Lance Morcan's Blog, page 45

Spanish treatment for book six in ‘The Underground Knowledge Series’

Bankrupting the Third World, our sixth book in The Underground Knowledge Series, has been translated into Spanish, and the ebook version – titled Arruinando al Tercer Mundo – has been published internationally.

Dedicated to the impoverished in forgotten places of the world, this book questions whether the likes of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United States Agency for International Development and other big international aid organizations help or hinder the world’s poorest people.

It also questions whether the aid packages provided are genuine or whether they are scams designed to subjugate Third World countries.

For our Spanish followers, a brief synopsis of Arruinando al Tercer Mundo  follows:

Los Morcan revelan que hay una agenda oculta y vil en juego, donde la “generosidad” extendida por organizaciones de ayuda internacional para asistir al desarrollo del Tercer Mundo y proveer alivio en la eventualidad de desastres naturales no sea caridad, sino egoísmo, con varios hilos atados… hilos diseñados para esquilar naciones vulnerables.

El lector encontrará al popular Sicario Económico John Perkins y encontrará que su bestseller “Confesiones de un Sicario Económico” es vigente, particularmente en África.

Al escribir este libro, los autores fueron motivados por unas estadísticas escalofriantes: 21,000 personas mueres de hambre cada día. ¡Eso es una persona cada cuatro segundos!

Más escalofriante es el hecho de que tales muertes son innecesarias, dado que hay más que suficiente riqueza en el mundo para que todos cubran, al menos, las necesidades básicas de la vida, y más que el Tercer Mundo se sostenga orgánicamente a sí mismo.

Para cuando termines este libro, verás que hay tanta riqueza en el Tercer Mundo, como en el Primero. De hecho, términos como “Tercer Mundo” y “naciones pobres” están, esencialmente, equivocados, ya que implican que la riqueza y los recursos son limitados en estos lugares.

 

The book as it appears on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Arruinando-al-Tercer-Mundo-Spanish-ebook/dp/B01MYNBX4U/

 

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Meet the Aboriginal tracker who features in the historical novel ‘White Spirit’

In our new release historical adventure novel White Spirit, convicts who escape from the notorious Moreton Bay penal settlement, on Australia’s east coast, risk death in the form of hunger, thirst, heat-stroke, snake-bite or sheer exhaustion. If by some chance they survive all that, they must elude Barega, an Aboriginal tracker employed by the British Army.

We introduce Barega early in the novel. He’s a tracker without peer – and he’s a born killer if ever there was.

Here’s an excerpt from White Spirit:

A wiry Aboriginal tracker ran fast through the undergrowth, following tracks only he could see. He carried a spear in one hand and a nulla nulla, or club, in the other. Wearing only a loincloth, he covered the ground with effortless ease, his bare feet hardly touching the sun-baked earth.

This was Barega, one of the last surviving members of the mysterious Joondaburri, a tribe whose menfolk were renowned up and down Australia’s east coast for their superior tracking abilities. In the language of his people, his name meant the Wind, which was appropriate for he ran like the wind. To the British soldiers who employed him, he was simply known as the Tracker.

Although only average height, Barega’s legs were out of proportion in that they were unusually long in relation to his torso – a fact that gave him a distinct advantage in his chosen occupation. Few men, black or white, could match him for speed in a cross-country foot race, and, like others of his tribe, he could run all day long, seemingly without tiring or succumbing to the relentless heat.

The tracks he followed were those of three convicts who had escaped custody earlier that morning. They were heading west, away from the coast and away from Moreton Bay – the site of Britain’s newest penal colony and home to two hundred or so convicts and soldiers. The route was leading deeper into the tropical rainforest that hugged this part of the coast. It became progressively steeper as the hills gave way to mountains.

Barega was accompanied by three soldiers who followed him on horseback. He glanced back at them from time to time to ensure they remained in contact. Though their horses were doing most of the work, it was clear to him the men were having a hard time of it in the heat. They stopped every so often to drink from their water bottles.

