Episode 34: Civilization, the Biosphere and Tomorrow

The Big History of Civilizations (2016)

Dr Craig G Benjamin

Film Review

Another really disappointing lecture. For some reason Benjamin is unrealistically enamored of modern technological achievements, which he is convinced only capitalism can deliver. For my part, I agree with Canadian author Ronald White, who, in A Short History of Progress (2004), brands technological innovation as a “progress trap.” In White’s view, all human inventions turn out to have extremely negative “unintended” consequences. White gives the example of weapons as the first progress trap. The second was agriculture, leading widespread deforestation and soil erosion* in all ancient civilizations, accompanied by soil salinization from over-irrigation.

Dams are a third progress trap. Not only do they typically displace tens of thousands of homes and destroy tens of thousands of acres of forests and fertile farmland, but they destroy important ecosystems and migratory fish (eg trout and salmon) that animals and indigenous people depend on them for food.

Benjamin also fails to point out that not all human beings benefit equally from new technology. Most benefits a tiny rich elite at the expense of the rest of us.

Benjamin does mention some of the downsides of rampant technology innovation, but almost as any afterthought: ocean acidification ( due to increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2), deforestation, species extinction, topsoil loss, loss and contamination of freshwater. He makes no mention of the role of rampant technological development in contaminating the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat. Nevertheless fails to mention how ecosystem damage caused by warehousing of tens of millions of people in megacities,** given their devastation of surrounding countryside and the massive amount of waste they produce. Instead he maintains capitalism always has up and coming technological solutions to all the problems technology creates.

He singles out genetic modification (GMOs) of plants to make them need less water as a potential solution to water shortages. He also has high praise for urban gardens, energy efficient CFL and LED lightsbulbs, improved public transport and cycle ways, as well as high praise for and philanthropists George Soros, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Mark Zuckerberg for their work in slowing capitalism’s gradual destruction of the Earth’s life support systems.

*Recent research shows that plowing soil kills it (ie destroys) the delicate network of fungi and bacteria are essential for plant nutrition. See Gaia Raising: The Woodwide Web, Preserving Underground Fungal Networks and Our Ecosystem

**As of 2016, Benjamin gives the following population figures for each of these cities:

Tokyo – 30 million

Delhi – 25 million

Shanghai – 23 million

Mexico City – 21 million

In total 20 cities have over 10 million people.

***On balance, each of these billionaires does far more to destroy than to repair Earth’s life support systems.

Can be viewed free on Kanopy with a library card.

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/civilization-biosphere-and-tomorrow

Four nurses told Insider their hospitals are pressuring them to come into work shortly after testing positive for COVID-19. JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images

By Allana Akhtar and Aria Bendix
Business insider

• A handful of nurses are using TikTok to call out hospitals pressuring them to come to work with COVID-19.
• Four nurses across the US told Insider they had been told to come into work while sick or risk losing pay.
• Some nurses said they’re close to quitting after nearly two years of long hours and heightened verbal and physical abuse.

What was once an ill-advised practice is now becoming a common request across US hospitals: Healthcare workers are being asked to treat patients while sick with COVID-19.

In a TikTok video now viewed more than 7.2 million times, April Lynn, an ICU nurse, claimed her hospital cleared her to return to work five days after testing positive for COVID-19, despite still having a cough and severe fatigue. (Lynn did not respond to Insider’s request for comment.)

Four other nurses told Insider that, in the last week or so, they’ve been instructed to come into work with symptomatic COVID-19, or risk losing pay or receiving a formal warning. The nurses said hospital administrators are pointing to new federal emergency guidance that allows healthcare workers to shorten isolation periods as a way to mitigate widespread staffing shortages.

“After almost two years of having to deal with this and having such a high stress job, this is kind of like a kick in the face,” labor and delivery nurse Rachel Pokriva, who tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday, told Insider. Pokriva is due to return to work on Thursday at St. Joseph East in Lexington, Kentucky, despite still suffering intense nausea and fatigue.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s emergency guidance, released on December 23, healthcare workers can return to work five to seven days after testing positive for COVID-19. Isolation time can also be cut shorter than seven days with a negative test “if there are staffing shortages,” the CDC stated.

