Plato's Cave

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

How To Live Your Best Life In America In 2021 (In A Van Down By The River)

One of the hottest new trends in the U.S. is to get rid of your house and live in a van. Of course many people have had “van life” forced upon them by current economic conditions, but for an increasing number of Americans “van life” has become a choice. Personally, I am old enough to remember when “living in a van” was a running joke in this country. But now we are being told that it is “cool” to live like a hobo. In fact, USA Today insists that life in a van “is particularly well suited” for the COVID pandemic because it allows for much easier social distancing…

But for those who can afford it, #vanlife is particularly well suited for this crisis because it’s socially distanced, can be done on a budget and fosters outdoor activities, which are safer during the outbreak than indoor environments where air doesn’t circulate well.

When you smell like a skunk after not showering for a week, it is true that not too many people will want to get near you, and so I would agree that living in a van will help with social distancing.

Since the start of the pandemic, van sales have risen dramatically, and this has happened even though overall sales for the auto industry are way down…

Mercedes, whose Sprinter van is the vehicle of choice for many #vanlife followers, appears to be the biggest winner. Mercedes-Benz U.S. van sales soared 22.5% in 2020 to 274,916, even as the brand’s overall sales fell 8.9%.

“Everybody’s trying to get their hands on a van,” says Stefanie Doemel, who manages upfit solutions for vans at Mercedes-Benz USA.

Of course most of those that choose to embrace “van life” cannot afford a Mercedes.

If you are fortunate enough to encounter someone living the “van lifestyle”, it is more likely that they will own a junky old Chevy van that has had the interior ripped to shreds over the years.

But the good news for van residents is that they never have to stay in one place and there is always something new to see.

USA Today interviewed one “van life” advocate named Abby Rodriguez who says that when her work for the day is done she can just “go refresh in nature”…

“You feel more relieved from some of the mental stress that others are going through by being trapped in one place,” Abby says. “We have wheels so we can change up our scenery, and after the workday, I can go refresh in nature.”

That is all well and good, but I just hope that she brings a shovel with her when she “refreshes”, because it isn’t polite to leave your droppings right out in the open.

In a companion article, USA Today shared five key tips for those that are considering making the switch to “van life”…

1. Consider buying a used van
2. Budget for upgrades and teach yourself how to do them
3. Stay at public campgrounds or national parks
4. Make sure you’ve got a bathroom solution
5. Plan for fixed and unexpected expenses

Personally, there are two more things that I would add to the list.

Number one, make sure that you are able to secure a good spot down by the river.

Number two, you may want to consider supplementing your income with some public speaking gigs.

As the U.S. economy continues to rapidly deteriorate right in front of our eyes, another one of the hottest new trends is to dig around for discarded food in dumpsters behind large supermarkets.

The trendies like to call it “dumpster diving”, and it has become particularly popular with impoverished Millennials living in core urban areas.

In fact, it has become so popular that some supermarkets are now calling out the police to guard their dumpsters. For example, approximately a dozen police officers were guarding the dumpsters behind a Fred Meyer in Portland on Tuesday…

Roughly a dozen Portland police officers faced off with a small group at a Northeast Portland Fred Meyer on Tuesday after people tried to take food that had been thrown away.

Workers at the Hollywood West Fred Meyer threw away thousands of perishable items because the store, like many others, had lost power in an outage brought on by the region’s winter storm.

We are being told that a riot almost ensued, but of course riots happen at the drop of a hat in Portland these days.

For a while the police were successful in keeping the hungry people away from the dumpsters, but eventually the police got tired and went home.

When the coast was finally clear, hungry Millennials descended upon the dumpsters like a pack of ravenous wolves…

Simonis said police eventually left and those waiting to get food made their way over to the dumpsters. As of 6:30 p.m., about two dozen people were at the dumpsters, taking a few items each.

Simonis noted that all the food was still in good condition, given the cold weather. One person picked up a carton of juice with an expiration date in March.

This is America in 2021. Poverty is growing with each passing day, and people are becoming increasingly desperate.

And if things are this bad already, how bad is the desperation going to become once our economy finally plunges into freefall mode?

On Wednesday, millions of Americans were deeply saddened to hear that Rush Limbaugh had passed away. He will be deeply missed, and nobody will ever be able to fill his shoes.

One of the things that always stood out to me when I listened to Rush was how much he truly loved the United States. He was zealously patriotic, and he truly embodied the ideals that our founders held so dear when they originally established this nation.

So as sad as it was to see him go, I am also glad that he is not going to have to see the nightmarish chapters that are ahead for this country.

Recent political events were already weighing very heavily on him, and to watch the U.S. completely fall to pieces would have absolutely broken his heart.

If we had made much different choices, America could have been on a much different path today.

