up is reaching out to veterans in many many ways and i don't think there's anything nefarious about this at all he wants to out of the military bring them the respect that he thinks they deserve and the pageantry because yes at heart he is a showman in addition to everything else and i don't think there's anything evil intended here whatsoever steve i think that we might disagree on a lot of things but the end of the day we will agree on taking care of the bedrooms we come home and i can do a lot better than just parades good good spending that thank you as always to you for coming on my pleasure. well hark watchers according to the old saying only two things in our lives are certain and that would be death and taxes but after decades of deliberation we can probably i dare say tragically add another war chaos and bloodshed in the middle east yes despite many attempts the grand bargains and many more attempts of quick and easy regime change solutions that we've been sold it is safe to say that violent turmoil is tragically guaranteed for the region's inhabitants probably ranking and certainly slightly below death in

a few steps above well enforced tax code and the turmoil continues as donald trump's entry into the world stage in an increasingly confident israeli government seek to impose their terms and neighboring syria lebanon along with the palestinians or as poised as ever to push back for some of the ground for some on the ground coverage we go to our t's on your parm full in tel aviv israel. israel's northern border with lebanon may not be the only front to experience a military escalation in the near future just down the coast from where i'm standing here in tel aviv the gaza strip is currently experiencing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in fact israeli army chief of staff got the eyes and caught warned in this week that situation has the potential to boil over into all out war this is the view apparently shared by hamas leadership which recently determined that scenario has a ninety five percent chance of playing out however hard line israeli defense

minister avigdor lieberman has said there is no humanitarian crisis in gaza suggesting he doesn't plan to address it at all i spoke with renowned israeli journalist and columnist at haaretz gideon levy about the prospects for war. the history teaches us that israel is going to war for five six years this is it might go food and is what all the excuses for another war and all. kinds of existential threats and and. the fact that this war was in a voter group and then when we analyze it we see another war of choice and another war of choice and again divisive politics was the main motivation. of why. how does having donald trump in the white house impact the

situation here. he really put an end to the masquerades he declared officially the united states is the support of israel. without any limits. israel has the. confirmation to go crazy to go violent to continue. and maybe even to annex the. wall light shine brightly behind me in the metropolis of tel of eve the un warned today that in the coastal enclave of gaza which israel holds under siege fuel keeping hospitals running and will run out intending in tel aviv this is on your part. as we're going to break our quarters don't forget to let us know what you think of the topics will come we are on facebook and twitter see our poll shows at our dot com coming up author russell wonders of his heartfelt journey to find answers to his son's mental health outside your post by

a reserve western medicine and big pharma state to travel. completely confused about why a republican administration made a change that was essentially. part of the democratic philosophy i can only think that somewhere deep within what they called a deep state in the u.s. treasury there were left leaning bureaucrats who implemented this change to a territoriality based system with taxation without anybody actually being aware of

what was going on. i'm here that muddy field stadium in edinburgh. the home and the heart of scottish rugby i'm here to interview a scotland legend daddy we are a man who for many great battles on the stage behind me now is engaged in the greatest battle of all his struggle against motor neuron disease.

according to the national institute of mental health one point one percent of the population over the age of eighteen suffer from schizophrenia if you do the math that means that any any at any one time as many as fifty one million people worldwide are suffering from this devastating and tragic affliction best selling author and environmental journalistic russell son franklin was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the young age of seventeen and the years that followed his son spent time in and out of various hospitals and institutions and that one point in a particularly brutal bout with the illness even rejected russell's old father like most concerned parents russell exhausted all avenues and treatments that western medicine big pharma had to offer which usually means pills with side effects to

even more pills with horrible side effects and then finally pills with side effects for the side effects of the previous horrible pills. in desperation he turned to a very unconventional journey in means of potentially helping his son mr russell writes about those i and i opening and mind opening experiences and discoveries in his book my mysterious son a life changing passage between schizophrenia and showing them which is out now in paperback and he joins us from los angeles thank you as always mr russell for coming on. thanks tyrrell great to be with you again today so so tell us what quickly you know what was the journey you took that is at the heart of your book my mysterious you know what were you when your son went to africa why were you going there. well first of all i want to say that i'm not anti-medication but as you said the side effects from these so-called anti-psychotic medications that are prescribed pretty much one size fits all for people are pretty severe and my son it

at one point in time put on one hundred pounds in weight because of one medication he was on zyprexa and become very lethargic had been in hospitals in and out of group homes and you know i was pretty desperate as was his mother and a few years ago i through a psychologist james hellman who's biography i was writing i'd come across a man named melodrama so may who was from west africa it worked with james hellman in the men's groups in this country with robert bly and michael mead in the one nine hundred ninety s. and melodrama when i interviewed him on the phone and said you know if you ever need to get in touch with me about your son feel free to do so and he was a salmon from so in west africa had been in the u.s. for many years traveled all over the world very renowned person and i contacted him and went to see him in ohio california when he happened to be there doing divinations where he could where you basically would read the pattern that you made with your hand and sort of talk to you about what was going on with your questions

