I have that feeling in my throat, the one that says “you’re gonna wake up tomorrow and be SICK, this is your only hint, do something about it NOW.”

I work in an office with enough people that there’s at least one person sick at any given time. Not to mention a few have kids or friends who have contracted H1N1. It’s that time of year, the flu is definitely spreading through Ohio, so it’s entirely possible I’ve been exposed. That’s life, not much you can do about it besides take care of yourself as best as possible.

(graphic from latest Rhiza Labs FluTracker data)

I don’t need a doctor to tell me it’s one of four things:

1. cold
2. flu
3. H1N1
4. nothing.

For the sake of transparency, since I’m such an advocate of natural health (NO vaccines!), I’m going to document the process of practicing what I preach.

I’ll admit, I’m not always kind to my immune system, I can’t claim sainthood. I have occasional insomnia which means only 4 hours of sleep a couple nights a week, and I don’t exercise as much as I should. Aside from that that I take pretty good care of myself — I don’t eat fast food (duh, none of it’s vegan), I eat healthy organic meals, and I take high quality vitamins every day (omega 3, b-complex, and D2.) I feel very confident in my immune system’s ability to fight off sickness, especially with my special plan of attack. (The only kind of attacking I condone. :-)

Day 1, symptoms so far:

• dry throat, feels swollen when I swallow
• slight nausea
• minor headache
• physically worn down

[Natural] plan of attack:

• liquid chlorophyll (2 tablespoons a day at least)
• colloidal silver (spray from Whole Foods)
• neti pot / sinus wash (twice a day)
• double dose of vitamin D2
• herbal tea (horehound, mullein, nettles, echinacea, etc.)
• Thieves oil (couple drops on the bottom of my feet)
• lots of water!

If it gets really bad, I have natural anti-virals ready (Virattack Compound and Lomatium Root), but right now I’m far from needing them.

To be continued…

*** Next Day Update:

Woke up feeling good as ever! All symptoms gone. Meanwhile, half of my department is out sick, some of whom got a flu shot.

Behold the power of a healthy immune system.

I’m back!

A couple months ago I got to a point where anxiety and insomnia were taking over my life and all I saw was bad news coming in on every side. So, at the suggestion of someone very important to me, I took a while off to “defrag” and regain my mental balance. Defragging, for me, came to mean disconnecting from the 24/7 constant connectedness we feel compelled to maintain. Status updates, overflowing Inbox, 1000+ unread Google Reader updates, text messages at all hours of the day — it can really drain a person, and is it worth it?

Think about that feeling you get when you turn your cell phone off. I mean really off, not just the ringer. You feel kinda twitchy right?  We are ADDICTED to being ON all the time. What’s most ironic is that with all our means of “connecting” these days, I’ve never felt more disconnected from people. It occurred to me a few weeks ago when I first started this process, that I have over 600 followers on Twitter and over 200 Facebook friends, but how many of them would be able to find my house and visit me if I were sick? How many of them know when my birthday is without Facebook reminding them? How many would have a clue if I had moved to another country and didn’t mention it in a status update? Clearly this connectedness is not real. In fact, it’s more dangerous than no computer at all because it provides an illusion of connectedness, a false sense of community. It’s also an illusion of living.

We get so busy staring at these crazy glowing rectangles, we forget how to really live and we don’t make real connections with people anymore.

So — acknowledging this imbalance in my life, I logged out of Twitter and deactivated my Facebook account. I supplemented computer time with things that were REAL and satisfied my SOUL rather than my anxiety: family, delicious food, good books, animal hugs, great music, movies, camping, coffee, bike riding, fresh air, guitar playing, meditation, conversations with neighbors… the list goes on.

Of course I still love technology, it has its place and I’ll always be a geek. I love being a few clicks away from saying hi to my friends in New York and California, getting news updates in real-time on Twitter, finding out what the mainstream media isn’t covering by reading one of my dozens of RSS feeds, and posting stories for my friends on Facebook. But, as with everything, moderation is absolutely necessary — it’s so easy to overdose on information and bad news and forget to live your life.