But instead we continue to steamroll toward oblivion, and many Americans will be doing so inside a clunky old van.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com. In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe. I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook, Twitter and Parler, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help. During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.

The post How To Live Your Best Life In America In 2021 (In A Van Down By The River) first appeared on The Economic Collapse.

via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

The Government Is Going To Start Treating Domestic “Extremists” The Same As ISIS Or Al-Qaeda Terrorists?

ORIGINAL LINK

Many Americans were perfectly fine with Islamic terrorists being shipped off to Guantanamo Bay where they would be endlessly waterboarded and tortured in countless other ways. But now members of Congress are talking about “applying the same penalties” to domestic “extremists” here in the United States. Does that mean that American citizens will soon be grabbed off the streets and sent to prison camps indefinitely without a trial? Personally, I am very much against terrorism wherever it is found all over the globe, but what some of our politicians are proposing to do to fight “domestic extremism” goes way over the line. Once you are done reading this article, I believe that you will share my concerns.

Even before the last election, the Department of Homeland Security was putting out some very alarming statements. For example, last October DHS officials came to the conclusion that U.S.-based extremists are now “the primary terrorist threat inside the United States”…

“The primary terrorist threat inside the United States will stem from lone offenders and small cells of individuals,” said the department’s first Homeland Threat Assessment. “Some U.S.-based violent extremists have capitalized on increased social and political tensions in 2020, which will drive an elevated threat environment at least through early 2021.”

If DHS officials had been referring to the groups that have been rioting, looting and burning our cities for the past 12 months, that assessment would make a lot of sense.

But of course that was not who they were talking about.

Following the election, we witnessed the horrific attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. In the aftermath of that attack, Democrats in Congress have been “insisting that domestic terrorism has eclipsed the threat from foreign actors such as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda”…

The attack has left many lawmakers, and especially Democrats, insisting that domestic terrorism has eclipsed the threat from foreign actors such as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. DHS and its agencies are responsible for securing the country’s borders, ports, transportation and cyber systems, generally leaving the monitoring of extremist groups and terrorism investigations to the FBI. But DHS and its agencies have nearly eight times as many employees as the FBI, and calls for the department to play a more muscular role in combating domestic extremism have policymakers looking at new ways to enlist its resources.

Once again, these Democrats are not talking about the groups that attack police stations, courthouses and federal buildings on an almost nightly basis.

Instead, their focus is almost exclusively on those that have “far right” political views.

Democrat Tulsi Gabbard is warning that her colleagues in Congress intend to define “extremist” so broadly that it could apply to nearly half the country…

“What characteristics are we looking for as we are building this profile of a potential extremist, what are we talking about? Religious extremists, are we talking about Christians, evangelical Christians, what is a religious extremist? Is it somebody who is pro-life? Where do you take this?” Gabbard said.

She said the proposed legislation could create “a very dangerous undermining of our civil liberties, our freedoms in our Constitution, and a targeting of almost half of the country.”

Last month, I wrote an article about the new bill that she was talking about. It is called the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2021, and it is basically the Patriot Act on steroids.

Of course it won’t be used against terrorists on the left. During a recent discussion about domestic extremism, Democrat Bennie Thompson (who is the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee) specifically used the word “patriots” to describe the sort of person that he intends to target…

“A lot of them mask themselves under some guise of being patriots or some form of citizen, but the question is, what do they advocate?”

That statement should chill you to the core.

“Republican” Michael McCaul, who is also on the House Homeland Security Committee, has gone even farther.

If you can believe it, he is actually suggesting that domestic extremists should face “the same penalties as those that exist for terrorism that originates overseas”…

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.), the committee’s former chairman, joined lawmakers calling for specific federal sanctions for domestic terrorism, potentially applying the same penalties as those that exist for terrorism that originates overseas. Such legislation could include penalties for providing material support to domestic groups and laws holding technology companies responsible for violent and extremist content on their platforms.

“I think it sends a strong message about where Congress is that we’re going to treat domestic terrorism on an equal plane as international terrorism,” McCaul said.

So what happens to terrorists overseas?

They are ruthlessly gunned down, their homes are hit by unexpected drone strikes, or if they are really lucky they get hauled off to Guantanamo Bay.

Without a doubt, terrorism has no place in our society.

And if authorities really wanted to do something about it, they should arrest the terrorists that are endlessly committing violence in Seattle, Portland and other major cities.

But whenever an American citizen is arrested, it is imperative that every constitutional right is respected and that citizen is given a fair trial.

Sadly, the measures that some members of Congress are now proposing cross quite a few lines that should never, ever be crossed.

Detaining U.S. citizens indefinitely without a trial is something that should never, ever be done.

Sending drones to “take out” U.S. citizens simply because of what they believe is something that should never, ever be done.