Leading the way was Lieutenant Desmond Hogan, a dashing Englishman who was a career soldier through and through. Hogan’s ambition to succeed in his chosen career was hinted at by his senior ranking, which was an achievement in itself for one so young. He was only twenty-six. His rapid rise up the ranks had undoubtedly been influenced by the fact that his father and his father’s father had both been high ranking army officers, and he was candid enough to acknowledge that, but that didn’t change the fact he was a man of some ability whose promotion had largely been based on merit.

Hogan caught Barega’s eye. “How close, Tracker?” he asked.

Pulling up, the tracker pointed at the sun, which at that moment was to the northeast, and then he pointed dead north. “Soon, Mister,” he said by way of explanation, though no explanation was necessary.

The young lieutenant had used Barega so often he could readily understand the other’s hand signals. On this occasion, the tracker had indicated they’d catch up to their quarry by mid-day when the sun would be where he’d indicated – dead north. By Hogan’s reckoning, that would be in an hour’s time give or take. He glanced around at his two men. “Another hour should do it,” he said.

 

WHITE SPIRIT (A novel based on a true story)   is exclusive to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/White-Spirit-novel-based-story-ebook/dp/B01LWIRH9J/

 

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Poll respondents fear mostly negative changes ahead with Donald Trump in charge

Do you believe the election of President Trump will bring about mostly POSITIVE or NEGATIVE changes in America and around the World?  That’s the question we put in our latest poll to members of our Underground Knowledge group on Goodreads — and results to date show only one fifth of respondents believe Trump will bring about mostly positive changes.

 

Trump…positive or negative changes ahead?

 

Interim poll results show: 60% of respondents voted mostly NEGATIVE changes, 21% voted mostly POSITIVE changes, 14% voted an equal mix of positive/negative changes, and the balance (5%) cannot decide.

 

Here’s what poll respondents are saying:

Suffice for DT to deliver the promises he made during the campaign and we would need to give a new meaning to the word ‘dystopian.’

What Trump will do, or try to do, will be negative. People’s strong reactions against what Trump does will hopefully be positive…If both the Republicrats and the Demoplicans implode, that would be positive.

I really believe that things will get better and that he will be more concerned for the people who are the backbone of this country and the good of all Americans. Time will tell but IMHO it can’t get much worse than it’s been.

He’s completely denying global warming and I think it will majorly impact the world negatively especially at this time.

Whatever he does I don’t think he can achieve much worse than Obamacare, NSA spying against own taxpayers on their own dime, police shooting American afroamericans on sight, ginormous external debt of US, home-growing DAISH and starting multiple wars around the world. And I’m not even starting on Hillary, she would have been even worse.

I imagine that those who voted for Trump will end up very disappointed when he doesn’t fulfill his campaign promises…Don’t believe anything these people say because the public will get nothing and the real winners are the big corporations and the 1%.

I have a hunch that as a businessman he will help the economy in the USA but I fear his abrupt style and lack of negotiation skills will cause offense and worsen relations between them and other countries.

Considering that the President has very little real power. It seems that we really need to worry about the congress.

This is awful but, I can’t wait for the economy to tank and for WWIII to start. Trump supporters are going down with the rest of us, just wait and see. Wait and see.

 

To view all the comments, or better still to have YOUR say, go to: https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/144916-do-you-believe-the-election-of-president-trump-will-bring-about-mostly-p

Poll ends December 31.

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The Underground Knowledge discussion group (on Goodreads) has been designed to encourage debates about important and underreported issues of our era. All you need is an enquiring mind, an interest in the world we live in and a desire to learn or share “underground knowledge”.

 

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And now for a short history of central banking in the US

In his bestselling This Book is Not FOR SALE, author Jarod Kintz says, “To live a more authentic life, I’ve started studying the world’s best counterfeiters, the Central Bankers. But I can assure you, my love for you is not inflated.” We thought that an appropriate quote to begin a chapter titled “A short history of central banking in the US” in our book INTERNATIONAL BANKSTER$.

 

Philadelphia’s historical site of the first US central bank.

 

In INTERNATIONAL BANKSTER$  we observe that numerous economists and historians, and vociferous politicians like Senator Ron Paul and Governor Jesse Ventura, have opined that the global elite had been aiming to control the resources of the United States for centuries. Creating an American central bank privately owned by an international banking cartel seemed to be the most efficient way to achieve this aim.

