wakingtimes--2020-09-24--In Unprecedented Monetary Overhaul, The Fed Is Preparing To Deposit “Digital Dollars” Directly To “E

In Unprecedented Monetary Overhaul , The Fed Is Preparing To Deposit “ Digital Dollars ” Directly To “ Each American ” Get the latest Waking Times articles delivered to your inbox .
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Over the past decade , the one common theme despite the political upheaval and growing social and geopolitical instability , was that the market would keep marching higher and the Fed would continue injecting liquidity into the system .
The second common theme is that despite sparking unprecedented asset price inflation , prices as measured across the broader economy – using the flawed CPI @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would remain subdued ( as a reminder , the Fed is desperate to ignite broad inflation as that is the only way the countless trillions of excess debt can be eliminated and has so far failed to do so ) The Fed ’ s failure to reach its inflation target – which prompted the US central bank to radically overhaul its monetary dogma last month and unveil Flexible Average Inflation Targeting ( or FAIT ) whereby the Fed will allow inflation to run hot without hiking rates – has sparked broad criticism from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we showed in June , deflation is now a direct function of the Fed ’ s unconventional monetary policies as the lower yields slide , the lower the propensity to spend .
In other words , the harder the Fed fights to stimulate inflation , the more deflation and more saving it spurs as a result ( incidentally this is not the first time this “ discovery ” was made , in December we wrote “ One Bank Makes A Stunning Discovery – The Fed ’ s Rate Cuts Are Now Deflationary “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Fed launched QE and NIRP , it has been making the situation it has been trying to “ fix ” even worse while blowing the biggest asset price bubble in history .
And having recently accepted that its preferred stimulus pathway has failed to boost the broader economy , the blame has fallen on how monetary policy is intermediated , specifically the way the Fed creates excess reserves which end up at commercial banks instead of “ tricking down ” all the way to the consumer level .
To be sure , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shutdowns the Fed has tried to short-circuit this process , and in conjunction with the Treasury it has launched “ helicopter money ” which has resulted in a direct transfer of funds to US corporations via PPP loans , as well as to end consumers via the emergency $ 600 weekly unemployment benefits which however are set to expire unless renewed by Congress as explained last week , as Democrats and Republicans feud over which fiscal stimulus will be implemented next .
And yet , the lament is that even as the economy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ liquidity tsunami , the funds created by the Fed and Treasury ( now that the US operates under a quasi-MMT regime ) did not make their way to those who need them the most : end consumers .
Which is why we read with great interest a Bloomberg interview with two former Fed officials : Simon Potter , who led the Federal Reserve Bank of New York ’ s markets group i.e.
, he was the head of the Fed ’ s Plunge Protection Team for years , and Julia Coronado , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Fed ’ s Board of Governors , who are among the innovators brainstorming solutions to what has emerged as the most crucial and difficult problem facing the Fed : get money swiftly to people who need it most in a crisis .
The response was striking : the two propose creating a monetary tool that they call recession insurance bonds , which draw on some of the advances in digital payments , which will be wired instantly to Americans .
As Coronado explained the details , Congress would grant the Federal Reserve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a percent of GDP [ in a lump sum that would be divided equally and distributed ] to households in a recession .
Recession insurance bonds would be zero-coupon securities , a contingent asset of households that would basically lie in wait .
The trigger could be reaching the zero lower bound on interest rates or , as economist Claudia Sahm has proposed , a 0.5 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate .
The Fed would then activate the securities and deposit the funds digitally in households ’ apps .
Essentially , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ digital legal tender unlike reserves which are stuck within the financial system , and which it can deposit directly into US consumer accounts .
In short , as we summarized “ The Fed Is Planning To Send Money Directly To Americans In The Next Crisis “ , something we reminded readers of on Monday : So this morning , as if to confirm our speculation of what comes next , Cleveland Fed president Loretta Mester delivered a speech to the Chicago Payment Symposium titled “ Payments and the Pandemic “ , in which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Mester goes straight to the matter at hand .
But wait it gets better , because in launching digital cash , the Fed would then be able to scrap “ anonymous ” physical currency entirely , and track every single banknote from its “ creation ” all though the various transactions that take place during its lifetime .
And , eventually , the Fed could remotely “ destroy ” said digital currency when it so decides .
Oh , and in the process the Fed would effectively disintermediate commercial banks , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ consumers and directly deposit funds into their accounts , effectively making the entire traditional banking system obsolete .
Here are the details : Other proposals would create a new payments instrument , digital cash , which would be just like the physical currency issued by central banks today , but in a digital form and , potentially , without the anonymity of physical currency .
Depending on how these currencies are designed , central banks could support them without the need for commercial bank involvement via direct issuance into the end-users ’ digital @ @ @ @ @ @ @ services .
The demand for and use of such instruments need further consideration in order to evaluate whether such a central bank digital currency would allow for quicker and more ubiquitous payments in times of emergency and more generally .
In addition , a range of potential risks and policy issues surrounding central bank digital currency need to be better understood , and the costs and benefits evaluated .
The Federal Reserve has been researching issues raised by central bank digital currency for some time .
The Board of Governors has a technology @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a range of distributed ledger platforms to understand their potential benefits and tradeoffs .
Staff members from several Reserve Banks , including Cleveland Fed software developers , are contributing to this effort .
The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston is also engaged in a multiyear effort , working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , to experiment with technologies that could be used for a central bank digital currency .
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has established an innovation center , in partnership with the Bank for International Settlements , to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trends and financial technology of relevance to central banks .
Experimentation like this is an important ingredient in assessing the benefits and costs of a central bank digital currency , but does not signal any decision by the Federal Reserve to adopt such a currency .
Issues raised by central bank digital currency related to financial stability , market structure , security , privacy , and monetary policy all need to be better understood .
To summarize , the wheels are already turning on a plan that sees the Fed depositing “ digital @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a stunning development that essentially sees the Fed bypass Congress , endowing the Central Bank with targeted “ fiscal stimulus ” capabilities , and which could lead to a dramatic reflationary spike as it is the lower income quartile segments of US society that are the marginal price setters for economic goods and services .
And having already implemented Average Inflation Targeting , the resulting burst of inflation would be viewed by the Fed as insufficient on its own ( as it would have to persist for a long time over the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ end up being ) , to tighten monetary policy .
In fact , even as inflation rages – which some alternative inflationary measures to CPI suggest it already is – the Fed will have a semantic loophole in explaining just why it needs to keep inflation scorching hot even as the standard of living in America collapses to the benefit of a handful of asset holders .
Why ?
The CBO showed the answer yesterday : Absent a massive burst of inflation in the coming years which inflates away the hundreds of trillions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tsunami that is coming would mean the end to the American way of life as we know it .
And to do that , the Fed is now finalizing the last steps of a process that revolutionizes the entire fiat monetary system , launching digital dollars which effectively remove commercial banks as financial intermediaries , as they will allow the Fed itself to make direct deposits into Americans ’ “ digital wallets ” , in the process also making Congress and the entire Legislative branch redundant , as a handful of technocrats quietly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tyler Durden / Republished with permission / Zero Hedge Like Waking Times on Facebook .
Follow Waking Times on Twitter .

