If you are considering vaccinating against pertussus, know the risks.
https://www.facebook.com/karibundyhealthactivist/videos/894131774054087/
Imagine A Society
NAILED it!
The Best Time To Start Eating Well
AMEN to that!
Conversation With An Anti-Vaxxer
Q: So you’re an “anti-vaxxer”?
A: Yes, if you need to call me that.
Q: Don’t you worry about your child getting sick from vaccine preventable diseases?
A: No, not really. I actually have less fear of many of those illnesses now that I’ve done my research.
Q: But what about polio?
A: Polio is asymptomatic in over 90% of cases. When symptoms do present, they’re usually mild and flu-like.
Q: But we don’t see iron lungs anymore because of vaccines.
A: We don’t see iron lungs anymore for the same reason we don’t see computers that are large enough to take up an entire room. Technology has come a long way.
Q: But even if the risk of getting something serious is small, don’t you want to protect your child with vaccines just in case?
A: I do want to protect my child, and that is one reason I say no to vaccines. Because in my cost-benefit analysis, the chances of my child being harmed from vaccines is greater than the chances of my child being harmed from one of those illnesses.
Q: But it’s not just about your child. It is your responsibility to vaccinate your child to protect immune compromised people through herd immunity.
A: First and foremost, my responsibility is to my child. I will not set my child on fire to keep someone else warm. What parent would knowingly risk their child’s life for the sake of the herd? Would you? My child is not a human shield. Secondly, herd immunity is a myth. We do not have vaccine induced herd immunity and never have.
Q: But don’t you think vaccines are a victim of their own success? They eradicated polio and other diseases, so you probably haven’t seen them thanks to vaccines.
A: Correlation does not equal causation. The history of vaccines is more complex than that, and I no longer believe that vaccines can take the credit for eradicating any diseases. We have never had widespread vaccination for scarlet fever or typhoid, yet, they are no longer a threat. Amazing what sanitation can do. Polio has also not been eradicated. I may not have lived through the “polio” era, but I am living in a time with a different kind of epidemic. My child’s generation is the first to have a life expectancy that is less than that of their parents. People are sicker than ever with autoimmune diseases, deadly allergies, neurological problems, and cancer. We can not cling to a controversial problem of the past to make crucial decisions for today. We have to do something about the problems we are currently faced with, and giving more vaccines is not an acceptable solution.
Q: Do the ingredients in vaccines concern you?
A: Yes
Q: You know there’s formaldehyde in pears, right? And mercury in tuna?
A: When’s the last time you puréed a pear and some tuna, then injected it intramuscularly? We have a digestive system for a reason, and the mucosal tissue is one of the most important components of the human immune system. I don’t think bypassing those functions is without consequence. Ingestion and injection are not the same thing. It’s the same reason you can drink snake venom, but being bitten in the leg with the same venom can kill you.
Q: But the science is settled and doctors and scientists agree that vaccines are necessary.
A: Science is never settled. As history has shown, science can be dangerously wrong. It can also be heavily influenced by financial interests. And doctors and scientists do not all agree about vaccines. There are many doctors, nurses, immunologists, and researchers who are aware of the shortcomings of vaccines. And if we want to really discuss vaccine science, we need to demand that there be more of it, because vaccine science is severely lacking. It is the tobacco science of our time. The current vaccine schedule (which has more than tripled since vaccine manufacturers became protected from liability) has never been tested for safety. There hasn’t been a randomized double blind placebo controlled study comparing the outcomes of the vaccinated vs. unvaccinated. Vaccines are the epitome of quackery.
Ubuntu
We should share this philosophy broadly. In fact, please do. My understanding is that we cannot individually prosper to our maximum if some of us suffer for lack.
Have Monsanto and the Biotech Industry Turned Natural Bt Pesticides Into GMO “Super Toxins”?
Have Monsanto and the Biotech Industry Turned Natural Bt Pesticides Into GMO “Super Toxins”?
Is the supposed safety advantage of GMO crops over conventional chemical pesticides a mirage?
According to biotech lore, the Bt pesticides introduced into many GMO food crops are natural proteins whose toxic activity extends only to narrow groups of insect species. Therefore, says the industry, these pesticides can all be safely eaten, e.g. by humans.
This is not the interpretation we arrived at after our analysis of the documents accompanying the commercial approval of 23 typical Bt-containing GMO crops, however (see Latham et al., 2017, just published in the journal Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering Reviews).