In 1791, the First Bank of the United States was set up apparently because the Government had a massive debt left over from the Revolutionary War known as the American Revolution. Many researchers say this was the earliest attempt by banking families of the global elite to create a privately-owned US central bank, masquerading as a federally-owned entity.

Although the bank had numerous opponents in the political arena, it only controlled 20% of the nation’s money supply – unlike the Fed today which manages 100% of the nation’s money supply and not a ‘penny’ less.

American Founding Father and the nation’s third President, Thomas Jefferson, was one of the most vocal critics of the First Bank of the United States. He argued the bank was unconstitutional, citing the 10th Amendment.

Jefferson also hinted that a central bank would lead to a monopoly instead of a free market. He said, “The existing banks will, without a doubt, enter into arrangements for lending their agency, and the more favorable, as there will be a competition among them for it; whereas the bill delivers us up bound to the national bank, who are free to refuse all arrangement, but on their own terms, and the public not free, on such refusal, to employ any other bank.”

This experiment in US banking ended in 1811 when the bank’s charter expired. Because of the institution’s many critics, Congress decided not to renew its charter.

Six years later, in 1817, the Second Bank of the United States was brought into being as major international banking families continued to push for an American central bank. This bank was also quite temporary with President Andrew Jackson ending its existence only 15 years later.

However, the global elite’s bankers did not give up, and in the early 20th Century started formulating ideas to create the US Federal Reserve System as we know it. One of the group’s breakthrough ideas came during a secretive meeting at a hunting lodge on Jekyll Island, off the coast of Georgia, when they decided not to call the new bank a central bank. History had shown America did not want a central bank.

After much brainstorming, the deceptive Federal Reserve name was agreed upon – presumably because it was assumed this name would fool the public into thinking it was a government-owned bank.

Although representatives of this shadowy banking cartel were open to co-managing this new central bank with Congress, all agreed the bank’s members had to be private banks that would own all of its stock.

(In book two of our international thriller series of novels The Orphan Trilogy, one of the founding members of an uber-powerful, shadowy organization is a senior banker of the US Federal Reserve, aka the Fed. It’s a work of fiction, of course, but much of the research we did for that series has carried over to this book and to this chapter in particular).

If one day proven to be correct, the alternative theory surrounding the Federal Reserve is one that may explain a variety of unusual occurrences in financial markets over the years.

In a nutshell, this theory contends that the Fed is an institution that acts independent of the US Congress, has zero transparency or accountability, and even determines its own monetary policy.

 

You have been reading an excerpt (to be continued) from INTERNATIONAL BANKSTER$: The Global Banking Elite Exposed and the Case for Restructuring Capitalism  (book five in The Underground Knowledge Series). 

 

 

INTERNATIONAL BANKSTER$  is exclusive to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/INTERNATIONAL-BANKSTER-Restructuring-Capitalism-Underground-ebook/dp/B015QN5RTY/

 

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Romance Novel Giveaways offers ‘Into the Americas’ giveaway

Win an eCopy of Into the Americas gifted via Amazon.com!

Romance Novel Giveaways, the  readers’ site for romance novels, is putting up our bestselling historical adventure-romance INTO THE AMERICAS (A novel based on a true story)  as the prize in a Giveaway for its members. Entries close November 19 PST. Interested? Check it out at http://romancenovelgiveaways.blogspot.co.nz/2016/11/into-americas-by-lance-morcan-james.html

To visit this site go to: www.romancenovelgiveaways.com




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Holocaust deniers and revisionists well and truly debunked

In our new release book DEBUNKING HOLOCAUST DENIAL THEORIES: Two Non-Jews Affirm the Historicity of the Nazi Genocide, we identify those fools who challenge the detailed and indisputable historicity of the Holocaust as people who generally fall into two distinct camps: deniers and the more common revisionists. The deniers, of course, say the entire crime of the Nazis never occurred and is all just a result of post-war propaganda while the more common revisionists try to downgrade the number of Jews killed from six million to as few as 50,000.