In Unprecedented Monetary Overhaul, The Fed Is Preparing To Deposit “Digital Dollars” Directly To “Each American”
Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge
Waking Times
Over the past decade, the one common theme despite the political upheaval and growing social and geopolitical instability, was that the market would keep marching higher and the Fed would continue injecting liquidity into the system. The second common theme is that despite sparking unprecedented asset price inflation, prices as measured across the broader economy – using the flawed CPI metric and certainly stagnant worker wages – would remain subdued (as a reminder, the Fed is desperate to ignite broad inflation as that is the only way the countless trillions of excess debt can be eliminated and has so far failed to do so)
The Fed’s failure to reach its inflation target – which prompted the US central bank to radically overhaul its monetary dogma last month and unveil Flexible Average Inflation Targeting (or FAIT) whereby the Fed will allow inflation to run hot without hiking rates – has sparked broad criticism from the economic establishment, even though as we showed in June, deflation is now a direct function of the Fed’s unconventional monetary policies as the lower yields slide, the lower the propensity to spend. In other words, the harder the Fed fights to stimulate inflation, the more deflation and more saving it spurs as a result (incidentally this is not the first time this “discovery” was made, in December we wrote “One Bank Makes A Stunning Discovery – The Fed’s Rate Cuts Are Now Deflationary“).
In short, ever since the Fed launched QE and NIRP, it has been making the situation it has been trying to “fix” even worse while blowing the biggest asset price bubble in history.
And having recently accepted that its preferred stimulus pathway has failed to boost the broader economy, the blame has fallen on how monetary policy is intermediated, specifically the way the Fed creates excess reserves which end up at commercial banks instead of “tricking down” all the way to the consumer level.
To be sure, in the aftermath of the covid pandemic shutdowns the Fed has tried to short-circuit this process, and in conjunction with the Treasury it has launched “helicopter money” which has resulted in a direct transfer of funds to US corporations via PPP loans, as well as to end consumers via the emergency $600 weekly unemployment benefits which however are set to expire unless renewed by Congress as explained last week, as Democrats and Republicans feud over which fiscal stimulus will be implemented next.
And yet, the lament is that even as the economy was desperately in need of a massive liquidity tsunami, the funds created by the Fed and Treasury (now that the US operates under a quasi-MMT regime) did not make their way to those who need them the most: end consumers.
Which is why we read with great interest a Bloomberg interview with two former Fed officials: Simon Potter, who led the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s markets group i.e., he was the head of the Fed’s Plunge Protection Team for years, and Julia Coronado, who spent eight years as an economist for the Fed’s Board of Governors, who are among the innovators brainstorming solutions to what has emerged as the most crucial and difficult problem facing the Fed: get money swiftly to people who need it most in a crisis.
The response was striking: the two propose creating a monetary tool that they call recession insurance bonds, which draw on some of the advances in digital payments, which will be wired instantly to Americans.
As Coronado explained the details, Congress would grant the Federal Reserve an additional tool for providing support—say, a percent of GDP [in a lump sum that would be divided equally and distributed] to households in a recession. Recession insurance bonds would be zero-coupon securities, a contingent asset of households that would basically lie in wait. The trigger could be reaching the zero lower bound on interest rates or, as economist Claudia Sahm has proposed, a 0.5 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate. The Fed would then activate the securities and deposit the funds digitally in households’ apps .
As Potter added, “it took Congress too long to get money to people, and it’s too clunky. We need a separate infrastructure. The Fed could buy the bonds quickly without going to the private market. On March 15 they could have said interest rates are now at zero, we’re activating X amount of the bonds, and we’ll be tracking the unemployment rate—if it increases above this level, we’ll buy more. The bonds will be on the asset side of the Fed’s balance sheet; the digital dollars in people’s accounts will be on the liability side.”
Essentially, the Fed is proposing creating a hybrid digital legal tender unlike reserves which are stuck within the financial system, and which it can deposit directly into US consumer accounts. In short, as we summarized “The Fed Is Planning To Send Money Directly To Americans In The Next Crisis“, something we reminded readers of on Monday:
There still appears to be some confusion about the endgame. The Fed itself spelled it out. The Fed Is Planning To Send Money Directly To Americans In The Next Crisis: "by getting money to consumers you can limit the depth and duration of a recession"https://t.co/bG03TxiviT — zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 22, 2020
So this morning, as if to confirm our speculation of what comes next, Cleveland Fed president Loretta Mester delivered a speech to the Chicago Payment Symposium titled “Payments and the Pandemic“, in which after going through the big picture boilerplate, Mester goes straight to the matter at hand.
In the section titled “Central Bank Digital Currencies”, the Cleveland Fed president writes that “the experience with pandemic emergency payments has brought forward an idea that was already gaining increased attention at central banks around the world, that is, central bank digital currency (CBDC).” And in the shocking punchline, then goes on to reveal that “ legislation has proposed that each American have an account at the Fed in which digital dollars could be deposited, as liabilities of the Federal Reserve Banks, which could be used for emergency payments. “
But wait it gets better, because in launching digital cash, the Fed would then be able to scrap “anonymous” physical currency entirely, and track every single banknote from its “creation” all though the various transactions that take place during its lifetime. And, eventually, the Fed could remotely “destroy” said digital currency when it so decides. Oh, and in the process the Fed would effectively disintermediate commercial banks, as it would both provide loans to US consumers and directly deposit funds into their accounts, effectively making the entire traditional banking system obsolete. Here are the details:
Other proposals would create a new payments instrument, digital cash, which would be just like the physical currency issued by central banks today, but in a digital form and, potentially, without the anonymity of physical currency. Depending on how these currencies are designed, central banks could support them without the need for commercial bank involvement via direct issuance into the end-users’ digital wallets combined with central-bank-facilitated transfer and redemption services. The demand for and use of such instruments need further consideration in order to evaluate whether such a central bank digital currency would allow for quicker and more ubiquitous payments in times of emergency and more generally. In addition, a range of potential risks and policy issues surrounding central bank digital currency need to be better understood, and the costs and benefits evaluated. The Federal Reserve has been researching issues raised by central bank digital currency for some time. The Board of Governors has a technology lab that has been building and testing a range of distributed ledger platforms to understand their potential benefits and tradeoffs. Staff members from several Reserve Banks, including Cleveland Fed software developers, are contributing to this effort. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston is also engaged in a multiyear effort, working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to experiment with technologies that could be used for a central bank digital currency. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has established an innovation center, in partnership with the Bank for International Settlements, to identify and develop in-depth insights into critical trends and financial technology of relevance to central banks. Experimentation like this is an important ingredient in assessing the benefits and costs of a central bank digital currency, but does not signal any decision by the Federal Reserve to adopt such a currency. Issues raised by central bank digital currency related to financial stability, market structure, security, privacy, and monetary policy all need to be better understood.
To summarize, the wheels are already turning on a plan that sees the Fed depositing “digital dollars” to “each American”, a stunning development that essentially sees the Fed bypass Congress, endowing the Central Bank with targeted “fiscal stimulus” capabilities, and which could lead to a dramatic reflationary spike as it is the lower income quartile segments of US society that are the marginal price setters for economic goods and services. And having already implemented Average Inflation Targeting, the resulting burst of inflation would be viewed by the Fed as insufficient on its own (as it would have to persist for a long time over the “average” period whatever it may end up being), to tighten monetary policy. In fact, even as inflation rages – which some alternative inflationary measures to CPI suggest it already is – the Fed will have a semantic loophole in explaining just why it needs to keep inflation scorching hot even as the standard of living in America collapses to the benefit of a handful of asset holders.
Why? The CBO showed the answer yesterday:
Absent a massive burst of inflation in the coming years which inflates away the hundreds of trillions in federal debt, the unprecedented debt tsunami that is coming would mean the end to the American way of life as we know it. And to do that, the Fed is now finalizing the last steps of a process that revolutionizes the entire fiat monetary system, launching digital dollars which effectively remove commercial banks as financial intermediaries, as they will allow the Fed itself to make direct deposits into Americans’ “digital wallets”, in the process also making Congress and the entire Legislative branch redundant, as a handful of technocrats quietly take over the United States.
By Tyler Durden / Republished with permission / Zero Hedge
Like Waking Times on Facebook. Follow Waking Times on Twitter.


wakingtimes--2020-09-24--How EMFs Disturb Your Immune System

How EMFs Disturb Your Immune System

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We are living in an unprecedented time , one in which electromagnetic fields ( EMFs ) from cellphones and cellphone base stations , Wi-Fi devices , power lines , electrical wiring and even computers , televisions and microwave ovens , surround us 24/7 .
Olle Johansson , Ph.D. , associate professor and head of the Experimental Dermatology Unit , Department of Neuroscience , at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden , is among those who have questioned whether humans can survive such an assault .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Johansson points out that since life on Earth began more than 3.5 billion years ago , the geomagnetic fields and radiation from the sun have remained largely static .
[ i ] During life ’ s progression , living organisms have developed ways to cope with these influences , including developing pigmented skin to shield from the sun or , for other species , living underground or under the dense , protective foliage of a rainforest .
During the last 100 years , however , as EMFs became prolific , we have not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it possible to adapt our biology to altered exposure conditions in less than 100 years , or do we have to have thousands of years – or longer – for such an adaptation ?
And , in the meantime , what kind of safety standards must we adopt ?
” Johansson asked .
After reviewing a number of papers on the effects of manmade EMFs on the immune system , he found disturbing consequences and ultimately concluded not only that existing public safety limits are inadequate to protect public health but also that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of further untested technologies .
EMFs present in everyday life , including at workplaces , homes and areas of recreation , disturb the human body at the cellular level , often at low or very low ( non-thermal ) levels .
Johansson cites research showing that EMF exposures stimulate increases in mast cells and other physiological changes that indicate an allergic response and inflammatory conditions .
He believes that rapid rises in the incidence of allergies , asthma and other sensitivities worldwide are a warning signal , as chronic exposure to EMFs may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ responses , inflammatory responses and overall ill health .
EMF exposures have also been linked to a variety of specific immune system effects , including : [ ii ] It ’ s estimated that up to 10 % of populations in the U.S. , Sweden , Switzerland , Germany , Norway and many other countries may be affected by electrohypersensitivity ( EHS ) , a condition that leads to a number of physical and cognitive symptoms upon exposure to EMFs .
Common symptoms of EHS include headaches , dizziness , fatigue , trouble @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and skin symptoms such as stinging , itching and burning .
According to Johansson , “ [ I ] t is evident from our preliminary experimental data that various biological alterations are present in EHS persons claiming to suffer from exposure to EMF .
The alterations are themselves enough to fully explain the EHS symptoms , and the involvement of the immune system is evident.
” [ iv ] Damages from EMF exposure are not only a matter of increased cell damage but also of reduced repair , facilitating the spread of disease @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exposure may contribute to DNA damage and adverse effects on cellular communication , metabolism and repair and cancer surveillance within the body , along with causing adverse cardiac and neurological effects , including memory impairment , changes in brainwave activity and disturbed cognitive function .
Biological effects from EMF exposure may occur at levels significantly below U.S. and international limits .
Biologically based exposure standards are needed to protect humans from the effects of even low-level EMF exposure , but , according to Johansson , “ such a completely protective safety limit would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ zero.
” Unfortunately , the currently accelerated rollout of 5G technology , which requires the installation of numerous small cell transmission devices in neighborhoods , stands to dramatically increase EMF exposures and their related health consequences .
The body of evidence showing that EMFs cause harm has become too large to ignore .
At GreenMedInfo.com , you can browse through more than 1,000 EMF abstracts and their connection to oxidative stress , DNA damage , cancer , inflammation and more .
More than a dozen studies focus on the immunotoxic effects of EMFs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the elderly and affecting cellular processes that play a role in cancer development and the proper growth and development of organisms .
[ v ] Limiting your cellphone use is one way to do this , but to learn more , I urge you to sign up for the free 5G Crisis Summit : Worldwide Call to Action , which is taking place June 1-7 , 2020 .
You ’ ll learn how 5G wireless poses a great risk to your immune system and steps you can take to help protect your community @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) is dedicated to investigating the most important health and environmental issues of the day .
Special emphasis will be placed on environmental health .
Our focused and deep research will explore the many ways in which the present condition of the human body directly reflects the true state of the ambient environment .
© [ 09/18/20 ] GreenMedInfo LLC .
This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of GreenMedInfo LLC .
Want to learn more from GreenMedInfo ?
Sign up for the newsletter here //www.greenmedinfo.com/greenmed/newsletter .

