The Melchizedek Chronicles - Nuclear Dangers - The Children of Chernobyl - Innocent Victims of a Silent Killer!

As you learned in my last article on Chernobyl, the extent of damage was not as severe as first speculated.  Since there was never a meltdown of a nuclear reactor before, no one really knew what to expect.  The most difficult aspect to project was the long term radiation impact on children who were exposed to the radiation cloud when it happened, or born after the accident to parents who were exposed to the radiation.

Since we are only 33 years into the history of the accident and the radiation half life may last 500 to 1,000 years, we have much to learn.  As you will discover in this story, in spite of the evacuation of many hundreds of thousands of people, men, women and children, many were contaminated with high levels of radiation.

Well science can claim the damage was much less severe than expected, but the children are not merely statistics, collateral damage in a severe accident, or a footnote in the history books, but a living testament to the follies of mankind.

What happened to them is criminal.

I personally met groups of children from Chernobyl just ten years after the accident on two visits to Scotland.  They still lived in the contaminated zone because they were contaminated in the accident along with their families and I can tell you, they did not complain but their lives and childhood had been stolen from them by something they did not understand, radiation poisoning.

There was and still is an incredible international effort to bring these victims out of the hot zone at least once a year and make them guests of ost families in different counties.  Scotland was one of the first countries to participate.  May the work of these humanitarians assure these helpless victims are never forgotten.

I am proud of my Scottish ancestors for working to improve the quality of life for these kids.  Even more so because Scotland was blanketed by the Chernobyl radiation cloud and many of the sheep were poisoned by the radiation and had to be humanely destroyed.

My plea to you is to not get so caught up in your own lives that you ignore the suffering of others, especially the innocent children of the world.

Kid born after accident

Chernobyl's legacy: Kids with bodies ravaged by disaster

THERE ARE 2,397,863 PEOPLE REGISTERED WITH UKRAINE’S HEALTH MINISTRY TO RECEIVE ONGOING CHERNOBYL-RELATED HEALTH TREATMENT. OF THESE, 453,391 ARE CHILDREN.

im Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY

Published 9:23 a.m. ET April 17, 2016 | Updated 12:25 p.m. ET April 18, 2016

There are 2,397,863 people registered with Ukraine’s health ministry to receive ongoing Chernobyl-related health care. Of these, 453,391 are children — none born at the time of the accident. Their parents were children in 1986. These children have a range of illnesses: respiratory, digestive, musculoskeletal, eye diseases, blood diseases, cancer, congenital malformations, genetic abnormalities, trauma. 

The children of Chernobyl have had children of their own who experience the effects of radiation exposure. It has not deterred Daryna Bizilya who hopes to be a singer.Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY

KIEV, Ukraine — Daryna Bizilya, 10, wants to be a singer. During a visit with her and about a dozen other children at Ukraine’s largest medical clinic for people living with the consequences of Chernobyl, that's what she did: She sang.

Bizilya walked directly into the middle of the room, signaled to her friend in the corner holding a cellphone to crank up its digital beatbox, and just went for it. She sang with feeling, dramatic facial expressions and large, sweeping arm gestures that occasionally ended with a clenched fist.

Daryna Bizilya, 10, sings at the institute in Ukraine.
(Photo: Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY)

This clinic had an elaborate name, even by former Communist-bloc standards — the Institute of Specialized Radiation Protection of the Ukraine Population. It was full of sick children whose entire lives had only known illness.

The halls were long and dark and seemed, however improbably, to be lit chiefly by fading avocado-colored paint. The children’s bedrooms were neat but gloomy. Textbook orphanage-interior. Not every room was heated, and it was cold outside.

The Institute of Specialized Radiation Protection of the Ukraine Population, in Kiev. Photo: March 3, 2016.  (Photo: Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY)

The children were eating a late breakfast when USA TODAY arrived. They all immediately stood up and said loudly, "Dobryy den!" (Good day!)

That’s when Bizilya presented herself.

The number she performed was by Ukrainian artist Ani Lorak, a hero of Bizilya's. On her website, Lorak describes herself as the "singer who became the idol of Ukrainians."

Bizilya, whose favorite subjects are math and English, said she admired Lorak mostly because she “sings from her heart, and she feels her songs with her heart.”

Bizilya has a heart condition brought on by eating contaminated food, her doctors said. Too much physical exercise makes her condition worse.

"They told us at school that some children were left without a home, and that they were very ill," she said when asked to explain what she knew about Chernobyl. "I would like to help those children who are without parents. There are children in our village like this," she added.

Daryna does not think of herself as especially ill.

Neither does Yaroslav Artemchuk, 14, a mild-mannered boy who said initially that he was not here because of radiation but because he fell and got a concussion.