And torturing U.S. citizens in the name of “fighting extremism” is something that should never, ever be done.

All of these things have been done to ISIS and Al-Qaeda terrorists, and now members of Congress want “domestic extremists” to be treated the same way.

Since the definition of a “domestic extremist” now covers close to half the country, there is a very good chance that you could potentially be considered a “domestic extremist” too.

We have reached such a critical turning point in our history, and we really are on the verge of losing all of our precious constitutional rights.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

The post The Government Is Going To Start Treating Domestic “Extremists” The Same As ISIS Or Al-Qaeda Terrorists? first appeared on The Most Important News.

via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

5 questions to ask your friends who plan to get the Covid vaccine

Many of us have friends or family who plan on getting the vaccine. Maybe they truly believe they are in danger. Maybe they think it’s better safe than sorry. Maybe they just want to be able to go to the pub again.

ORIGINAL LINK

National Guard To Stay In DC "Through Fall 2021", Why?!

ORIGINAL LINK
National Guard To Stay In DC "Through Fall 2021", Why?!

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

A leaked email suggests that there are plans to keep the National Guard in Washington DC beyond the previously discussed deadline of March 12th, and throughout the Summer AND Fall.

A report by FOX 5 cites an internal email seen by reporters that reveals The National Security Council is asking the Department of Defense to engage Capitol Police on planning for post-March 12th support.

The report notes that there will be a meeting for agencies to discuss the matter next Wednesday, February 17th.

The email was written by Robert Salesses who is covering the duties of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Global Security.

It states:

“If it’s not possible to sustain at the current level with NG personnel, we need to establish the number of NG personnel (DCNG and out-of-state) we can sustain for an extended period – at least through Fall 2021 – and understand additional options for providing DoD support, to include use of reserve personnel, as well as active component.”

While troops were expected to stay in DC for the duration of the impeachment sideshow, owing to “security concerns,” it now appears that they will remain even longer.

The Pentagon has confirmed that there are still around 6000 National Guard troops in DC. While there have been indications that the number will be reduced to 5000 within a month, there have been no other indications of when troops will be stood down.

There is also no indication of when the huge razor wire topped security fencing will be removed from around Capitol Hill.

The Guard have been given virtually no information about what they are required to do, with one soldier previously describing the situation as “very unusual for any military mission.”

As we reported last month, thousands of the troops were forced to sleep OUTSIDE and in a parking Garage near the Capitol building after a Democratic lawmaker complained that ONE guardsmen was not wearing a face mask.

The estimated cost of keeping the security measures is so far close to $500 million.

Without a legitimate reason to keep troops in DC any longer, Americans can only assume that the Biden administration and the Democrats feel their grip on power needs protecting by a permanent military presence.

Tyler Durden Tue, 02/16/2021 - 22:30

via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

The False and Exaggerated Claims Still Being Spread About the Capitol Riot

What took place at the Capitol on January 6 was undoubtedly a politically motivated riot. As such, it should not be controversial to regard it as a dangerous episode.

ORIGINAL LINK

Monday, February 15, 2021

Johnstone: Conspiracy Theories Are Caused By Government Secrecy

ORIGINAL LINK
Johnstone: Conspiracy Theories Are Caused By Government Secrecy

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

The DC Circuit has ruled that the CIA is under no obligation to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests pertaining to its involvement with insurgent militias in Syria, overturning a lower court’s previous ruling in favor of a Buzzfeed News reporter seeking such documents.

As Sputnik’s Morgan Artyukhina clearly outlines, this ruling comes despite the fact that mainstream news outlets have been reporting on the Central Intelligence Agency’s activities in Syria for years, and despite a US president having openly tweeted about those activities.

“In other words, the CIA will not be required to admit to actions it is widely reported as having done, much less divulge documents about them to the press for even greater scrutiny,” Artyukhina writes, calling to mind the Julian Assange quote “The overwhelming majority of information is classified to protect political security, not national security.”

My latest: Despite extensive reporting by the @WSJ & CIA-vetted @nytimes confirming it happened, a DC court has sided with the @CIA, finding that a Trump tweet doesn't constitute proof that it funded al-Qaeda in #Syria. https://t.co/NFaQBrggV5
— Morgan Artyukhina (@LavenderNRed) February 13, 2021

The CIA’s brazen collaboration with dangerous extremist factions seeking to topple Damascus, and its equally brazen refusal to provide the public with any information about the extent of its involvement in Syria from the earliest stages of the violence in that nation onwards, will necessarily provide fodder for conspiracy theories.

It is public knowledge that the CIA was involved in the Syrian war to some extent, it is public knowledge that the CIA has a well-documented history of doing extremely evil things, and it is public knowledge that the US government has long sought control over Syria. Due to the agency’s refusal to be transparent about the exact nature of its involvement in that nation, people are left to fill in the knowledge gaps with their own speculation.