 

Jews pictured on arrival at one of the death camps during the Holocaust.

 

We remind our readers of the basic definition of the Holocaust, which mainstream historians universally  agree upon: “The Holocaust (aka the Shoah) was a genocide in which Nazi Germany killed approximately six million Jews between 1933 and 1945.” The Shoah, incidentally, is from the Hebrew HaShoah, which appropriately translates as “the catastrophe.”

Note the revisionists are quick to imply that of the tens of thousands, or the hundreds of thousands, of Jews they acknowledge died, few if any of these “casualties of war” died in the Nazis’ infamous gas chambers.

So, essentially revisionists are still denying the historicity of the Holocaust. Clearly, there is very little difference between saying 95% of the Holocaust never happened and saying it never happened at all. For this reason, we only use the term Holocaust deniers as we feel the term Holocaust revisionists gives them far too much respect and makes them sound intellectual or even academic.

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“Negationism means the denial of historical crimes against humanity. It is not a reinterpretation of known facts, but the denial of known facts. The term negationism has gained currency as the name of a movement to deny a specific crime against humanity, the Nazi genocide on the Jews … Negationism is mostly identified with the effort at re-writing history in such a way that the fact of the Holocaust is omitted.” –Koenraad Elst, Negationism in India: Concealing the Record of Islam, The Voice of India

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We have studied all sides of this so-called debate. We’ve read Holocaust survivors’ books and watched documentary footage of the actual Holocaust; we’ve listened to recordings of Hitler’s speeches and those of other Nazis; we’ve watched footage of talks given by notorious Holocaust deniers including shamed historian David Irving; we’ve studied WW2 history and have met and interviewed Jewish survivors of the concentration camps. And we can assure you of one thing…

Holocaust deniers always have anti-Semitic beliefs and sympathies somewhere inside them. Always…

… In our opinion, psychiatrist Walter Reich, former director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and now professor of international affairs at George Washington University, summarized the underlying reason for Holocaust denial best when he wrote in a July 1993 article in The New York Times that, for anti-Semites, “the Holocaust is an infuriatingly inconvenient fact of history. After all, the Holocaust has generally been recognized as one of the most terrible crimes that ever took place, and surely the very emblem of evil in the modern age. If that crime was a direct result of anti-Semitism taken to its logical end, then anti-Semitism itself, even when expressed in private conversation, is inevitably discredited among most people. What better way to rehabilitate anti-Semitism, make anti-Semitic arguments seem once again respectable in civilized discourse and even make it acceptable for governments to pursue anti-Semitic policies than by convincing the world that the great crime for which anti-Semitism was blamed simply never happened— indeed, that it was nothing more than a frame-up invented by the Jews, and propagated by them through their control of the media? What better way, in short, to make the world safe again for anti-Semitism than by denying the Holocaust?”

T.B.C.

 

You have been reading an excerpt from Debunking Holocaust Denial Theories – by James & Lance Morcan. The book is exclusive to Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/DEBUNKING-HOLOC...  

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Top Amazon book reviewer gives ‘White Spirit’ novel five stars

Amazon Australia Top 50 reviewer Todd Simpson says “The Authors have really brought this story alive with some amazing characters and splendid writing” in his five-star review of our new release historical adventure WHITE SPIRIT (A novel based on a true story). 

 

 

Excerpts from Todd Simpson’s review follow. (Paragraph breaks added):

Both Lance and James Morcan have done an amazing job with this incredible story. Being based on a true story, made it that much more interesting. One of the standouts is how well they explained how hard the white settlers and convicts had it back in the 1800’s. Some of the convicts went through hell, and all for stealing a loaf of bread. The Authors have really brought this story alive with some amazing characters and splendid writing.

With no supermarket or corner store in the 1800’s Moilow stood for hours like an unmoving statue waiting for a kangaroo to drink from the waterhole. This was the patience required to hunt and catch food for his tribe in the Australian bush. The soldiers of the Penal Colony had it a little easier when it came to food, and they were smart in employing the services of Barega an Aboriginal Tracker. He was the main reason they had such success in tracking down escaped convicts. That and because they were a long way from civilisation.