Artemchuk also has ambitions to be a singer.

"Probably a pop singer, like Michael Jackson," he said.

The Institute of Specialized Radiation Protection of the Ukraine Population.
(Photo: Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY)

He had some other things to say: Favorite food (meatballs), soccer team (Dynamo Kiev) and player (Real Madrid's Cristiano Ronaldo).

"The doctor says I have very bad blood circulation," he suddenly volunteered. "My parents say that Chernobyl was a big disaster and many people perished because of it."

A girl named Alina Aponchuk, also 14, was too nervous to speak and fiddled with the sleeves of her dress. There was something on her mind. After a few minutes, she said she was going home the next day.

A road inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone stretches to the horizon.(Photo: Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY)

 Aponchuk’s doctor said she had two left kidneys, both twice the normal size. She had chronic gastroduodenitis, which produces sharp stomach pains, lethargy and headaches. She also had "vegetative dysfunction," a nervous system syndrome that causes anxiety, depression and other emotional stresses.

Vadim Bozhenko, the doctor who runs the clinic, said children stay at the institute from a few days to several weeks and all come from areas located on radioactive land.

"The (children) eat and drink contaminated milk products because cattle that live there eat that grass," he said, adding that the clinic was underfunded by at least 30%.

Looking around the grounds that evoked a disheveled college campus, it was hard to believe the shortfall was that modest.

“Tell them we need beds and blankets,” Bozhenko said. "Tell them the Institute of Specialized Radiation Protection of the Ukraine Population needs this and a lot more."

God Bless the Children of Chernobyl!

Your Twenty-first Century “New” New Year’s Resolutions

Come on, most everyone is a slacker when it comes to New Year’s resolutions.  Since New Year’s Resolutions are a practice run for Lenten resolutions, and Lent is when you are supposed to help heal your body, mind and soul, not just your ego, it is time you had some new, more creative, much more imaginative resolutions for both occasions.

As for the annual New Year's resolutions, you might as well call them your Fantasy Game Resolutions, like fantasy football.  Playing fantasy football does not put you on the field or in the game, you just pretend.  It is the same with most New Year’s resolutions.  For thousands of years we have celebrated New Years.

New Year's Day was first celebrated in 45 B.C. on January 1 for the first time in history as the Julian calendar took effect. Soon after becoming Roman dictator, Julius Caesar decided that the traditional Roman calendar was in dire need of reform.

The earliest recorded festivities in honor of a new year’s arrival date back some 4,000 years to ancient Babylon. For the Babylonians, the first new moon following the vernal equinox—the day in late March with an equal amount of sunlight and darkness—heralded the start of a new year.

They marked the occasion with a massive religious festival called Akitu (derived from the Sumerian word for barley, which was cut in the spring) that involved a different ritual on each of its 11 days.

In addition to the new year, Atiku celebrated the mythical victory of the Babylonian sky god Marduk over the evil sea goddess Tiamat and served an important political purpose: It was during this time that a new king was crowned or that the current ruler’s divine mandate was symbolically renewed.

With such significance put on the New Year and thanks to Roman Emperor Julius Caesar changing the calendar, we have celebrated on the same day, New Year’s Eve, for a couple of thousand years.  One can only assume mankind has evolved since those early days and we now indulge in a rather benign series of dos and don’ts called New Year Resolutions.

In other words, kinder and friendlier stuff that will not add too much stress to your already stressful life.  Do eat healthier food.  Do not eat sugar saturated junk food.  Do get more exercise (as if that defines any real obligation).  Do not eat candy and sweets, as if about everything you eat did not have sugar.  Join the latest diet fad.  Give up smoking.  Do not drink so much booze.  Do go to church more often.  Do not pile up so much credit card debt.

You get the message.

If we ever really did do any of those resolutions the world would be a much kinder, gentler, yes benign place to live.

So, look around you.  Do you see any evidence of success, or sustained success?

We have the most expensive health care system in the world yet we are sicker, fatter, more out of shape, more stressed out and more over-medicated to legal drugs, illegal drugs and other synthetic poison than ever before.

Perhaps there is a reason our automobile manufacturers keep announcing they are no longer building normal passenger cars, but adding new lines of behemoth SUVs and light trucks to replace cars.  We no longer fit in passenger cars, we need bigger and bigger mechanical monsters to bear our weight.

Sometimes it seems we have a self-defeating attitude about picking resolutions that often try to address our real problems or flaws or addictions that have not been solved in our lifetime.  We hope to accomplish something good to feel good about failing at another resolution.

Maybe we take solace in the fact “trying” to do something is better than doing nothing at all but is it really?  I suspect it just lets us get away with the fantasy approach to discipline.  Six months later after the resolution is broken and nothing changed in your life.

