BUY NOTHING DAY

During the week, I dropped my step-daughter off at the Metro Centre in Newcastle, on her way back to New Zealand. It’s a massive shopping centre with ten thousands car parks. I’d never been there before and I can swear I’ll never go there again. I felt physically ill by the shop-a-holic fever which swept through the place. I know Christmas is coming up, but there was something else in the air...almost a fear that the world would end, and if only, IF ONLY, they could buy just one more thing, it might save them.

I pointed out to my daughters that almost all the things for sale would end up in a landfill and not readily decompose ~ except things from the bookshop.

Our culture raises babies on fast food (formula) and weans them onto more consumerism. Every baby I saw in that shopping centre was stuck in a pram, and had a dummy in its mouth ~ a bit of plastic which will sit in landfills for up to 450 years. What sort of children are we raising?

Today’s a celebration for those who’d like to show a little more respect for the planet ~ it’s called BUY NOTHING DAY. Just 20% of the world’s population consume 80% of our natural resources. Where's the fairness in that?

Everything we purchase should have us questioning whether we really need it, who has produced (that is, was it made ethically, through child labour, virgin forest destruction etc), how will it impact on the environment?, etc.

Like many people, I can get quite frustrated with the cost of ‘living’ and, indeed, living in a consumerist culture. I was sharing with another mother the other day that the best things in life are free. I wouldn’t swap the love in my family for any amount of money. There are some days when I swear I could just reach my hand out and 'touch' love in the air. My daughters know we are rich beyond measure.

Buy Nothing Day is about developing a CONSUMER CONSCIENCE. Being eco-minded isn’t just about recycling. In fact, recycling is pretty much a last ditch effort. Our focus should be on ‘do I really need this?’, and if I do, then can it be reused.

I recently *needed* some more bookshelves and for years I've made do with a hard dining chair for my computer area. Within days of being on freecycle, I received a very comfortable computer chair and three next-to-new bookshelves, as well as a piano stool which I’d been seeking out for quite a while!

We need to move away from our culture’s obsession with everything we own being brand spanking new, in the latest colours, or twinned with what some celebrity owns. We need, in short, to stop being so shallow.

Of course, you COULD buy my new book (not today though, get it on Monday!!), or get your library to stock it so loads of mums and midwives, and with luck, health visitors, can read it! Let's get babes back on the breast and away from all that crap in a can. Let's save this planet from the formula milk industry and all the pollution it causes.

The Drinks Are On Me (everything your mother never told you about breastfeeding) as recommended by The Independent on November 13th...now available from www.artofchange.co.uk Enjoy!

GUNPOINT MEDICINE

Children herded like cattle into Maryland courthouse
for forced vaccinations as armed police and attack dogs stand guard

Today’s blog is a piece from NewsTarget by Mike Adams. I'm too speechless to comment.

(NewsTarget) Following the State of Maryland's threats against parents who refuse to have their children vaccinated, children were herded into a Price George County courthouse being guarded by armed personnel with attack dogs. Inside, the children were forcibly vaccinated, many against their will, under orders from the State Attorney General, various State Judges and the local School Board Director, all of whom illegally conspired to threaten parents with imprisonment if they did not submit their children to vaccinations.The State of Maryland has now turned to Gestapo tactics to force its medical will upon the People, stripping parents of any right to decide how they wish to protect their own children from infectious disease.

Health authorities there have already announced their intent to essentially kidnap parents and throw them in jail, removing them from their children for up to thirty days if they continue to refuse to have their children vaccinated. This will all be conducted at gunpoint, with armed personnel and attack dogs at the ready, making sure nobody steps out of line, and suppressing any attempt at public dissent against the Orwellian vaccination policies.The entire campaign against these parents is blatantly illegal. There is no law in Maryland requiring the vaccination of children, thus parents who refuse to do so may not be legally charged with violating any law. Instead, Maryland health and school authorities are using Gestapo-like tactics, threatening to charge the parents with child truancy violations, criminalizing them for daring to protect their children from the dangerous chemicals found in vaccines (including thimerosal, a chemical additive containing a neurotoxic form of mercury).

