitamins A, all the Bs, C, D, E, beta carotene, choline, selenium, acetyl L-carnitine, alpha lipoic acid, zinc, magnesium, flavonoids and omega-3 oils.Nutrition improves immunity. Immune cells have a higher metabolic rate, and therefore, need more nutrients. Water soluble nutrients such as B vitamins and vitamin C are not stored well in the body and need constant replacement. When this does not happen, immunity is quickly affected. Whenever the immune system responds to a threat, billions of immune cells are needed quickly. These cells will be limited by the amount of nutrients available for their construction. Any vitamin or mineral deficiency will quickly be felt, impairing immunity. This is why the Beyond Health Life Essentials Comprehensive Kit, along with the Cancer Add-on Kit is a powerful anti-cancer regimen. The bad news is that cancer is an out-of-control epidemic. The good news is that cancer is a complex disease requiring the successful completion of many steps to make it happen—this provides us with multiple opportunities for its prevention and reversal. The most powerful preventive and healing tools are fresh fruits and vegetables plus high quality supplements. Raymond Francis is an M.I.T.-trained scientist, a registered nutrition consultant, author of Never Be Sick Again, host of the Beyond Health Show and an internationally recognized leader in the field of optimal health maintenance. He is the president of the San Jose, California chapter of Cancer Victors.www.beyondhealth.com - mail@beyondhealth.comCopyright 2006, Beyond Health
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Venezuela: Chavez says he's willing to take Gitmo inmates
CARACAS, Venezuela (CNN) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says he would be willing to accept prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay detention center, which U.S. President Barack Obama has said he will close, the Venezuelan government said Thursday.
President Obama has pledged to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Chavez also said he hopes the United States will give Cuba back the land on which the naval base is located, the government said in a news release.
"We would not have any problem receiving a human being," the government release quoted Chavez as saying in an interview Wednesday with Al Jazeera TV.
The United States obtained the Guantanamo base in 1903, after Spain's surrender in the Spanish-American War of 1898. In 2002, then-President George W. Bush opened the detention center to hold what the Bush administration categorized as enemy combatants captured in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
U.S. officials have not said what will happen to prisoners at the camp when it closes, nor are there are any known plans for any to be sent to Venezuela.
Chavez attended the second summit of South American and Arab heads of state in Qatar earlier this week.
Speaking about Israel, Chavez said new Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is supported "by the extreme right," the government release said.
"I hope someday the Hebrew people will be liberated from that caste," the release quoted him as saying in the 90-minute Al Jazeera interview.
From Qatar, Chavez traveled to Iran, where he met with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday.Friday, February 27, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/21018/
WE Surround Them
February 23, 2009 - 2:06 ET
February 23, 2009 - 2:06 ET
We Surround Them-The Unveiling
March 13th on FOX News 5pm ET
Do you watch the direction that America is being taken in and feel powerless to stop it?
Do you believe that your voice isn’t loud enough to be heard above the noise anymore?
Do you read the headlines everyday and feel an empty pit in your stomach…as if you’re completely alone?
If so, then you’ve fallen for the Wizard of Oz lie. While the voices you hear in the distance may sound intimidating, as if they surround us from all sides—the reality is very different. Once you pull the curtain away you realize that there are only a few people pressing the buttons, and their voices are weak. The truth is that they don’t surround us at all.
Share this page with your friends and family...
We surround them.
So, how do we show America what’s really behind the curtain? Below are nine simple principles. If you believe in at least seven of them, then we have something in common. I urge you to read the instructions at the end for how to help make your voice heard.
12 Values
Honesty
Reverence
Hope
Thrift
Humility
Charity
Sincerity
Moderation
Hard Work
Courage
Personal Responsibility
Friendship
The Nine Principles
1. America is good.
2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.
3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.
4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.
5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.
6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.
7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.
8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.
9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.
You Are Not Alone
If you agree with at least seven of those principles, then you are not alone. Please send a digital version of your picture to: wesurroundthem@foxnews.com and then stay tuned to the radio and television shows over the coming weeks to see how we intend to pull back the curtain.
Picture updates...
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Television Executive Accused of Beheading Wife Remains Jailed
Television Executive Accused of Beheading Wife Remains JailedWednesday, February 18, 2009
By Joshua Rhett Miller
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Muzzammil Hassan, right, founder of Bridges TV, is charged with murder in the beheading of his wife, Aasiya Hassan, left, in Orchard Park, N.Y.