Of course they will do this. Why wouldn’t they? Why would anyone give the lying, torturing, propagandizing, drug trafficking, coup-staging, warmongering, psychopathic Central Intelligence Agency the benefit of the doubt and assume their actions in Syria have been benevolent just because the hard facts have been hidden behind a wall of government secrecy?

Yet they will be expected to. Anyone with a sufficient degree of influence who comes right out and says the CIA knowingly armed violent jihadists with the goal of orchestrating regime change in Syria will be attacked as a crazy conspiracy theorist by the narrative managers of the establishment media. If their words are really disruptive to establishment narratives, there will be calls to deplatform, unemploy, and ban them from social media.

I'd forgotten how shameless and demented the imperialist narrative managers get whenever anyone in a position of influence contradicts the imperial narrative about what's happening in Syria. Mentally replace their words with "STOP INTERFERING IN OUR GLOBAL PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN!" https://t.co/Sd5HCCklkW pic.twitter.com/O9XonJBHfo
— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) January 15, 2021

And really such is the case with all the melodramatic garment rending about the dangers of conspiracy theories today. All the fixation on the way unregulated speech on the internet has contributed to the circulation of conspiracy theories conveniently ignores the real cause of those theories: government secrecy.

If the most powerful government in the world were not hiding a massive amount of its behavior behind increasingly opaque walls of secrecy, people would not need to fill in the gaps with theories about what’s happening, because there would be no gaps; they would simply see what’s happening.

“But Caitlin!” one might object. “How could America engage in all its military operations around the world if it didn’t keep information about its behaviors a secret?”

Exactly, my smooth-brained friend. Exactly.

Government secrecy is indeed necessary for winning wars. Government secrecy is also necessary for starting those wars in the first place. US government agencies have an extensive history of using false pretenses to initiate military conflicts; if they could not hide the facts behind a veil of government opacity, the public would never engage in them. The American people would never have allowed their sons to go to Vietnam if they’d known the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a lie. They’d never have sent their sons and daughters to invade Iraq if they’d known weapons of mass destruction were a lie. They would lose the support of the public, and the international community would refuse to back them.

Protecting the lives of foreign military and intelligence personnel is the primary argument against government transparency in the United States, a premise which takes it for granted that there need to be foreign military and intelligence personnel at all. The only reason the lives of troops and intelligence officers would be endangered without massive walls of government secrecy is because those personnel are out there facilitating imperialist acts of mass murder and tyranny. The argument is essentially “Well we can’t tell you the truth about what’s happening in our government, because it would mean we’d have to stop doing extremely evil things.”

The argument that the internet needs strict censorship to eliminate dangerous conspiracy theories takes it as a given that simply eliminating government secrecy is impossible, which in turn takes it as a given that the US government cannot simply stop inflicting grave evils around the world. Our ability to share information with each other online is therefore ultimately being increasingly choked off by monopolistic Silicon Valley megacorporations because no one in charge can fathom the idea of the United States government ceasing to butcher human beings around the world.

That is the real underlying argument over internet censorship today. Should people have free access to information about what their own government is doing, or should their government be permitted to do evil things in secret while people who form theories about what they’re doing are shoved further and further away from audibility? That’s the real debate here.

Here's how politicians, media and government could eliminate conspiracy theories if they really want to:
- Stop lying all the time
- Stop killing people
- Stop promoting conspiracy theories (Russiagate)
- Stop doing evil things in secret
- End government opacity
- Stop conspiring
— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) January 9, 2021

The powerful should not be permitted to keep secrets from the public. They should not be permitted to jail journalists who try to reveal those secrets to the public, and they should not be permitted to collaborate with monopolistic corporations to censor people who form theories about those secrets. The amount of secrecy you are entitled to should be directly inverse to the amount of power that you have.

The US government has powerful agencies whose literal job is to conspire. The fact that people are punished and condemned for forming theories about how that conspiring might take place, even while those agencies are completely lacking in transparency, is abusive.

If the government was not doing evil things in secret, then it wouldn’t need secrecy. If the government didn’t have secrecy, there would be no conspiracy theories. Stop pointing your attacks at powerless people who are just trying to figure out what’s going on in the world amidst a sea of government secrecy and propaganda, and point your attacks instead at the power structures that are actually responsible for the existence of conspiracy theories in the first place.

* * *

Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my new book Poems For Rebels (you can also download a PDF for five bucks) or my old book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Tyler Durden Mon, 02/15/2021 - 22:30

via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

A Doctor’s View About the New mRNA Vaccines

ORIGINAL LINK

Submitted by Cow Doctor

This is the best explanation, from a physician, as to why one should avoid the vaccine. The antibody dependent enhancement problem with Corona viruses are very real. In cats there is a disorder known as Feline Infectious Peritonitis. It’s caused by guess what, a Corona virus. We still don’t know why but one cat can get this Corona virus and be forever asymptomatic while the next cat will develop a fulminating fatal disease that is primarily caused by an over reaction of the immune system.