How EMFs Disturb Your Immune System
GreenMedInfo Research Group, Guest
Waking Times
We are living in an unprecedented time, one in which electromagnetic fields (EMFs) from cellphones and cellphone base stations, Wi-Fi devices, power lines, electrical wiring and even computers, televisions and microwave ovens, surround us 24/7. Olle Johansson, Ph.D., associate professor and head of the Experimental Dermatology Unit, Department of Neuroscience, at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, is among those who have questioned whether humans can survive such an assault.
In a 2009 review published in Pathophysiology, Johansson points out that since life on Earth began more than 3.5 billion years ago, the geomagnetic fields and radiation from the sun have remained largely static.[i] During life’s progression, living organisms have developed ways to cope with these influences, including developing pigmented skin to shield from the sun or, for other species, living underground or under the dense, protective foliage of a rainforest.
During the last 100 years, however, as EMFs became prolific, we have not developed a similar adaptation. “Is it possible to adapt our biology to altered exposure conditions in less than 100 years, or do we have to have thousands of years – or longer – for such an adaptation? And, in the meantime, what kind of safety standards must we adopt?” Johansson asked.
After reviewing a number of papers on the effects of manmade EMFs on the immune system, he found disturbing consequences and ultimately concluded not only that existing public safety limits are inadequate to protect public health but also that limits should be set on the deployment of further untested technologies. The good news is that there are many EMF protection products available such as a cell radiation blocker.
EMFs Disturb Immune Function via Allergic and Inflammatory Responses
EMFs present in everyday life, including at workplaces, homes and areas of recreation, disturb the human body at the cellular level, often at low or very low (non-thermal) levels. Johansson cites research showing that EMF exposures stimulate increases in mast cells and other physiological changes that indicate an allergic response and inflammatory conditions.
He believes that rapid rises in the incidence of allergies, asthma and other sensitivities worldwide are a warning signal, as chronic exposure to EMFs may lead to immune dysfunction, chronic allergic responses, inflammatory responses and overall ill health. EMF exposures have also been linked to a variety of specific immune system effects, including:[ii]
Overreaction of the immune system Alteration of immune cells Profound increases in mast cells in the upper layers of the skin Larger size of mast cells in electrohypersensitive individuals Suppressed or impaired immune function Decreased count of natural killer cells, immune cells that help kill cells infected with viruses and control early signs of cancer[iii] Negative effects on pregnancy
It’s estimated that up to 10% of populations in the U.S., Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, Norway and many other countries may be affected by electrohypersensitivity (EHS), a condition that leads to a number of physical and cognitive symptoms upon exposure to EMFs. Common symptoms of EHS include headaches, dizziness, fatigue, trouble concentrating, cognitive problems, sleep interruptions and skin symptoms such as stinging, itching and burning.
According to Johansson, “[I]t is evident from our preliminary experimental data that various biological alterations are present in EHS persons claiming to suffer from exposure to EMF. The alterations are themselves enough to fully explain the EHS symptoms, and the involvement of the immune system is evident.”[iv]
Damages from EMF exposure are not only a matter of increased cell damage but also of reduced repair, facilitating the spread of disease. The report cites evidence that EMF exposure may contribute to DNA damage and adverse effects on cellular communication, metabolism and repair and cancer surveillance within the body, along with causing adverse cardiac and neurological effects, including memory impairment, changes in brainwave activity and disturbed cognitive function.
Biological effects from EMF exposure may occur at levels significantly below U.S. and international limits. Biologically based exposure standards are needed to protect humans from the effects of even low-level EMF exposure, but, according to Johansson, “such a completely protective safety limit would, for many exposure situations, be zero.”
Unfortunately, the currently accelerated rollout of 5G technology, which requires the installation of numerous small cell transmission devices in neighborhoods, stands to dramatically increase EMF exposures and their related health consequences.
1,000 Studies on Adverse Effects of EMFs
The body of evidence showing that EMFs cause harm has become too large to ignore. At GreenMedInfo.com, you can browse through more than 1,000 EMF abstracts and their connection to oxidative stress, DNA damage, cancer, inflammation and more.
More than a dozen studies focus on the immunotoxic effects of EMFs, including potentially reducing immune function in the elderly and affecting cellular processes that play a role in cancer development and the proper growth and development of organisms.[v]
“Living organisms can detect and respond immediately to low environmental levels of these fields,” Henry Lai with the department of bioengineering at the University of Washington in Seattle, wrote.[vi] As such, it’s important to take action now to protect yourself and your family from unnecessary EMF exposures as much as possible.
Limiting your cellphone use is one way to do this, but to learn more, I urge you to sign up for the free 5G Crisis Summit: Worldwide Call to Action, which is taking place June 1-7, 2020. You’ll learn how 5G wireless poses a great risk to your immune system and steps you can take to help protect your community.
About the Author
The GMI Research Group (GMIRG) is dedicated to investigating the most important health and environmental issues of the day. Special emphasis will be placed on environmental health. Our focused and deep research will explore the many ways in which the present condition of the human body directly reflects the true state of the ambient environment.
References
[i] Pathophysiology Volume 16, Issues 2-3, August 2009, Pages 157-177 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0928468009000352
[ii] Pathophysiology Volume 16, Issues 2-3, August 2009, Pages 157-177 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0928468009000352
[iii] British Society for Immunology, Natural Killer Cells http://www.immunology.org/public-information/bitesized-immunology/cells/natural-killer-cells
[iv] Pathophysiology Volume 16, Issues 2-3, August 2009, Pages 157-177 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0928468009000352
[v] Electromagn Biol Med. 2019 Aug 26:1-18. Epub 2019 Aug 26. PMID: 31450976 www.greenmedinfo.com/article/electromagnetic-field-exposure-may-induce-dna-damage-stimulate-inflammation-an
[vi] Electromagn Biol Med. 2019 Aug 26:1-18. Epub 2019 Aug 26. PMID: 31450976 www.greenmedinfo.com/article/electromagnetic-field-exposure-may-induce-dna-damage-stimulate-inflammation-an
© [09/18/20] GreenMedInfo LLC. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of GreenMedInfo LLC. Want to learn more from GreenMedInfo? Sign up for the newsletter here //www.greenmedinfo.com/greenmed/newsletter.
Image: Unsplash


wakingtimes--2020-09-24--‘Trash Tsunami’ Washes Up On Honduran Beaches

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A “ trash tsunami ” has washed ashore on the beaches of Honduras , endangering both wildlife and the local economy .
The trash is mostly plastic waste , Voice of America reported Tuesday , and it is polluting the typically pristine tropical beaches of Omoa in the country ’ s north .
Honduran officials said Saturday that the refuse was coming from the mouth of the Motagua River in neighboring Guatemala .
It poses a problem for the local economy because it depends on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This wave of trash which came from the Motagua River really surprised us , and even though it caused problems , it has not stopped our activities , ” Honduran environment official Lilian Rivera said , as Yahoo News reported .
“ We are committed to cleaning our beaches and keeping them clean , but today we are demanding that authorities in Tegucigalpa take strong actions , actions to find a permanent solution to this problem.
” Tegucigalpa is the capital of Honduras .
The Hondoran government , meanwhile , has demanded action @ @ @ @ @ @ @ plastic , according to Voice of America .
But the plastic flowing from Guatemala ’ s Motagua River is an ongoing problem for the region , as The Intercept reported in 2019 .
The plastic tide is fed by the fact that Guatemala has few managed landfills or wastewater treatment plants .
The plastic then washes out in the Caribbean Sea , home to the biodiverse Mesoamerican reef .
In 2017 , the Guatemalan government installed a “ bio-fence ” in the river to catch some of the waste after the Honduran government @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reached its beaches .
The fence is made of plastic bottles tied together with plastic netting .
“ When it ’ s full , you can practically walk on it , ” trash removal worker Marco Dubón told The Intercept .
Worldwide , rivers are a major source of ocean plastic pollution : 90 percent of it comes from just 10 rivers , scientists found in 2017 .
The problem is only growing .
A study published in July found that around 11 million metric tons of plastic enter marine environments every year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 29 million metric tons a year by 2040 if no action is taken .
Plastic is then a major problem for marine life .
Seabirds , turtles and marine mammals can become entangled in plastic or eat it by mistake , PEW pointed out .
This can lead to strangulation , suffocation or death .
It is estimated that plastic kills one million seabirds every year and that half of all sea turtles have swallowed plastic .