A Muslim-American television executive who allegedly beheaded his wife days after she filed for divorce remains jailed without bail following a court appearance in western New York.
Muzzammil Hassan, 44, did not speak during the brief appearance Wednesday before Judge Philip Marshall in Orchard Park Village Court, where an attorney waived Hassan's right to a felony hearing.
Officials at the Erie County District Attorney's Office told FOXNews.com that Hassan will now be held for possible grand jury action within 45 days.
Hassan — who was shackled at his wrists and ankles during his first court appearance — wore a tan suit, white shirt and a tie. He allegedly beheaded Aasiya Hassan, 37, on Thursday and surrendered to police. Hassan was later charged with the second-degree murder of his wife, whose body was found at the office of Bridges TV, their television station in Orchard Park, near Buffalo.
"He came in and said his wife was dead," said Orchard Park Police Chief Andrew Benz, who declined to elaborate on the particulars of his conversation with the suspect.
Reacting to speculation that the crime may have been an "honor killing," defense attorney James Harrington said "culture, religion doesn't play a role."
"It's not an issue in this case," said Harrington, who described the burly businessman as almost in shock.
"He has an almost blunted affect. He's having difficulty coping with this," the lawyer said.
Following multiple episodes of domestic violence, Aasiya Hassan filed for divorce on Feb. 6 and obtained an order of protection that barred her husband from their home, according to attorney Elizabeth DiPirro, whose law firm, Hogan Willig, represented Aasiya Hassan in the divorce proceeding.
The Islamic Society of North America issued a statement of condolence to Buffalo's Muslim community and urged leaders to take a strong stand against domestic violence.
"Women who seek divorce from their spouses because of physical abuse should get full support from the community and should not be viewed as someone who has brought shame to herself or her family," the statement by Imam Mohamed Hagmagid Ali said.
Muzzammil and Aasiya Hassan founded Bridges TV in November 2004 to counter anti-Islam stereotypes, touting the network as the "first-ever full-time home for American Muslims," according to a 2004 press release.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
See Next Story in U.S.
PrintShareThis
Muzzammil Hassan, right, founder of Bridges TV, is charged with murder in the beheading of his wife, Aasiya Hassan, left, in Orchard Park, N.Y.
A Muslim-American television executive who allegedly beheaded his wife days after she filed for divorce remains jailed without bail following a court appearance in western New York.
Muzzammil Hassan, 44, did not speak during the brief appearance Wednesday before Judge Philip Marshall in Orchard Park Village Court, where an attorney waived Hassan's right to a felony hearing.
Officials at the Erie County District Attorney's Office told FOXNews.com that Hassan will now be held for possible grand jury action within 45 days.
Hassan — who was shackled at his wrists and ankles during his first court appearance — wore a tan suit, white shirt and a tie. He allegedly beheaded Aasiya Hassan, 37, on Thursday and surrendered to police. Hassan was later charged with the second-degree murder of his wife, whose body was found at the office of Bridges TV, their television station in Orchard Park, near Buffalo.
"He came in and said his wife was dead," said Orchard Park Police Chief Andrew Benz, who declined to elaborate on the particulars of his conversation with the suspect.
Reacting to speculation that the crime may have been an "honor killing," defense attorney James Harrington said "culture, religion doesn't play a role."
"It's not an issue in this case," said Harrington, who described the burly businessman as almost in shock.
"He has an almost blunted affect. He's having difficulty coping with this," the lawyer said.
Following multiple episodes of domestic violence, Aasiya Hassan filed for divorce on Feb. 6 and obtained an order of protection that barred her husband from their home, according to attorney Elizabeth DiPirro, whose law firm, Hogan Willig, represented Aasiya Hassan in the divorce proceeding.
The Islamic Society of North America issued a statement of condolence to Buffalo's Muslim community and urged leaders to take a strong stand against domestic violence.
"Women who seek divorce from their spouses because of physical abuse should get full support from the community and should not be viewed as someone who has brought shame to herself or her family," the statement by Imam Mohamed Hagmagid Ali said.
Muzzammil and Aasiya Hassan founded Bridges TV in November 2004 to counter anti-Islam stereotypes, touting the network as the "first-ever full-time home for American Muslims," according to a 2004 press release.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
See Next Story in U.S.
Bird Suspected to Be Extinct Photographed for First Time ... Then Eaten
Bird Suspected to Be Extinct Photographed for First Time ... Then Eaten
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
A bird suspected to be extinct was reportedly photographed for the first time in the Philippines, and then sold to a poultry market as food.