The reaction causes damage to the vasculature allowing it to leak serum into the body cavities. They tried a vaccine for this and IMHO it made things worse. I personally am certain of one instance where a cat, which I gave the vaccine, developed FIP shortly thereafter. Needless to say that vaccine is no longer available. All I can say is don’t be a Guinea Pig.

Guest Post by Thomas Silar

It’s important to know both what we know about the new vaccines and what we don’t know.

I’ve practiced for 35 years. I am always honest with my patients, even if conversations are difficult or confrontational. I will also be honest about saying “I don’t know.” This happens when a diagnosis is not readily apparent or when there are limits to the help I can give. With the passage of time, I’ve learned that what we don’t know about medicine outweighs what we do know.

I’ve always been a proponent of older, more established vaccines. However, they are imperfect and, like all medical treatments, can have side effects. Unfortunately, in the conversation about the new COVID-19 vaccines, the tenets of honesty and a willingness to admit ignorance are being compromised.

Operation Warp Speed was remarkable, but it leaves an uncomfortable question: Is it a good thing to rush a vaccine (or medicine) to the public without the usual safeguards? Operation Warp Speed might be a great business objective or military goal, but is it great for a medical treatment?

The pharmaceutical industry, government health authorities, and the media insist the new vaccines are safe and effective. While the initial results are promising, this is not the whole truth. Both honesty and acknowledging ignorance require answering a few questions.

What do we know about the new TYPE of vaccine being given?

Pfizer and Moderna were the first COVID-19 vaccines to be approved. Both use a new technology called mRNA vaccine, which has never been broadly given to a human population to prevent any disease.

Let that sink in for a moment.

All previous vaccines take a weakened virus or a piece of the virus and inject it into humans to induce an immune response sufficient to prevent a disease. Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines inject mRNA, which is a protein code that instructs the body to make a part of COVID-19’s spike protein that will then induce an immune response.

Our bodies daily use our own mRNA to carry instructions from DNA to make various proteins the body uses. While this new vaccine science sounds intriguing, it has never been tried in humans in this scope. It may be a breathtaking scientific advancement heralding a new path for all vaccines. It may also be less effective or have currently unknown side effects.

Is the mRNA vaccine for COVID-19 safe?

So far, the limited study of the vaccines approved for emergency use (one major study for each vaccine approved) has shown some short-term side effects. The vaccine is a two-shot series and side effects were prominent after the second shot. Side effects were more common if the recipient was younger than 65 years old.

Side effects

Pain at the injection site has usually gone away in 4-5 days. The other side effects resolve, on average, in 2-3 days.

Early reports after giving the vaccine have also included allergic reactions ranging from mild to a few cases of anaphylaxis (serious allergic reaction). Allergy may be to mRNA itself or the lipid nanoparticles/PEG vehicle it is housed in. The long-term side effects are not currently known, as the main study length and follow up have only been four months.

Is the mRNA vaccine effective?

In the main study from Pfizer’s vaccine, 8/17,000 patients got symptomatic COVID-19 in the treatment group during the short follow up. In the placebo group, 162/17,000 patients got symptomatic COVID-19 during the study time. There was also a trend towards those getting the vaccine having a less severe disease and needing less hospitalization.

The Moderna study had 30,000 patients split into treatment and placebo arms. In the vaccine group, 11/15,000 patients came down with COVID-19. In the placebo group, 185/15,000 patients came down with COVID-19.

It was hard to ascertain death avoidance in these small studies. However, the two initial studies are favorable and show a 95% efficacy. Now that more information about the studies is known, Peter Doshi, associate editor of the British Medical Journal, wrote an editorial that the true efficacy may be much lower because the study excluded people with COVID-19 symptoms but a negative test and other factors.

How long does immunity last?

This is unknown. Injected mRNA goes away in days, but it is thought that the immune response will be long lasting. Whether patients will need boosters at some point is not known.

What about mutations in the COVID-19 virus? Will the vaccine still work?

Viruses always mutate and scientists following COVID-19 estimate it mutates, on average, twice a month. Most of these mutations are minor and will likely not change the vaccine effectiveness. These mutations also usually do not make the virus more deadly.

What is antibody dependent enhancement?

COVID-19 is in the family of Coronavirus that causes the common cold. The pharmaceutical industry has been trying without success for the last two decades to make a vaccine against the common cold. A safe vaccine against the common cold would make some company a lot of money!

One problem in the animal studies on coronavirus family vaccines was “antibody dependent enhancement.” When animals were inoculated, they developed a robust immune response, which is a good result.