[…]

Suzanne Downing

Global Research, January 06, 2022
Must Read Alaska 30 December 202

A group of doctors and others have penned a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration, explaining a problem that they’ve identified with the Covid-19 vaccine: Pilots are flying with unapproved medications in their bodies, in violation of FAA rules.

According to the letter signers, which include attorneys and medical doctors, the airline industry is operating in violation of Title 14 of the Federal Aviation Regulations, and related federal rules, which prohibit pilots from flying with non-FDA approved agents in their bodies, such as the Covid-10 vaccines, if those substances put the general public at risk for serious injury or death. The writers distinguish between FDA-approved vaccines and those that are actually being used to reduce the danger of Covid-19.

The authors of the letter are requesting the FAA medically flag all vaccinated pilots within four weeks of the Dec. 15 letter, until those pilots undergo thorough medical reexaminations to include D-Dimer tests; which check for blood clotting; Troponin tests, which reveal heart muscle damage; and EKG and MRI tests to determine cardiac health.

The signers of the letter are recommending that all pilots who fail the tests be immediately grounded until they can get a clean bill of health.

“From this point forward, only allowing commercial aircraft to be operated by pilots who can show D-Dimer and Troponin tests – as well as cardiac MRIs, ECGs and PULS tests – at aeromedically acceptable levels, and a clean medical examination undertaken a minimum of five (5) days after each COVID-19 vaccine and after each COVID ‘booster’ shot, as a review of reporting systems such as the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (‘VAERS’) indicates that the current FAA wait time of two (2) days is insufficient to detect a significant number of blood clotting and myocarditis cases (which are manifesting more than 48 hours post-inoculation),” the group wrote.

“…the FDA has not approved any of the COVID-19 shots currently available in the United States. On August 23, the FDA granted BioNTech Manufacturing GmbH’s Biologics Licensing Application to distribute the Comirnaty vaccine in the United States once certain conditions are met; however, the Comirnaty vaccine is not currently available in the United States – and will not be until the supply of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is first exhausted. See https://www.fda.gov/media/151710/download. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is currently available only under an EUA, which the FDA extended on August 23, 2021. See https://www.fda.gov/media/150386/download. It is also important to note that the approved vaccine, Comirnaty, cannot be said to be interchangeable with unapproved inoculations,” the letter said.

Some pilots have been forced to seek medical care, such as Cody Flint, whose story is included in the letter:

“I am a 33 year old husband and father of two young boys. I am an agricultural pilot by profession, with over 10,000 flight hours. I have been very healthy my whole life, with no underlying conditions. I received my first dose of the Pfizer Covid Vaccine on February 1. Within thirty minutes, I developed a severe stabbing headache, which later became a burning sensation in the back of my neck. Two days after vaccination, I got in my airplane to do a job that would only take a few hours.

“Immediately after taking off, I knew that something was not right with me. I was starting to develop tunnel vision, and my headache was getting worse. Approximately two hours into flying, I pulled my airplane up to turn around and felt an extreme burst of pressure in my ears.

“Instantly, I was nearly blacked out, dizzy, disoriented, nauseous and shaking uncontrollably. By the grace of God, I was able to land my plane without incident – although I do not remember doing this.

“My initial diagnosis of vertigo and severe panic attacks – although I’ve never had a history of either of these – was later replaced with left and right peri-lymphatic fistulas, Eustachian tube dysfunction, and elevated intra-cranial pressure due to brain swelling. My condition continued to decline, and my doctors told me that only an adverse reaction to the vaccine or a major head trauma could have caused this much spontaneous damage.