Morton Bay Penal Colony definitely wasn’t a place you wanted to end up in as a convict. Lord Bertram Cheetham was the man in overall charge, and he probably let the power go to his head a bit too much. He ruled with an iron fist, and he demanded punishments were dished out in the harshest imaginable terms…It was because of Cheetham’s hard-line approach that Captain Marsden his second in charge believed there were so many escape attempts by the convicts.

The prisoners had very little to eat, and their cramped living conditions were deplorable. Then add in the 16 hour working days in the quarry, which was tough going. Especially if you were exhausted or sick as most of the men were.

Young Helen Marsden certainly has her admirers. With not many women around, and certainly none as beautiful as she is. Lieutenant Hogan isn’t the only one showing a keen interest in her. Helen is becoming quite outspoken and is beginning to put her two cents worth in around the colony.

As soon as John Graham arrives in Morton Bay, he is already counting how many guards there are, and planning an escape. He is much smarter than the average man, and he knows if he is caught, then he will face death at the gallows.

Helen begins to write a newspaper column, and it makes her father very angry when she writes of the atrocities that are happening at the penal colony. Her father doesn’t realise it yet, but one of the convicts is hopefully going to rescue his daughter. This was such a captivating story, and it made for a few very enjoyable days of reading. I would definitely recommend it.

 

WHITE SPIRIT (A novel based on a true story)   is exclusive to Amazon. To see all the reviews for this book go to: https://www.amazon.com/White-Spirit-novel-based-story-ebook/dp/B01LWIRH9J/

 

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‘The Catcher in the Rye Enigma’ connects the dots…

In summarizing our book THE CATCHER IN THE RYE ENIGMA: J.D. Salinger’s Mind Control Triggering Device or a Coincidental Literary Obsession of Criminals?  we acknowledge the alleged conspiracy surrounding Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye  has already been studied ad nauseam. The conspiracy we refer to, of course, is that many high profile assassination victims or intended victims have been connected with Salinger’s classic. (For those yet to catch up with this, refer to our blog of August 16).

 

 

JFK and John Lennon…amongst the alleged victims.

 

And we acknowledge the general consensus by experts is that it is a mere coincidence the criminals involved committed, or at least planned, such horrific crimes after reading Salinger’s book. However, we also ask our readers how many of the so-called experts know about MK-Ultra  and the highly documented history of mind control? And how many are aware of the intelligence community’s experiments proving Manchurian Candidates are indeed possible?

Here’s an excerpt from our book that addresses these very questions:

We’re certainly not implying we are experts, but it’s a fact that most who have analyzed Catcher  conspiracy theories have been authorities in either literature or criminology with highly specific knowledge in their chosen fields. Perhaps to more accurately assess this subject a prerequisite would be to have a broader knowledge of such topics as the way intelligence agencies operate, the dark history of assassinations and suspicious lone gunmen, and Project Paperclip’s Americanized Nazis as well as understanding how advanced the science of mind control really is.

We ain’t saying Catcher  is definitely a mind control mechanism for those who have been brainwashed by intelligence agencies. But at the very least, the book had an accidental and unintended influence on some of the most heinous and high profile crimes of the 20th Century. And to us that seems very convenient or coincidental or suspicious – take your pick.

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“They say music can alter moods and talk to you / Well, can it load a gun up for you and cock it too? / Well if it can, and the next time you assault a dude / Just tell the judge it was my fault, and I’ll get sued.” -Eminem, lyric from Sing for the Moment

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Just like any good story, maybe there’s a few facts hidden within the fiction and a healthy dose of fiction buried amongst the facts. Perhaps J.D. Salinger never bothered to publicly comment on the crimes associated with his book as he liked the mystery that surrounded it.

And on that note let’s allow the man himself have the final word…

“It’s partly true, too, but it isn’t all true,” Salinger wrote in The Catcher in the Rye. “People always think something’s all true.”

THE END

 

The Catcher in the Rye Enigma  is book four in The Underground Knowledge Series  and is exclusive to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Catcher-Rye-Enigma-Coincidental-Underground-ebook/dp/B00YVROKZ4/

 

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You are what you eat…right Doc?