‘Trash Tsunami’ Washes Up On Honduran Beaches
Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch
Waking Times
A “trash tsunami” has washed ashore on the beaches of Honduras, endangering both wildlife and the local economy.
The trash is mostly plastic waste, Voice of America reported Tuesday, and it is polluting the typically pristine tropical beaches of Omoa in the country’s north. Honduran officials said Saturday that the refuse was coming from the mouth of the Motagua River in neighboring Guatemala. It poses a problem for the local economy because it depends on the tourism the beaches attract.
“This wave of trash which came from the Motagua River really surprised us, and even though it caused problems, it has not stopped our activities,” Honduran environment official Lilian Rivera said, as Yahoo News reported. “We are committed to cleaning our beaches and keeping them clean, but today we are demanding that authorities in Tegucigalpa take strong actions, actions to find a permanent solution to this problem.”
Tegucigalpa is the capital of Honduras.
The Hondoran government, meanwhile, has demanded action from Guatemala to stem the tide of plastic, according to Voice of America.


wakingtimes--2020-09-25--Will I Survive? A Look at the Afterlife

Will I Survive? A Look at the Afterlife

Will I Survive ?
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What happens when we die ?
Human beings have asked this question probably more than any other , with “ Does God exist ?
” and “ What is the meaning of life ?
” coming in as close seconds .
All three , of course , are intertwined , but while the reality of the deity and the solution to life ’ s riddle may be grasped in the here and now , what happens @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be something we can know only by doing just that .
It seems that the only way we can know for certain what happens after death is by dying .
And while the attraction of that ultimate mystery is strong , the means of solving it appear , to most of us at least , somewhat less attractive .
But is it really the case that the answer to what happens after death lies beyond a threshold which , once crossed , can not be uncrossed ?
While messages from the dead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and religions around the world and through the ages have in different ways assured their devotees of the reality of an afterlife , many of us are nevertheless not entirely certain that anything awaits us beyond the grave – except perhaps annihilation , which is , of course , the standard modern view .
In recent times , however , assurances of a continuity of consciousness beyond the brain have come , not from the camp of religion , mysticism , or the occult , but from that of their often sworn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ paper appeared in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet purporting to show evidence supporting the reality of Near-Death Experiences , or NDEs .
In “ Near-death experiences in survivors of cardiac arrest : a prospective study in the Netherlands , ” the Dutch cardiologist Pim van Lommel and his research team presented the results of a twenty-year long study of the strange experiences reported by patients who survived heart failure .
That these patients reported being aware of anything during cardiac arrest was strange enough .
The standard view is that when the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ brain and consciousness .
What should have happened was that they experienced nothing at all .
Nevertheless they did .
The patients Lommel studied reported that during the period of unconsciousness brought on by their seizure , they experienced some very remarkable things indeed .
Many recounted feelings of bliss and intense happiness ; many spoke of a bright white light , of a tunnel , of seeing deceased relatives and of going through a kind of “ life review , ” in which their entire lives , as the cliché goes , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spoke of having an “ out-of-the-body experience , ” of seeing themselves and their nurses and doctors from some vantage point near the ceiling .
Many spoke of guides , angels and spirits , come to comfort them .
Many also assured Lommel that the experience was entirely beneficial , that it relieved them of their fear of death , that it had transformed them in some way , and that it gave them the certainty that the life we know here on earth is not the only one .
Lommel ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ yet the research was impressive .
The statistics Lommel and his team provided seem to show that the usual explanations given to account for NDEs – from the mainstream scientific view – did not , at least in these cases , work .
Lommel studied some 562 survivors of cardiac arrest and he discovered that up to 18 % of them reported having had a NDE .
Of these , none could be chalked up to oxygen deficiency to the brain , the effects of drugs , or the other physiological or psychological @ @ @ @ @ @ @ explaining the phenomenon .
Lommel and his team concluded the NDE was an actual , objective event and that it argued in favour of some kind of ‘ post-death ’ survival .
Perhaps even more controversial , the findings also seemed to offer proof that consciousness can exist outside or even without the brain .
While most mainstream scientists will merely snort at the idea of an afterlife , they will positively bellow at the suggestion consciousness is anything more than a by-product of that three-pound mass of grey matter .
According to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of mind – I talk about some of them in my book A Secret History of Consciousness – consciousness is absolutely , positively , 100 % produced by the brain .
Lommel was unrepentant and in 2007 he produced a book , Consciousness Beyond Life [ available from New Dawn , see page 79 ] , based on his paper , presenting his case studies in greater depth and bringing his research to a wider public .
The results were encouraging .
The book was a bestseller in the Netherlands , then repeated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the US .
Lommel has presented his ideas in interviews and videos and on television .
Lommel ’ s work has , of course , attracted criticism .
Yet his findings seem to stand and for the open-minded provide the kind of ‘ hard ’ evidence that scientists dismissive of any non-materialist accounts of consciousness demand , in order for them to consider changing their minds in any way about the matter .
Lommel was not the only medical practitioner to take NDEs seriously and to subject them to study .
Even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was the account by the American neurosurgeon Eben Alexander of his own NDE .
Alexander had twenty-five years ’ experience studying the brain and teaching others how to study it , at institutions such as the Harvard Medical School .
Like most of his colleagues , he accepted the dogma that the brain produces consciousness .
Then , in 2008 , a bacterial infection – a rare form of meningitis – had him in a coma for a week and taught him otherwise .
His chances of recovery were slim at best , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he did survive , he would be little more than a vegetable : the infection had caused irreparable brain damage .
Yet on the seventh day under a ventilator Alexander opened his eyes and came to .
This was miracle enough .
But the story Alexander had to tell was even more remarkable .
The white light was there , and also beautiful melodies , angelic choirs , fantastic landscapes with strange plant life , waterfalls , crystal pools , and thousands of beings , dancing , and a girl who came to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the week of his coma , when his brain shouldn ’ t have produced the slightest hallucination – should have produced no consciousness at all – Alexander went on a journey to “ higher realms ” and eventually to what he calls the “ Core , ” a centre of reality “ filled with the infinite healing power of the all-loving deity , ” the source of everything .
He was privy to fundamental realities , for which “ God seemed too puny a little human word.
” He speaks of experiencing a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ oversphere ” and that his notions of time , space , and everything else were radically changed .
During his coma he underwent a kind of spiritual evolution , from what he calls the “ Earthworm ’ s Eye View ” to the Core , many times , learning truths about the nature of existence and our part in it .
One truth was about the reality of the afterlife , knowledge of which Alexander has tried to pass on to his many readers in his bestselling books Proof of Heaven and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lommel , Alexander came to believe that human beings are much more than their physical bodies and consciousness is something more than a by-product of the brain .
They disagree with the philosopher John Searle who argues that the brain produces consciousness as the liver does bile .
Consciousness , they argue , is not localised in or produced by the brain because consciousness itself is the ultimate reality , not the physical world – an insight echoed down the ages by mystics and visionaries , but which in recent times it seems @ @ @ @ @ @ @ well .
They see it as a way out of the cul-de-sac reached by trying to solve the ‘ hard problem ’ in mainstream neuroscience : how does a neuron , a physical phenomenon , become a thought , a mental one ?
The answer is it doesn ’ t .
It ’ s the other way around .
Whatever we might think of Alexander ’ s account of the afterlife and his ideas about mankind ’ s spiritual evolution – he has since become a popular advocate of the union of science @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Winfrey ’ and other talk shows – the notion of a non-local consciousness has a history .
What was remarkable about the cases Lommel studied and Alexander ’ s own , was that they reported vivid inner , transformative experience during a time when the brains involved should have been incapable of ‘ producing ’ anything .
If brains ‘ produce ’ consciousness , this should have been impossible , rather like a flashlight shining without the battery .
Some studies done in the 1960s suggest consciousness may not need much brains at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a specialist in hydrocephalus – “ water on the brain ” – published a paper as remarkable as Lommel ’ s .
In “ Hydranencephaly with Normal Development , ” published in Developmental Medicine and Child Psychology for December 1965 , Lorber presented several case studies in which people with little or no cerebral cortex functioned normally .
In one case the subject had an IQ of 126 and an honours degree in mathematics .
Two girls born in the 1960s had fluid where their cerebrums should have been , with no evidence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had perfectly normal intelligence .
Unlike ‘ The Wizard of Oz ’ s Scarecrow , they , and the other cases Lorber studied seemed to get on perfectly well without a brain .
Such cases , though well documented , may push the believability barrier , but we need not resort to these extremes to argue the brain does not ‘ produce ’ consciousness .
In the late nineteenth century the philosopher Henri Bergson argued eloquently that , rather than produce consciousness , the brain served an eliminatory function , acting as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only what was necessary for survival to reach conscious awareness .
Rather than produce consciousness , the brain edits it down to something manageable , otherwise we would be overwhelmed by reality ’ s complexity , a condition common to many mystics .
Aldous Huxley resorted to Bergson ’ s idea when , in The Doors of Perception , he tried to account for the effects of the drug mescaline on his consciousness .
The mystical effects of the drug , Huxley believed , were due to its ‘ opening ’ the filters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than needed for mere survival to flood into awareness .
The fact that in the cases Lommel studied and in Alexander ’ s own , the brain was out of commission , seems to support the Bergson/Huxley thesis .
With the filters off , much more of Reality – what Huxley called “ Mind at Large ” – became available .
If the brain “ mutes ” reality , allowing , as Huxley said , only a “ thin trickle ” to enter consciousness , in the NDE the taps seem to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ apt as our kitchen taps do not ‘ produce ’ the water in our sinks , but quite the opposite , they stop it from running .
It ’ s already there in the pipes .
Some variant of Bergson ’ s idea is popular among ‘ alternative ’ scientists , such as the biologist Rupert Sheldrake who speaks of the brain acting as a kind of “ tuner , ” “ selecting ” different “ wavelengths ” of reality , rather as a radio works by cutting out all transmissions except the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a television that picks up a broadcast but is not responsible for it .
Neither my radio nor my television ‘ produces ’ the programs they play .
They ‘ receive ’ them from the broadcaster , and Sheldrake and other scientists and philosophers like him , see the brain as a kind of inner TV , picking out different ‘ channels ’ , broadcast by – well , we ’ re not quite sure .
The general idea is that consciousness is the fundamental reality ; rather than being stuffed into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it pervades the universe .
This is the “ panpsychism ” that philosopher David Chalmers advocates , following in the philosophical footsteps of Bergson and his contemporary Alfred North Whitehead , who , in different ways , envisioned some version of Mind at Large .
Needless to say – or perhaps not – such an idea as an all-pervasive consciousness or mind is , of course , a staple part of many pre-modern worldviews .
Another who accepted the idea of Mind at Large was , oddly enough , an early investigator into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death ( 1903 ) , the first “ scientific ” study of the afterlife , F.W.H .
Myers did not call them that .
Myers spoke of the “ subliminal mind , ” by which he meant something different than Freud ’ s “ unconscious , ” which Myers ’ coinage preceded by some years .
It was Huxley who in his foreword to Myers ’ classic compared his “ subliminal mind ” to an “ upstairs ” in the “ house of the soul , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ garbage-littered basement.
” This upstairs had some unusual characteristics and in the late nineteenth century Myers and his fellows in the Society for Psychical Research devoted their lives to studying them .
Take , for example , the remarkable experience of Dr A. S. Wiltse who in 1889 “ died ” from typhoid fever .
Wiltse was pronounced dead but found himself “ waking up ” inside his body , and gradually being “ released ” from it .
He felt himself emerge from his body and found that he could walk away @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and , stranger still , he found that he could walk through people .
Wiltse then found himself confronting huge rocks standing beneath storm clouds .
A voice told him that if he continued past them he would enter eternity but if desired he could return to life , a common choice in many modern NDEs .
He then “ woke up , ” four hours after being pronounced dead , and told of what he saw .
Myers ’ account of Dr Wiltse ’ s experience was preceded by an even earlier @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a professor of geology , fell some seventy metres while climbing in the Alps .
During the few seconds of his fall , Heim experienced a panoramic “ life review , ” seeing his whole past “ take place in many images , as though on a stage at some distance from me.
” Like many who have experienced an NDE , he saw a “ heavenly light ” and was free from fear and anxiety .
Conflict was “ transmuted into love ” and he found himself moving “ painlessly and softly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Heim survived his fall but the experience so moved him that he began to collect accounts of similar experiences by other climbers .
Forgotten for years , Heim ’ s work was re-discovered when what we might call the “ NDE and afterlife boom ” of the 1970s and 80s , in the work of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross , Raymond Moody , Kenneth Ring and others , brought it back to light .
Another fairly well-known account of a NDE is that of C. G. Jung , who , in 1944 , following @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the earth and confronting a strange temple and Hindu floating in space .
Jung was about to cross the threshold like Dr Wiltse when he found himself whisked back to earth , disappointed at the prospect of coming back to life .
Do Lommel and Alexander bring anything new to this study ?
Their scientific and medical credentials certainly bring new attention to it , although to be sure , not all of it is positive , and the claims and expertise of both have come under heavy scrutiny and criticism .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ studies convincing – at least to the open-minded – is the similarity between the accounts they study and older reports on what happens when we die .
As Ptolemy Tompkins in The Modern Book of the Dead makes clear , there is much overlap between accounts of the afterlife found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Tibetan Book of the Dead , to speak of only the two most famous earlier reports on the beyond .
And these two share much with recent investigations , such as the insights about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” gleaned by the “ spiritual scientist ” Rudolf Steiner through his access to the “ Akashic Record.
” For instance , Steiner too makes the “ life review ” a central part of the process of dying , in preparation for reincarnation .
But , as Tompkins makes clear , there are also differences .
The Swedish scientist and religious philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg , who wrote much about the brain , journeyed to heaven , hell , and also to an intermediary realm he called the “ spirit world , ” not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ states .
He gave his own “ proof ” of the higher spheres in his book Heaven and Hell , yet his account is somewhat different from Eben Alexander ’ s , while both Swedenborg ’ s and Alexander ’ s differ considerably from Steiner ’ s .
Enough similarities exist among these accounts to suggest that in some way they and other voyagers were encountering different parts of the same inner landscape .
And if the ‘ proofs ’ of heaven we have glanced at here are at all reliable , it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , we all will have an opportunity to journey through , in this life and the next .
Gary Lachman was born in Bayonne , New Jersey , but has lived in London , England since 1996 .
A founding member of the rock group Blondie , he is now a full time writer with more than a dozen books to his name , on topics ranging from the evolution of consciousness and the western esoteric tradition , to literature and suicide , and the history of popular culture .
Lachman writes frequently @ @ @ @ @ @ @ UK , and lectures on his work in the US , UK , and Europe .
His work has been translated into several languages .
His website is www.garylachman.co.uk .

