Cameron preaches at the Church of iatrogenics

High priest David Cameron enchants members of the Church of iatrogenics and other followers of the God of Modern Medicine by announcing  £814m to help vaccinate children. At the same time plans are being revealed of a Vatican II like re-organisation of the inner workings of the Mystical body (commonly called the NHS).

Why do we ignore the work of the so-called "heretic" Dr. Ivan Illich? He documented quite clearly, with supporting evidence in his book, Medical Nemesis, the following facts:

• 90% of the reduction in the worst diseases had come before widespread immunization or antibiotics.
• Nutrition and disease link is much better 
• Environment is everywhere the most important way to control disease and promote health 
• Current nutrition levels would have been fatal except for hygiene 
• Some medical related developments have increased health: contraceptives, treatment of water and excrement, use of soap and scissors by midwives, small pox vaccinations of infants, antibacterial washing and insecticides.
• Rate of doctors in a population, number of hospital beds, nor their clinical tools relates to increasing health if other factors are considered.
• Supply of doctors does not relate to prevalence of disease, rather doctors live where they like and they like to live where it is healthy, where people work and are healthy and can pay them. 

Filled with the Holy Spirit

You have probably been in a restaurant where the waitress has asked, "Can I warm up your coffee for you?"

 The cup may be half-full and cold after sitting on the table for a while. When she pours the new coffee in, she refills and warms up the cup.

If are spiritually cold, empty or dry. It doesn't have to stay that way. Quit trying to live in your own power and strength and ask God today to fill you with His Holy Spirit.

Yes,now, today, Pentecost Sunday, the Birthday of the Church. No better day

"If you have the Word without the Spirit, you'll dry up.

If you have the Spirit without the Word, you'll blow up.

If you have both the Word and the Spirit, you'll grow up."

Derek Prince 

Turkey to send troops into Syria.

A new and dramatic turn in the Syrian crisis;: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Friday night, June 10, ordered his army to move into northern Syria where battles were blazing in Idlib, Maarat al-Numaan and Jisr al-Shuhour. Exclusive sources report that the prime minister's office and high command in Ankara are still working out how to define the Turkish military mission in Syria. One proposal is to evoke UN Security Council's 1973 resolution which mandated the NATO operation in Libya to protect civilian lives against Col. Qaddafi.

Turkey would be acting to defend Syrian civilians against a crackdown which Erdogan called barbaric.

Ankara decided on military intervention Friday night, two days before Turkey's general election, after learning about the latest turn in the showdown between the Syrian government and the opposition.

Most of the day's reporting focused on the small northern town of Jisr al-Shughour near the Turkish border, where tanks blasted residential areas Friday night and killed an estimated 28 civilians to punish its residents for the 120 officers and soldiers killed in clashes with protesters Monday, June 6.

Away from the limelight, heavy fighting also raged in Idlib, west of Syria's second largest town Aleppo, and Maarat al-Numaan, a small western market city located on the highway between Aleppo and Hama.

In these places, the Syrian army encountered the guns of a Muslim Brotherhood militia fighting alongside a group of defecting soldiers, according to our military sources.

In the late afternoon, Assad sent tanks and attack helicopters armed with heavy machine guns to strike rebel positions. The casualty toll in this northern battleground is believed to be the highest of any day since the start of the uprising in early April.

The Turkish expeditionary force in Syria will have three missions:

1.  To stem the swelling stream of Syrian refugees fleeing massacre at the hands of government forces. Ankara has accepted over 3,000 refugees from Jisr al-Shughour who are desperate to escape certain slaughter; it is not prepared to take on tens or possible hundreds of thousands of Syrians fleeing from larger towns like Idlib, Maarat al-Numaana and the Kurdish regions abutting the Turkish border.

2.  To mark out a military zone on the Syrian side of the border where the Red Crescent will set up camps for Syrian refugees to shelter under Turkish army protection;

3.  Next week, the Turkish army will establish a military buffer zone in the Kurdish region of northern Syria near its main town, Qamishli.

The Erdogan government will be taking the chance of Assad deciding that the Turkish military incursion is an act of war. Fighting would then break out between the two armies.

DEBKAfile

Assad paid Golan demonstrators $1,000 apiece

Syrian President Bashar Assad's security machine is creaking judging by its failure to raise thousands of Palestinian and Syrian volunteers to brave the Israeli troops manning the Golan Sunday, June 5 - three weeks after his success in staging the first mass border incursion.

Intelligence sources reveal that even the few hundred willing to turn out demanded a fee: $1,000 for every demonstrator who managed to cut a piece of razor wire from the Israeli border fence – and exorbitant fee in Syrian terms - and $10,000 for the families of volunteers shot by Israeli troops before they reached their goal.