Worcester's buttonquail was known only through illustrations based on decades-old museum specimens until a television crew documented the live bird in the market before it was sold in January, NationalGeographic.com reported.
Scientists had suspected the bird, found only on the island of Luzon, to be extinct, according to NationalGeographic.com.
Wild Bird Club of the Philippines President Michael Lu, told the Agence France-Press news agency that it’s unfortunate that the locals aren't more conscious of the threatened wildlife around them.
"What if this was the last of its species?" he said.
Worcester's buttonquail was known only through illustrations based on decades-old museum specimens until a television crew documented the live bird in the market before it was sold in January, NationalGeographic.com reported.
Scientists had suspected the bird, found only on the island of Luzon, to be extinct, according to NationalGeographic.com.
Wild Bird Club of the Philippines President Michael Lu, told the Agence France-Press news agency that it’s unfortunate that the locals aren't more conscious of the threatened wildlife around them.
"What if this was the last of its species?" he said.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Protect Life: Pope tells Pelosi to reject abortion
Pelosi, Pope Have No Meeting of the Minds
It would appear from the two statements issued by the Vatican and the speaker's office that Nancy Pelosi and Pope Benedict did not share the same views during her audience with the pontiff.
FOXNews.com
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican Wednesday morning, but may not have had a meeting of the minds if the two statements from their offices are any indication.
No journalists were at the 15-minute encounter and the Vatican and the speaker's offices have not released any photos. However, according to their statements it appears the pope and the politician attended two different get-togethers.
"His Holiness took the opportunity to speak of the requirements of the natural moral law and the Church's consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death which enjoins all Catholics, and especially legislators, jurists and those responsible for the common good of society, to work in cooperation with all men and women of good will in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development," the Vatican wrote, having released the statement moments before the two met.
Several hours later, Pelosi's office gave her take on the tete-a-tete.
"It is with great joy that my husband, Paul, and I met with his Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI today," Pelosi said in a statement released hours after the meeting. "In our conversation, I had the opportunity to praise the Church's leadership in fighting poverty, hunger and global warming, as well as the Holy Father's dedication to religious freedom and his upcoming trip and message to Israel. I was proud to show his Holiness a photograph of my family's papal visit in the 1950s, as well as a recent picture of our children and grandchildren."
The pontiff has a long history of urging Catholic politicians to toe the line on abortion, and has said that those who don't shouldn't take communion. Pelosi supports abortion rights and says she's never been denied communion at her church in San Francisco.
In 2002, the Vatican issued a doctrinal note on "The Participation of Catholics in Political Life," which states rather succinctly that politicians who profess to be Catholic have a "grave and clear obligation" to oppose any law that attacks human life.
That note was approved by John Paul II but signed by none other than Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. He's now the pope.
The speaker does not share that belief, and even got into a verbal slugfest with American bishops last August after her statements on a news program about the Church's view of when life begins.
"I would say that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time. And what I know is, over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition. And St. Augustine said at three months, we don't know. The point is, is that it shouldn't have an impact on the woman's right to choose," she said at the time on NBC's "Meet the Press."
She then added that the Church has only held the view for 50 years or so that life begins at conception. The remarks earned her widespread corrections by Catholic clerics.
FOX News' Greg Burke contributed to this report.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Doctor loses license in live birth abortion case, cnn
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/02/06/florida.abortion/
From Kim Segal
CNN
MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- A doctor's license was revoked Friday in the case of a teenager who planned to have an abortion but instead gave birth to a baby she says was killed when clinic staffers put it into a plastic bag and threw it in the trash.
Pierre Jean-Jacques Renelique, right, and his attorney, Joseph Harrison, at the hearing.
The doctor, Pierre Jean-Jacques Renelique, also is the subject of a criminal investigation. Renelique was not present when the baby was born, but the Florida Medical Board upheld Department of Health allegations that he falsified medical records, inappropriately delegated tasks to unlicensed personnel and committed malpractice.
Joseph Harrison, the attorney representing Renelique at the license revocation hearing in Tampa, said Renelique has not decided whether to appeal.
The state attorney's office, meanwhile, said its criminal investigation into the incident is ongoing and no charges have been filed. A fetus born alive cannot be put to death even if its mother intended to have an abortion, police said when the incident occurred in 2006.
The baby's mother, Sycloria Williams, sued Renelique, the clinic and its staff in January, seeking damages.