Will I Survive? A Look at the Afterlife
Gary Lachman, New Dawn
Waking Times
What happens when we die? Human beings have asked this question probably more than any other, with “Does God exist?” and “What is the meaning of life?” coming in as close seconds. All three, of course, are intertwined, but while the reality of the deity and the solution to life’s riddle may be grasped in the here and now, what happens when we give up the ghost seems to be something we can know only by doing just that. It seems that the only way we can know for certain what happens after death is by dying. And while the attraction of that ultimate mystery is strong, the means of solving it appear, to most of us at least, somewhat less attractive.
But is it really the case that the answer to what happens after death lies beyond a threshold which, once crossed, cannot be uncrossed? While messages from the dead fill folklore, myth, and séances, and religions around the world and through the ages have in different ways assured their devotees of the reality of an afterlife, many of us are nevertheless not entirely certain that anything awaits us beyond the grave – except perhaps annihilation, which is, of course, the standard modern view. In recent times, however, assurances of a continuity of consciousness beyond the brain have come, not from the camp of religion, mysticism, or the occult, but from that of their often sworn enemy, science.
Dutch cardiologist Pim van Lommel
In 2001 a paper appeared in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet purporting to show evidence supporting the reality of Near-Death Experiences, or NDEs. In “Near-death experiences in survivors of cardiac arrest: a prospective study in the Netherlands,” the Dutch cardiologist Pim van Lommel and his research team presented the results of a twenty-year long study of the strange experiences reported by patients who survived heart failure. That these patients reported being aware of anything during cardiac arrest was strange enough. The standard view is that when the heart and lungs stop so do the brain and consciousness. What should have happened was that they experienced nothing at all. Nevertheless they did.
The patients Lommel studied reported that during the period of unconsciousness brought on by their seizure, they experienced some very remarkable things indeed. Many recounted feelings of bliss and intense happiness; many spoke of a bright white light, of a tunnel, of seeing deceased relatives and of going through a kind of “life review,” in which their entire lives, as the cliché goes, “passed before their eyes.” Many spoke of having an “out-of-the-body experience,” of seeing themselves and their nurses and doctors from some vantage point near the ceiling. Many spoke of guides, angels and spirits, come to comfort them. Many also assured Lommel that the experience was entirely beneficial, that it relieved them of their fear of death, that it had transformed them in some way, and that it gave them the certainty that the life we know here on earth is not the only one.
Lommel’s Lancet paper understandably caused an uproar, yet the research was impressive. The statistics Lommel and his team provided seem to show that the usual explanations given to account for NDEs – from the mainstream scientific view – did not, at least in these cases, work. Lommel studied some 562 survivors of cardiac arrest and he discovered that up to 18% of them reported having had a NDE. Of these, none could be chalked up to oxygen deficiency to the brain, the effects of drugs, or the other physiological or psychological reasons usually offered as a way of explaining the phenomenon. Lommel and his team concluded the NDE was an actual, objective event and that it argued in favour of some kind of ‘post-death’ survival.
Perhaps even more controversial, the findings also seemed to offer proof that consciousness can exist outside or even without the brain. While most mainstream scientists will merely snort at the idea of an afterlife, they will positively bellow at the suggestion consciousness is anything more than a by-product of that three-pound mass of grey matter. According to a number of prestigious neuroscientists and philosophers of mind – I talk about some of them in my book A Secret History of Consciousness – consciousness is absolutely, positively, 100% produced by the brain.
Lommel was unrepentant and in 2007 he produced a book, Consciousness Beyond Life [available from New Dawn, see page 79], based on his paper, presenting his case studies in greater depth and bringing his research to a wider public. The results were encouraging. The book was a bestseller in the Netherlands, then repeated its success in Germany, the UK and the US. Lommel has presented his ideas in interviews and videos and on television. Lommel’s work has, of course, attracted criticism. Yet his findings seem to stand and for the open-minded provide the kind of ‘hard’ evidence that scientists dismissive of any non-materialist accounts of consciousness demand, in order for them to consider changing their minds in any way about the matter.
A Neurosurgeon Visits “Heaven”
Lommel was not the only medical practitioner to take NDEs seriously and to subject them to study. Even more controversial than Lommel’s findings was the account by the American neurosurgeon Eben Alexander of his own NDE. Alexander had twenty-five years’ experience studying the brain and teaching others how to study it, at institutions such as the Harvard Medical School. Like most of his colleagues, he accepted the dogma that the brain produces consciousness. Then, in 2008, a bacterial infection – a rare form of meningitis – had him in a coma for a week and taught him otherwise. His chances of recovery were slim at best, and his family was advised that if he did survive, he would be little more than a vegetable: the infection had caused irreparable brain damage. Yet on the seventh day under a ventilator Alexander opened his eyes and came to. This was miracle enough. But the story Alexander had to tell was even more remarkable.
The white light was there, and also beautiful melodies, angelic choirs, fantastic landscapes with strange plant life, waterfalls, crystal pools, and thousands of beings, dancing, and a girl who came to him on a butterfly wing. During the week of his coma, when his brain shouldn’t have produced the slightest hallucination – should have produced no consciousness at all – Alexander went on a journey to “higher realms” and eventually to what he calls the “Core,” a centre of reality “filled with the infinite healing power of the all-loving deity,” the source of everything. He was privy to fundamental realities, for which “God seemed too puny a little human word.” He speaks of experiencing a “higher dimensional multiverse” and an “oversphere” and that his notions of time, space, and everything else were radically changed. During his coma he underwent a kind of spiritual evolution, from what he calls the “Earthworm’s Eye View” to the Core, many times, learning truths about the nature of existence and our part in it. One truth was about the reality of the afterlife, knowledge of which Alexander has tried to pass on to his many readers in his bestselling books Proof of Heaven and Maps of Heaven.
Like Pim van Lommel, Alexander came to believe that human beings are much more than their physical bodies and consciousness is something more than a by-product of the brain. They disagree with the philosopher John Searle who argues that the brain produces consciousness as the liver does bile. Consciousness, they argue, is not localised in or produced by the brain because consciousness itself is the ultimate reality, not the physical world – an insight echoed down the ages by mystics and visionaries, but which in recent times it seems some scientists are cottoning on to as well. They see it as a way out of the cul-de-sac reached by trying to solve the ‘hard problem’ in mainstream neuroscience: how does a neuron, a physical phenomenon, become a thought, a mental one? The answer is it doesn’t. It’s the other way around.
Filtering Reality
Whatever we might think of Alexander’s account of the afterlife and his ideas about mankind’s spiritual evolution – he has since become a popular advocate of the union of science and spirituality with appearances on ‘Oprah Winfrey’ and other talk shows – the notion of a non-local consciousness has a history. What was remarkable about the cases Lommel studied and Alexander’s own, was that they reported vivid inner, transformative experience during a time when the brains involved should have been incapable of ‘producing’ anything. If brains ‘produce’ consciousness, this should have been impossible, rather like a flashlight shining without the battery. Some studies done in the 1960s suggest consciousness may not need much brains at all. In 1965 John Lorber, a specialist in hydrocephalus – “water on the brain” – published a paper as remarkable as Lommel’s. In “Hydranencephaly with Normal Development,” published in Developmental Medicine and Child Psychology for December 1965, Lorber presented several case studies in which people with little or no cerebral cortex functioned normally. In one case the subject had an IQ of 126 and an honours degree in mathematics. Two girls born in the 1960s had fluid where their cerebrums should have been, with no evidence of a cerebral cortex, yet both had perfectly normal intelligence. Unlike ‘The Wizard of Oz’s Scarecrow, they, and the other cases Lorber studied seemed to get on perfectly well without a brain.
Such cases, though well documented, may push the believability barrier, but we need not resort to these extremes to argue the brain does not ‘produce’ consciousness. In the late nineteenth century the philosopher Henri Bergson argued eloquently that, rather than produce consciousness, the brain served an eliminatory function, acting as a reducing valve, filtering reality and allowing only what was necessary for survival to reach conscious awareness. Rather than produce consciousness, the brain edits it down to something manageable, otherwise we would be overwhelmed by reality’s complexity, a condition common to many mystics. Aldous Huxley resorted to Bergson’s idea when, in The Doors of Perception, he tried to account for the effects of the drug mescaline on his consciousness. The mystical effects of the drug, Huxley believed, were due to its ‘opening’ the filters of the brain, allowing more consciousness than needed for mere survival to flood into awareness. The fact that in the cases Lommel studied and in Alexander’s own, the brain was out of commission, seems to support the Bergson/Huxley thesis. With the filters off, much more of Reality – what Huxley called “Mind at Large” – became available. If the brain “mutes” reality, allowing, as Huxley said, only a “thin trickle” to enter consciousness, in the NDE the taps seem to be on full blast. The analogy is apt as our kitchen taps do not ‘produce’ the water in our sinks, but quite the opposite, they stop it from running. It’s already there in the pipes.
Some variant of Bergson’s idea is popular among ‘alternative’ scientists, such as the biologist Rupert Sheldrake who speaks of the brain acting as a kind of “tuner,” “selecting” different “wavelengths” of reality, rather as a radio works by cutting out all transmissions except the one you wish to hear, or as a television that picks up a broadcast but is not responsible for it. Neither my radio nor my television ‘produces’ the programs they play. They ‘receive’ them from the broadcaster, and Sheldrake and other scientists and philosophers like him, see the brain as a kind of inner TV, picking out different ‘channels’, broadcast by – well, we’re not quite sure. The general idea is that consciousness is the fundamental reality; rather than being stuffed into the cramp confines of our skulls, it pervades the universe. This is the “panpsychism” that philosopher David Chalmers advocates, following in the philosophical footsteps of Bergson and his contemporary Alfred North Whitehead, who, in different ways, envisioned some version of Mind at Large. Needless to say – or perhaps not – such an idea as an all-pervasive consciousness or mind is, of course, a staple part of many pre-modern worldviews.
Another who accepted the idea of Mind at Large was, oddly enough, an early investigator into NDEs, although in his aptly posthumous Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death (1903), the first “scientific” study of the afterlife, F.W.H. Myers did not call them that. Myers spoke of the “subliminal mind,” by which he meant something different than Freud’s “unconscious,” which Myers’ coinage preceded by some years. It was Huxley who in his foreword to Myers’ classic compared his “subliminal mind” to an “upstairs” in the “house of the soul,” rather than Freud’s “garbage-littered basement.” This upstairs had some unusual characteristics and in the late nineteenth century Myers and his fellows in the Society for Psychical Research devoted their lives to studying them. Take, for example, the remarkable experience of Dr A. S. Wiltse who in 1889 “died” from typhoid fever. Wiltse was pronounced dead but found himself “waking up” inside his body, and gradually being “released” from it. He felt himself emerge from his body and found that he could walk away from it. No one noticed him and, stranger still, he found that he could walk through people. Wiltse then found himself confronting huge rocks standing beneath storm clouds. A voice told him that if he continued past them he would enter eternity but if desired he could return to life, a common choice in many modern NDEs. He then “woke up,” four hours after being pronounced dead, and told of what he saw.
Myers’ account of Dr Wiltse’s experience was preceded by an even earlier one. In 1871 Albert Heim, a professor of geology, fell some seventy metres while climbing in the Alps. During the few seconds of his fall, Heim experienced a panoramic “life review,” seeing his whole past “take place in many images, as though on a stage at some distance from me.” Like many who have experienced an NDE, he saw a “heavenly light” and was free from fear and anxiety. Conflict was “transmuted into love” and he found himself moving “painlessly and softly” into a “splendid blue heaven.” Heim survived his fall but the experience so moved him that he began to collect accounts of similar experiences by other climbers. Forgotten for years, Heim’s work was re-discovered when what we might call the “NDE and afterlife boom” of the 1970s and 80s, in the work of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, Raymond Moody, Kenneth Ring and others, brought it back to light. Another fairly well-known account of a NDE is that of C. G. Jung, who, in 1944, following a heart attack, found himself orbiting the earth and confronting a strange temple and Hindu floating in space. Jung was about to cross the threshold like Dr Wiltse when he found himself whisked back to earth, disappointed at the prospect of coming back to life.
Do Lommel and Alexander bring anything new to this study? Their scientific and medical credentials certainly bring new attention to it, although to be sure, not all of it is positive, and the claims and expertise of both have come under heavy scrutiny and criticism. But part of what makes their and other studies convincing – at least to the open-minded – is the similarity between the accounts they study and older reports on what happens when we die. As Ptolemy Tompkins in The Modern Book of the Dead makes clear, there is much overlap between accounts of the afterlife found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, to speak of only the two most famous earlier reports on the beyond. And these two share much with recent investigations, such as the insights about the “life between death and rebirth” gleaned by the “spiritual scientist” Rudolf Steiner through his access to the “Akashic Record.” For instance, Steiner too makes the “life review” a central part of the process of dying, in preparation for reincarnation.
But, as Tompkins makes clear, there are also differences. The Swedish scientist and religious philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg, who wrote much about the brain, journeyed to heaven, hell, and also to an intermediary realm he called the “spirit world,” not through a NDE but through inducing visionary states. He gave his own “proof” of the higher spheres in his book Heaven and Hell, yet his account is somewhat different from Eben Alexander’s, while both Swedenborg’s and Alexander’s differ considerably from Steiner’s.
Enough similarities exist among these accounts to suggest that in some way they and other voyagers were encountering different parts of the same inner landscape. And if the ‘proofs’ of heaven we have glanced at here are at all reliable, it is one that, at some point, we all will have an opportunity to journey through, in this life and the next.
About the Author
Gary Lachman was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, but has lived in London, England since 1996. A founding member of the rock group Blondie, he is now a full time writer with more than a dozen books to his name, on topics ranging from the evolution of consciousness and the western esoteric tradition, to literature and suicide, and the history of popular culture. Lachman writes frequently for many journals in the US and UK, and lectures on his work in the US, UK, and Europe. His work has been translated into several languages. His website is www.garylachman.co.uk.