The desperation of organized medicine is becoming increasingly apparent
As more and more parents are becoming informed about the dangers of vaccinations and their link to autism, state health authorities are increasingly turning to "Gunpoint Medicine" to force the People to submit to the poisons of conventional medicine. Parents who attempt to save their children from deadly chemotherapy chemicals are being arrested and having their children kidnapped by Child Protective Services (see http://www.newstarget.com/Abraham_Cherrix.html ), and oncologists who used to be armed only with radiation machines and chemotherapy injectors and now arming themselves with U.S. Marshals and other local law enforcement authorities who are using loaded firearms to enforce "the will of the State" against parents who resist.

Even the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) announced its strong opposition to the Maryland "Gunpoint Medicine" vaccination campaign. In a press release published Nov. 16, the AAPS states:The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons today condemned the “vaccine roundup” executed in Prince George’s county Maryland this week, and promised to do everything it can to support parents who refuse to immunize their children. “This power play obliterates informed consent and parental rights,” said Kathryn Serkes, director of policy for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), one of the few national physician groups that refuse corporate funding from pharmaceutical companies. In a scenario reminiscent of cattle round-ups, the state’s attorney has issued summons to more than 1600 parents of children who have not provided certificates of immunization for their children. But instead of toting a cattle prod, this state’s attorney chooses to wield a syringe to keep the “herd” in line.

Gunpoint Medicine: Why drug pushers must now rely on Gestapo tactics

Conventional (pharmaceutical) medicine is the only system of medicine in the world that is so unpopular with informed consumers that it must be administered at the barrel of a gun. There is no other system of medicine anywhere in the world that resorts to such tactics to recruit patients.At the Nov. 17th event in Maryland, activists Jim Moody and Kelly Ann Davis from SafeMinds (www.SafeMinds.org) were able to get in front of TV news cameras and voice their opposition to the coerced vaccination policy. Yet, amazingly, most parents just lined up like cattle ready to be branded, not bothering to question the sanity or legality of the very system in which they were now agreeing to participate.

A health freedom blog called Center for the Common Interest (www.CommonInterest.info) also covered the event, and it reports that a local activist named Donovan Hubbard videotaped the event and plans to make the video available online. (NewsTarget would like to contact Donovan and / or publicize his video. If you know of a way we can contact him, please call us at (520) 232-9300 to let us know...)

What's next for Gunpoint Medicine?
As the truth continues to emerge about the extreme dangers of vaccinations and pharmaceuticals, Big Pharma is becoming increasingly desperate to coerce the public into relying on its products. It is now working closely with state authorities (including Governors of several states) to mandate the use of vaccinations on young children. This results in the criminalization of parents who refuse to subject their children to these dangerous chemicals.In effect, Big Pharma is hoping to turn natural health followers into criminals.The FDA has already criminalized nutritional supplement companies who dare to tell the truth about the health benefits of their supplements. (Read the true history of armed FDA raids on vitamin companies here: http://www.newstarget.com/021791.html )

Next, parents who refuse to subject their children to the chemical pharmaceuticals proposed by Big Pharma will be criminalized, rounded up and incarcerated for "refusing to comply with public health policy."


This is all being done by the State in the name of "protecting the children" from their own natural health parents. (Insane, isn't it, to think that protecting your child from toxic chemicals is now a criminal act in the United States?)The end game of all this is to apply Gunpoint Medicine tactics to everyone: Adults and senior citizens included. Anyone suffering from high cholesterol, for example, who does not submit to Big Pharma's statin drugs could be arrested, strapped to a table and medicated against their will. People with cancer could be arrested for choosing to treat that cancer with safe and effective botanical medicines instead of patented, high-profit Big Pharma drugs.

If you think the prisons are full enough right now from all the arrests for marijuana possession and other victimless crimes, just wait until the State starts arresting all the natural health moms and dads across the country who refuse to participate in the utterly insane and extremely harmful system of medicine that now dominates U.S. health care today.