In our publication, authored along with Madeleine Love and Angelika Hilbeck, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), we show that commercial GMO Bt toxins differ greatly from their natural precursors. These differences are important. They typically cause GMO Bt proteins to be more toxic. Worse, they also cause them to be active against many more species than natural forms of Bt toxins.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/13/have-monsanto-and-the-biotech-industry-turned-natural-bt-pesticides-into-gmo-super-toxins/
The Seeds of Agroecology and Common Ownership
The increasingly globalised industrial food system that transnational agribusiness promotes is not feeding the world and is responsible for some of the planet’s most pressing political, social and environmental crises. Localised, traditional methods of food production have given way to globalised supply chains dominated by transnational companies policies and actions which have resulted in the destruction of habitat and livelihoods and the imposition of corporate-controlled, chemical-intensive (monocrop) agriculture that weds farmers and regions to a wholly exploitative system of neoliberal globalisation.
Whether it involves the undermining or destruction of what were once largely self-sufficient agrarian economies in Africa or the devastating impacts of soy cultivation in Argentina or palm oil production in Indonesia, transnational agribusiness and global capitalism cannot be greenwashed.
In their rush to readily promote neoliberal dogma and corporate PR, many take as given that profit-driven transnational corporations have a legitimate claim to be custodians of natural assets. There is the premise that water, seeds, land, food, soil and agriculture should be handed over to powerful, corrupt transnational corporations to milk for profit, under the pretence these entities are somehow serving the needs of humanity.
These natural assets (‘the commons’) belong to everyone and any stewardship should be carried out in the common interest by local people assisted by public institutions and governments acting on their behalf, not by private transnational corporations driven by self-interest and the maximization of profit by any means possible.
The Guardian columnist George Monbiot notes the vast wealth the economic elite has accumulated at our expense through its seizure of the commons. A commons is managed not for the accumulation of capital or profit but for the steady production of prosperity or wellbeing of a particular group, who might live in or beside it or who created and sustain it.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/10/the-seeds-of-agroecology-and-common-ownership/
Russiagate was a CIA/Media Invention
The investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election will ultimately show that “quite a few” news outlets ran stories that were not factual, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, said.
Senator Burr said that although his committee will not be investigating news organizations, it does plan on providing the public with the information needed to hold them responsible for what they reported.
“We’re not going to investigate news organizations, but we will use the findings of our report to let the American people hold every news organization accountable for what they portrayed as fact, in many cases without sources — at least, no sources that would admit to it.”
Will we see this news reported by the presstitute media? Don’t count on it.
https://www.rt.com/usa/405874-russia-probe-fake-news/
Democracy Not Plutocracy
A major chapter in American history – rarely taught in our schools – is how ever larger corporations have moved to game, neutralize and undermine the people’s continual efforts to protect our touted democratic society. It is a fascinating story of the relentless exercise of power conceived or seized by corporations, with the strategic guidance of corporate lawyers.
Start with their birth certificate – the state charters that bring these corporate entities into existence, with limited liability for their investors. In the early 1800s, the Massachusetts legislature chartered many of the textile manufacturing companies. These charters could be renewed on good behavior, because lawmakers then viewed charters as privileges contingent on meeting the broad interests of society.
Fast forward to now. The charter can be granted online in a matter of hours; there are no renewal periods and the job is often given over to a state commission. Over the decades, corporate lobbyists have had either the legislatures or the courts grant them more privileges, immunities and concentration of power in management, rendering shareholders – their owners – increasingly powerless. The same corporate fixers work for corporations and their subsidiaries abroad to help them avoid US laws, taxes and escape disclosures.
Remarkably, the artificial creation called the “corporation” has now achieved almost all of the rights of real people under our “We the People” Constitution that never mentions the words “corporation” or “company.”
Corporations cannot vote, at least not yet; only people can. That was seen as a major lever of democratic power over corporations. So what has happened? Commercial money to politicians started weakening the influence of voters because the politicians became increasingly dependent on the corporate interests that bankrolled their campaigns. The politicians use their ever-increasing corporate cash to saturate voters with deceptive political ads, and intimidate any competitors who have far less money, but may be far better representative of the public good.
To further shatter the principle of voter sovereignty, corporations have rewarded those politicians who construct restrictive political party rules, gerrymander electoral districts and obstruct third party candidate ballot access. By concentrating political power in fewer and fewer hands, corporate influence becomes more deeply entrenched in our democratic society. Politicians quickly learn that political favors will attract more corporate campaign cash and other goodies.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/06/how-big-corporations-game-our-democracy-into-their-plutocracy/
Principal's Letter To Parents
Increasing certainty and confidence are incredibly therapeutic for children and adults alike.