What’s most important is to have real life experiences and cultivate real community, something no amount of clicks or pixels can bring.

I’m back now, but re-balanced. I’ll still update and post stories (I could never stay silent on the crimes of our government and cruelties against animals) but I will live life at the same time. I will no longer be a prisoner to pessimism and worry. If the plug ever gets pulled on the Internet, I’ll still have a life and a community around me, and we’ll all be just fine.

Thanks to my Dad for prompting me to unplug, and to TinyBuddha for motivating me to post this — I’d been meaning to for a couple weeks, but their latest Do Happy email update pushed me to finally do it.

“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.”

- Dalai Lama

Want a cheap and natural way to protect yourself from cancer? Ever heard of apricot kernels and vitamin B-17?

A bit of research will reveal that societies that include eating foods rich in B-17 don’t get cancer: Eskimos, Hunzas, and the Hopi and Navajo Indians, for example. And when you combine B-17 AND a vegetarian diet (as Seventh Day Adventists do) — look out!

Why haven’t you heard of this before? To put it simply: the FDA, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, doctors, and other groups that claim to be looking out for your health don’t want a cheap and natural way to prevent cancer to get much attention.

How dare I say such a thing! Keep in mind the FDA, NCI, and NIH are government organizations, and we all know how resistant the gov’t. is to bribery and corruption… NOT. The big pharmaceutical companies LOVE to bribe the government and doctors. After all, cancer treatment is a great way to make money. So, rather than advocate a healthy lifestyle and proper nutrition, they’d prefer to tout a treatment that includes some profit for the HMO’s, pharmaceutical companies, and the banks who have to loan you money in order to pay your hospital bills.

My final argument against mainstream health advice: the FDA and all their friends are the same guys telling you to:

• drink 8 glasses of fluoridated water a day
• consume 2-3 servings a day of fattening and diseased meat from animals that lived torturous lives and were slaughtered in the most inhumane ways possible
• …or you could eat 2-3 servings of eggs instead of meat. “Cage free” and “free range” means the chickens are frolicking on a farm somewhere, happy as can be
• use aspartame (rat poison) and saccharin (carcinogen) instead of sugar if you want to lose weight
• consume at least 2-3 servings of hormone and pus-laden cow’s milk a day and don’t worry about the tortured dairy cows that gave it to you
• keep eating mercury-filled fish, it’s perfectly safe and healthy, especially for pregnant women
• accept genetically-modified corn as a modern marvel that will save the planet from starvation
• consume 3-5 servings of fruits and vegetables sprayed with pesticides a day
• keep using high-fructose corn syrup because it’s “fine in moderation” and better than natural alternatives like stevia or xylitol

You really think they’re telling you the truth about cancer?!

Now the good news: Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s carry apricot kernels!

I’ve shopped at both places for years but only very recently discovered they carried them, so I want to get the word out. You won’t see anything on the label about B-17 or its cancer-prevention benefits, but it’s the same thing you’ll find for sale online for way more. So instead of paying $13/lb., just head over to one of these stores and get the same thing for about half the price: $7/lb @ Whole Foods or $4/lb. @ Trader Joe’s.

One last note: apricot kernels are not the only source of B-17, these foods are also good sources:

Apple seeds, alfalfa sprouts, apricot kernels, bamboo shoots, barley, beet tops, bitter almond, blackberries, boysenberries, brewer’s yeast, brown rice, buckwheat, cashews, cherry kernels, cranberries, currants, fava beans, flax seeds, garbanzo beans, gooseberries, huckleberries, lentils, lima beans, linseed meat, loganberries, macadamia nuts, millet, millet seed, peach kernels, pecans, plum kernels, quince, raspberries, sorghum cane syrup, spinach, sprouts (alfalfa, lentil, mung bean, buckwheat, garbanzo), strawberries, walnuts, watercress, yams.

