11 Lies From Mainstream Nutritionists

As readers of this blog likely know, after 31 years of Vegetarianism, 25 of them as a strict Vegan and (70 - 100%) Raw Foodist, I came to consider those diets to be failed experiments.

Nearly 2 years ago, my wife and I started trying to include some raw, pastured, organic dairy (kefir, cheese, eggs) in our diet and after a few months tried to also introduce organic meats back into our diet.

This appeared doomed to fail as we were so emotionally opposed to meat eating, but we were persuaded by previously unavailable (to us) science that promoted a natural pre-agricultural diet, often called a Paleo-diet or LCHF (low carb, high fat).

After several starts and stops, we finally, about 9 months ago, succeeded in fully adopting this diet plan and have seen significant benefits, including some reversal of the immune deficiencies caused by our years of high carb, low fat eating.

Two books that I always recommend are Gary Taubes, Why We Get Fat, and Lierre Keith's, The Vegetarian Myth.  

Some good information can be gotten online via the Weston Price Foundation  and The Diet Doctor. 

People who are trying to recover their health after ruining it on a Vegan diet can also find help on Facebook at  Recovering Vegans & Vegetarians and Primal Body, Primal Mind. 

But I wanted to pass on a nice short introduction (or refresher) to some of these ideas in this nice post I received today, all points of which are elaborated in the references I have just given.

Top 11 Biggest Lies of Mainstream Nutrition

February 11, 2013 | by Kris Gunnars 

http://authoritynutrition.com/11-biggest-lies-of-mainstream-nutrition/

There is a lot of misinformation circling around in mainstream nutrition.
I have listed the worst examples in this article, but unfortunately this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Here are the top 11 biggest lies, myths and misconceptions of mainstream nutrition.

1. Eggs Are Unhealthy

There’s one thing that nutrition professionals have had remarkable success with… and that is demonizing incredibly healthy foods.
The worst example of that is eggs, which happen to contain a large amount of cholesterol and were therefore considered to increase the risk of heart disease.
But recently it has been proven that the cholesterol in the diet doesn’t really raise the cholesterol in blood. In fact, eggs primarily raise the “good” cholesterol and are NOT associated with increased risk of heart disease (1, 2).
What we’re left with is one of the most nutritious foods on the planet. They’re high in all sorts of nutrients along with unique antioxidants that protect our eyes (3).
To top it all of, despite being a “high fat” food, eating eggs for breakfast is proven to cause significant weight loss compared to bagels for breakfast (4, 5).

Bottom Line: Eggs do not cause heart disease and are among the most nutritious foods on the planet. Eggs for breakfast can help you lose weight.

2. Saturated Fat is Bad For You

A few decades ago it was decided that the epidemic of heart disease was caused by eating too much fat, in particular saturated fat.
This was based on highly flawed studies and political decisions that have now been proven to be completely wrong.
A massive review article published in 2010 looked at 21 prospective epidemiological studies with a total of 347.747 subjects. Their results: absolutely no association between saturated fat and heart disease (6).
The idea that saturated fat raised the risk of heart disease was an unproven theory that somehow became conventional wisdom (7).
Eating saturated fat raises the amount of HDL (the “good”) cholesterol in the blood and changes the LDL from small, dense LDL (very bad) to Large LDL, which is benign (8, 9).
Meat, coconut oil, cheese, butter… there is absolutely no reason to fear these foods.

Bottom Line: Newer studies have proven that saturated fat does not cause heart disease. Natural foods that are high in saturated fat are good for you.

3. Everybody Should be Eating Grains

The idea that humans should be basing their diets on grains has never made sense to me.
The agricultural revolution happened fairly recently in human evolutionary history and our genes haven’t changed that much.
Grains are fairly low in nutrients compared to other real foods like vegetables. They are also rich in a substance called phytic acid which binds essential minerals in the intestine and prevents them from being absorbed (10).
The most common grain in the western diet, by far, is wheat… and wheat can cause a host of health problems, both minor and serious.
Modern wheat contains a large amount of a protein called gluten, but there is evidence that a significant portion of the population may be sensitive to it (11, 12, 13).
Eating gluten can damage the intestinal lining, cause pain, bloating, stool inconsistency and tiredness (14, 15). Gluten consumption has also been associated with schizophrenia and cerebellar ataxia, both serious disorders of the brain (16, 17).

Bottom Line: Grains are relatively low in nutrients compared to other real foods like vegetables. The gluten grains in particular may lead to a variety of health problems.

4. Eating a Lot of Protein is Bad For Your Bones and Kidneys

A high protein diet has been claimed to cause both osteoporosis and kidney disease.
It is true that eating protein increases calcium excretion from the bones in the short term, but the long term studies actually show the opposite effect.

In the long term, protein has a strong association with improved bone health and a lower risk of fracture (18, 19).
Additionally, studies don’t show any association of high protein with kidney disease in otherwise healthy people (20, 21).
In fact, two of the main risk factors for kidney failure are diabetes and high blood pressure. Eating a high protein diet improves both (22, 23).
If anything, a high protein diet should be protective against osteoporosis and kidney failure!

Bottom Line: Eating a high protein diet is associated with improved bone health and a lower risk of fracture. High protein also lowers blood pressure and improves diabetes symptoms, which should lower the risk of kidney failure.

5. Low-Fat Foods Are Good For You

Do you know what regular food tastes like when all the fat has been taken out of it?
Well, it tastes like cardboard. No one would want to eat it.
The food manufacturers know this and therefore they add other things to compensate for the lack of fat.
Usually these are sweeteners… sugar, high fructose corn syrup or artificial sweeteners like aspartame.
We’ll get to the sugar in a moment, but I’d like to point out that even though artificial sweeteners don’t have calories, the evidence does NOT suggest that they are better for you than sugar.
In fact, many observational studies show a consistent, highly significant association with various diseases like obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, heart disease, premature delivery and depression (24, 25, 26).
In these low-fat products, healthy natural fats are being replaced with substances that are extremely harmful.

Bottom Line: Low-fat foods are usually highly processed products loaded with sugar, corn syrup or artificial sweeteners. They are extremely unhealthy.

6. You Should Eat Many Small Meals Throughout The Day

The idea that you should eat many small meals throughout the day in order to “keep metabolism high” is a persistent myth that doesn’t make any sense.
It is true that eating raises your metabolism slightly while you’re digesting the meal, but it’s the total amount of food that determines the energy used, NOT the number of meals.