wakingtimes--2020-09-28--Legal DMT Churches Are Popping Up Across The United States And Canada

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A DMT church in Winnipeg , Canada was recently granted a government exemption to legally import and use Daime tea , which is a DMT-based brew very similar to ayahuasca , but a little bit less potent .
The church is called “ The Centre for Universal Illumination Luz Divina ” and it is one of six churches in Canada that have received special permission from the government to use DMT .
Vice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be serving ayahuasca , but the report is unclear because the terms ayahuasca and Daime are used interchangeably .
While each brew contains the same ingredients , ayahuasca tends to be stronger and contain more DMT than Daime tea .
Either brew will be legal for these churches to serve under their special permissions , but shamans associated with the Santo Daime religion are known to have a very specific recipe .
During Santo Daime religious services , the brew is usually ingested in small doses spread out over a few hours , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doses in a shorter amount of time .
Santo Daime churches have also silently traveled the United States in recent years , operating legally but still maintaining a low profile by doing pop-up services and retreats instead of keeping a permanent address .
The church has run into trouble with the law in the past , but after winning a battle against the government in the US supreme court , they are able to operate legally in the country .
Last year , a friend told me about a Santo Daime service that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not far from where I live .
It was not something that was advertised to the public , but there was a close-knit community that arrived for the service , and all of them seemed to be taking the spiritual aspect of the experience very seriously .
In fact , it was basically a day-long church service , in which everyone was dancing around and chanting in Portuguese , then stopping to line up for a shot of the psychedelic brew every hour or so .
I was told that some events are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ visited , but it seemed like a very safe environment with a genuinely spiritual staff .
John Vibes is an author and journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture , and focuses solutions-oriented approaches to social problems .
He is also a host of The Free Your Mind Conference and The Free Thought Project Podcast .