So where do we start?

Seek out the truth in all things.

Our first resolution should be to seek out the truth about how to get healthier.  There is so much untruth in labelling it is often confusing, if not downright deceptive.  Just saying something is true does not make it true.  Eating less sugar does not mean just the granules you put in coffee or tea, or on cereal.  Most everything you consume has sugar or salt intended to get you addicted to the food, and boy is that ever a friendly addiction.

Sodas, sweets and salt are the real sources of addiction because at a very early age it is thrown at us to shut us up, bribe us, make us feel good or simply teach self-indulgence.  Of course, no one is to blame for the primal addictions we force on our children that will eventually kill you but that is beside the case.  There are a lot of people who contribute to this childhood addiction including parents, grandparents, doctors, teachers, coaches and, believe it or not, you.

Heal yourself first.

Jesus once said to heal yourself before you can heal others as he said to forgive yourself before you can forgive others.  What he was saying to us is God created us and gave us gifts but we must take responsibility to use them as God intended.

In other words, we must take responsibility for our own self, for our body, mind and soul.  You must take responsibility through knowledge.  Use knowledge to learn about your addictions.  Learn why you let yourself be a repeat victim to habits that are self-destructive and sometimes fatal.

By learning you gain knowledge, with knowledge you might gain wisdom.  Accumulating knowledge is the first step, knowing what to do with it is wisdom.

   

God gave you a body and mind, and the free will to make choices.

These choices can either help or hurt you.  Only you, not your doctor, priest, rabbi, minister, imam, monk, teacher, shrink or family knows you like you do.

Take responsibility, do not delegate to an outside source because it only gives you someone else to blame for your woes.  Besides, by now you should be asking yourself if those outside sources have really helped you eliminate the addictions they were treating, and without prescription drugs.

Are you joyful?  Are you happy?  Are you healthy?  Do you set a good example for others?  Or are you just passing on your own hang ups to your children?

In Truth addictions are just another way of giving up.  They are the modern-day rationalization of explaining away your own inattention and lack of responsibility for your own choices, actions and failures.  Additions are the modern-day form of slavery.

Modern-day slavery.

All forms of addictions from health to digital to financial lead to obsession and depression.  Once you accept them as real or try to ignore them as not reflecting you, they seem to take possession of your mind and your life.

Modern addictions like the digital addiction are the twenty-first century form of slavery, perhaps even far more dangerous than those we carried over from the twentieth century like prescription drugs, pain killers, anti-depression drugs, illegal drugs, alcohol and smoking.

Digital addiction runs counter to everything we, as living and breathing creations of God are meant to be.  It stops natural contact and communication with other people, real people.  It often leads you to the creation of false identities hiding behind the Facebook, Instagram, Twitter ad other social media forums.

It depersonalizes us into mere false identities in a virtual world where no rules, ethics, orality, or common sense guide our actions.  We do not take responsibility for the alter-egos we create nor the consequences that result.  Hiding behind them on the Internet we can accept fake news, lies, distortions, and create chaos, bully and character assassinate others.  It is all part of our detached fantasy world.

In Truth it is no more real than the fantasy we create for our alter-ego.

Artificial Intelligence is the God of technology and machine world.

Artificial Intelligence is the God of technology and the machine world, because it knows everything there is to know that is available and it has the processing speed to instantly compile, analyze and make decisions.  The algorithms of AI are taking away your mind, your creative thinking, your imagination, and your ability to communicate with others.

Digital addiction is the result when you delegate all decisions to the machines and their clever algorithms.  It creates a new you guided by fantasy and not fact.  But the AI God creating it has no ethics, no morality, no common sense and no concern for you or your mind and body beyond profiling you from your dependence on them.

AI overwhelms you with choices, while it saps your energy, shuts down your creativity and imagination, and blocks you from direct, old fashioned face-to-face communication with real people.  All the while it is telling you how to think, what to think, what you need to buy, where to go, and how to get there.

It is your very own Godless Puppet Master and you are dancing on the stage at the end of those Wi-Fi links and endless apps.  You are living the destiny decided by the Puppet Master, not your own destiny, your own path.  You have weakly succumbed to delegating a substantial part of your life to a machine-made set of rules and principles based not on right or wrong, but trends and habits.  Yet you are responsible for what it told you to do, not the Godless One.

Truth about health, life and destiny.

Your twenty-first century resolutions should be to seek out the Truth about your health, life and destiny.  You should take responsibility for identifying your addictions and for overcoming them.

You should especially address regaining control of your body, mind, spirit and soul from the ever-expanding tentacles of Artificial Intelligence with their seemingly harmless algorithms.