This has actually been put to the test and refuted multiple times. Controlled studies where one group eats many small meals and the other the same amount of food in fewer meals show that there is literally no difference between the two (27, 28).
In fact, one study in obese men revealed that eating 6 meals per day led to less feelings of fullness compared to 3 meals (29).
Not only is eating so often practically useless for most of the people out there, it may even be harmful.
It is not natural for the human body to be constantly in the fed state. In nature, we used to fast from time to time and we didn’t eat nearly as often as we do today.
When we don’t eat for a while, a cellular process called autophagy cleans waste products out of our cells (30). Fasting or not eating from time to time is good for you.
Several observational studies show a drastically increased risk of colon cancer (4th most common cause of cancer death), numbers going as high as a 90% increase for those who eat 4 meals per day compared to 2 (31, 32, 33).

Bottom Line: There is no evidence that eating many small meals throughout the day is better than fewer, bigger meals. Not eating from time to time is good for you. Increased meal frequency is associated with colon cancer.

7. Carbs Should Be Your Biggest Source of Calories

The mainstream view is that everyone should eat a low-fat diet, with carbs being around 50-60% of total calories.
This sort of diet contains a lot of grains and sugars, with very small amounts of fatty foods like meat and eggs.
This type of diet may work well for some people, especially those who are naturally lean.
But for those who are obese, have the metabolic syndrome or diabetes, this amount of carbohydrates is downright dangerous.
This has actually been studied extensively. A low-fat, high-carb diet has been compared to a low-carb, high-fat diet in multiple randomized controlled trials.
The results are consistently in favor of low-carb, high-fat diets (34, 35, 36).

Bottom Line: The low-fat, high-carb diet is a miserable failure and has been proven repeatedly to be vastly inferior to lower-carb, higher-fat diets.

8. High Omega-6 Seed and Vegetable Oils Are Good For You

Polyunsaturated fats are considered healthy because some studies show that they lower your risk of heart disease.
But there are many types of polyunsaturated fats and they are not all the same.
Most importantly, we have both Omega-3 fatty acids and Omega-6 fatty acids.
Omega-3s are anti-inflammatory and lower your risk of many diseases related to inflammation (37). Humans actually need to get Omega-6s and Omega-3s in a certain ratio. If the ratio is too high in favor of Omega-6, it can cause problems (38).
By far the biggest sources of Omega-6 in the modern diet are processed seed and vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower oils.
Throughout evolution, humans never had access to such an abundance of Omega-6 fats. It is unnatural for the human body.
Research that specifically looks at Omega-6 fatty acids instead of polyunsaturated fats in general shows that they actually increase the risk of heart disease (39, 40).
Eat your Omega-3s and consider supplementing with cod fish liver oil, but avoid the industrial seed and vegetable oils.

Bottom Line: Humans need to get Omega-6 and Omega-3 fats in a certain ratio. Eating excess Omega-6 from seed oils raises your risk of disease.

9. Low Carb Diets Are Dangerous

I personally believe low-carb diets to be a potential cure for many of the most common health problems in western nations.
The low-fat diet peddled all around the world is fairly useless against many of these diseases. It simply does not work.
However, low-carb diets (demonized by nutritionists and the media) have repeatedly been shown to lead to much better outcomes.
Every randomized controlled trial on low-carb diets shows that they:

1. Reduce body fat more than calorie-restricted low-fat diets, even though the low-carb dieters are allowed to eat as much as they want (41, 42).
2. Lower blood pressure significantly (43, 44).
3. Lower blood sugar and improve symptoms of diabetes much more than low-fat diets (45, 46, 47, 48).
4. Increase HDL (the good) cholesterol much more (49, 50).
5. Lower triglycerides much more than low-fat diets (51, 52, 53).
6. Change the pattern of LDL (bad) cholesterol from small, dense (very bad) to Large LDL, which is benign (54, 55).
7. Low carb diets are also easier to stick to, probably because they don’t require you to restrict calories and be hungry all the time. More people in the low-carb groups make it to the end of the studies (56, 57).

Many of the health professionals that are supposed to have our best interest in mind have the audacity to claim that these diets are dangerous, then continue to peddle their failed low-fat dogma that is hurting more people than it helps.

Bottom Line: Low-carb diets are the healthiest, easiest and most effective way to lose weight and reverse metabolic disease. It is a scientific fact.

10. Sugar is Unhealthy Because it Contains “Empty” Calories

It is commonly believed that sugar is bad for you because it contains empty calories.
It’s true, sugar has a lot of calories with no essential nutrients. But that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Sugar, primarily because of its high fructose content, affects metabolism in a way that sets us up for rapid fat gain and metabolic disease.
Fructose gets metabolized by the liver and turned into fat which is secreted into the blood as VLDL particles. This leads to elevated triglycerides and cholesterol (58, 59).
It also causes resistance to the hormones insulin and leptin, which is a stepping stone towards obesity, metabolic syndrome and diabetes (60, 61).
This is just to name a few. Sugar causes a relentless biochemical drive for humans to eat more and get fat. It is probably the single worst ingredient in the standard western diet.

Bottom Line: The harmful effects of sugar go way beyond empty calories. Sugar wreaks havoc on our metabolism and sets us up for weight gain and many serious diseases.

11. High Fat Foods Will Make You Fat

It seems kind of intuitive that eating fat would make you get fat.
The stuff that is gathering under our skin and making us look soft and puffy is fat. So… eating fat should give our bodies even more of it.
But it isn’t that simple. Despite fat having more calories per gram than carbohydrate or protein, high-fat diets do not make people fat.
As with anything, this depends on the context. A diet that is high in fat AND high in carbs will make you fat, but it’s NOT because of the fat.
In fact, diets that are high in fat (and low in carbs) cause much greater fat loss than diets that are low in fat (62, 63, 64).

Lowrey Family Christmas 1986 - Another Hair-Raising Adventure!

The Ghost of Christmas Past.....!

The Christmas Miracles of 1986

by Katrina Lowrey , Detroit Metro Area, December 23, 2012
http://www.broowaha.com/articles/15518/the-christmas-miracles-of-1986

Credit: Olan Mills Portrait Studio
Doc & Katrina Lowrey 1986

The year we missed out on trimming a tree, eating a feast and opening presents became the most real Christmas I ever had.