She alleges in her suit that "she witnessed the murder of her daughter" and said she "sustained severe emotional distress, shock and psychic trauma which have resulted in discernible bodily injury."
"This is not about a pot of gold," said Tom Pennekamp, her attorney. "What this is about is right and wrong and making a statement, making sure it doesn't happen to other young women."
According to the suit, Williams, then 18, discovered while being treated for a fall that she was 23 weeks pregnant. She went to a clinic to get an abortion on the morning of July 20, 2006, after receiving medication and instructions the previous day.
Renelique was not at the clinic, however, and Williams was told to wait for him. She was given two pills and told they would make her ill. When she complained of feeling ill, clinic staff members gave her a robe and told her to lie down in a patient room, the suit says.
Renelique was still not present when Williams "felt a large pain" and delivered a baby girl, according to the suit.
"The staff began screaming and pandemonium ensued. Sycloria watched in horror and shock as her baby writhed with her chest rising and falling as she breathed."
A clinic co-owner entered the room and used a pair of shears to cut the baby's umbilical cord, the suit said. She "then scooped up the baby and placed the live baby, placenta and afterbirth in a red plastic biohazard bag, which she sealed, and then threw bag and the baby in a trash can."
Staff at the clinic did not call 911 or seek medical assistance for Williams or the baby, the suit said.
Renelique arrived at the clinic about an hour later and gave Williams a shot to put her to sleep. "She awoke after the procedure and was sent home still in complete shock," the suit said.
Police were notified of the incident by an anonymous caller who told them the baby was born alive and disposed of.
"The complainant [Williams] observed the baby moving and gasping for air for approximately five minutes," according to a police affidavit requesting a search warrant for the clinic.
Two search warrants found nothing, but officers executing a third warrant "found the decomposing body of a baby in a cardboard box in a closet," the suit said.
The baby was linked to Williams through DNA testing, the lawsuit said. An autopsy showed it had filled its lungs with air prior to death. Documents from the state Department of Health said its cause of death was determined to be "extreme prematurity."
Fewer than 1 percent of babies are born at less than 28 weeks, according to the March of Dimes, a nonprofit organization aimed at reducing premature births, birth defects and infant mortality.
Infants born at that stage may survive, but require treatment with oxygen, other medical help and mechanical assistance to help them breathe. They are too immature to suck or swallow and so must be fed intravenously.
Babies born before about 32 weeks of gestation face the highest risk of health problems, the March of Dimes said.
Williams' lawsuit seeks damages from Renelique, the clinic and its staff. It claims that clinic records were falsified to say only that Williams underwent an abortion. Williams filed the suit individually and "as personal representative of the estate of Shanice Denise Osbourne, deceased," the suit said.
The medical board's action Friday came at the request of the Florida Department of Health, which filed an order in February 2007 seeking emergency restrictions on Renelique's license. Department documents list many of the same allegations as Williams' lawsuit.
"Dr. Renelique's failure to practice medicine with that level of care, skill and treatment that is recognized as being acceptable, as well as his willingness to falsify medical records, poses a serious and immediate danger to the public," the health department said.
Renelique did not respond to the health department or dispute the facts it alleged, department spokeswoman Eulinda Jackson said Friday.
Williams has declined to speak publicly about the case, said Pennekamp, her attorney. She suffers from post-traumatic stress because of the experience, he said
Thursday, January 29, 2009
(This is from the guy who started the weather channel)
The Amazing Story Behind the Global Warming Scam
The Amazing Story Behind Tho Global Warming ScamBy John ColemanJanuary 28, 2009The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax we citizens for our carbon footprints. Only two details stand in the way, the faltering economic times and a dramatic turn toward a colder climate. The last two bitter winters have lead to a rise in public awareness that CO2 is not a pollutant and is not a significant greenhouse gas that is triggering runaway global warming.
How did we ever get to this point where bad science is driving big government we have to struggle so to stop it?
The story begins with an Oceanographer named Roger Revelle. He served with the Navy in World War II. After the war he became the Director of the Scripps Oceanographic Institute in La Jolla in San Diego, California. Revelle saw the opportunity to obtain major funding from the Navy for doing measurements and research on the ocean around the Pacific Atolls where the US military was conducting atomic bomb tests. He greatly expanded the Institute’s areas of interest and among others hired Hans Suess, a noted Chemist from the University of Chicago, who was very interested in the traces of carbon in the environment from the burning of fossil fuels. Revelle tagged on to Suess studies and co-authored a paper with him in 1957. The paper raises the possibility that the carbon dioxide might be creating a greenhouse effect and causing atmospheric warming. It seems to be a plea for funding for more studies. Funding, frankly, is where Revelle’s mind was most of the time.