However, when the animals were later exposed to the coronavirus against which they were vaccinated, their immune system went into overdrive, and they developed an overwhelming, fatal immune response called a “cytokine storm.” Fatal cytokine storms also happened to some COVID-19 patients when their infection was severe.

Human responses do not always correlate to animal responses. So far, there have been no signs that humans have a cytokine storm when exposed to COVID-19 after receiving the vaccine. Obviously, this would be catastrophic for any vaccine.

Should we be concerned about other long term side effects from mRNA vaccines?

A concern that deserves mention is the possibility that a cross-reaction and immunity to other parts of the spike protein could cause auto-immune disease or other problems.

A former Pfizer VP, Dr. Michael Yeadon, who has over 30 years of experience in immunology and drug research, filed a Stay of Action petition with the European Medicine Agency (like our FDA) to halt the trials of mRNA vaccines over concerns it might affect sterility in women.

Yeadon is worried that the mRNA vaccine was coded for a region of the spike protein that was similar to Syncytin-1, which is a protein that is essential for the development of the placenta. If a woman’s body makes antibodies to this protein, she could become sterile when vaccinated for COVID-19. This is a theory, not a proven fact, and no one has studied it. Yeadon’s insistence on more studies to make sure this will not happen seems reasonable.

What to make of all these concerns?

Medicine is always about a risk/benefit analysis, subject to the first maxim of “do no harm.” Usually, new medicines or new vaccines are used only after multiple studies show over long periods of time (for vaccines, at least five years) prove they’re safe and better than the older treatments.

While the new mRNA vaccines have good initial results and may be a breakthrough, they should be viewed as experimental and would best be used in high-risk patients (older patients or those with health conditions raising COVID-19 mortality) until we know more. Patients should receive extensive informed consent to understand the risks and benefits. Patients also need to know that if they have a serious complication, Congress already protected the pharmaceutical companies from litigation around emergency vaccines.

The mantra of “safe and effective” is not only incomplete, but it also ignores other pathways out of the pandemic. For healthy people, early outpatient treatments are being developed to treat COVID-19. These would be a safer option than taking an experimental vaccine. Young people (<60 years old) who have very low mortality from COVID-19 should approach getting the new vaccine as if they were consenting to be in an experimental trial of a new vaccine.

Our history shows there are good reasons why new medicines and vaccines are not rushed into widespread use until we have multiple studies and time to assess the safety and efficacy of the new treatments. If the death rate from COVID-19 were much higher, it might make the risks acceptable to try an experimental vaccine. Given that the COVID-19 death rate is a little higher than a bad flu, my opinion is that younger and healthier people need a more rigorous risk/benefit analysis before taking the mRNA vaccines.

via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

Opening The CIA's Can Of Worms

ORIGINAL LINK
Opening The CIA's Can Of Worms

Authored by Edward Curtin via Off-Guardian.org,

“The CIA and the media are part of the same criminal conspiracy,” wrote Douglas Valentine in his important book, The CIA As Organized Crime.

This is true. The corporate mainstream media are stenographers for the national security state’s ongoing psychological operations aimed at the American people, just as they have done the same for an international audience.

We have long been subjected to this “information warfare,” whose purpose is to win the hearts and minds of the American people and pacify them into victims of their own complicity, just as it was practiced long ago by the CIA in Vietnam and by The New York Times, CBS, etc. on the American people then and over the years as the American warfare state waged endless wars, coups, false flag operations, and assassinations at home and abroad.

Another way of putting this is to say for all practical purposes when it comes to matters that bear on important foreign and domestic matters, the CIA and the corporate mainstream media cannot be distinguished.

For those who read and study history, it has long been known that the CIA has placed their operatives throughout every agency of the U.S. government, as explained by Fletcher Prouty in The Secret Team; that CIA officers Cord Myer and Frank Wisner operated secret programs to get some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom among intellectuals, journalists, and writers to be their voices for unfreedom and censorship, as explained by Frances Stonor Saunders in The Cultural Cold War and Joel Whitney in Finks, among others; that Cord Myer was especially focused on and successful in “courting the Compatible Left” since right wingers were already in the Agency’s pocket.

All this is documented and not disputed. It is shocking only to those who don’t do their homework and see what is happening today outside a broad historical context.

With the rise of alternate media and a wide array of dissenting voices on the internet, the establishment felt threatened and went on the defensive. It, therefore, should come as no surprise that those same elite corporate media are now leading the charge for increased censorship and the denial of free speech to those they deem dangerous, whether that involves wars, rigged elections, foreign coups, COVID-19, vaccinations, or the lies of the corporate media themselves.

Having already banned critics from writing in their pages and or talking on their screens, these media giants want to make the quieting of dissenting voices complete.