We were living in tents and building a house on the old 5 acre, mountainside Houdini Estate, in Laurel Canyon, Hollywood, California which my children fondly called “The Hill”.
My husband Doc and I married for 2 years had 6 children between us. Our eldest was my 7-year-old son and then five daughters the oldest being 6, twins which were 4, his 3-year-old and our youngest daughter just 7 months old.
My husband was self-producing a national radio show and I was in negotiations for a cartoon contract with a local newspaper, The LA Reader. We were also waiting on a promised record contract with help from an acquaintance who worked for Arista Records.
A few days before Christmas, Doc received a letter from his Mother telling him that his 8-year-old adopted daughter had been hurt in a double homicide at her grandparent's Thanksgiving party and that his ex-wife needed money for the hospital bill. He knew the family well and had a lot of difficult experiences with them. Unfortunately it wasn't a far-fetched idea that something like this could be true.
His ex-wife, angry about the divorce and kept his daughter away in hiding for about 5 years. You can imagine the kind of panic a parent feels at a time like this. Especially one who has had their child kidnapped out of spite and hasn't had any news in many years.
The letter gave us a new Northern California address to send money to. So after talking about it all night we got up early, packed a few things and drove directly to the given address in San Jose. The plan was to enforce his Christmas visitation during which we'd have her seen by a doctor and psychologist and maybe file for custody.
The drive was about 6 hours away and when we got there we found the address was a fake. It didn't exist at all. This wasn't the first time his ex-wife had done something like this to him. He wasn't too surprised, but he was disturbed and unable to go home without seeing her for himself.
On a hunch we got a hotel room and because we were all members of the Mormon Church he started calling all the Mormon Bishops in towns within 150 miles of the address. After about two hours he found her, even got her phone number and address.
That evening, being it was the day before Christmas Eve and he wanted to be there in time to enforce his visitation, we left our hotel room and drove down to Merced California arriving there early in the evening.
Doc took his visitation papers to the police station and told them about how he hadn't seen her for 5 years and that she might have been in a double homicide on Thanksgiving. After talking to the police for an hour the police agreed to go with us to her real address to pick her up for his Christmas visitation.
When we got there his ex-wife stalled the police with complaints about her daughter already being in bed, while her husband called her church appointed Home Teacher who was a lawyer. The lawyer talked the police into having us go to court in the morning.
It was very late by then, so instead of driving home we had to get another hotel room. We were struggling artists and these expenses we charged to our one and only, for emergencies only, gas card.
Early in the next morning, on Christmas Eve we went to court. He was in mediation about getting his visitation when the mediator called a break and on leaving the room he was arrested for back child support.
Things looked very frightening for me at this point. I knew we couldn't stay in the hotel but one more night and I didn't want to leave him there 4 hours away and live in tents by myself. I didn't have any idea how to get around LA without him, I didn't know if I could find my way home.
The judge wasn't being very understanding despite the fact Doc hadn't known where to send the child support for years, had the letter from his mother with the fake address and could prove he had paid support before her disappearance. To assure his release Doc offered to stay in Merced to work the issues out and then judge let him go without bail.
However, the mediator decided to not give him the visitation, instead recommending 6 months of weekly joint counseling with weekend visits at our Merced residence, which we had yet to get.
All this because Doc's ex was insisting that her current husband wanted to adopt the daughter and was pushing for Doc to give up his parental rights to that end. The six months was to decide if Doc and the daughter wanted to end their legal relationship.
While I worried, waiting with our children in the courthouse halls a woman came up to me and told me she felt God wanted her to give me a check for $25. I thought she was being nice and graciously accepted it. We didn't have a bank account and in California it is difficult to cash a check without one, so I didn't think I would be able to use it. I certainly wasn't thinking about Christmas presents at this point in time.
I took it as a sign from heaven though, that we were doing the right thing and that everything would be okay.
After the court system finished with Doc, we went back to the hotel room and Doc got a local newspaper and we looked for a house to rent. There were only two listed and being it was late evening Christmas Eve, only one person would show us their house.
When we went to looked at it, it was in the dark as they had turned the utilities off. Doc explained our situation to them and surprisingly they generously just gave us the key and told us they would start the rent after the New Year.
When we got back to our hotel room Doc called our new Mormon Bishop and explained our situation and told him I would need a ride to the house in the morning. He was very nice over the phone and so I didn't worry about meeting and getting a ride from a complete stranger.
Very early Christmas Morning Doc and our son left our mini van seats in the garage at our new home and drove back to LA to break camp and bring us our clothes, bedding, food, tents and household items from off “The Hill”.
While checking out I found out my credit card had exceeded its limit and declined. The hotel manager was very angry and wanted to call the police. Frightened, I started to cry, but still managed to convince them to try it again for less and it went through.
To my surprise, I was exactly $25 short on the bill! Because I had that check and a local address, I convinced the manager to give me three days to get the money to them before they'd call the police. (Which I did, but I can't remember how now.)
Then I called the Bishop for a ride and he became very rude with me. Obviously he had talked to Doc's ex-wife and got a whole different story and I was the problem now and an unwelcomed disruption of his Christmas plans. But he never the less eventually agreed to pick us up, when he could get around to it.
My time in the hotel was up so I stood out in the parking lot with five little girls, waiting in the cold. Eventually the Bishop arrived and took us to our new house.
There was more coldness in him than the air. He growled when he spoke and didn't look at me even once. Merry Christmas, I bitterly thought to myself, though I thanked him profusely as I knew I would be interacting with him every Sunday to come.
It was cold in the house and the girls and I had no food left after breakfast. This is when I realized that we had miscalculated how long Doc's trip would take. Thankfully I was nursing our infant and she wouldn't suffer.
It was a cloudy and the sun fading fast. Without their toys and books there was very little for my girls to do. I had only been prepared for a long drive, not several days on the road.
After they ran around exploring their new home and claiming bedrooms, we all cuddled up together on the floor at the end of the hall. We kept our coats on and made pillows out of yesterdays clothes.
Soon it was dark inside and out so we napped on and off. It was incredibly uncomfortable laying on the floor cold and hungry. I know it was very boring, but the girls complained very little and slept most of the afternoon and evening away.
I lay there awake most of the time, my infant tucked in my coat. My thoughts alternating between about how happy we would be to finally be living in a house again and worrying about what troubles his ex-wife would continue to create. I also worried about how two artists would make living in this new strange small town and if we would both lose our career opportunities.
It felt like forever, but only after about 6 hours of being alone in the new house, my husband arrived with our blankets and food. We were so happy to be together again we all quickly forgot the cold and set about unloading the car and unpacking our few belongings.
We set the tents up and made beds in the bedrooms and fixed a sparse meal.
Surprisingly the children, tucked in all fell asleep right away.
The next morning Doc surprised the children with a gift for each one from a Christmas care package sent by Grandma that had arrived in Hollywood and somehow found it's way to our camp while we were gone.
Funny when asked, my children don't remember it at all.

Copyright © 2010 Katrina Lowrey

Read more at http://www.broowaha.com/articles/15518/the-christmas-miracles-of-1986#1yCA3WE49CQctIJK.99

The System Is Rigged.