Syrian state TV reported 20 killed and 277 injured in clashes with Israeli border troops - figures which are not reliably confirmed.

Assad's home front is sinking fast, which was why he tried to stage a piece of nation-cementing drama on the Israeli border. He hoped the Golan dead would outnumber the many hundreds killed in his three-month crackdown on the protest movement against his regime and is therefore likely to keep on trying.

Sunday alone, scores died in Syrian tank-backed attacks on protesters in northwest Syria who are now using live fire against his troops. Sources report that Syrian security agents captured by protesters were hanged in broad daylight from electricity poles on city high streets Sunday, June 5, causing troops and police to flee in panic.

"We are deeply troubled by events that took place earlier today in the Golan Heights resulting in injuries and the loss of life," the State Department said in a statement.
"We call for all sides to exercise restraint. Provocative actions like this should be avoided. Israel, like any sovereign nation, has a right to defend itself," the US statement added.

DEBKAfile

Salvation is of God

According to a certain theology, when we sin we are punished, and when we are good we are rewarded. This makes sense. But it isn’t what the sages, saints, or Scriptures tell us about God.

This “theology” is designed to urge us to save ourselves, and unfortunately this is the theology that many people live by: we get back as good as we give to God. This means that our salvation depends totally on us and on our ability to become perfect, or at least good.

Thank God, it’s not true.

This is not what Jesus teaches us. It’s much truer to say that our weakness and brokenness bring us to God—exactly the opposite of what most of us believe. It can take a lifetime, even with grace, to accept such a paradox. Grace creates the very emptiness that grace alone can fill.

St. Paul stated this with elegant concision: “’For power is made perfect in weakness.’. . . For whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).

 Richard Rohr 

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad "should be tried"

Hamza al-Khatib's death has become a rallying point for anti-government protesters

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should face trial at a UN court over the "brutal" treatment of his people, Australia's foreign minister says.

Kevin Rudd said incidents such as the alleged torture and murder of a 13-year-old boy by security forces had robbed Mr Assad of any legitimacy.

President Assad invited the boy's family to meet him and promised an inquiry, state television said.

Activists say more than 1,000 people have died in weeks of protests.

The 13-year-old boy, Hamza al-Khatib, has become an icon of the anti-government uprising in Syria, says the BBC's Jim Muir.

Activists say he was detained by security forces and tortured to death, while the authorities insist he was shot dead during a demonstration.

Mr Rudd called it a "brutal act" and accused Mr Assad of taking "large-scale directed action" against his own people.

"I believe it is high time that the Security Council now consider a formal referral of President Assad to the International Criminal Court," said Mr Rudd.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the boy's death showed the regime was deaf to the voice of its people.

Assad tortures children

Hamza al-Khateeb used to love it when the rains came to his small corner of southern Syria, filling up the farmers' irrigation channels enough so that he and the other children could jump in and swim.

But the drought of the last few years had left the 13-year-old without the fun of his favourite pool.
Instead, he'd taken to raising homing pigeons, standing on the roof of his family's simple breeze-block home, craning his neck back to see the birds circling above the wide horizon of fields, where wheat and tomatoes were grown from the tough, scrubby soils.

Though not from a wealthy family himself, Hamza was always aware of others less fortunate than himself, said a cousin who spoke to Al Jazeera.

"He would often ask his parents for money to give to the poor. I remember once he wanted to give  someone 100 Syrian Pounds ($2), and his family said it was too much. But Hamza said, 'I have a bed and food while that guy has nothing.' And so he persuaded his parents to give the poor man the 100."

In the hands of President Bashar al-Assad's security forces, however, Hamza found no such compassion, his humanity degraded to nothing more than a lump of flesh to beat, burn, torture and defile, until the screaming stopped at last.

Arrested during a protest in Saida, 10km east of Daraa, on April 29, Hamza's body was returned to his family on Tuesday 24th May, horribly mutilated.

The child had spent nearly a month in the custody of Syrian security, and when they finally returned his corpse it bore the scars of brutal torture: Lacerations, bruises and burns to his feet, elbows, face and knees, consistent with the use of electric shock devices and of being whipped with cable, both techniques of torture documented by Human Rights Watch as being used in Syrian prisons during the bloody three-month crackdown on protestors.

Hamza's eyes were swollen and black and there were identical bullet wounds where he had apparently been shot through both arms, the bullets tearing a hole in his sides and lodging in his belly.

On Hamza's chest was a deep, dark burn mark. His neck was broken and his penis cut off.

"Where are the human rights committees? Where is the International Criminal Court?" asks the voice of the man inspecting Hamza's body on a video uploaded to YouTube.

"A month had passed by with his family not knowing where he was, or if or when he would be released. He was released to his family as a corpse. Upon examining his body, the signs of torture are very clear.