—–

UPDATE #2: The Cleveland Plain Dealer has finally decided to give this story some attention, even quoting this blog at one point. Unfortunately, they dismiss all reports of the SWAT team, deciding it’s just some crazies on the internet spreading rumors. Yes of course, believe the police, they’re always innocent and well-intentioned! Don’t do anything silly like wait for the family’s statement to come out…

Reason magazine has also picked up the story, also mentioning my humble little blog:

“The folks over at Peace Chicken (yes, that’s a real site, complete with chicken death doomsday clock) are seriously peeved.”

—–

UPDATE #1: Here’s a good update on this story, including the fact that the husband of the family wasn’t present for the raid because he was in IRAQ. And here is a letter from the family themselves, which includes ways you can help.

[Thanks to LewRockwell.com, Intel Daily, OpEdNews, and NowPublic for carrying this story.]

Below is an OUTRAGEOUS story of a Cleveland-area rural co-op that was raided by a SWAT team earlier this week for a supposed Ohio Dept. of Agriculture violation.

It reeks of police state, lack of Constitutional Rights, and excessive use of force. Unfortunately, this is not a new occurrence, it happens all the time, you just don’t hear about it in the news (big surprise.)

The immediate question that comes to mind — why was the SWAT team used to enforce an alleged Ohio Dept. of Agriculture rule violation? According to the Lorain County Sheriff’s SWAT page, they are intended to be used for these reasons:

• Hostage Situations: the holding of any person(s) against their will by an armed or potentially armed suspect.
• Barricade Situation: the stand-off created by an armed or potentially armed suspect in any location, whether fortified or not, who is refusing to comply with law enforcement demands for surrender.
• Sniper Situations: the firing upon citizens and/or law enforcement officers by an armed suspect, whether stationary or mobile.
• High-Risk Apprehension: the arrest or apprehension of armed or potentially armed suspects where the likelihood of armed resistance is high.
• High-Risk Warrant Service: the service of search or arrest warrants where the warrant service matrix or policy recommends or requires the use of SWAT.
• Personal Protection: the security of special persons, such as VIP’s, witnesses, or suspects, based on threat or potential threat to the well being of those persons.
• Special Assignments: any assignment, approved by the SWAT Operations Commander, based on a high level of threat and/or need.

Was the private selling of organic food by the Manna Storehouse REALLY one of those instances??

We must stand up for our fellow citizens and refuse to allow a transition from Buckeye State to Police State. After the story you’ll find a list of Cleveland news sources. PLEASE contact them and demand they investigate this story. I strongly believe people would be appropriately outraged if they only knew what was going on.

On Monday, December 1st, a SWAT team with semi-automatic rifles entered the private home of the Stowers family in LaGrange, Ohio, herded the family onto the couches in the living room, and kept guns trained on parents, children, infants and toddlers, from approximately 11 AM to 8 PM.

The team was aggressive and belligerent. The children were quite traumatized. At some point, the “bad cop” SWAT team was relieved by another team, a “good cop” team that tried to befriend the family. The Stowers family has run a very large, well-known food cooperative called Manna Storehouse on the western side of the greater Cleveland area for many years.

There were agents from the Department of Agriculture present, one of them identified as Bill Lesho. The search warrant is reportedly supicious-looking. Agents began rifling through all of the family’s possessions, a task that lasted hours and resulted in a complete upheaval of every private area in the home. Many items were taken that were not listed on the search warrant. The family was not permitted a phone call, and they were not told what crime they were being charged with. They were not read their rights. Over ten thousand dollars worth of food was taken, including the family’s personal stock of food for the coming year. All of their computers, and all of their cell phones were taken, as well as phone and contact records. The food cooperative was virtually shut down. There was no rational explanation, nor justification, for this extreme violation of Constitutional rights.

Presumably Manna Storehouse might eventually be charged with running a retail establishment without a license. Why then the Gestapo-type interrogation for a 3rd degree misdemeanor charge? This incident has raised the ominous specter of a restrictive new era in State regulation and enforcement over the nation’s private food supply.

This same type of abusive search and seizure was reported by those innocents who fell victim to oppressive federal drug laws passed in the 1990s. The present circumstance raises the obvious question: is there some rabid new interpretation of an existing drug law that considers food a controlled substance worthy of a nasty SWAT operation? Or worse, is there a previously unrecognized provision(s) pertaining to food in the Homeland Security measures? Some have suggested that it was merely an out-of-control, hot-to-trot ODA agent, and, if so, this would be a best-case scenario. Anything else might spell the beginning of the end for the freedom to eat unregulated and unmonitored food.