Legal DMT Churches Are Popping Up Across The United States And Canada
John Vibes, Truth Theory
Waking Times
A DMT church in Winnipeg, Canada was recently granted a government exemption to legally import and use Daime tea, which is a DMT-based brew very similar to ayahuasca, but a little bit less potent. The church is called “The Centre for Universal Illumination Luz Divina” and it is one of six churches in Canada that have received special permission from the government to use DMT.
Vice has indicated that the churches will also be serving ayahuasca, but the report is unclear because the terms ayahuasca and Daime are used interchangeably. While each brew contains the same ingredients, ayahuasca tends to be stronger and contain more DMT than Daime tea.
Either brew will be legal for these churches to serve under their special permissions, but shamans associated with the Santo Daime religion are known to have a very specific recipe. During Santo Daime religious services, the brew is usually ingested in small doses spread out over a few hours, while ayahuasca is typically consumed in larger doses in a shorter amount of time.
Santo Daime churches have also silently traveled the United States in recent years, operating legally but still maintaining a low profile by doing pop-up services and retreats instead of keeping a permanent address. The church has run into trouble with the law in the past, but after winning a battle against the government in the US supreme court, they are able to operate legally in the country.
Last year, a friend told me about a Santo Daime service that was taking place in rural Maryland, not far from where I live. It was not something that was advertised to the public, but there was a close-knit community that arrived for the service, and all of them seemed to be taking the spiritual aspect of the experience very seriously. In fact, it was basically a day-long church service, in which everyone was dancing around and chanting in Portuguese, then stopping to line up for a shot of the psychedelic brew every hour or so. I was told that some events are more laid back than the one I visited, but it seemed like a very safe environment with a genuinely spiritual staff.
About the Author
John Vibes is an author and journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture, and focuses solutions-oriented approaches to social problems. He is also a host of The Free Your Mind Conference and The Free Thought Project Podcast.


wakingtimes--2020-09-28--New Study Shows Honeybee Venom ‘Rapidly Destroys’ Some Cancer Cells

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Honeybees have long provided humans with vital tools for our survival like the pollination of fruits and vegetables as well as honey which has medicinal and antibiotic properties .
A new study published this month in the journal npj Precision Oncology reveals that the role of honeybees in helping humans may have just taken a massive live-saving step forward .
The results of the study , titled Honeybee venom and melittin suppress growth factor receptor activation in HER2-enriched and triple-negative breast cancer , showed that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and HER2-enriched breast cancer cells .
Lead researcher , Dr Ciara Duffy from the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research and The University of Western Australia , tested the effect of the honeybee venom on the clinical subtypes of breast cancer and their results were promising , to say the least .
In an interview with Science Daily , Duffy said the aim of the research was to investigate the anti-cancer properties of honeybee venom , and a component compound , melittin , on different types of breast cancer cells .
“ No-one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ venom or melittin across all of the different subtypes of breast cancer and normal cells .
“ We tested honeybee venom on normal breast cells , and cells from the clinical subtypes of breast cancer : hormone receptor positive , HER2-enriched , and triple-negative breast cancer .
“ We tested a very small , positively charged peptide in honeybee venom called melittin , which we could reproduce synthetically , and found that the synthetic product mirrored the majority of the anti-cancer effects of honeybee venom , ” Dr Duffy said .
“ We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , selectively and rapidly reduced the viability of triple-negative breast cancer and HER2-enriched breast cancer cells .
Incredibly , the specific concentration of honeybee venom can induce 100 % cancer cell death , all the while leaving regular cells mostly unharmed .
Researchers demonstrated that the melittin works in two ways : Within an hour of administration , it effectively punches holes in the cell membrane , killing the cell .
In addition however , within 20 minutes of administration , it rapidly disrupts the cancer signaling pathways , shutting down the chemical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reproduction .
Researchers found that honeybee venom was particularly effective in combination therapy , such as chemotherapy .
Though the researchers urge more study is warranted , they note that this study shows major promise for the treatment of common and invasive cancers using the naturally derived venom of a honeybee .
The researchers noted that honeybee venom is available globally and , if preliminary results are confirmed , may offer cost-effective and accessible treatment options for lower socioeconomic populations in remote areas of the world .
They concluded that their results “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of new therapeutic modalities for many cancer types associated with frequent drug resistance and poor prognosis.
” Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA .
This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state .
Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world .
Agorist is also the Editor at Large at the Free Thought Project .
Follow @ MattAgorist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Minds .

New Study Shows Honeybee Venom ‘Rapidly Destroys’ Some Cancer Cells
Matt Agorist, The Free Thought Project
Waking Times
Honeybees have long provided humans with vital tools for our survival like the pollination of fruits and vegetables as well as honey which has medicinal and antibiotic properties. A new study published this month in the journal npj Precision Oncology reveals that the role of honeybees in helping humans may have just taken a massive live-saving step forward.
The results of the study, titled Honeybee venom and melittin suppress growth factor receptor activation in HER2-enriched and triple-negative breast cancer, showed that honeybee venom rapidly destroyed triple-negative breast cancer and HER2-enriched breast cancer cells.
Lead researcher, Dr Ciara Duffy from the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research and The University of Western Australia, tested the effect of the honeybee venom on the clinical subtypes of breast cancer and their results were promising, to say the least.
In an interview with Science Daily, Duffy said the aim of the research was to investigate the anti-cancer properties of honeybee venom, and a component compound, melittin, on different types of breast cancer cells.
“No-one had previously compared the effects of honeybee venom or melittin across all of the different subtypes of breast cancer and normal cells. “We tested honeybee venom on normal breast cells, and cells from the clinical subtypes of breast cancer: hormone receptor positive, HER2-enriched, and triple-negative breast cancer. “We tested a very small, positively charged peptide in honeybee venom called melittin, which we could reproduce synthetically, and found that the synthetic product mirrored the majority of the anti-cancer effects of honeybee venom,” Dr Duffy said. “We found both honeybee venom and melittin significantly, selectively and rapidly reduced the viability of triple-negative breast cancer and HER2-enriched breast cancer cells. “The venom was extremely potent,” Dr Duffy said.
Incredibly, the specific concentration of honeybee venom can induce 100% cancer cell death, all the while leaving regular cells mostly unharmed.
Researchers demonstrated that the melittin works in two ways: Within an hour of administration, it effectively punches holes in the cell membrane, killing the cell. In addition however, within 20 minutes of administration, it rapidly disrupts the cancer signaling pathways, shutting down the chemical messages needed for cancer cell growth and reproduction.
“We found that melittin can completely destroy cancer cell membranes within 60 minutes,” the study notes. According to Dr. Duffy, “We looked at how honeybee venom and melittin affect the cancer signaling pathways, the chemical messages that are fundamental for cancer cell growth and reproduction, and we found that very quickly these signaling pathways were shut down.”
Researchers found that honeybee venom was particularly effective in combination therapy, such as chemotherapy. Though the researchers urge more study is warranted, they note that this study shows major promise for the treatment of common and invasive cancers using the naturally derived venom of a honeybee.
“We found that melittin can be used with small molecules or chemotherapies, such as docetaxel, to treat highly-aggressive types of breast cancer. The combination of melittin and docetaxel was extremely efficient in reducing tumour growth in mice,” Duffy said.
The researchers noted that honeybee venom is available globally and, if preliminary results are confirmed, may offer cost-effective and accessible treatment options for lower socioeconomic populations in remote areas of the world. They concluded that their results “could be leveraged to aid the development of new therapeutic modalities for many cancer types associated with frequent drug resistance and poor prognosis.”
Great news indeed.
About the Author
Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Agorist is also the Editor at Large at the Free Thought Project. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter, Steemit, and now on Minds.


wakingtimes--2020-09-28--‘We Do Not Consent’ – Thousands Rally In London To Oppose Another COVID-19 Lockdown