The State is very clear about medicine: If you want to remain a free citizen, you must submit to the synthetic drugs made by the very same corporations that now control government health regulators. Any person who resists such "treatments" will be branded a threat to public health -- a designation just beneath "terrorist" in the eyes of many government bureaucrats. As such, they believe there is no limit to the level of force they may use to coerce such people into submitting to Big Pharma's chemicals. Today, it's armed guards with attack dogs. Tomorrow, it might be water boarding or other torture methods. Think that's impossible? Think again: Just five years ago, nobody in their right mind would have thought that parents who did not want to get their children vaccinated would end up in prison, their children kidnapped by state authorities and forced to subject themselves to dangerous chemical injections at gunpoint. Yet that is precisely what is happening right now in the state of Maryland. It happened on Saturday, in fact.

Where is the outrage?
What's most interesting about this issue of using the threat of imprisonment to force vaccinations upon children is not necessarily who is speaking out against it, but who has chosen to remain silent.The American Medical Association, for example, has said nothing in opposition to the policy. Neither has the Food and Drug Administration. Where is the outrage from the Maryland Hospital Association? None of these organizations seem to have a problem with Gunpoint Medicine. The idea of rounding up parents and coercing their children into receiving injections of toxic chemicals does not seem to bother these organizations. And why should it? All of these organizations are closely tied to Big Pharma. They're all in favor of vaccinations for all, it seems, and I have no doubt that some individuals in these organizations (especially the AMA) are strongly in favor of the Gunpoint Medicine coerced vaccination policy being played out in Maryland right now.Organized medicine believes the People are too stupid to be allowed to make their own health decisions. Bureaucrats and physicians should be the ones making these decisions, we're told, and any person who disagrees with such decisions should be labeled a criminal, arrested and prosecuted. This is no exaggeration. It is, in fact, a shockingly accurate description of Maryland's current vaccination policy.It wasn't too long ago that Americans would have stood up and rallied against this kind of medical tyranny.

The major news networks would have denounced Maryland's vaccination policy with strong language and harsh accusations. People would have been marching in the streets, demanding their health freedom. But today, it's a different America.

The People are drugged up on pharmaceuticals and dosed on fluoride. They're too intoxicated to think straight, and they're frightened into submission by a fear-based government that invokes domestic tyranny at every opportunity to control and manipulate the People into doing whatever it wants.


The "free" America we all once knew is long gone, and it has been replaced with The United States of Corporate America, where police tactics are now used to enforce hazardous public health policies, and the people who run the State no longer think there's anything wrong with rounding up the population at gunpoint and performing large-scale medical experiments on their children. That's what modern vaccines are, after all: A grand medical experiment whose effects will only become known after a generation of mass poisoning has come and gone.

About the author: Mike Adams is a consumer health advocate with a mission to teach personal and planetary health to the public He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, impacting the lives of millions of readers around the world who are experiencing phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. In 2007, Adams launched EcoLEDs, a maker of super bright LED light bulbs that are 1000% more energy efficient than incandescent lights. He's also a noted pioneer in the email marketing software industry, having been the first to launch an HTML email newsletter technology that has grown to become a standard in the industry. Adams also serves as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a non-profit consumer protection group, and enjoys outdoor activities, nature photography, Pilates and adult gymnastics. Known as the 'Health Ranger,' Adams' personal health statistics and mission statements are located at www.HealthRanger.org

Would you drink a vaccine? WHY NOT?

October 1, 2007

Ojai, CA -- On January 29, 2001, Jock Doubleday offered $20,000 to the first U.S.-licensed medical doctor or pharmaceutical company CEO to publicly drink a mixture of standard vaccine additive ingredients: http://www.mercola.com/2001/feb/10/vaccine_offer.htm The offer had no takers.

On August 1, 2006, Doubleday increased the $20,000 offer to$75,000: http://www.vaclib.org/links/jockslinks.htm#press The new $75,000 offer had no takers. THEREFORE . . . On June 1, 2007, the offer was increased to $80,000. On July 1, 2007, the offer was increased to $85,000.On August 1, 2007, the offer was increased to $90,000.On September 1, 2007, the offer was increased to $95,000.

On October 1, 2007, the offer was increased to $100,000.