Only humans, with their knowledge, moral and ethical standards, and a dose of common sense know what is best for other humans because AI was created by humans, while we were created by God.

Communicate with real people.

Vow to communicate with real people more, face-to-face, because only humans can express and demonstrate how emotions and passion, not found in the AI digital world, can transform those around us.  We can share joy, spread good cheer, be kind and nice, none of which the God of the Virtual World can duplicate.  No algorithm has been able to recreate the Perfect Love of God or Jesus, essential to empowering our life on Earth.

Laugh, love and live joy while encouraging and energizing those you encounter.

Use this information as a basis for your resolutions and you might actually become human again.  In all things ask not just “What Would Jesus Do (WWJD), but ask What Would God Do (WWGD), and you will be accepting your responsibilities as one of God’s creations.

Forsake the darkness and embrace the light and finally have a real Happy New Year.

Health Care in America - What you better know! Insights by Dr. Jon Robison

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Dr. Jon and sidekick Lady

Jon Robison

Dr. Jon Robison at salveopartners.com

What Do the EEOC, Wellness Industry, Urban Dictionary, Humpty Dumpty and George Orwell Have In Common?

May 18, 2016

                 "A word means what I choose it to mean—neither more or less.”                                                                                                                            --Humpty Dumpty

Written Together With Al Lewis 

The wellness industry is rejoicing at the EEOC’s final rulings on workplace wellness programs. The results boil down to this. The programs can require participation, compel employees to hand over medical information from screenings and health risk assessments (and even their DNA) and punish them if they don’t comply, as long as the programs are voluntary.

If you are having trouble reconciling the words require, compel and punish with voluntary, so were we. In fact, befuddled by the EEOC / Wellness Industry’s use of the term “voluntary” we went to the source seeking answers.  Google helped us to look more deeply into definitions of “voluntary” to make sure we weren’t missing something. Here are a couple we found:

·         
                        Dictionary.com -- done, made, brought about, undertaken, etc., of one's own accord or by free choice

·                   Merriam Webster -- done or given because you want to and not because you are forced to: done or given by choice

No less befuddled, we were determined not to give up! We thought: “This definition has got to come from somewhere; they cannot just have made it up. Perhaps a more updated, hip source is needed here. What about the Urban Dictionary?” And sure enough, there we found the answer:

Urban dictionary -- do it or you will lose your job

Now we were getting somewhere. In the eyes of the wellness industry and now also apparently the EEOC, “voluntary” means “coerced, pressured, incentivized, and/or punished.” In other words “voluntary” means “involuntary.” (In the wellness industry, defining things as their opposites is par for the course. Health Fitness Corporation’s Chief Medical Officer has famously described the difference between making “life-saving catches of 514” Nebraska employees with cancer and admitting that these employees never had cancer at all as “semantics.”)

Fascinating! We wondered if there might be any literary precedents for defining this particular word as the opposite of what it really means.

Then we remembered George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Consider Napoleon’s decree that, in addition to an already 60-hour work week, the animals would be asked to work on Sunday afternoons as well:

          “This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself              from it would have his rations reduced by half.”

Lessons Learned

We might take solace in the fact that the EEOC and the wellness industry settled on punishments of "only” 30% (roughly $1800) for employees who choose not to volunteer. Interestingly, one politician didn’t think that punishment would generate enough voluntary participation. He said we should impose penalties for all programs of 50% (now possible only for smokers); he must have been a big Orwell fan.

Aside from the self-serving albeit admittedly highly creative use of the English language, here are the problems with these guidelines:

·          It has been proven that forced voluntary wellness programs (the “pry, poke and prod” variety of programs) have not paid and cannot pay for themselves;

·         
            Even the so-called best programs –the ones that win the Koop Award -- show trivial risk reduction (before adding back in dropouts and non-participants), and fabricate their savings figures;

·         
             Screenings and HRA’s are more likely to lead to overdiagnosis and overtreatment than to health improvement;

·         
          Many workplace programs--like those for weight loss--are completely ineffective, that is, when they are not busy harming employees;

·       
         Thirty years of consistent and definitive research that the incentive approach being recommended does not lead to sustained behavior change and engenders a wide variety of iatrogenic consequences;

·      
           These type of programs are highly unpopular with employees, which means they are much more likely to diminish than enhance employee engagement.

The real question here is not how much employers can punish employees who refuse to submit to forced “wellness or else” programs. The real question is: are these initiatives a good idea? And the answer, according to all the research not financed by the wellness industry itself, is a resounding NO! So how about asking Congress to put an end to involuntary, voluntary wellness programs, and instead allow only truly voluntary, voluntary ones?

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