Next Revelle hired a Geochemist named David Keeling to devise a way to measure the atmospheric content of Carbon dioxide. In 1960 Keeling published his first paper showing the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and linking the increase to the burning of fossil fuels.
These two research papers became the bedrock of the science of global warming, even though they offered no proof that carbon dioxide was in fact a greenhouse gas. In addition they failed to explain how this trace gas, only a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, could have any significant impact on temperatures.
Now let me take you back to the1950s when this was going on. Our cities were entrapped in a pall of pollution from the crude internal combustion engines that powered cars and trucks back then and from the uncontrolled emissions from power plants and factories. Cars and factories and power plants were filling the air with all sorts of pollutants. There was a valid and serious concern about the health consequences of this pollution and a strong environmental movement was developing to demand action. Government accepted this challenge and new environmental standards were set. Scientists and engineers came to the rescue. New reformulated fuels were developed for cars, as were new high tech, computer controlled engines and catalytic converters. By the mid seventies cars were no longer big time polluters, emitting only some carbon dioxide and water vapor from their tail pipes. Likewise, new fuel processing and smoke stack scrubbers were added to industrial and power plants and their emissions were greatly reduced, as well.
But an environmental movement had been established and its funding and very existence depended on having a continuing crisis issue. So the research papers from Scripps came at just the right moment. And, with them came the birth of an issue; man-made global warming from the carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.
Revelle and Keeling used this new alarmism to keep their funding growing. Other researchers with environmental motivations and a hunger for funding saw this developing and climbed aboard as well. The research grants began to flow and alarming hypothesis began to show up everywhere.
The Keeling curve showed a steady rise in CO2 in atmosphere during the period since oil and coal were discovered and used by man. As of today, carbon dioxide has increased from 215 to 385 parts per million. But, despite the increases, it is still only a trace gas in the atmosphere. While the increase is real, the percentage of the atmosphere that is CO2 remains tiny, about .41 hundredths of one percent.
Several hypothesis emerged in the 70s and 80s about how this tiny atmospheric component of CO2 might cause a significant warming. But they remained unproven. Years have passed and the scientists kept reaching out for evidence of the warming and proof of their theories. And, the money and environmental claims kept on building up.
Back in the 1960s, this global warming research came to the attention of a Canadian born United Nation’s bureaucrat named Maurice Strong. He was looking for issues he could use to fulfill his dream of one-world government. Strong organized a World Earth Day event in Stockholm, Sweden in 1970. From this he developed a committee of scientists, environmentalists and political operatives from the UN to continue a series of meeting.
Strong developed the concept that the UN could demand payments from the advanced nations for the climatic damage from their burning of fossil fuels to benefit the underdeveloped nations, a sort of CO2 tax that would be the funding for his one-world government. But, he needed more scientific evidence to support his primary thesis. So Strong championed the establishment of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This was not a pure climate study scientific organization, as we have been lead to believe. It was an organization of one-world government UN bureaucrats, environmental activists and environmentalist scientists who craved the UN funding so they could produce the science they needed to stop the burning of fossil fuels. Over the last 25 years they have been very effective. Hundreds of scientific papers, four major international meetings and reams of news stories about climatic Armageddon later, the UN IPCC has made its points to the satisfaction of most and even shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.
At the same time, that Maurice Strong was busy at the UN, things were getting a bit out of hand for the man who is now called the grandfather of global warming, Roger Revelle. He had been very politically active in the late 1950’s as he worked to have the University of California locate a San Diego campus adjacent to Scripps Institute in La Jolla. He won that major war, but lost an all important battle afterward when he was passed over in the selection of the first Chancellor of the new campus.
He left Scripps finally in 1963 and moved to Harvard University to establish a Center for Population Studies. It was there that Revelle inspired one of his students to become a major global warming activist. This student would say later, "It felt like such a privilege to be able to hear about the readouts from some of those measurements in a group of no more than a dozen undergraduates. Here was this teacher presenting something not years old but fresh out of the lab, with profound implications for our future!" The student described him as "a wonderful, visionary professor" who was "one of the first people in the academic community to sound the alarm on global warming," That student was Al Gore. He thought of Dr. Revelle as his mentor and referred to him frequently, relaying his experiences as a student in his book Earth in the Balance, published in 1992.