Just the other day The New York Times had this headline:

"Robert Kennedy Jr. Barred From Instagram Over False Virus Claims."

Notice the lack of the word alleged before “false virus claims.” This is guilt by headline. It is a perfect piece of propaganda posing as reporting, since it accuses Kennedy, a brilliant and honorable man, of falsity and stupidity, thus justifying Instagram’s ban, and it is an inducement to further censorship of Mr. Kennedy by Facebook, Instagram’s parent company.

That ban should follow soon, as the Times’ reporter Jennifer Jett hopes, since she accusingly writes that RFK, Jr. “makes many of the same baseless claims to more than 300,000 followers” at Facebook. Jett made sure her report also went to msn.com and The Boston Globe.

This is one example of the censorship underway with much, much more to follow. What was once done under the cover of omission is now done openly and brazenly, cheered on by those who, in an act of bad faith, claim to be upholders of the First Amendment and the importance of free debate in a democracy. We are quickly slipping into an unreal totalitarian social order.

Which brings me to the recent work of Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, both of whom have strongly and rightly decried this censorship. As I understand their arguments, they go like this.

First, the corporate media have today divided up the territory and speak only to their own audiences in echo chambers: liberal to liberals (read: the “allegedly” liberal Democratic Party), such as The New York Times, NBC, etc., and conservative to conservatives (read” the “allegedly” conservative Donald Trump), such as Fox News, Breitbart, etc.

They have abandoned old school journalism that, despite its shortcomings, involved objectivity and the reporting of disparate facts and perspectives, but within limits. Since the digitization of news, their new business models are geared to these separate audiences since they are highly lucrative choices. It’s business-driven since electronic media have replaced paper as advertising revenues have shifted and people’s ability to focus on complicated issues has diminished drastically.

Old school journalism is suffering as a result and thus writers such as Greenwald and Taibbi and Chris Hedges (who interviewed Taibbi and concurs: part one here) have taken their work to the internet to escape such restrictive categories and the accompanying censorship.

Secondly, the great call for censorship is not something the Silicon Valley companies want because they want more people using their media since it means more money for them, but they are being pressured to do it by the traditional old school media, such as The New York Times, who now employ “tattletales and censors,” people who are power-hungry jerks, to sniff out dissenting voices that they can recommend should be banned.

Greenwald says,

They do it in part for power: to ensure nobody but they can control the flow of information. They do it partly for ideology and out of hubris: the belief that their worldview is so indisputably right that all dissent is inherently dangerous ‘disinformation.’”

Thus, the old school print and television media are not on the same page as Facebook, Twitter, etc. but have opposing agendas.

In short, these shifts and the censorship are about money and power within the media world as the business has been transformed by the digital revolution.

I think this is a half-truth that conceals a larger issue. The censorship is not being driven by power-hungry reporters at the Times or CNN or any media outlet. All these media and their employees are but the outer layer of the onion, the means by which messages are sent and people controlled.

These companies and their employees do what they are told, whether explicitly or implicitly, for they know it is in their financial interest to do so. If they do not play their part in this twisted and intricate propaganda game, they will suffer. They will be eliminated, as are pesky individuals who dare peel the onion to its core.

For each media company is one part of a large interconnected intelligence apparatus – a system, a complex – whose purpose is power, wealth, and domination for the very few at the expense of the many. The CIA and media as parts of the same criminal conspiracy.

To argue that the Silicon valley companies do not want to censor but are being pressured by the legacy corporate media does not make sense. These companies are deeply connected to U.S. intelligence agencies, as are the NY Times, CNN, NBC, etc. They too are part of what was once called Operation Mockingbird, the CIA’s program to control, use, and infiltrate the media. Only the most naïve would think that such a program does not exist today.

In Surveillance Valley, investigative reporter Yasha Levine documents how Silicon Valley tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google are tied to the military-industrial-intelligence-media complex in surveillance and censorship; how the Internet was created by the Pentagon; and even how these shadowy players are deeply involved in the so-called privacy movement that developed after Edward Snowden’s revelations.

Like Valentine, and in very detailed ways, Levine shows how the military-industrial-intelligence-digital-media complex is part of the same criminal conspiracy as is the traditional media with their CIA overlords. It is one club.

Many people, however, might find this hard to believe because it bursts so many bubbles, including the one that claims that these tech companies are pressured into censorship by the likes of The New York Times, etc. The truth is the Internet was a military and intelligence tool from the very beginning and it is not the traditional corporate media that gives it its marching orders.

That being so, it is not the owners of the corporate media or their employees who are the ultimate controllers behind the current vast crackdown on dissent, but the intelligence agencies who control the mainstream media and the Silicon Valley monopolies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. All these media companies are but the outer layer of the onion, the means by which messages are sent and people controlled.