When did your doctor last talk to you about your diet? We ask that very question in our no-holds-barred book MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: The $ickness Industry, Big Pharma and Suppressed Cures.

 

 

Most are aware of the old adage, You are what you eat. It seems to us, though, that many members of the medical profession aren’t aware – or, if they are, they consider it an old wives’ tale.

In Medical Industrial Complex  we devote a whole chapter to this vexing issue. Here’s an excerpt:

We suspect that, more often than not, doctors only deign to discuss diet when a patient dares to raise the subject. And then, if your experience is like ours, you’ll be greeted with a frosty stare or, at best, a few mumbled banalities about not over-eating or the importance of a balanced diet or cut down on fats.

Which leads to more (related) questions: How long do doctors-in-training spend studying nutrition at medical school? And why isn’t nutrition on the curriculum alongside biochemistry, pathology, physiology and the like?  

These questions and more are raised in a very appropriate discussion thread on the ResearchGate.net site. A random selection of comments from that thread follows:

“We need clinicians to remember to consider nutrition when seeing/treating a patient rather than being a full nutritional expert. However they should know basics such as basic nutritional needs and guidelines, calculating and interpreting BMI, when to give nutritional support and be aware of the importance of using nutritional screening tools to see if referral to a dietitian is required.”
“I would be a staunch supporter of making nutrition a major field of study in a medical doctors pursuit of their degree.”
“Before health care providers can get into…details about individual response to nutrients and talk about personal nutrition, they need to establish their nutrition knowledge and clinical skills foundation. For physicians this needs to happen in medical school and requires a serious effort.”
“Considering the importance of nutrition for a patient’s recovery from disease and maintenance of health it is surprising that nutrition isn’t a bigger part of conventional medical school education.”
“It should be within the core responsibilities of doctors to address nutrition in patient care and it is essential that all doctors know the appropriate time to make a dietitian referral.”
“Why is it so hard to understand that robust familiarity with nutrition is equally or even more important (than surgery training)?”

To add some balance to the discussion, one contributor (from the University of Jordan) to the above thread observes that nutrition is “a specialized field and huge in its content.” He adds, “Medical students (are) overwhelmed by texts, labs, and courses. It requires an evolutionary plan to incorporate nutrition with medicine curricula”.

Medical educators at least pay lip service to the importance of nutrition, and they appear to be in general agreement that there’s not enough instruction on this topic in today’s medical schools.

For example, the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) addresses this via its official online site AAFP News. In an article dated May 17, 2010, the writer reports that although most medical schools (in the US) offer some form of nutrition education, only one-quarter require a dedicated nutrition course.

The article continues, “In fact, the amount of nutrition education that medical students receive is so ‘inadequate’ that ‘medical school graduates feel unprepared to intervene in their patients’ care with regard to nutrition,’ according to the UNC preliminary survey results”.

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“I actually like how doctors talk. I like the sound of science. I like how words you don’t understand explain things you can’t understand.” –American author (Ms.) R.J. Palacio

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Another 2010 report – this one published by the US National Library of Medicine in conjunction with the National Institutes of Health – concludes that “The amount of nutrition education that medical students receive continues to be inadequate”.

That report summarizes a survey of 109 medical schools, which revealed that “most (103) required some form of nutrition education” of their students. The most disturbing revelation, however, is that “Overall, medical students received 19.6 contact hours of nutrition instruction during their medical school careers”.

19.6 contact hours of nutrition instruction? During a med school course that takes, what, four or five years at least?

Let’s face it, sensible eating is probably the best single thing we can do to help ensure a healthy future as food governs the functions of our organs and figures prominently in both the contracting of illness and disease, and in our recovery from those ailments.

T.B.C.

 

Medical Industrial Complex  is Book #3 in The Underground Knowledge Series  and is available exclusively via Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/MEDICAL-INDUSTRIAL-COMPLEX-Suppressed-Underground-ebook/dp/B00Y8Y3TUM/

 

 

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Australia’s mysterious Songlines feature in new historical novel

In our new release historical adventure WHITE SPIRIT (A novel based on a true story), set in 19th Century Australia, escaped Irish convict John Graham finds sanctuary with the Kabi, a primitive tribe of Aborigines who have never seen a white man. During his time with the clan members, John marvels at their uncanny ability to navigate the landscape by following the mysterious Songlines – tracks left by their spirit ancestors from the Dreaming.