The offer will increase $5,000 per month, in perpetuity, until an M.D. or pharmaceutical company CEO, or any of the 14 relevant members of the ACIP (see below), agree to drink a body-weight calibrated dose of the poisonous vaccine additives that M.D.sroutinely inject into children in the name of health.As of November 1, 2007, the offer will increase to $105,000.As of December 1, 2007, the offer will increase to $110,000.As of January 1, 2008, the offer will increase to $115,000. . . . etc.

This offer has no expiration date unless superseded by a similar offer of higher remuneration. In health, Jock DoubledayDirectorNatural Woman, Natural Man, Inc.A California 501(c)3 Nonprofit Corporation

http://gentlebirth.org/nwnm.org/nwnm_org.html

Optical Illusion

In March this year, my daughter Bethany was squinting a lot. Was it a ‘habit’ that developed from an unmet need and a way of getting some extra parental attention? Was she reading too much? Paul suggested we take her to an optometrist. Against my better judgement I went. I avoid the medical profession, and opticians come under the same category. I was horrified when he said she needed glasses for all ‘close work’, like reading, sewing, knitting, drawing, etc.

He said to come back in six months. This man, with the social skills of a dead ant, was very dismissive of any holistic approach, including pin hole glasses. I bit my tongue.

For the duration of the six months I felt uneasy. When her check-up was due, I chose another optometrist. There was panic and they said her eyes had deteriorated rapidly in six months and prescribed her ‘new glasses’… Here’s an irony, they wouldn’t even use her old frames without charging me £20 for the recycling pleasure. I didn’t find this woman’s social skills to be much better than the last optometrist's.

They said Bethany needed to see a specialist. Thank Goddess for that!

When we travelled over to Hexham hospital to meet him, I was immediately struck by how pleasant he was, his FANTASTIC eye contact, and his honesty. He was stunned that she’d been prescribed glasses in the first place. Her vision is normal. Apparently, according to him, many children are being prescribed glasses in the UK ~ no coincidence that the optometrist gets £20 from the government each time a child gets new glasses.

Until we saw him, I’d been planning to get hold of a holistic eyesight book from Findhorn Press. I’d read excerpts online about the metaphysical reasons for various eye disorders and felt this to be the path we would have pursued in remedying the situation.

If your child has been prescribed glasses, listen to your heart and consider getting an opinion from a specialist who has no ulterior motive.

Environmental implications of not breastfeeding affects EVERY plant and animal on this planet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yau-Y7tWaPo

hello everyone...today's blog is an invitation to visit the Youtube snippets of my book The Drinks Are On Me. The wonderful Barry Durdant-Hollamby (aka Art of Change man) has created three mini films (and his home educated daughter Sophie is singing to it). This one covers the environmental costs of not breastfeeding. You can link to the other two films while you're there...And watch for more to come.

Have a fab week
Veronika

GOT MILK, WILL SHARE

Apologies to those people who check in to my blog each week. I’ve not really fallen off the edge of the Earth, despite those rumours! It’s been a hectic month or so, for various reasons, and will become apparent in my blogs over the next few weeks.



(Wet Nursing is the nursing of another woman’s baby for money. Cross Nursing involves the one-off or occasional breastfeeding of someone else’s baby while you continue to nurse her own child.)

When I was pregnant with my daughters, I had a pact with my lactating friends that if I couldn’t breastfeed for any reason, they’d breastfeed my babies. We were Milk Systers, and our vow was solid. Obviously I would do the same for their babies. I am one of *those* women who’d happily share my breast milk with another woman’s baby ~ friend or stranger. Like any aspect of breastfeeding, whether it’s breastfeeding itself, full-term breastfeeding, tandem nursing, breastfeeding in public ~ how you feel about it will depend on your frame of reference.

I have shared milk with other women’s children (with their permission) and although it is initially strange having a child who’s not your own, in your arms and connected so intimately, once the old oxytocin (love hormone) kicks in, you simply know that you could breastfeed the World’s Children. Yes, love is that big. Breast milk is liquid love and true love knows no bounds.