But for whom do these intelligence agencies work?

Not for themselves.

They work for their overlords, the super wealthy people, the banks, financial institutions, and corporations that own the United States and always have. In a simple twist of fate, such super wealthy naturally own the media corporations that are essential to their control of the majority of the world’s wealth through the stories they tell.

It is a symbiotic relationship.

As FDR put it bluntly in 1933, this coterie of wealthy forces is the “financial element in the larger centers [that] has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.” Their wealth and power has increased exponentially since then, and their connected tentacles have further spread to create what is an international deep state that involves such entities as the IMF, the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, those who meet yearly at Davos, etc.

They are the international overlords who are pushing hard to move the world toward a global dictatorship.

As is well known, or should be, the CIA was the creation of Wall St. and serves the interests of the wealthy owners. Peter Dale Scott, in “The State, the Deep State, and the Wall Street Overworld,” says of Allen Dulles, the nefarious longest-running Director of the CIA and Wall St. lawyer for Sullivan and Cromwell:

There seems to be little difference in Allen Dulles’s influence whether he was a Wall Street lawyer or a CIA director.”

It was Dulles, long connected to Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, international corporations, and a friend of Nazi agents and scientists, who was tasked with drawing up proposals for the CIA. He was ably assisted by five Wall St. bankers or investors, including the aforementioned Frank Wisner who later, as a CIA officer, said his “Mighty Wurlitzer” was “capable of playing any propaganda tune he desired.”

This he did by recruiting intellectuals, writers, reporters, labor organizations, and the mainstream corporate media, etc. to propagate the CIA’s messages.

Greenwald, Taibbi, and Hedges are correct up to a point, but they stop short. Their critique of old school journalism à la Edward Herman’s and Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing of Consent model, while true as far as it goes, fails to pin the tail on the real donkey. Like old school journalists who knew implicitly how far they could go, these guys know it too, as if there is an invisible electronic gate that keeps them from wandering into dangerous territory.

The censorship of Robert Kennedy, Jr. is an exemplary case. His banishment from Instagram and the ridicule the mainstream media have heaped upon him for years is not simply because he raises deeply informed questions about vaccines, Bill Gates, the pharmaceutical companies, etc. His critiques suggest something far more dangerous is afoot: the demise of democracy and the rise of a totalitarian order that involves total surveillance, control, eugenics, etc. by the wealthy led by their intelligence propagandists.

To call him a super spreader of hoaxes and a conspiracy theorist is aimed at not only silencing him on specific medical issues, but to silence his powerful and articulate voice on all issues. To give thoughtful consideration to his deeply informed scientific thinking concerning vaccines, the World Health Organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, etc., is to open a can of worms that the powerful want shut tight.

This is because RFK, Jr. is also a severe critic of the enormous power of the CIA and its propaganda that goes back so many decades and was used to cover up the national security state’s assassination of both his father and his uncle.

It is why his wonderful recent book, American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family, that contains not one word about vaccines, was shunned by mainstream book reviewers; for the picture he paints fiercely indicts the CIA in multiple ways while also indicting the mass media that have been its mouthpieces.

These worms must be kept in the can, just as the power of the international overlords represented by the World Health Organization and the World Economic Forum with its Great Reset must be. They must be dismissed as crackpot conspiracy theories not worthy of debate or exposure.

Robert Kennedy, Jr., by name and dedication to truth seeking, conjures up his father’s ghost, the last politician who, because of his vast support across racial and class divides, could have united the country and tamed the power of the CIA to control the narrative that has allowed for the plundering of the world and the country for the wealthy overlords.

So they killed him.

There is a reason Noam Chomsky is an exemplar for Hedges, Greenwald, and Taibbi. He controls the can opener for so many. He has set the parameters for what is considered acceptable to be considered a serious journalist or intellectual. The assassinations of the Kennedys, 9/11, or a questioning of the official Covid-19 story are not among them, and so they are eschewed.

To denounce censorship, as they have done, is admirable. But now Greenwald, Taibbi, and Hedges need go up to the forbidden gate with the sign that says – “This far and no further” – and jump over it. That’s where the true stories lie. That’s when they’ll see the worms squirm.

Tyler Durden Sun, 02/14/2021 - 23:30

via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

CDC WITHOLDING INFORMATION! 1,170 DEAD Following COVID Injections: Almost Twice as Many Deaths as Found in VAERS

Yesterday we reported that the CDC had done another data dump into the VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) database, showing that through February 4,

ORIGINAL LINK

Fury at ‘do not resuscitate’ notices given to Covid patients with learning disabilities

People with learning disabilities have been given do not resuscitate orders during the second wave of the pandemic, in spite of widespread condemnation of the practice last year and an urgent investigation by the care watchdog.

ORIGINAL LINK