One blogger familiar with the Ohio situation has reported that:

“Interestingly, I believe they [Manna Storehouse] said a month or so ago, an undercover ODA official came to their little store and claimed to have a sick father wanting to join the co-op. Both the owner and her daughter-in-law had a horrible feeling about the man, and decided not to allow him into the co-op and notified him by certified mail. He came back to the co-op demanding to be part of it. They refused and gave him names of other businesses and health food stores closer to his home. Not coincidentally, this man was there yesterday as part of the raid.”

The same blog also noted that the Ohio Department of Agriculture has been chastised by the courts in several previous instances for its aggression, including trying to entrap an Amish man in a raw milk “sale,” which backfired when it became known that the Amish believe in a literal interpretation of “give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away” (Matthew 5:42)

The issue appears to be the discovery of a bit of non-institutional beef in an Oberlin College food service freezer a year ago that was tracked down by a county sanitation official to Manna Storehouse. Oberlin College’s student food coop is widely known for its strident ideological stance about eating organic foods. It seems that the Oberlin student food cooperative had joined the Manna Storehouse food cooperative in order to buy organic foods in bulk from the national organic food distributor United, which services buying clubs across the nation. The sanitation official, James Boddy, evidently contacted the Ohio Department of Agriculture. After the first contact by state ODA officials, Manna Storehouse reportedly wrote them a letter requesting assistance and guidelines for complying with the law. This letter was never answered. Rather, the ODA agent tried several times to infiltrate the coop, as described above. When his attempts failed, the SWAT team showed up!

Food cooperatives and buying clubs have been an active part of the American landscape for over a generation. In the 1970s, with the rise of the organic food industry (a direct outgrowth of the hippie back-to-nature movement) food coops started up all over the country. These were groups of people who freely associated for the purpose of combining their buying power so that they could order organic food items in bulk and case lots. Anyone who was part of these coops in the early era will remember the messy breakdown of 35 pounds of peanut butter and 5 gallon drums of honey!

These buying clubs have persisted and flourished over the years due to their ability to purchase high quality organic foods at reduced prices in bulk quantities. Most cooperatives have participated greatly in the local agrarian economies, supporting neighborhood organic farmers with purchases of produce, eggs, chickens, etc. The groups also purchase food from a number of different local, regional and national distributors, many of them family-based businesses who truck the food themselves. Some of these food cooperatives have become large enough to set up mini-storefront operations where members can drop in and purchase items leftover from case lot sales. Manna Storehouse had established itself in such a manner, using a small enclosed breezeway attached to their home. It was a folksy place with old wooden floors where coop members stopped by to chat and snack on bags of organic corn chips.

The state of Ohio boasts the second largest Amish population in the country. Many of the Amish live on acreages where they raise their own food, not unlike Manna Storehouse, and sell off the extras to neighbors and church members. There is a sense of foreboding that this state crackdown on a longstanding, reputable food cooperative operation could adversely impact the peaceful agrarian way of life not only for the Amish, but homeschoolers and those families living off the land on rural acreages. It raises the disturbing possibility that it could become a crime to raise your own food, buy eggs from the farmer down the road, or butcher your own chickens for family and friends – bustling activities that routinely take place in backwater America.

The freedom to purchase food directly from the source is increasingly under attack. For those who have food allergies and chemical intolerances, or who are on special medical diets, this is becoming a serious health issue. Will Americans retain the right to purchase food that is uncontaminated by pesticides, herbicides, allergens, additives, dyes, preservatives, MSG, GMOs, radiation, etc.? The melamine scare from China underscores the increasingly inferior and suspect quality of modern processed institutional foods. One blog, commenting on the bizarre and troubling Manna Storehouse situation, observed that:

“No one is saying exactly why. At the same time the FDA says it it safe to eat the 40% of tainted beef found in Costco’s and Sam’s all over the nation. These farm raids are very common now. Every farmer needs to be fully equipped for the possibility of it happening to them. The Farmer To Consumer Legal Defense Fund was created just for this purpose. The USDA just released their plans to put a law into action that will put all small farmers out of business. Animals for the sale of meat or milk will only be allowed in commercial farms, even the organic ones.”