and my big questions were about franklin it was a long journey but he had always told us i had done rituals in this country and i deduced franklin to him but he said you know eventually you've got to go come to my country come to bring and bring franklin's mom who i had not been with from a number of years but bring her along and he said he had a holy man there have his own a shaman that he felt would be able to help franklin reduce substantially if not go off his medication so that's. but we set out to do in the beginning of twenty sixteen and spent a remarkable month there that's incredible and as you said after spending that time there and you know what was that what did they have your son doing really how did they connect with him out of the you know essentially get him off this massive amount of pills because it could save a book that eventually did you know reach the point where it doesn't have to take as many pills now today as he did that are correct. that's absolutely correct and we started over there we spent a lot of time in

a very small village outside of the second largest city in brooklyn a faso in west africa called bobo and we were there with a he's called a holy man he's an indigenous healer as well as a as a muslim priest and so we attended you know ceremonies or not ceremonies but you know talks that he gave in sermons in his little church there and and he didn't speak any english so everything was was translated into french and then into english for us from his native tongue and from the very beginning we had a people scribe he looks at the parents he looks at the young person and and he prescribed us african medicine which we came into in a big metal pot each of us had our own individually prescribed pots and we would bathe with this medicine twice a day and we'd also drink from it we replenish it with water every day it had roots on the top these long tubular roots that were contain some i don't know exactly what was in them but we trusted it and then we also later went through and there

were other westerners there too there were about twenty some other people who had come over there with melodrama in january of that year to go through their own healing process of these and we didn't i mean every day was a mystery we didn't know what was going to happen next it was really dusty we were traveling from this little village to melodramas village two and a half hours further south dano and we went through also a series of rituals which involved animals and sometimes we would just be with the animal but there were chickens there were go. it's vengefully a cow and there was ritual sacrifice involved it may be hard for some people to relate to but we went through it all as prescribed and toward the end of the journey franklin began to reduce his medication and you know it wasn't just the fact that i think that they had the alternative that that was happening there with the adjunct to western medication i would say but also the fact we were doing it together and we were doing it as a family unit and we were in it we were in it to see what could happen and in

a pretty desperate situation and it did pay off i mean it it worked by the end of the over the next year and a half. franklin reduced his medication substantially now i don't say that what we went through over there was a cure all. it wasn't a miracle cure or anything i mean once he finally went off his western medication entirely with his doctor's permission he did have a relapse and had to go back on medication but a lot less than he was on before so i consider it to be a remarkable experience we went through together in a real success and it also brought as you mentioned you did it together as a family which were interpersonal relationships and the building of that i think we kind of overlook a lot of times in western treatments because it's kind of like hey you know here's the pill go home get better when you know we don't look at the psychological process of that we don't look at the bonds and things like that that human beings are social animals and mede to also heal us aside from just the chemical injection

. but it's absolutely true you know they found in programs because not everybody can go to app to west africa like we did and my son's biracial so that also was a factor in the importance of it but you know there's a program in finland for example called open dialogue where they've found they're trying to duplicate it now in the u.s. there were more of these programs back in the seventy's before big pharma kind of took over everything with medication but they found that through these programs of interaction with. they bring together so you know practitioners of medicine with the peer group especially in the immediate days after someone may have had a psychotic breakdown it really works it works but you know to for people to talk together about what they've been going through and and they found that after five years of that program in finland eighty percent of the young people who had an acute breakdown no longer need to be on that very much medication they're going back to work they're going to school and it's it's a pretty remarkable thing and there should be

a lot more of it in this country there should also be more emphasis on vitamin therapy and on diet and the things that unfortunately have been overshadowed by the medical model of everything and you know and then that's all about money really i mean the abilify which is one of the medications my son was on as a seven billion dollars a year business and they often prescribe it now for people who don't just have they say that you know if you have depression you should take this because you might be bipolar i mean you know there's a there's a big and the pills are very very expensive unless you have s.s.i. or some kind of benefits so you know it's and now they're prescribing these medications more and more to younger and younger children as well as as older people who are in nursing homes i think the figure i saw was like fifteen thousand people in nursing homes who've been prescribed and i psychotics have died as a result of taking those medications so let me again emphasize i'm not against medication i'm not saying you need to go off it entirely medication has its place