“I’ve had six spinal taps over eight months to monitor my intra-cranial pressure, and two surgeries, eight weeks apart, to repair the fistulas. I have missed nearly an entire year of my life – and my children’s lives. Days of baseball games, playing in the backyard, and just picking up my kids to hug them have been replaced with living in a sick body, doctor’s visits, and more questions than answers. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to fly again.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/faa-warned-doctors-letter-describing-vaccine-hazard-health-faa-violations/5766436

Coincidence? The Key Word 

Several months ago, we expressed at least “theoretical reservations” about vaccinating cancer patients or former patients who had been cured, because of the underlying mechanism of the gene injection on immunity.

Several geneticists had also expressed their concerns about the possible interference between active or dormant cancer cells and the activity of gene therapy on lymphocytes in particular.

Months have passed, and the vaccine madness has amplified, leading to the refusal of patients without a passport in hospitals (which, as is well known, are intended to receive only healthy people) and to the demand that patients be vaccinated  before receiving any treatment, including cancer patients.

[…]

More and More Testimonies are Coming In 

Whatever their unacceptable reasons, testimonies are multiplying.

A young girl accompanies her friend to her mother’s funeral… such a mother, mother of a high school friend, 34 years old, in remission from breast cancer for two years, who is injected with the vaccine and collapses a few days later in a coma and dies after three days of hospitalization… Politically correct explanation: the cancer exploded and took her away. Close the chapter and the coffin.

[…]

In any case, as far as “cancer and gene injection” is concerned, the vagueness unfortunately dissipates in front of the multitude of terrible stories.

From the colleague who sees multiple “balls” appearing under her armpits, which the check-ups in the hospital do not explain… Obviously no possible link with the vax. And yet the ganglions that appear some time after the injection are a frequent observation after these vax.

So clearly there seems to be three situations:

• The appearance of a cancer rapidly after the injection (two weeks to a few months) and very progressive, in a person who was previously free of known carcinological pathologies.
• The resumption of cancer in a patient who has been in complete remission for several months or years.
• The rapid, even explosive, evolution of a cancer that is not yet controlled.

Beyond the testimonies that are pouring in from relatives and friends and on social networks, a Swiss newspaper has finally addressed the subject in a broader way.

Here are some excerpts from their article[6] and their references[7]:

“Can covid vaccines cause cancer?

In some cases, the answer seems to be yes. Certainly, there is no evidence that the covid vaccines themselves are carcinogenic. However, it has been shown that in up to 50% of vaccinees, covid vaccines can induce temporary immunosuppression or immune dysregulation (lymphocytopenia) that can last for about a week or possibly longer.

Furthermore, covid mRNA vaccines have been shown to “reprogram” (i.e., influence) adaptive and innate immune responses and, in particular, to downregulate the so-called TLR4 pathway, which is known to play an important role in the immune response to infections and cancer cells.”

Thus the authors conclude that it is quite possible that these immune changes could have unintended consequences on the condition of the recipient of the gene injection. A matter of common sense indeed!

“Thus, if there is already a tumor somewhere – known or unknown – or if there is a predisposition to a certain type of cancer, such a state of vaccine-induced immune suppression or immune dysregulation could potentially trigger sudden tumor growth and cancer within weeks of vaccination. It should be noted that lymphocytopenia was also frequently observed in cases of severe covid.

Post-vaccination reactivation of latent viral infections, including shingles virus, EBV (Epstein-Barr) and hepatitis virus, has also been observed.

“Vaccine-induced temporary immunosuppression is also a factor that may contribute to the post-vaccination spike in coronavirus infections seen in many countries.”

Frequency of Vaccine Related Adverse Event in Cancer 

There are already a few thousand observations in official adverse event reporting and online patient groups. There are certainly true coincidences or diagnostic delays due to delayed diagnosis related to containment. But we should not dismiss the huge problems that these real people affected in their daily lives and even more the responsibility that cancer doctors take by imposing the injection before any treatment or protocol continuation. Their main argument: “we did it right, without discussion” does not seem worthy of a once thoughtful profession.

In August 2021, Dr. Ryan Cole,[8] an American pathologist for many years, described a significant increase in certain types of cancer (e.g. endometrial cancer, uterine cancer) since the beginning of the covid mass vaccination campaign. More recently, German pathologists have also noted the problem of post-vaccination immune dysregulation and sudden tumor growth in some patients.