History indicates that eventually, often in cycles of about 70 years (occasionally a few hundred - and rarely a thousand or more) the power structure immolates itself or is crushed by it's own victims or a neighbor who has noticed growing weakness. 

 All "great" empires eventually fall. After a period of struggle and positive change, it all happens over again. 

I think this is why Jefferson spoke about recurring revolution as necessary. 

Ultimately, our challenge is to individually make ourselves into the kind of person we can honestly appreciate, and live according to our convictions, often by beating our heads against whatever wall impedes our sense of propriety. 

We hope for change in our lifetime and do often get it - sometimes after it seems too late to enjoy. 

Change involves transition that historically involves repression, degradation and all kinds of overtly hellish behaviors before the more refined hellish human behaviors prosper for a brief period and then grow sodden again. 

Life often appears meaningless. 

I think life only has the meaning we each individually give to it and we express that meaning by being true to ourselves - often requiring the sacrifice of sanity and sometimes even the personal liberty we seek. 

We give it up in our demand for a right to it! 

This applies across the board from social life to parenting, etc. 

Weirdly, that's where our moments of happiness come from. 

It seems that if you want to be a human, some degree of sadomasochism is a necessary personal quality. 

Fortunately, once we have pulled back the curtain and recovered from our surprise, we realize that the man there only has such power as we give to him - though he is usually not going to relinquish that power gently. 

The real "wizard" pulling the levers behind your curtain is you. 

You must "rig" yourself to deal with the system you find yourself in.

UBU - Revisited

Today I thought I'd repost the first article I wrote when UBU Ministries (then called People for Peace) was first organized in 1984.  I was surprised to see it got a few reads lately, even though it was buried in the archive, last posted in 2005.  This was written when I was corresponding with President Ronald Reagan about a better plan for detente, which he repeatedly rejected and just before I finally proposed to President Mikhail Gorbachev the same plan, which he adopted six months later, to end the cold war.  Someday I hope to publish the interesting story in full of that action and the results including the errors of Gorbachev and the silly arrogant posturing of Reagan.  I am sad that I was not invited for further consultation to avoid the ignorant errors that followed this great event.  Anyway, that is another topic.  This letter was for the general public and my first official appeal for people to "think".
I hope you enjoy it.

UBU

Gregory “Doc” Lowrey

Detroit – 1984

(original title People For Peace)

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Kill or be killed. TV or Not TV? 

That is the question - whether tis nobler to listen to the lies and promises of outrageous pitchmen or to slit your throat on an electroplated stainless steel blade.

Our neighbors and children are starving and homeless while we spend hundreds of billions of dollars per year to prepare to kill people with fears, cares and interests no different from our own.

How far does our fear of each other take us?

How long before we can admit to simple paranoia?

The real fear about war is not what “The Enemy” can or will do to our bodies and homes, but what they might do to our minds – that a conquering foe will subjugate us and within a generation or two, or a decade or two, or a year or two, or even within a month or a week or a day or an hour or two change our minds so that we become slaves and not self determining individuals.

Yet we are in bondage now! Right here – right now.

We’ve been programmed to be the slaves of our own elected paranoid demagoguery!

They have sold us on fear – fear of ourselves and of each other.

Our weakness is not one of military might, but of mental, moral and spiritual strength. The real wars are fought on the inside of the body, not on the outside.

The people of our world are playing a huge and cruel joke on themselves – causing pain and promoting fear in their communities, nations and within themselves as individuals.

The problem is so simple – the evidence so complex. 

We who consider ourselves so sophisticated, not only cannot see it ourselves, we have difficulty being self-honest enough to accept it when pointed out to us.

We are a greedy, selfish and warmongering world; warring and preparing for war, killing and being killed, suffering and causing suffering, yet we deny responsibility for our thoughts and behavior. <>

Regardless of what our national religion says about itself, contemporary Christianity does not adhere to the teachings of Christ.

The truths spoken by Him have been taught by others both before and since His time and we may accept truth taught by any teacher of rightness such as Lao Tze, Buddha, Mohammed, Gandhi, Krishna or others.

Yet, no one - has ever presented truth as simply and sublimely as Jesus; regardless of how you conceive His divinity.

The keys to all happiness and success are declared in the one simple teaching to: Love God who gave you life and love your neighbor as yourself.

This love and respect for yourself and all creation was declared by Him to be the sum total of all the messages of all the prophets since forever and the totality of His message and religion as well. (Matthew 7:12)

Think of all those who claim to be believers in the “Good Book” who pass by our children and neighbors in need while they glut themselves on abject materialism and self gratification.

Think of the difference it would make instead of spending billions per day preparing to kill our neighbor, we instead spent the same billions on teaching peace and brotherhood and practicing what we preach.

Where do we love our neighbor except at the end of a gun? 

We are a world at war with ourselves.

We are a world of haters and killers and self-serving opportunists.

As Pogo so aptly put it, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Only by changing Us can we save Us.
 

You have the responsibility to serve yourself and your fellowmen by openly practicing principles of peace.

Now is the time for each and every one of you to decide whether you are going to be the problem; or you are going to be the solution.

If you are not behaving true to your principals, you are lying to yourself and everyone around you.

                         You cannot give what you do not possess.  

  If all you feel is fear and distrust and envy, you get a world like we have today.

If you don’t soon change direction, you are liable to end up where you are headed.

Change yourself, change your space, change your world.

Only if you are unafraid of truth will you find it.

Believe in yourself – Be true to yourself.

All who seek – find.

UBU

                                           Respect/Honor/Integrity/Love

Why I'm Not a Vegan Anymore

Every time Kita changes her blog name, all my links to her posts go dead.  So I am reposting this one on my blog - which never changes.  I don't know where the pictures went, but I will try to fix that.

Why I'm Not a Vegan Anymore

Grandma Kita's Story

My husband Doc and I were vegan for 25+ years, he was a vegetarian for about 7 years before I met him.

I became a vegetarian to battle ulcerative colitis and he became one to conform to the Mormon doctrine of the Word of Wisdom.  (D&C 89)

In the winter of 1984 we were in a violent auto accident with a drunk driver. Doc broke his back and I went into premature labor with our youngest daughter Jamie. For 6 months Doc sat in a recliner fitted with a back brace, as laying in a bed hurt too much. I was medicated and put on bed rest.

We recovered slowly and both of us gained a lot of weight, as we didn't know much about eating a healthy diet. I had only been a vegetarian for a year.

We were SAD (Standard American Diet) vegetarians. You know, pizza, sandwiches, spaghetti, chocolate pie, pancakes...