‘ We Do Not Consent ’ – Thousands Rally In London To Oppose Another COVID-19 Lockdown Get the latest Waking Times articles delivered to your inbox .
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Six months after parliament passed the Coronavirus Act 2020 , which gives the government powers to impose lockdowns and other restrictive social distancing measures ( measures that have been accompanied by stiff fines ) , thousands of Britons packed London ’ s Trafalgar Square bearing signs reading “ We Do Not Consent ” and “ Think Before It ’ s Illegal ” during a rally that was billed as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anti-lockdown demonstration .
The event was organized by a coalition of political groups , and supporters have been galvanized by the talk of another London lockdown by mayor Sadiq Khan , as well as PM Boris Johnson ’ s assurances that a lockdown would be imposed if the government felt all other measures had failed .
Protests are exempt from the rule of six , a rule that threatens fines for groups of more than six people , which has created much aggravation in the UK .
Organizers of the rally had to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ agree to comply with social distancing rules .
While police told the press that the organizers had completed these requirements , the metropolitan police promised to crack down on those not wearing masks and violating other rules .
Demonstrators waved signs and British flags and cheered as speakers – including several notable “ conspiracy theories ” , according to the Guardian – addressed the crowd .
Crowds chanted “ freedom ” as people whistled and clapped .
At points , police fulfilled their promise to break up crowds .
Before they began , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Metropolitan Police , which said it would intervene if the protesters don ’ t abide by social distancing guidelines .
Toby Young , General Secretary of the Free Speech Union , expressed hope that law enforcement would allow the group to protest “ as they did with [ Extinction Rebellion ] and BLM.
” Attending the protest , Kerry Dunn , 41 , from Bath , claimed her son , Beau , suffered adverse affects after being vaccinated .
Another event , billed as a “ People ’ s network and family picnic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the same activists for Sunday in Hyde Park .
By Tyler Durden / Republished with permission / Zero Hedge Like Waking Times on Facebook .
Follow Waking Times on Twitter .

‘We Do Not Consent’ – Thousands Rally In London To Oppose Another COVID-19 Lockdown
Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge
Waking Times
Six months after parliament passed the Coronavirus Act 2020, which gives the government powers to impose lockdowns and other restrictive social distancing measures (measures that have been accompanied by stiff fines), thousands of Britons packed London’s Trafalgar Square bearing signs reading “We Do Not Consent” and “Think Before It’s Illegal” during a rally that was billed as a “We Do Not Consent” anti-lockdown demonstration.
The event was organized by a coalition of political groups, and supporters have been galvanized by the talk of another London lockdown by mayor Sadiq Khan, as well as PM Boris Johnson’s assurances that a lockdown would be imposed if the government felt all other measures had failed.
Protests are exempt from the rule of six, a rule that threatens fines for groups of more than six people, which has created much aggravation in the UK. Organizers of the rally had to submit a “risk assessment” and agree to comply with social distancing rules. While police told the press that the organizers had completed these requirements, the metropolitan police promised to crack down on those not wearing masks and violating other rules.
They added that enforcement “remains a last resort but will be undertaken if required.”
Demonstrators waved signs and British flags and cheered as speakers – including several notable “conspiracy theories”, according to the Guardian – addressed the crowd. Crowds chanted “freedom” as people whistled and clapped.
http://twitter.com/Charlotte3003G/status/1309817510137651200?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1309817510137651200%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Fthink-its-illegal-1000s-rally-london-oppose-another-covid-19-lockdown
Thousand of people have joined a #NoNewNormal demonstration against #lockdown, mass vaccination and other Covid-19 measures in Trafalgar Square. pic.twitter.com/n30bIoVJVe — Damien Gayle (@damiengayle) September 26, 2020
“I’ve been shouting that mandatory vaccines are coming, no one believed me. No we can see it’s just around the corner, we’ve never been closer.” Kerry Dunn, 41, from Bath, whose son, Beau, suffered severe brain damage after he was vaccinated. pic.twitter.com/lhZrLp022E — Damien Gayle (@damiengayle) September 26, 2020
“What is see is fear and negativity being propagated. In Ayurveda, which is the root of western medicine, we say the thing that weakens the immune system the most is negativity.” Vinothini Apok, 40, a former doctor from north London. pic.twitter.com/ZvBzzGquDB — Damien Gayle (@damiengayle) September 26, 2020
At points, police fulfilled their promise to break up crowds. Before they began, the protests received a warning from the Metropolitan Police, which said it would intervene if the protesters don’t abide by social distancing guidelines.
Police have moved in to break up the crowd at the #NoNewNormal demo pic.twitter.com/1gwbo200sB — Damien Gayle (@damiengayle) September 26, 2020
Toby Young, General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, expressed hope that law enforcement would allow the group to protest “as they did with [Extinction Rebellion] and BLM.”
http://twitter.com/toadmeister/status/1309812079214432259?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1309812079214432259%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Fthink-its-illegal-1000s-rally-london-oppose-another-covid-19-lockdown
Attending the protest, Kerry Dunn, 41, from Bath, claimed her son, Beau, suffered adverse affects after being vaccinated.
“I’ve been shouting that mandatory vaccines are coming, no one believed me,” she said. “Now we can see it’s just around the corner, we’ve never been closer.”
Another event, billed as a “People’s network and family picnic”, is also being organised by the same activists for Sunday in Hyde Park.
By Tyler Durden / Republished with permission / Zero Hedge
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wakingtimes--2020-09-28--Police in Tennessee Apologize For Deploying Taser Shields To Use Against Protesters

Police in Tennessee Apologize For Deploying Taser Shields To Use Against Protesters Get the latest Waking Times articles delivered to your inbox .
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The Shelby County Sheriff ’ s office in Tennesee has come under fire after deploying taser shields to protests that sprang up in response to the lack of charges against the officers who killed Breonna Taylor .
After the strange shields were noticed by a group of protesters who gathered in front of the Criminal Justice Center , and images of the shields went viral online , Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the shields , calling it a “ regrettable mistake.
” According to WREG , the sheriff ’ s office recently upgraded to the newest e-shields in July 2020 but has had other “ less lethal shock shields ” since a jail riot in the 1990s .
The shields reportedly cost $ 895 each .
Police often use shields as weapons during protests .
Just this week , an LA County Sheriff ’ s deputy was seen on film repeatedly striking a protester with a riot shield .
Luckily , in that case , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and not a taser shield , but one could imagine how much more dangerous these encounters could be if these devices were commonly deployed by police departments across the country .
Luckily , there were no reports of the taser shields being used on any of the protesters in Tennessee .
Hunter Demster , one of the activists that saw the officers wielding the shields suggested that they were being used to intimidate the protesters .
“ They are scary looking and once again I think that ’ s the point , to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Demster told Fox13 Memphis .
“ How often are these shields being used , how often have you had them ?
There a lot of questions around them that the public deserves to have answers to , ” he added .
A statement from the sheriff ’ s office insisted that the shields carry less than lethal voltage , and made a strange comparison with the voltage of a Christmas tree light , which could obviously still do some serious damage .
Even low voltage shocks have been known to affect people differently @ @ @ @ @ @ @ underlying health conditions .
These weapons are often tested on members of the military who are in optimum health , so a force that is less than lethal for them might certainly be lethal for someone who has underlying health conditions or someone who is at a different level of fitness .
The sheriff promises that these devices won ’ t be deployed in a public setting like this again , but they will still be used in prisons , especially if there is some type of uprising or rioting among the inmates @

Police in Tennessee Apologize For Deploying Taser Shields To Use Against Protesters
John Vibes, The Free Thought Project
Waking Times
The Shelby County Sheriff’s office in Tennesee has come under fire after deploying taser shields to protests that sprang up in response to the lack of charges against the officers who killed Breonna Taylor. After the strange shields were noticed by a group of protesters who gathered in front of the Criminal Justice Center, and images of the shields went viral online, Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner was forced to apologize for the deployment of the shields, calling it a “regrettable mistake.”
In a statement, the sheriff’s office said that Bonner has “directed policy modifications that will prohibit those shields from being displayed or used outside of the Jail again.”
According to WREG, the sheriff’s office recently upgraded to the newest e-shields in July 2020 but has had other “less lethal shock shields” since a jail riot in the 1990s. The shields reportedly cost $895 each.
Police often use shields as weapons during protests. Just this week, an LA County Sheriff’s deputy was seen on film repeatedly striking a protester with a riot shield. Luckily, in that case, it was just a normal riot shield and not a taser shield, but one could imagine how much more dangerous these encounters could be if these devices were commonly deployed by police departments across the country. Luckily, there were no reports of the taser shields being used on any of the protesters in Tennessee.
Hunter Demster, one of the activists that saw the officers wielding the shields suggested that they were being used to intimidate the protesters.
“They are scary looking and once again I think that’s the point, to chill our 1st Amendment-protected rights,” Demster told Fox13 Memphis. “How often are these shields being used, how often have you had them? There a lot of questions around them that the public deserves to have answers to,” he added.
A statement from the sheriff’s office insisted that the shields carry less than lethal voltage, and made a strange comparison with the voltage of a Christmas tree light, which could obviously still do some serious damage.
Even low voltage shocks have been known to affect people differently, especially those with any type of underlying health conditions. These weapons are often tested on members of the military who are in optimum health, so a force that is less than lethal for them might certainly be lethal for someone who has underlying health conditions or someone who is at a different level of fitness.
“The new shield is capable of delivering a pulsating shock of 210-320 volts for a fraction of a second. This shock appears to be lower than a 4.8 watt Christmas tree light and far less than tasers which can be 50,000 volts at discharge. The temporary electrical shock delivered by eshield is non-injurious and does not enter the body,” a portion of the statement read.
The sheriff promises that these devices won’t be deployed in a public setting like this again, but they will still be used in prisons, especially if there is some type of uprising or rioting among the inmates.
By John Vibes | Creative Commons | The Free Thought Project