Source: http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/08/swat-team.htm
Also reported by The Morning Journal

Please use the ShareThis link below to email this to your friends and family!

Otherwise — forgive the scarcity of posts for a while! There are only so many hours in the day…

A couple weeks ago I was asked to guest-host the Ohio Freedom radio show, and it’s now posted online in case anybody wants to check it out.

Most of the show is a recap of Constitution Party presidential candidate Dr. Chuck Baldwin’s appearance the day before at Capital University, including some great clips from his speech.

I was really nervous, of course, but had a great time — thanks Matt and Joe!

Download the show here (60 min.): http://www.ohiofreedom.com/podcast/?p=episode&name=2008-10-24_1014_show.mp3

Dear Mr. Voinovich,

As I promised in my previous communications on this matter, thanks to your treasonous vote in support of the Wall St. Bailout plan, I will never again vote for you. I don’t care who may run against you, whether they be Democrat, Republican, Socialist, whatever– I will never, ever give you my vote.

You should be immensely ashamed of yourself and tried for treason along with many of your colleagues. Instead of standing up as a hero for our Constitution, you sold out our great republic to the bankers.

I will never again address you as Senator Voinovich because you are indeed NOT worthy of such a label. You are a traitor, and nothing else.

Sincerely,
…

and:

Dear Mr. Brown,

As I promised in my previous communications on this matter, thanks to your treasonous vote in support of the Wall St. Bailout plan, I will never again vote for you. I don’t care who may run against you, whether they be Democrat, Republican, Socialist, whatever– I will never, ever give you my vote.

You should be immensely ashamed of yourself and tried for treason along with many of your colleagues. Instead of standing up as a hero for our Constitution, you sold out our great republic to the bankers.

I will never again address you as Senator Brown because you are indeed NOT worthy of such a label. You are a traitor, and nothing else.

Sincerely,
…

“Let this be her legend, let this be her voice,
let this be her vision, let this be her choice.
To remain as we knew her, strong and poised,
as the one we love.”

- Katie Reider, Her Song

http://www.peacechicken.com/wp-content/KatieReider_HerSong.mp3

It’s been a little over a month since this world lost a beautiful soul named Katie Reider.

I invite all of my readers to watch this video made by my good friend Kiersten. It’s a brief look back at her life— filled to the brim with love, friends, and family.

After you finish the video, please visit 500Kin365.org, where you can download 9 of Katie’s songs for only $1 (of course you can always donate more if you wish.) All proceeds benefit Katie’s partner Karen and their two sons, who were left with massive medical bills not covered by insurance.

If you want to do even more for Katie and her family — tell 3 of your friends about Katie’s music, send a quick email with a link to 500Kin365.org. Through your message, her music and spirit will remain with us forever.

We miss you Katie!

Can’t see the video? Click here.

Also, a memorial service for Katie Reider will be held at 11am this Saturday (July 26th) at Crossroads Church, 3500 Madison Road, Cincinnati, Ohio. Hope to see you there.

Katie Reider
1978-2008

A friend and favorite musician of mine (and many of my friends) passed away this morning after a courageous two-year battle with a mysterious illness called a Myofibroblastic Inflammatory Tumor.

It’s about the saddest ending one could conceive of for one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever met. Everyone knew Katie. She made us all feel like her close friends. Everyone would swear when she was singing, she was looking right at them and nobody else.

But it’s not her ending we must remember, it’s her life and her spirit. She touched sooooo many people’s lives. So many friends from different parts of my life were connected through her music. It’s amazing what one person can do.

There will be a candlelight vigil for her tonight at 9pm at the Goodale Park Gazebo. I hope some of you read this in time and can join us.

Most importantly— Please help her music live on. Listen to it yourself and pass it on to a friend.