Some people are absolutely horrified at the thought of feeding someone else’s child, yet have no qualms about their baby sucking from a cow’s udder ~ even if the experienced is camouflaged and one step removed by being mixed with other ingredients, freeze dried and then re-hydrated into a bottle.

There’s no question that the breastfeeding relationship between a mother and her child is sacred, even holy, ground. And as an advocate of breastfeeding at the breast, rather than a mother’s own expressed milk in a bottle, it might seem odd that I’d be in support of wet nursing or shared feeding (known as cross nursing [horrible expression]). Here are my reasons:

I’m not in support of expressed milk as life-style choice because breast milk is designed to be consumed as it is made. It is age and (developmental) stage specific to the mother’s child and was never meant to see the light of day.

Breastfeeding is a complete package that involves so many aspects of the child’s being ~ physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. My preference would be for a child to be nursed at another woman’s breast (as a temporary measure, or permanently if her own mother is dead or extremely ill) than to consume ‘old’ (even hours old) milk from a bottle.

Breast milk is a *living* food and should be treated with the respect it deserves.

My main thoughts about wet-nursing/cross nursing are:

1.) It should be a gift of love, and not something measured by money, unless the lactating woman is doing it long-term as a career.

2.) I believe mothers should support each other when new babies come along, and be willing to share their milk so that asking the baby to drink from a bottle (expressed milk or formula) is not necessary. (Please note that a mother’s expressed milk is always the first choice of supplement, but where possible offer it off a finger, pipette or spoon, rather than a bottle. Allowing the baby to nurse from another mum enables the sucking reflex to develop)


A child will not breastfeed if it doesn’t want to! You can’t force a baby to breastfeed, so the concerns from some quarters of LLL that it might cause psychological harm, I believe, are unfounded.

If you want to look further into cross nursing, the Association of Breastfeeding Mothers takes a more liberal view than LLL.

I have heard someone in LLL say that if a mother cross nurses another child, it may reduce her own milk supply. This flies in the face of what I learnt during my breastfeeding counsellor training (ironically with LLL) AND from my own experience and that of other mothers world-wide. Milk is made on demand. If you’ve got two (or more) children feeding at the breast, then your body will make more milk to suit the need, not less! A woman can easily provide breast milk for about five children at any one time if she wanted to.

To be clear, though, once a baby gets to a certain age, say 4 – 6 months, it may not want to breastfeed from another woman, either because her voice is different, or her let-down is unlike what she’s been used to. As with any aspect of breastfeeding, let your baby be the guide.

The ideal person to breastfeed your child in a cross nursing situation, is a mother with a baby the same, or very similar age, who is healthy, drug free, and in a good mental and emotional state. She should not consume caffeine, alcohol, smoke, or have large amounts of sweetener. Ironically, some milk banks allow lactating mothers to have up to 7 cups of coffee a day. Seven cups? I’d have a heart attack if I had seven cups of coffee in one day. Just one cup of coffee (or a mouthful of chocolate), and I can’t sleep for about 30 hours! I do not understand this about milk banks. Why would it be acceptable for babies to have breast milk loaded with caffeine? It’s insane.

My experience of women who cross nurse is that they are more than happy with having had their baby fed by another woman, and themselves having breastfed another child. Clearly this cuts against our cultural bias of it being an ‘adulterous relationship’.

Babies must receive breast milk. When our culture finally wakes up enough to realise the significance of this, personally and collectively, then all squeamishness about wet nursing/cross nursing/full term breastfeeding etc., will fly out the window. And not before time!

Cross nursing can be used in emergencies, or to help stimulate a mother’s milk supply if her baby hasn’t been latched-on enough (eg. baby has Down’s Syndrome or is premature). Women who choose to breastfeed an adopted baby, can stimulate their milk supply by nursing an experienced breastfeeding baby.

It’s nothing short of child abuse, in my opinion, to give newborn babies anything less than breast milk, and ideally from the breast. But hey, it’ll take a while before our society wakes up to this. If ever in doubt about what a baby needs to drink, remember, HUMAN MILK FOR HUMAN BABIES.

One of the reasons people are so uncomfortable with the idea of wet nursing, is because of the use of intimate body parts (not so intimate when splashed on the covers of lad magz) and exchanging of body fluids. Funny, though, how one night stands don’t come into the same category.

