A few steps above well enforced tax code and the turmoil continues as Donald Trumps 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 ts on your parm full in tel aviv israel. Israels 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 im 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 doesnt 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 were going to break our quarters dont 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 sons 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. Im here that muddy field stadium in edinburgh. The home and the heart of Scottish Rugby im 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 russells 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 im not antimedication but as you said the side effects from these socalled antipsychotic 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 whos biography i was writing id come across a man named melodrama so may who was from west africa it worked with James Hellman in the mens 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 youve got to go come to my country come to bring and bring franklins 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 thats. But we set out to do in the beginning of twenty sixteen and spent a remarkable month there thats 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 doesnt have to take as many pills now today as he did that are correct. Thats 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 hes called a holy man hes 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 didnt 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 wed 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 dont 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 didnt i mean every day was a mystery we didnt 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. Its 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 wasnt 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 dont say that what we went through over there was a cure all. It wasnt a miracle cure or anything i mean once he finally went off his western medication entirely with his doctors 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 its kind of like hey you know heres the pill go home get better when you know we dont look at the psychological process of that we dont 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 its absolutely true you know they found in programs because not everybody can go to app to west africa like we did and my sons biracial so that also was a factor in the importance of it but you know theres a program in finland for example called open dialogue where theyve found theyre trying to duplicate it now in the u. S. There were more of these programs back in the seventys 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 theyve 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 theyre going back to work theyre going to school and its its 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 thats 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 dont just have they say that you know if you have depression you should take this because you might be bipolar i mean you know theres a theres a big and the pills are very very expensive unless you have s. S. I. Or some kind of benefits so you know its and now theyre 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 whove been prescribed and i psychotics have died as a result of taking those medications so let me again emphasize im not against medication im not saying you need to go off it entirely medication has its place but theres 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 bandaid 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 hes living with his mom again in baltimore and hes more social most socially oriented than hes been i think since before he had his breakdown and hes doing his art again for it regularly hes 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 hes beginning to find himself again in his own way and what he wants to do and in the future so its 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 thats so true and you know schizophrenia and Mental Illness again is one of those its one of those afflictions i think that or its far too easy for people to kind of push off and usually say i will go for depression i will thats their fault or oh its 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 im sure any last thoughts russell as we wrap up here. Well you know just that in traditional societies indigenous societies like in africa theres often a relationship shamans are often considered to be fairly close to the socalled Mental Illness spectrum i mean they dont they dont look at Mental Illness the same way that we do theyre theyre considered people as i consider my son to be those with special abilities with psychic capabilities that most of us dont have and a World Health Organization study a few years back found that the. In socalled poor countries that didnt 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 dont disdain it all but well but i think its 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 socalled 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 dont even understand what the currency is how mining works what bitcoin does and that confusion and that learning curve that they havent bothered to climb leads to a lot of missed policy choices messed up policy choices and its 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 wednesdays airstrikes that targeted progovernment 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 dont stop there as norway now faces doping allegations as well. Republican lawmakers in the United States are threatening to cut funding to a Global CancerResearch Program after its linked americas most widely used weed killer made by the agribusiness giant monsanto to cannes. Good evening great to have you with as youre watching r. T. International. Syria has called on the u. N. To hold the u. S. Led coalition to account for wednesdays airstrikes against progovernment forces t