but there's a real over emphasis on it in our western society i would agree and i think that you know one of the big problems that we see too is that we go our direction of medicine western society is directed more towards you know kind of putting the band-aid on the problem or treating after the fact as opposed to preventative would you say that some of the things that you through this through their shopping through that you did was through this through their shaaban through that you did was it was more of that kind of preventative healing whether mental or mentally spiritually or even physically. oh yeah i think so i think in every respect and you know it gave it gave franklin a belief that there was something you know the besides medication that could be of benefit to him and that we were in it together as a family and with other westerners that he became more and more comfortable with i mean i would say that today he's living with his mom again in baltimore and he's more social most socially oriented than he's been i think since before he had his breakdown and he's doing his art again for it regularly he's going to

a day program there interacting with people on a social level i mean it it means the world and and you know he was a very talented and still is young person before this happened and you know he's beginning to find himself again in his own way and what he wants to do and in the future so it's all about relationships and the fact that you know we were able to find something that would take him beyond just the western medical model to to find be able to find more of who he is that's so true and you know schizophrenia and mental illness again is one of those it's one of those afflictions i think that or it's far too easy for people to kind of push off and usually say i will go for depression i will that's their fault or oh it's beyond our control and things like that and i think that your book does a fantastic job of really showing you know how a family can not only deal with this but also you know keep their minds open and keep your eyes open to new things that could eventually bring help but always be careful at the end of the day i'm sure any last thoughts russell as we wrap up here

. well you know just that in traditional societies indigenous societies like in africa there's often a relationship shamans are often considered to be fairly close to the so-called mental illness spectrum i mean they don't they don't look at mental illness the same way that we do they're they're considered people as i consider my son to be those with special abilities with psychic capabilities that most of us don't have and a world health organization study a few years back found that the. in so-called poor countries that didn't have access to medication like we have in the west that the success rate actually over time when there was just a lot of social interaction with people was a lot better than it is with our western medical outcomes so you know why i say and i don't disdain it all but well but i think it's very important to look for alternatives first sure thank you so much for coming on once the mr russell always a pleasure to have you on thank you thanks so much kyra. when we hear of the

so-called resistance movement in the u.s. these days threaten to tear down walls and instead build bridges we may very well laugh the chance off is naive idealism but there is no better time than now to remember that sometimes these chants grow into something much greater. than that and that to people who feel arbitrarily classified unfairly divided there was no desire more burning than that to tear down that wall yes hauke watchers this week marked a dividing line in modern history with the years since the berlin wall dividing east and west germany came crashing down out numbering its own considerable lifespan and setting aside for a moment all the political and exercise will problems modern day germans may be facing now let us commemorate this turning point in history that is perhaps best captured by the most famous piece of artwork now adorning it saying many small people who in many small places do many small things can alter the face of the world. and that laden gentlemen is our show for today remember everyone in this

world we are now told that we are loved enough for tell you all i love you. keep on watching those hawks never great day and night. national governments in various locations still don't even understand what the currency is how mining works what bitcoin does and that confusion and that learning curve that they haven't bothered to climb leads to a lot of missed policy choices messed up policy choices and it's just because of a massive confusion out there so little is known about. all levels of government most levels of the consumer world and even within the crypto community itself.

syria calls on the united nations to hold the u.s. led coalition to accounts for wednesday's airstrikes that targeted pro-government forces your central command says the attack was to defend an american bank group. the final day before the start of the winter olympics and dozens of russian are still awaiting a ruling on whether or not they can compete in south korea tensions over the games that don't stop there as norway now faces doping allegations as well. republican lawmakers in the united states are threatening to cut funding to a global cancer research program after it's linked america's most widely used weed killer made by the agribusiness giant monsanto to cannes.

good evening great to have you with as you're watching r.t. international. syria has called on the u.n. to hold the u.s. led coalition to account for wednesday's airstrikes against pro-government forces the number of casualties hasn't yet been confirmed u.s. central command described that attack as a defensive move but russia's defense ministry said the unit was hit as it was carrying out an operation against an eyesore. unfair breed the seventh while carrying out an operation to locate and terminate an eyesore sleeper so near to form oil refinery a unit of pro-government forces was suddenly shelled and then hit by airstrikes by the u.s. led coalition vis was overkill pure and simple if the numbers are true i would see a demonstration of she have brute force perhaps you know to send perhaps the send

a message that nevertheless the united states says that it's its in syria and it will defend itself and it has the right to defend itself in this instance in defense of coalition and partner forces the coalition conducted strikes against attack and forces to repel the act of aggression against partners in the global coalition's defeat danish mission if the situation is like how they describe that they were indeed attacks while fighting isis to make up the right to self defense well if you take them at face value you could think so but the people they just killed were also fighting isis and recently they had been making much better progress against isis then the united states led coalition or their partner forces the the s.d.f. the syrian government has of course called all of this an act of aggression unwarranted and unjust but just for you information all of this happened in there