In 1985 our chiropractor suggested we'd try a raw food vegan diet to help us heal our injuries. This diet change help us recover very quickly, as we ate only organic fruit, nuts and vegetables along with a daily sprout salad. I went from my post pregnancy weight of 170# down to 90# in a matter of weeks.

It was miraculous!

However, our children were another story.  After only 6 months of this diet they stopped playing, they lost their usually happy vital energy. They had sallow dry skin and grew big bellies like the starving children in Africa.  I knew something was wrong, but the books we were studying reassured us this was normal at first and claimed after they had adjusted to eating this way they would gain weight and be healthier than ever.

Thankfully the people around us decided to talk to us about this situation and at the advice of a friend who was a nurse we gradually included some cooked foods. Our new diet consisted of whole grains, homemade breads and beans in addition to our organic produce and nuts.  We never fed our children a full on raw food vegan diet again.

Us adults were strictly vegan, with a fondness for the memories of the vitality we had experienced on our raw food vegan diet.  Every spring we'd returning to eating a raw food diet or close to it for the next 23 years.  However, in the fall we found that we couldn't stay warm eating only raw foods, so we'd reluctantly returned to cooking some of our diet.

Throwing away the stove was a regular spring event. I think I have given away at least a dozen stoves in the last 20 years.  My children would tease me that they knew it was spring when they would arrive home from school to find the stove sitting on the curb.

However, the health and vitality we had originally experienced as raw food vegans became nothing but a memory.

After about 3 years of becoming a vegan I became clinically depressed and had waking visions of throwing myself in front a cars and buses. This fear kept me home bound for over a year.

Tired of being unable to leave home by myself I sought counseling. My doctors treated this condition with antidepressants and assessed me as suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

I also gained 20 lbs. past my healthy weight, I then weighted 140#. I looked 6 months pregnant. I hated how I looked and I hated how I felt.

At the same time Doc's thyroid failed and he suffered a mental break down which left him disabled.  He had been an extremely organized and proficient business executive and a talented musician/song writer.

None of the many mental health professionals he saw could figure out what was wrong with him.  None of the anti-depressants helped.  Not one of them inquired about his diet, nor did they suggest a full physical.

Seeing him sit wrapped in a blanket (even in the summer) staring at the wall was heart breaking.  He stopped playing guitar, lost his band and job as he couldn't even sign his name.

I'll let him tell you more about this bellow.

All I could think of during those 23+ vegan years was how much I wanted to die. I tried to commit suicide several times. Thankfully I would remember my children needed me and would seek help.

I was always gaining more weight no matter how little I ate or how much I exercised. I was angry all the time.  I couldn't think and my memory was terrible.  I couldn't sleep very well and spent every day dragging myself through life exhausted, insecure, living without joy.  I was an emotional wreck.

I also had sever hormone imbalances. My menses became irregular and I would experience false pregnancies.  I also suffered 4 miscarriages and lost a set of twin boys at 22 weeks gestation.

By my late 30's and through out my 40's on top of continuing depression and insomnia, I had I developed several autoimmune symptoms and my heart felt weak. I couldn't walk even a mile.

My blood pressure was high and I couldn't get any relief from natural means. As I was already on several antidepressants and didn't want to take more medications, I just lived with it.

Now that I look back on those days I can see that we weren't able to think clearly.  No matter how hard we worked at it we could not seem to keep our lives “together”.

I could tell that we weren't stupid people, both of us had high IQ scores to prove it, so why did we make so many mistakes?

We were always either being taken advantage of by unscrupulous people or we'd be unrealistic about our investments.  So, as well as having health issues we'd always be struggling with financial problems.

It confused me that the people around us, not eating our "superior vegan diet" were some how passing us by.  We couldn't seem to make the right choices or do as much as they could with their lives.  Why was our energy level always so much lower than theirs?

And, we spent upwards of $1000 a month on "good" foods to feed our family, but some how still had all the same illnesses and health struggles of people who lived on nothing but take-out.

Then in the fall of 2010 Doc suddenly, after trimming some small trees, became partially paralyzed from the neck down. Because he had been in two car accidents, one when he was 19 and the other with me and he had broken his neck and back, we thought this paralysis was the result of those injuries and his using the wrong tool to trim those trees.

So we reverted back to what we knew and tried to use raw food vegan diet and "super-foods" trying to heal this paralysis. After almost a year we had to concede that this approach failed.  He did not improve at all and my health was failing completely.

During this period my teeth started to hurt and my gums quickly receded a lot. They hurt all the time and I could barely eat. Returning to a cooked vegan diet improved the situation quite a bit, but left my tooth nerves still exposed.

In addition to having problems with my teeth my autoimmune problems seemed to get worse and I became even more chronically exhausted and depressed. I couldn't get enough sleep, I hurt all day everyday.

I felt like we were just sitting around waiting to die.

We eventually decided to try the medical route.

Doc's x-rays revealed the back injuries from those car accidents had healed! One of his chiropractors said he had the most perfectly aligned neck bones he had seen!  However he had developed arthritis down his neck and spine. This made no sense to us, we were sure our diet would have prevented arthritis!

Blood tests reveled his cholesterol levels were really horrible, which was even more confusing since he didn't eat any saturated fats.

Dissatisfied with the medical treatments Doc was receiving and their effects, I returned to my old ways of thinking.

I believe our bodies have the ability to heal themselves. So I kept searching for what we needed to do to heal ourselves.

I started thinking about how healthy my 85+ years old Aunts are. I started thinking I should eat like they do.  Perhaps like my grandparents did when they were children.

The healthiest of my aunts is 90+ and grows all of her own food. She eats home grown vegetables, a little meat, home raised eggs and has a goat she milks.  Her mind is sharper than mine and she doesn't need any medications.

I talked to Doc about this idea and his resistance coupled with my worn down health stopped me from doing anything about it.

Then my Mother in-law's health started to fail and Doc had to go live with her in another state. This left me with a lot of extra time and freedom.

So I turned to Google and found the Weston Price research. I double checked everything I read there and was impressed with the real science they use. I became convinced I was on the right track and started eating some free range eggs and raw fermented milk products.

To my surprise, my 23+ year struggle with depression went away in about 3 weeks.

Seeing my improvements and reading up on some of the research I had found, Doc decided he had nothing to lose and joined me in my experiment. His paralysis improved after a couple of months.

Then further research brought me to the GAP diet. This diet includes low starch veggies, navy beans and lentils. We had to give up veganism as this diet also includes cod liver oil and homemade meat broth.

We could be almost vegetarians, which was important to Doc. He was still very weary of actually eating meat as everything he knew stated that meat would cause cancer.

We both benefited from this low starch diet and his paralysis almost completely recovered and my teeth started feeling and looking healthier.