I believe another difficulty we may have with cross nursing in Western culture, stems from the idea of ownership. We simply don’t know how to share. We’ve been raised to believe in my, my, my or mine, mine, mine. It’s a strong, bold and beautiful woman who transcends this patriarchal line and offers her breast up to another child, and indeed, trusts another woman to nurture her child.

Milk Banks

Milk banks have their place, but I’d rather see women sharing their milk directly from the breast to child. The process involved in making donated breast milk available to babies in NICU or elsewhere, defeats the purpose of providing the benefits of breast milk (to my mind). However, I’d certainly recommend donated milk from this source over formula. Beware though of a particular company marketing donated breast milk for babies in NICU at extortionate prices.

Each country with milk banks, have their own guidelines for donor mums. In some countries, if you’ve had a blood transfusion, are vegetarian/vegan, drink herb teas, etc., you are unlikely to be allowed to donate. Some countries have a blood transfusion deadline of about 20 years ago, some countries one year ago. There’s certainly no universal consensus on this.

Many women happily consume raspberry leaf tea or fennel tea while they’re lactating. Excluding these women from milk donation is ludicrous, and a joke given it’s ok to have seven cups of coffee a day! Excluding women like me, who abstain from flesh, is ludicrous. Our children have thrived on our fennel-laced breast milk.

My main reservation with milk banking is that the milk is pasteurised and pooled (with other mother’s milks). Any *living* food is rendered inadequate by heat treatment. Some places, like Norway, are experimenting with offering ‘raw’ breast milk for babies in need. This is a much more enlightened approach.

For many centuries in Britain, it was common for wet nurses to feed babies. Sadly the reasons used including protecting a mother’s figure (!!) or allowing wealthier women to be emotionally removed from their children. Wet nursing went out of fashion when doctors believed some infections might have been transmitted through breast milk…and lo and behold, crap in a can was invented for women who *didn’t want* to breastfeed.
I believe it is highly unlikely that a woman who is passionate about breast milk, would knowingly breastfeed another woman’s child if she had a transmittable/infectious disease.

The media has recently latched-on (no pun intended!) the idea of wet-nursing, no doubt to ignite people’s interest in something unusual, however recorded history shows wet nursing occurring as far back as 2000 BC in the Code of Hammurabi. A wet nurse was hired for Moses and written about in 1250BC (Old Testament’s Book of Exodus). Turned out that the wet nurse was actually his mother, but the employer didn’t know that!

In 600 AD, The Koran suggested wet nursing.

It’s always been controversial, and like many things, comes in and out of fashion. It was in the middle of the 19th Century that physicians sought out a substitute for breast milk. And the rest is history. Separating babies from their food source has been our undoing. Women were fooled into believing that artificial feeding was to be respected.

Ideally, a child will receive breast milk from her mother’s breast. But we don’t live in an ideal world and so we must be open to wet nursing and cross nursing.

One of my favourite cross nursing stories (although very sad) involved the mother of a three month old baby who was injured in a car crash.

The mother was unconscious, and clearly unable to breastfeed. Fortunately, the ‘aware’ father, although he was also injured, knew that the mother would not want the child to have formula, so he asked for donations of breast milk. When one of the women turned up at the hospital to express her milk, she thought it seemed a bit ridiculous to express it into a bottle, and so, with the father’s permission, breastfed the baby. For the duration that the mother was unable to breastfeed, five women took turns breastfeeding the baby. To me this is a beautiful story of sisterhood. The tragedy is that this understanding, this support and love, is so rare in our society.

Another story which warms my heart is of Judith Waterford ~ a wet nurse. On her 81st birthday (back in the 1800s) she was still producing milk for babies. During the prime of her wet nursing years, she managed to produce four pints a day.

If you have a personal experience of wet nursing/cross nursing, either breastfeeding someone else’s child, or your child having been breastfed by another mum, and might be open to taking part in a SENSITIVE documentary on the subject, please get in touch with me. If you get in touch, there is no commitment to be involved. (UK women only, please).