is or near a rich oil field and refinery conical it's called it was liberated last year by the u.s. led coalition very quickly and in fact the u.s. partner forces seem to have a knack for liberating areas with oil under them much quicker than they do those areas that don't have oil under them since since all the oil rich areas were taken in that as ordered by the s.d.f. progress against isis seems to have dropped to a snail's pace but you know regardless. here america has said that it is in syria only to fight isis today isis has been all but defeated in syria but you don't see the pentagon packing its bags our military policy in syria has not changed our priority remains to defeat of isis whether it's in iraq or in syria that is our intent to defeat isis and not do anything more than that united states will

maintain a military presence in syria focused on ensuring isis cannot reemerge total withdrawal of american personnel at this time would restore assad who continue his brutal treatment against his own people so as to put its ability to the lack of a fundamental commitment to our agreements that is typical of current u.s. diplomacy including the reasons why the americans stay in syria rex tillerson peter he stated that the only goal in syria was the feet of ice or now they've got far more ambitious plans with more of the most with the mixed messages here is the pentagon staying general mattis said that the united states will stay in syria we'll fight in syria for as long as the united states wants to fight in syria i mean that's you know pretty direct now you see how this might sound strange going to syria and advice and while there you start killing syrians in syria in self

defense. like the purse of told us that with islamic state practically gone now from syria washington is targeting the country's government instead they are not just in syria to fight there in the new have been in syria for a long time because they want to throw aside as the space. feeds as it becomes clear that it is the syrian forces themselves at large would be to die in the priority of overthrowing assad begins to reassert itself in the pentagon and in the white house so i think that through the eyes of the. question the overthrow of assad was always the protocol problem the reason why the americans were in syria the army in treating these groups intervening with the airstrikes in saudi they were diverted from that by no with the possibility of a defeated diet inside syria that policy that reasserts itself this is coming at

the end of a long war the united states has taken about twenty eight percent of syrian territory and over fifty percent of its oil this is led british in order to roll back the one and get rid of my side by side just like if he wants that oil for himself there was a race only a few months ago would get those fields and he's proving undoubtedly under the pretext of biting isis the united states didn't think it was so the united states is trying to lay down the law here and not let anybody throw at it as we know it turks threatened and mended to take on the americans over there so the united states i think is very patients that goes and turkey will begin to push america out try to push americans out of northern syria but he likes. the start of the winter olympics in south korea is just one day away but the fate of dozens of russia they stand still hangs in the balance forty seven sports men and women

from russia have appealed to the court of arbitration for sport to overturn the i.o.c. decision over alleged doping violations the ruling is due to be announced on friday and among those who filed appeals are some of russia's most celebrated athletes for example six times a limb picked gold medalist victor are also such a games champion and should pool in between the reports from the olympic host city appealing chan for almost two and a half hours the court of arbitration for sport was listening to the russian side which have now left led by their lawyer. so these people won't get another chance to give their arguments to the court and now it is all up to the cast members they promise to announce some sort of decision by noon korean time on friday to go over to the bone we continue to defend on the gas pump listen to our arguments and the

decision will be reached within twenty four hours so things won't be decided to with a few hours before the opening ceremony which of course puts extra pressure on the russian athletes on wednesday the secretary general hinted that still their mind to be at delay now here we are looking at three scenarios either cas decides to do nothing about the international olympic committee's move not to invite the russian athletes who have never been caught for cheating and without specifying particular reasons for doing that or the court of arbitration for sport chooses to give the green light to the russians and in that case that would be a massive blow for the audio scene and that would in turned mean that the international olympic committee discriminated against the russians the third scenario we heard about from an online leak that cannot be confirmed but reports are suggesting that there could be a split decision on the russian athletes i'm standing by here at the temporary home

of the court of arbitration for sport and i'll give you any news as soon as it comes out showing the support for russian athletes sports fans present to the light show was on to a building opposite the world on the doping agency headquarters in canada it said the only doubling among the russian olympic team is the support and love of russian people russians all coming. but participation in the games is not in question are now embroiled in controversy two that's after a documentary published a list of drugs that norway's team doctor had brought to pyong chang a remarkable amount of us medication was noted six thousand doses in fact containing banned substances now that's ten times more assman drugs than for example neighboring finland and brought to south korea. the quantity of us medicine it's a lot of concerns most of these drugs they're containing substances that have been

banned by wider open watchdog argues that they can enhance its performance by expanding lung capacity the norwegian anti-doping agency is also admitted the country has a problem with the over use of asthma medication it is common practice in norway to occasionally use asthma medicine in major elements in the respiratory system even with a diagnosis vastly is not specific the latest revelation comes after the release of a documentary that alleges the existence of an organized doping system in norway ski federation we spoke to one of the journalist who's behind that film the region ski federation is very angry about this and they don't want to talk about this problem and that's very sad in the region it's more. than a ski federation doping program we can see that forty one chris.