However, I was still struggled with autoimmune symptoms. I suffer from Lichen Sclerosus, Chronic Fatigue and Arthritis in my hands and feet.

This spring I felt drawn to do further research and began to study the Paleo or cave-man diet which includes veggies, grass-fed and free range meats, fermented raw dairy, free-range eggs, sprouted nuts and fruit in season. No grains. I highly recommend Primal Body - Primal Mind by Nora Gedgaudas

For the past few months we've eaten a Paleo style diet. We eat grass-fed organic meat or wild caught fatty fish everyday, along with plenty of organic vegetables. We also take a high quality natural vitamin and a tablespoon of cod liver oil and 2-3 tablespoons of coconut oil everyday.

I've lost 20# of body fat, mostly around my waist. My hands and feet hurt less, I sleep better, I no longer need to nap, my teeth are healing themselves. My autoimmune symptoms are lessening and for a few days a month seem to have gone away.  I've seen a big improvement in my ability to remember things and my reading comprehension has improved.

My husband feels much healthier and stopped going to his chiropractor 3 times a week.

Life has improved and we both feel hopeful for the first time in many-many years.

Grandpa weighs in -

I guess I feel obligated to add to this a bit. It's true that I spent 31 years as a vegetarian (the first six allowing dairy and refined sugar), 25 of them as vegan.

I am a real extremist and purist and while I never disparaged others for their eating habits, I was very strict about how my own family ate. With 5 generations of chiropractors in my family including early health food researchers and advocates I found myself to be the most extreme of them all.

I dropped out of 3 major chiropractic colleges to pursue energy only healing, which I have practiced since 1978, and considered myself a true disciple of what I considered a pure and superior diet. I discovered Spirulina 30 years ago and consumed and promoted it daily up to about a year ago when I finally isolated it as the source of recently acquired constipation. Now, of course I see that it took years of veganism to allow my body to degenerate to the point that it became a problem, because at first it made me feel great.

Also, when we first became vegans at the recommendation of our chiropractor (though he wasn't even vegetarian) we started with raw-food sproutarianism (Ann Wigmore) and followed that very strictly for 2 years, adding some cooked vegetables back into our diets when our six young children progressively got more lethargic and pasty-skinned. This was weird to us because the adults felt energetic and invigorated, and "the literature" (a disgustingly misleading book "Diet Into the 21st Century") told us that people would say we looked like skeletons and not to worry about it, which view our chiro endorsed.

Our children immediately recovered with the addition of some non-raw meals and for the next 23 years we struggled to stay between 50 and 80% raw.

Over the years, as we experienced occasional health issues (much worse than we recognized) we would dive back into 100% raw eating in an attempt to heal with what we thought was a more pure diet.

So two years ago, when I damaged my radial nerve by pruning with a reciprocal saw instead of a chain saw (or hand saw) we went back to a 100% raw diet to try to cure it. I experienced "pins and needles" over my entire body and couldn't control my tactile response, so I dropped everything I picked up, breaking expensive electronics and afraid to hold my grandkids. It was horrible.

While we loved our raw diet, we always found it a struggle to maintain (we stayed 100% for a year at this time) - but more importantly, it didn't help my problems.

I saw all kinds of doctors, deciding that since the chiropractor wasn't helping at all, I would go to (shudder) an MD, and so got MRIs and endured hours of painful poking with electric needles to determine what was wrong. They couldn't find anything, but I tried the physical therapy they prescribed and took all kinds of hard core drugs to manage my pain and escalating (level 4) hypertension. (my thyroid was already pretty much dead by then). None of that helped either.

Just over a year ago, I went to live with and care for my dying mother, bringing her on a 4 hour trip every other weekend to Michigan so she and I could visit my sister's and my families. I hadn't been gone more than a few weeks when Kita told that she was (in my absence) going to try eating some eggs and kefir.

I was so upset, especially when she told me that she had been secretly contemplating this change for about three years.

Between my debilitation and taking care of my mom with hers, I really had no energy to argue. I have always been committed to supporting Kita and respected her intellect (she is so smart) and just as when in the past she wanted to go on 30 day juice fasts (which I loved) I felt that I would have to support her in this, and since we generally are pretty much "connected at the hip", after she surprised me with a positive report on eating her first egg in 25 years, decided that I had better join her as long as she promised not to experiment with anything beyond dairy.

She was reading Weston Price who I had cursorily dismissed years earlier as a crackpot because he thought meat was good for you. I tried some kefir (full of sugar from Kroger) and liked it, just about the time my mom went into hospice (to die a week later) I bought some pastured eggs and started having an egg every day and a glass of kefir.

After about a month (and back home by now) I found that my manual dexterity was suddenly very much improved and while I hadn't been able to make a fist or play guitar for nearly two years, I could with great effort finger some chords and pick the right strings now and then.

I still couldn't ride my motorcycle since I couldn't control the handlebars and we were both sad to lose one of our favorite activities. (anybody want to buy a 76 Harley with a suicide shift?)

Over the months, with great effort my ability to play guitar continued to improve to the point that "other people" thought I sounded really good.

About 8 months ago Kita decided that she was going to try eating meat. My daughter Jamie chastised me for saying that if Kita ate meat I wouldn't kiss her. That made me think. (I really like the way she kisses) and I decided that if she was really going to do that, and was so convinced that it would improve our health (she had other health issues that our "pure" diet wouldn't resolve, but I'll let her tell about that) that I would try to drag myself to the table for vegetables cooked in meat broth.

The more she read (I was resistant to the literature, but trusted her conclusions) the more she moved us toward actually eating meat. I couldn't deny my dramatic (though not complete) improvement in health and though we were both creeped-out by eating meat, we kept at it and now, finally after all these months are starting to enjoy it.

Since we were vegan for so long (thank goodness all our kids secretly cheated and ate dairy) I expect it will be a slower recovery than some shorter term vegans have reported. We may have damaged our immune systems beyond full recovery - but maybe not.

Our decline was in gradual spurts and I didn't really realize until I was practically totally incapacitated how much vitality, strength and mental clarity I had lost (much like other vegans have reported - though I just recently found that out). Some little bit of that has improved and I hope it continues.

Now that we are eating organic, pastured meat and dairy only, we have even fewer restaurant options (really just vegan ones) than before, especially since we are opting out on grains, and still can't eat anything at family dinners but what we bring ourselves. (well, we've been doing that for nearly 30 years anyway) It's pretty confusing to relatives (as always) especially since they know we will eat meat and mayo, but not theirs.