So there it is, Roger Revelle was indeed the grandfather of global warming. His work had laid the foundation for the UN IPCC, provided the anti-fossil fuel ammunition to the environmental movement and sent Al Gore on his road to his books, his movie, his Nobel Peace Prize and a hundred million dollars from the carbon credits business.
What happened next is amazing. The global warming frenzy was becoming the cause celeb of the media. After all the media is mostly liberal, loves Al Gore, loves to warn us of impending disasters and tell us "the sky is falling, the sky is falling". The politicians and the environmentalist loved it, too.
But the tide was turning with Roger Revelle. He was forced out at Harvard at 65 and returned to California and a semi retirement position at UCSD. There he had time to rethink Carbon Dioxide and the greenhouse effect. The man who had inspired Al Gore and given the UN the basic research it needed to launch its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was having second thoughts. In 1988 he wrote two cautionary letters to members of Congress. He wrote, "My own personal belief is that we should wait another 10 or 20 years to really be convinced that the greenhouse effect is going to be important for human beings, in both positive and negative ways." He added, "…we should be careful not to arouse too much alarm until the rate and amount of warming becomes clearer."
And in 1991 Revelle teamed up with Chauncey Starr, founding director of the Electric Power Research Institute and Fred Singer, the first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, to write an article for Cosmos magazine. They urged more research and begged scientists and governments not to move too fast to curb greenhouse CO2 emissions because the true impact of carbon dioxide was not at all certain and curbing the use of fossil fuels could have a huge negative impact on the economy and jobs and our standard of living. I have discussed this collaboration with Dr. Singer. He assures me that Revelle was considerably more certain than he was at the time that carbon dioxide was not a problem.
Did Roger Revelle attend the Summer enclave at the Bohemian Grove in Northern California in the Summer of 1990 while working on that article? Did he deliver a lakeside speech there to the assembled movers and shakers from Washington and Wall Street in which he apologized for sending the UN IPCC and Al Gore onto this wild goose chase about global warming? Did he say that the key scientific conjecture of his lifetime had turned out wrong? The answer to those questions is, "I think so, but I do not know it for certain". I have not managed to get it confirmed as of this moment. It’s a little like Las Vegas; what is said at the Bohemian Grove stays at the Bohemian Grove. There are no transcripts or recordings and people who attend are encouraged not to talk. Yet, the topic is so important, that some people have shared with me on an informal basis.
Roger Revelle died of a heart attack three months after the Cosmos story was printed. Oh, how I wish he were still alive today. He might be able to stop this scientific silliness and end the global warming scam.
Al Gore has dismissed Roger Revelle’s Mea culpa as the actions of senile old man. And, the next year, while running for Vice President, he said the science behind global warming is settled and there will be no more debate, From 1992 until today, he and his cohorts have refused to debate global warming and when ask about we skeptics they simply insult us and call us names.
So today we have the acceptance of carbon dioxide as the culprit of global warming. It is concluded that when we burn fossil fuels we are leaving a dastardly carbon footprint which we must pay Al Gore or the environmentalists to offset. Our governments on all levels are considering taxing the use of fossil fuels. The Federal Environmental Protection Agency is on the verge of naming CO2 as a pollutant and strictly regulating its use to protect our climate. The new President and the US congress are on board. Many state governments are moving on the same course.
We are already suffering from this CO2 silliness in many ways. Our energy policy has been strictly hobbled by no drilling and no new refineries for decades. We pay for the shortage this has created every time we buy gas. On top of that the whole thing about corn based ethanol costs us millions of tax dollars in subsidies. That also has driven up food prices. And, all of this is a long way from over.
And, I am totally convinced there is no scientific basis for any of it.
Global Warming. It is the hoax. It is bad science. It is a high jacking of public policy. It is no joke. It is the greatest scam in history.
John Coleman 1-29-09
The Amazing Story Behind the Global Warming Scam
The Amazing Story Behind Tho Global Warming ScamBy John ColemanJanuary 28, 2009The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax we citizens for our carbon footprints. Only two details stand in the way, the faltering economic times and a dramatic turn toward a colder climate. The last two bitter winters have lead to a rise in public awareness that CO2 is not a pollutant and is not a significant greenhouse gas that is triggering runaway global warming.
How did we ever get to this point where bad science is driving big government we have to struggle so to stop it?