On the French networks, several testimonies coincide with the reappearance of vaginal hemorrhages in women over 85 years of age leading to the diagnosis of endometrial cancer and rapid death… The spike protein produced by the body following the injection is particularly attracted to the genitals, and this would be a new demonstration of this.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-incidence-of-cancer-triggered-by-the-covid-19-vaccine/5758110

Bloomberg

U.S. hospitals are so far seeing significantly fewer severe outcomes from the Omicron wave than they saw in past COVID-19 spikes, mirroring the experience of South Africa and the U.K. Even New York, the uber-dense site of one of the nation’s worst outbreaks, is seeing similar results.

In the U.K., the general pattern of lower hospitalization has held up so far even as cases surged, as the Financial Times’ John Burn-Murdoch showed Tuesday.

[…]

Via https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-04/omicron-spares-u-s-icus-so-far-mirroring-s-africa-trajectory

By Jeremy Kuzmarov

Covert Action Magazine

Vince Foster was the highest federal official to die since JFK. His death was ruled a suicide; however, strong evidence suggests that he was murdered.

Shortly after 6 p.m. on July 20, 1993, following two 911 calls, the U.S. Park Police came upon the body of Vincent W. Foster, White House Counsel, and Bill and Hillary Clinton’s personal lawyer, who had come to Washington, D.C., after working closely with Hillary at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Foster’s body was found lying face up, head up on the side of a steep slope in Fort Marcy Park, an old Civil War structure in McLean Virginia—located only 8 minutes away from CIA headquarters—on a dirt path in front of an old cannon. With his head blood-stained, Foster was still clutching the .38 colt revolver he supposedly shot himself with, his thumb trapped by the trigger.

On the day of his death, Foster had left his office in the White House’s West Wing at 1 p.m. after eating lunch there. Supposedly, he jumped in his Honda, walked to a secluded corner of the park and killed himself.

Strangely, no one had seen Foster from the moment he had left the West Wing to the time his body was discovered—even though his face had been splashed across the news.^[1]

Also, no one heard the thunderous noise of a gunshot and police investigators initially did not find his car keys on him, raising questions about how he got to the park.

In the Foster case also, they would have expected a huge pool of blood—a mess—when only a small trickle of blood was found running from his mouth.^[3]

The gun itself appeared clean—as if it had been wiped.^[4]

Further Evidence that the Crime Scene Was Staged

There were several other suspicious things about Foster’s death to contradict the official story. These included:

1. No soil found on Foster’s shoes despite him allegedly having walked down a dirt path. Everyone who walked down the path had soil samples on their shoes.^[5]
2. The bullet that killed Foster could not be located.^[6]
3. None of the 26 people who viewed Foster’s body before the autopsy saw entrance and exit wounds from the bullet that allegedly killed him.^[7]
4. No fingerprints on the gun and no gunpowder was found on Foster’s tongue. There was also no disfigurement of the mouth or chipped teeth as is usual for a gun shot through the mouth.^[8]
5. Foster’s family could not identify the .38 colt revolver as being his.
6. Foster’s eyeglasses were found some 19 feet from his head, or 13 feet beyond his shoes, indicating the staging of the scene.^[9]
7. A gash on Foster’s neck and wine stain on his shirt has never been explained along with the presence of semen in his underpants.^[10]
8. The first witness and police officer on the scene reported that they did not find a gun in Foster’s hand, indicating that a gun may have placed next to him afterwards.

[…]

As the Clintons’ personal lawyer, Foster knew more than any living person about the Clintons’ finances and sub rosa campaign financing, tax evasion practices, shady associations,^[43] and the Whitewater land deal—the focus of a prolonged legal investigation led by Kenneth Starr.

[…]

Via https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/01/05/with-the-clinton-brand-now-discredited-its-high-time-to-reopen-the-investigation-into-the-death-of-vince-foster/