Most importantly, however - we are getting well and now realize that our new paleo diet is our true NATURAL diet, being led previously by false religion that God was vegan and preferred us to be also (even though we seemed to be the only true believers in those teachings all those years, we were often accused at church of being satanists because we were vegetarian) which is how I became a vegetarian in the first place - to please God and eat like him. (D&C 89 - LDS Word of Wisdom purported to be dictated by Jesus)

I even nearly completed a book, likely now never to be published helping Mormons see that God and science demand vegetarianism!

I guess (hope) that eliminating veganism has been just the latest part of our long, painful, humiliating and divisive but successful extraction from Mormonism.

I don't have to hope regarding improvement in health by rejecting all of the above past beliefs - except to hope for more of what my return to Nature is already providing.

Other vegan bloggers who have had similar experiences.

My Must Read List

The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability

Lierre Keith (Paperback - May 1, 2009)

$13.60

Nutrition and Physical Degeneration

Weston A. Price (Paperback - Jan 31, 2008)

$22.78

Primal Body, Primal Mind: Beyond the Paleo Diet for Total Health and a …

Nora T. Gedgaudas (Paperback - May 27, 2011)

$12.36

Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It

Anchor

Followers Follow Where Leaders Lead

This is a topic I could write a whole book about (I'll try to not do that just now) but it is an important truth.

The militarization of our police, making every cop into a "Rambo" and every citizen into "garbage" needing to be "taken out" if they dare to drag a cop away from his doughnut is a Really Big Problem in the United States today.

It is not just isolated to certain cities, states or activities, but is a problem everywhere in our nation.

The thinking that makes every person who interacts with the police a criminal who has no civil rights and further makes police brutality a practice that Mayors, Prosecutors, Police Chiefs and Police Officers consider legitimate and appropriate is one area where the Trickle Down theory applies absolutely.

This began well before Pres. G.W. Bush signed the so called Patriot Act and began Federally funding and encouraging the militarisation of our police, but the practice of considering every one as under suspicion of being a terrorist, or just a suspicious character, just because they have ventured out of their home, certainly escalated to insane proportions with his signing of this unconstituional and fascist legislation.

I can't help but think of Benjamin Franklin's warning, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."


Worse even is the failure of Leaders and Legislators to understand that YOU CANNOT GIVE WHAT YOU HAVE NOT GOT.  In this case of course the thing they all have not got is power and authority over and above that held by any individual citizen.  

It is not a new concept that the powers of government derive directly from the powers of the governed.  This is simple Constitutional history and easy to understand.  I have posted before an excellent, short exposition of The Proper Role of Government  (given in 1968) that I think everyone should read. (especially Mitt Romney, since it is from one of his Prophets, delivered in General Conference and hence manditorily The WORD OF GOD to him).

Most basic to the converstation,  from that sermon by Ezra T. Benson.

"It is generally agreed that the most important single function of government is to secure the rights and freedoms of individual citizens.

But, what are those rights? And what is their source? Until these questions are answered there is little likelihood that we can correctly determine how government can best secure them.

Thomas Paine, back in the days of the American Revolution, explained that:

Rights are not gifts from one man to another, nor from one class of men to another...It is impossible to discover any origin of rights otherwise than in the origin of man; it consequently follows that rights appertain to man in right of his existence, and must therefore be equal to every man."

"If we accept the premise that human rights are granted by government, then we must be willing to accept the corollary that they can be denied by government. I, for one, shall never accept that premise.

As the French political economist, Frederick-Bastiat, phrased it so succinctly,

"Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws.

On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place." (The Law, p. 6)"

I support the doctrine of separation of church and state as traditionally interpreted to prohibit the establishment of an official national religion.

But I am opposed to the doctrine of separation of church and state as currently interpreted to divorce government from any formal recognition of God.

The current trend strikes a potentially fatal blow at the concept of the divine origin or our rights, and unlocks the door for an easy entry of future tyranny. 

If Americans should ever come to believe that their rights and freedoms are instituted among men by politicians and bureaucrats, then they will no longer carry the proud inheritance of their forefathers, but will grovel before their masters seeking favors and dispensations--a throwback to the Feudal System of the Dark Ages. 

[Wow!  Talk about a Prophet!]

We must ever keep in mind the inspired words of Thomas Jefferson, as found in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

"Since God created man with certain unalienable rights, and man, in turn, created government to help secure and safeguard those rights, it follows that man is superior to the creature which he created.

Man is superior to government and should remain master over it, not the other way around.

Even the non-believer can appreciate the logic of this relationship.

The Source of Government Power Leaving aside, for a moment, the question of the divine origin of rights, it is obvious that a government is nothing more or less than a relatively small group of citizens who have been hired, in a sense, by the rest of us to perform certain functions and discharge certain responsibilities which have been authorized.

It stands to reason that the government itself has no innate power or privilege to do anything.

Its only source of authority and power is from the people who have created it.

This is made clear in the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States, which reads:
"WE THE PEOPLE...do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

The important thing to keep in mind is that the people who have created their government can give to that government only such powers as they, themselves, have in the first place.

Obviously, they cannot give that which they do not possess.

So, the question boils down to this. What powers properly belong to each and every person in the absence of and prior to the establishment of any organized governmental form?

A hypothetical question? Yes, indeed!
But, it is a question which is vital to an understanding of the principles which underlie the proper function of government."

Well, that is the basic idea and the foundation of what I believe and practice about the nature and proper role of government, but you really should read the whole essay for yourself.  The Proper Role of Government

I see no difference (beyond severity) in the recent murder of Trayvon Martin and the unmitigated and unwarrented brutality toward Occupy Protesters and laws which hold that any person deemed "suspicious" by a police officer or even by a civilian (as in Trayvon's murder) can simply be indefinitly detained or "taken out" at will, no questions asked.

Our government has a long history of immoral and illegal acts, but I feel these views and practices by our "Leaders" became widely known to the public with Pres. Richard Nixon and became enshrined as legitimate political licsense with his unpardonable pardon, followed of course by the well publicised, immoral and illegal acts of nearly every President since. (right up to today)

If President Reagan had not eliminated community mental health facilities, dumping hundreds of thousands of mentally ill people directly to the streets and creating the term "Homeless" (before that the only homeless were bums and hobos who were generally homeless by choice, not circumstance), I beleive Trayvon's killing would not have happened.

From police reports of the irrational, compulsive and obsessive behavior of Trayvon's killer, it is easy to conclude that this man had severe, anti-social, mental issues that would most likely have placed him in protective mental health care long before he could have killed anyone, and certainly would have deprived him from owning a gun.

So when Mr. Zimmerman is eventually tried, we should dig up Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Jeb Bush and others to stand trial along side him, as they certainly set him up to murder and set up Trayvon to be murdered due to their unconstitutional, Gestapo-like policies.