The story begins with an Oceanographer named Roger Revelle. He served with the Navy in World War II. After the war he became the Director of the Scripps Oceanographic Institute in La Jolla in San Diego, California. Revelle saw the opportunity to obtain major funding from the Navy for doing measurements and research on the ocean around the Pacific Atolls where the US military was conducting atomic bomb tests. He greatly expanded the Institute’s areas of interest and among others hired Hans Suess, a noted Chemist from the University of Chicago, who was very interested in the traces of carbon in the environment from the burning of fossil fuels. Revelle tagged on to Suess studies and co-authored a paper with him in 1957. The paper raises the possibility that the carbon dioxide might be creating a greenhouse effect and causing atmospheric warming. It seems to be a plea for funding for more studies. Funding, frankly, is where Revelle’s mind was most of the time.
Next Revelle hired a Geochemist named David Keeling to devise a way to measure the atmospheric content of Carbon dioxide. In 1960 Keeling published his first paper showing the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and linking the increase to the burning of fossil fuels.
These two research papers became the bedrock of the science of global warming, even though they offered no proof that carbon dioxide was in fact a greenhouse gas. In addition they failed to explain how this trace gas, only a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, could have any significant impact on temperatures.
Now let me take you back to the1950s when this was going on. Our cities were entrapped in a pall of pollution from the crude internal combustion engines that powered cars and trucks back then and from the uncontrolled emissions from power plants and factories. Cars and factories and power plants were filling the air with all sorts of pollutants. There was a valid and serious concern about the health consequences of this pollution and a strong environmental movement was developing to demand action. Government accepted this challenge and new environmental standards were set. Scientists and engineers came to the rescue. New reformulated fuels were developed for cars, as were new high tech, computer controlled engines and catalytic converters. By the mid seventies cars were no longer big time polluters, emitting only some carbon dioxide and water vapor from their tail pipes. Likewise, new fuel processing and smoke stack scrubbers were added to industrial and power plants and their emissions were greatly reduced, as well.
But an environmental movement had been established and its funding and very existence depended on having a continuing crisis issue. So the research papers from Scripps came at just the right moment. And, with them came the birth of an issue; man-made global warming from the carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.
Revelle and Keeling used this new alarmism to keep their funding growing. Other researchers with environmental motivations and a hunger for funding saw this developing and climbed aboard as well. The research grants began to flow and alarming hypothesis began to show up everywhere.
The Keeling curve showed a steady rise in CO2 in atmosphere during the period since oil and coal were discovered and used by man. As of today, carbon dioxide has increased from 215 to 385 parts per million. But, despite the increases, it is still only a trace gas in the atmosphere. While the increase is real, the percentage of the atmosphere that is CO2 remains tiny, about .41 hundredths of one percent.
Several hypothesis emerged in the 70s and 80s about how this tiny atmospheric component of CO2 might cause a significant warming. But they remained unproven. Years have passed and the scientists kept reaching out for evidence of the warming and proof of their theories. And, the money and environmental claims kept on building up.
Back in the 1960s, this global warming research came to the attention of a Canadian born United Nation’s bureaucrat named Maurice Strong. He was looking for issues he could use to fulfill his dream of one-world government. Strong organized a World Earth Day event in Stockholm, Sweden in 1970. From this he developed a committee of scientists, environmentalists and political operatives from the UN to continue a series of meeting.
Strong developed the concept that the UN could demand payments from the advanced nations for the climatic damage from their burning of fossil fuels to benefit the underdeveloped nations, a sort of CO2 tax that would be the funding for his one-world government. But, he needed more scientific evidence to support his primary thesis. So Strong championed the establishment of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This was not a pure climate study scientific organization, as we have been lead to believe. It was an organization of one-world government UN bureaucrats, environmental activists and environmentalist scientists who craved the UN funding so they could produce the science they needed to stop the burning of fossil fuels. Over the last 25 years they have been very effective. Hundreds of scientific papers, four major international meetings and reams of news stories about climatic Armageddon later, the UN IPCC has made its points to the satisfaction of most and even shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.
At the same time, that Maurice Strong was busy at the UN, things were getting a bit out of hand for the man who is now called the grandfather of global warming, Roger Revelle. He had been very politically active in the late 1950’s as he worked to have the University of California locate a San Diego campus adjacent to Scripps Institute in La Jolla. He won that major war, but lost an all important battle afterward when he was passed over in the selection of the first Chancellor of the new campus.