We refer to the Songlines in the following excerpts from White Spirit. To set the scene, John Graham finds himself in the company of Mamba, a fetching young widow who believes him to be Moilow, her deceased husband who has returned to her in the form of a white spirit. They and the other clan members are relocating to new hunting grounds…

Mamba was currently singing to herself – something John had observed her do often, especially whilst walking. He found the melody enchanting, captivating even, and though he could understand little of what she sang about, it nevertheless strangely resonated with him. For reasons he couldn’t explain, it made him feel at one with nature.

“What do you sing about, Mamba?” he enquired, speaking slowly so that she would get the gist of what he was asking.

The young woman smiled patiently and then rolled her eyes in mock exasperation – as if to say this was something John should know. “Why you ask…such thing…Moilow?” she asked in pigeon English. “Surely remember…the Songlines.”

John just shrugged. He had heard her and others often talk about something they called the Songlines, but still he didn’t know what they were.

When Mamba saw that her man looked genuinely bemused, she reverted to her native tongue. “You know we sing to the land and its sacred landmarks because it is alive,” she said. “Our ancestors have told us it is so, remember? The Songlines allow us to follow the paths left by our spirit ancestors from the Dreamtime.” She paused to assess whether John understood.

The Irishman had heard Mirritji speak of the Dreamtime. He understood it no more than he did the Songlines, but he knew better than to dismiss it as twaddle, so he nodded to indicate he was following her so far.

Encouraged, Mamba continued, “By following the…Dreaming Tracks…we walk in footprints of those…who went before us…and so we journey safely…and never get lost.”

That bit John did understand. He had long observed the Kabi never seemed to lose their way, not even when venturing into foreign territories never before visited. He’d learned that for their initiation, the clan’s boys went bush, as they called it, armed only with a spear and often trekking hundreds of miles into the interior – an age-old ritual which, if they survived, formally ushered them into manhood. On occasion, they didn’t return. Not because they’d become lost, he’d been assured, but because some other catastrophe had befallen them. More often than not, that catastrophe was a failure to find food or water, or falling foul of enemies of the Kabi. Whatever the reason, the end result was usually death…

And later, during another trek to yet another campsite…

John noticed Mamba’s eyes were now fixed on a craggy, bush-covered hill to their left, and she began singing louder and with more feeling. He remembered seeing the hill once before – this time last year to be precise – and he recalled Mamba had told him it was the place where her father had died. He could see tears now rolled down her face, and he wanted to comfort her, but he resisted because he had learned she didn’t appreciate being distracted at such times.

Since Mamba had first told him about the Songlines, John had imagined more than once he could hear them singing back to him. It only happened when he was alone, and then only very occasionally. Once, quite recently, it had seemed so real he’d mentioned it to Mirritji. John had half expected the elder to laugh at him, but Mirritji had assured him it was the Songlines he’d heard. He remembered advising the old man that he couldn’t understand the words of the song. Mirritji had smiled and said, “The language of the Songlines is in the rhythm of the song, not the words, Moilow. The rhythm is an echo of the sky and of the land below. Listening to it, or singing it, guarantees you always have a path to follow.”

“I can make no sense of the sound I hear,” John had complained.

“You must clear your mind and listen harder, Moilow,” Mirritji had patiently advised. “The Songlines guided you back to us. They will guide you again.”

The next time John thought he heard the Songlines, he took the elder’s advice and listened harder, but still he could make no sense of the sound. Yet he found it comforting.

 

WHITE SPIRIT (A novel based on a true story)   is exclusive to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/White-Spirit-novel-based-story-ebook/dp/B01LWIRH9J/

 

As a footnote, it seems very likely the Aborigines’ oneness with the Songlines endures to this day. Their tracking abilities are second-to-none, and their ability to survive in the harsh Outback of Australia defies explanation.

 

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