Today on a local (Michigan) program on our legislature, a proponant of even more liberal gun laws who thinks we need to be able to carry guns to church (and if we served the mentally ill, we should be able to - or maybe because we fail to service the mentally ill, we need to!)

Anyway, he made the remark that policemen must carry guns "to protect themselves"!

This could not be more wrong.

The police carry guns to protect citizens, not themselves.

With this kind of thinking it is no wonder that we have devolved into a POLICE STATE.

It simply is no longer safe for any ordinary citizent to be in the vicinity of a police officer.

And in Michigan of course, our Governor has decreed (and made law) that he has the power to eliminate self-rule, unseat local governments, un-charter cities, defund education, make and unmake laws at will - and this is not just a law waiting to be put into practice - it is in practice all over Michigan right now.  (Michigan's Emergency Manager Law)

We can easily see that we as a people have indeed "followed our leaders" in being bigoted and paranoid to the degree that we would rather shoot people that are "different" and not be interested in whether they are an actual threat or not.

And nearly all people (worldwide) simply ARE NOT a threat, yet we treat each other as if we were.

Our police are so PETRIFIED of their jobs and convinced (and why not considering their ugly behavior) by their training that anyone not in their particular uniform is a terrorist practicing terrorism, that the very basic rights they are hired to protect are the ones they prosecute, each officer as sole judge, jury and executioner.

This is horrible and disgusting and a threat to TRUE Democracy.  (as opposed to the Imperialism, Pillage and Tyrany that passes for Democracy today).   Why do other nations distrust and despise us indeed!!!

I cannot beleive that police officers preparing to "ensure the safety of citizens" during, say - an Occupy protest are not prepped before they leave the station to see everyone, even reporters and local officals who happen to be in the vicinity as human garbage that they are there to take out.

I have for several years subscribed to Police Magazine and recently have shared many of their articles and videos here which graphically display this inverted police mentality (which they get from their leaders as it trickles down from the very top - Hi Pres. O.).

I do this because I think it's vital that we not fall for the promotional hype and recognise that if we are within grasp of "the government" we will be targeted, if only to be extorted.  All our world has been turned into one giant "speed trap" it seems.

I hope that when you watch the videos and read the articles you continue down to read the comments section.

It is easy to identify which comments come from fellow police officers, who routinely congratulate each other on their brutality and disparage any non-cop who happens to fall into police clutches as just more human garbage that neither has nor deserves human rights or humane treatment.

They obviously see the public as their own personal enemies and not as their employers and objects of their finest efforts to serve and protect.

A policeman who is scared to death of everyone, and who has no respect for anyone (not wearing the uniform) is one who is going to bully and beat and even kill anyone in his space - because they percieve standing in the same space as them as a direct personal threat is not a benefit to anyone and is a direct threat to life and liberty.

This is wrong.  It is wrong from it's foundation.

This is the reason we have become victims of the creature that is government - that we created.

We have made a monster and we need to tame it or chop off it's head.

From Greg Palast at http://www.gregpalast.com

Cops beat our cameraman ZD Roberts

Sunday, March 18, 2012

[New York Monday March 19]
Our photographer ZD Roberts was beaten by New York City cops with nightsticks while covering Occupy Wall Street's attempt to re-take Zuccotti Park Saturday night.

Zach yelled several times, “I’m PRESS! PRESS!” yet was slammed on the head twice after he’d been thrown to the ground when the police shoved back the protesters. Zach, whose photos of Occupy Wall Street have been seen all over the world on the front page of The Guardian, showed his press badge, an act for which his hair was grabbed, head pulled back and slammed again with a club.
If you remember, Zach was arrested while covering the story three months ago. His trial is coming up (he refused to cop a plea).
We’ve covered the world … but who thought that the toughest combat assignment would be New York?
Here’s Zach story and comment in his own words and photos:
My head hurts. The NYPD did this to me.
3 months after my arrest during an Occupy Wall St. protest on #D17 and two days away from my meeting with the Assistant DA about said arrest - I got beaten by cops just outside of Zuccotti Park.
I wasn't the only one, and I have no doubt I won't be the last. The NYPD has complete authority in this town - I hate using the word police state, but when I saw a girl thrown from a bus, in handcuffs, having a seizure being tossed to the ground - I really am at a loss for any other words.

Cameras documented it. Here's one of the photos I took. There's tons of video. I can tell you from being there that there wasn't a single police officer with a look of concern on his/her face as the girl continued having a seizure on the hard pavement of Broadway.
It took 15 minutes for an ambulance to arrive. I'm told 5 minutes is the usual response time in this part of town.
This is Commissioner Ray Kelly's city, we just live here.
There was no ambulance needed for me. I was lucky… or maybe just stupid.
After the second cleansing of Zuccotti Park, Saturday night, the police continued their pushback under the guise of 'safety concerns' - basically a standard operating procedure to keep protesters and journalists from being allowed to witness arrests and to disperse the crowd in different directions.
It works quite well, that is until it doesn't. The thing is, when you're pushing back with billy clubs and metal barricades, sometimes people can't move back quick enough. Or sometimes, people refuse to move from a public sidewalk. Well as a photographer, I get caught in the middle quite often - usually I'm deft enough to get out of the way - this time I wasn't.
I fell back, and while trying to get up - there was another push from the police - they saw me fall, mind you. Just didn't care.
Two or three people made it over me without falling as well, using me as their sidewalk (they didn't have any other choice) - but then came the rush - four or five people fell on top of me.
The police kept pushing. Then came the batons. I couldn't see if the people that were on top of me previously got hit at all but I certainly did, twice to the back and once on the head.

I'm not quite sure what the logic is of literally beating a man when he's down. But once he saw that his baton beating wasn't getting me going he decided to try to pick me up by my hair. That didn't work either - but by then I was up enough to get my footing under me as I continued screaming "PRESS!!! PRESS!!!" That was enough to get the beating to stop - but I still was pushed/thrown back into the crowd, again almost losing my footing as I had to leap over a pile of garbage into the street.
Checking my bag and camera for damage I moved outside of the crowd to compose myself before pushing back in.
Read the rest at SuicideGirlsblog.com later tomorrow and visit our facebook page for some exclusive photos from the raid.

.................................................................................................................

So, what do you think?  Is this the United States that was established to ensure Life, Liberty and the Persuit of Happiness (originally it was supposed to say property) or has our nation been commandeered by Tyrants and Fascists?

Do you think they are going to give us back our Freedoms without a fight?

Do you think their bullying and murderous tactics are "too big to fail"?

Do you think the "right to bear arms" (2nd Amendment) is there more to protect us from our neighbors or more to protect us from our government?