He left Scripps finally in 1963 and moved to Harvard University to establish a Center for Population Studies. It was there that Revelle inspired one of his students to become a major global warming activist. This student would say later, "It felt like such a privilege to be able to hear about the readouts from some of those measurements in a group of no more than a dozen undergraduates. Here was this teacher presenting something not years old but fresh out of the lab, with profound implications for our future!" The student described him as "a wonderful, visionary professor" who was "one of the first people in the academic community to sound the alarm on global warming," That student was Al Gore. He thought of Dr. Revelle as his mentor and referred to him frequently, relaying his experiences as a student in his book Earth in the Balance, published in 1992.
So there it is, Roger Revelle was indeed the grandfather of global warming. His work had laid the foundation for the UN IPCC, provided the anti-fossil fuel ammunition to the environmental movement and sent Al Gore on his road to his books, his movie, his Nobel Peace Prize and a hundred million dollars from the carbon credits business.
What happened next is amazing. The global warming frenzy was becoming the cause celeb of the media. After all the media is mostly liberal, loves Al Gore, loves to warn us of impending disasters and tell us "the sky is falling, the sky is falling". The politicians and the environmentalist loved it, too.
But the tide was turning with Roger Revelle. He was forced out at Harvard at 65 and returned to California and a semi retirement position at UCSD. There he had time to rethink Carbon Dioxide and the greenhouse effect. The man who had inspired Al Gore and given the UN the basic research it needed to launch its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was having second thoughts. In 1988 he wrote two cautionary letters to members of Congress. He wrote, "My own personal belief is that we should wait another 10 or 20 years to really be convinced that the greenhouse effect is going to be important for human beings, in both positive and negative ways." He added, "…we should be careful not to arouse too much alarm until the rate and amount of warming becomes clearer."
And in 1991 Revelle teamed up with Chauncey Starr, founding director of the Electric Power Research Institute and Fred Singer, the first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, to write an article for Cosmos magazine. They urged more research and begged scientists and governments not to move too fast to curb greenhouse CO2 emissions because the true impact of carbon dioxide was not at all certain and curbing the use of fossil fuels could have a huge negative impact on the economy and jobs and our standard of living. I have discussed this collaboration with Dr. Singer. He assures me that Revelle was considerably more certain than he was at the time that carbon dioxide was not a problem.
Did Roger Revelle attend the Summer enclave at the Bohemian Grove in Northern California in the Summer of 1990 while working on that article? Did he deliver a lakeside speech there to the assembled movers and shakers from Washington and Wall Street in which he apologized for sending the UN IPCC and Al Gore onto this wild goose chase about global warming? Did he say that the key scientific conjecture of his lifetime had turned out wrong? The answer to those questions is, "I think so, but I do not know it for certain". I have not managed to get it confirmed as of this moment. It’s a little like Las Vegas; what is said at the Bohemian Grove stays at the Bohemian Grove. There are no transcripts or recordings and people who attend are encouraged not to talk. Yet, the topic is so important, that some people have shared with me on an informal basis.
Roger Revelle died of a heart attack three months after the Cosmos story was printed. Oh, how I wish he were still alive today. He might be able to stop this scientific silliness and end the global warming scam.
Al Gore has dismissed Roger Revelle’s Mea culpa as the actions of senile old man. And, the next year, while running for Vice President, he said the science behind global warming is settled and there will be no more debate, From 1992 until today, he and his cohorts have refused to debate global warming and when ask about we skeptics they simply insult us and call us names.
So today we have the acceptance of carbon dioxide as the culprit of global warming. It is concluded that when we burn fossil fuels we are leaving a dastardly carbon footprint which we must pay Al Gore or the environmentalists to offset. Our governments on all levels are considering taxing the use of fossil fuels. The Federal Environmental Protection Agency is on the verge of naming CO2 as a pollutant and strictly regulating its use to protect our climate. The new President and the US congress are on board. Many state governments are moving on the same course.
We are already suffering from this CO2 silliness in many ways. Our energy policy has been strictly hobbled by no drilling and no new refineries for decades. We pay for the shortage this has created every time we buy gas. On top of that the whole thing about corn based ethanol costs us millions of tax dollars in subsidies. That also has driven up food prices. And, all of this is a long way from over.
And, I am totally convinced there is no scientific basis for any of it.
Global Warming. It is the hoax. It is bad science. It is a high jacking of public policy. It is no joke. It is the greatest scam in history.
John Coleman 1-29-09
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