We love you Katie, and will miss you. Your family will be in our thoughts.

I just got in from D.C., back from the Ron Paul Revolution March. My inbox is overflowing and the RSS updates are in the thousands. But PeaceChicken.com comes first!

Before I forget, I want to share a video of my recent interaction with Ohio Congressman Pat Tiberi.

I saw him at the Delaware County Parade (I was marching with The Liberty Voice) and decided to ask him about the unconstitutional FISA bill which recently passed through the Senate (FYI, Obama voted YES to spy on Americans.) Tiberi’s response? He turned around and started talking to someone else. The Fourth Amendment obviously not a big concern to him. Fortunately I had my Bill of Rights with me and kindly reminded him what it said.

This is Congress. This is who we’re relying on to save this country. They wear flag pins on their suit lapels and march in Fourth of July Parades, but when it comes time to actually stand up and defend the U.S. Constitution — they turn their back.

The good news that THEY are on their way out and WE’RE on our way in. This weekend at the D.C. Revolution March there were thousands of REAL PATRIOTS from across the country who took over Constitution Avenue and spent the day listening to amazing speakers like G. Edward Griffin, Naomi Wolf, Chuck Baldwin, and Ron Paul.

Together we marched against FISA, against the IRS, against the Federal Reserve, against REAL I.D., against the North American Union, against the war, against attacking Iran, against McCain, against Obama, against the false and dividing left/right paradigm, against everything that’s taking our country down. We marched FOR freedom, FOR liberty, FOR the Constitution, FOR the Bill of Rights, FOR limited government, FOR our Founding Fathers, FOR PEACE!

Aside from the obvious highlights, I also easily handed out a few hundred copies of The Liberty Voice and was interviewed by the National Journal Online (hopefully I’ll have a link for that to post soon, as well as my photos.) If you want to see some of the fun, there are lots of videos already uploaded here from fellow-marchers.

Also this weekend, another Patriot, someone I’m very proud to call my friend (and member of We Are Change Ohio) got the chance to ask McCain a very important question, live on CNN, at a recent town hall event in Portsmouth, Ohio.

He said to McCain:

“Can you tell us about your role as president of the ‘New Citizen Project,’ founded in 1994, which served as a chief fund-raising and parent organization to PNAC? And is this one of the factors that has made you so reluctant to support the victims’ family members and first responders who are begging for a new investigation into 9/11?”

Can you guess what McCain’s response was? YOU GOT IT! Once again, another member of Congress responded by not answering the question. He just rambled on about how he was a co-sponsor of the legislation that formed the 9/11 Commission and how great that Commission was (what a joke!!) Are we seeing a trend here?

Meanwhile… the U.S. banking crisis got some fresh momentum on Friday when there was a run on California-based IndyMac bank, resulting in their seizure by the Federal Reserve. That marked the second largest bank failure in U.S. history.

Short on its tails, ready to fail, are federally-chartered and now privately-owned Fanny Mae (AKA Federal National Mortgage Association) and Freddy Mac (AKA Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation), which together guarantee half the mortgages in the country. Of course the Federal Government, Congress, and the Federal Reserve are vehemently denying any problem, but still stand ready and eager to bail them out with OUR TAX DOLLARS (last time I checked, the Constitution said nothing of spending We the People’s tax dollars to save failing businesses.) Which of course won’t work. It’s a band-aid on a blown-off leg. The dollar crash is starting, my friends. Buy some gold and silver (here’s why) then hold on.

Yeah, I know, I have a lot of bad news in this post, sorry. I’m also sorry that I’m not done yet, because Bush has given Israel the thumbs up to attack Iran.

Given our unwavering support of Israel ($6.8 million a DAY, to be precise), of course the U.S. will be by their side in no time. Another attack on a sovereign country that poses no threat is ready to be launched. A third front for our poor soldiers in the Middle East and millions more dead civilians. Another yawn comes from the mouth of mainstream media.

It’s another day in the neighborhood, folks. One by one, the dominoes are falling as predicted. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

How many of these news stories does it take to wake people up and move them to action?