“Who is the N-I-G-G-E-R?” Author, James Baldwin

Three selected excerpts from two national treasures authors / activists James Baldwin (1963 / 1969) and Dr Cornel West (2016) which demonstrate a theme “Who is the n-i-g-g-e-r?” and Dr West also touches on the struggle for honesty, decency and integrity in modern America.

Below is my Faint Signals from Vega compilation of these podcast excerpts.

One excerpt from author James Baldwin (1963):

“Well, I know this,
Anyone who has ever tried to live knows this:
That what you say about somebody else, anybody else… reveals you.
What I think of you as being,
Is dictated by my own necessities,
My own psychology, my own fears and desires.
I’m not describing you when I talk about you,
I’m describing me.

Now, here in this country, we’ve got something called a n-i-g-g-e-r…

We have invented the n-i-g-g-e-r.
I didn’t invent him.
White people invented him.

I’ve always known,
I had to know by the time I was 17 years old,
What you were describing was not me,
And what you were afraid of was not me
It has to be something else,
You invented it, so it had to be something YOU were afraid of – you invested me with.

Now, if that’s so…
No matter what you’ve done to me,
I can say to you this, and I mean it

I know you can’t do anything more and I’ve got nothing to lose.
And I know,
And I’ve always known,
And really always- that’s a part of the agony –
I’ve always known that I am not a n-i-g-g-e-r.
But if I am not the n-i-g-g-e-r,
And if it’s true that your invention reveals you,
Then who is the n-i-g-g-e-r?
I’m not the victim here.

I know one thing from another…
I know I was born, I’m gonna suffer, and I’m gonna die.
The only way to get through life is know the worst things about it.

A person is more important than anything else. Anything else.

I’ve learned this because I had to learn it.
But, you still think, I gather,
That the n-i-g-g-e-r is necessary.
Well, he’s unnecessary to me,
So he must be necessary to you.
So I give you your problem back:
You’re the n-i-g-g-e-r, baby, it isn’t me.”

Author James Baldwin, 1969

Here’s the full talk by Dr. West from which the excerpts were taken. You can find numerous speeches by James Baldwin and Dr. Cornel West on Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXw37Pr5CDw&t=132s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AFA98fuexA

 

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Tasmania’s Dark Mofo: Is Killing Animals Art or Business as Usual?

I discuss an event in Tasmania which happens each year : Dark Mofo. This June during this festival, a young bull is slated to be killed (not in front of the public) prior and his body cut up and used in an installation.

There’s been a huge outcry from the public. I discuss the moral compartmentalisation that occurs every time an instance like this happens in society whether it be Harambe the gorilla, Maurius the giraffe, Cecil the lion and so forth. Most who are outraged by these individuals being killed, are not vegan.

Like most of us before we became vegan, we do not understand that every sentient being loves life just like this bull loves life and does not want to die. Every animal we eat, wear and use as a resource is just like this young bull and will go through the same horror and torture before they are killed and when they are killed. And all of it is for trivial reasons of mostly palate pleasure.

We don’t need animal products to survive, in fact we can *easily* meet all of our nutrition requirements from plants (and other non-animal sources). Since that is the case, the only reason we can give for why we continue participating in this tremendous violence is because they “taste good”. That’s morally unjustifiable.

It’s easy to be vegan.

All we have to do is make that decision to end our participation in this tremendous violence and injustice, and the rest is easy. It just requires a little research. Go no further. Here’s my vegan resource to assist you HowToGoVegan.org

If you are vegan, and you want to politely register your opposition to killing this sentient being for this installation, consider writing to Lord Mayor Sue Hickey –
email: lord.mayor ( at) hobartcity (dot) com (dot) au
or contact Dark Mofo here. Consider asking the Lord Mayor to consider going vegan and ask those at Dark Mofo to consider going vegan 🙂 and to urge the organisers to accept the invitation of Brightside Farm Sanctuary to rescue this young bull and care for him.

Here’s the vlog I did on Faint Signals from Vega on Youtube.

Thanks for listening. 🙂

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Children and Vaccines: Some Details (Updated Ep 59 Part 3/3)

This is the partial transcript. Some components and some updated terms may be missing, but most of what is contained in this transcript is the updated episode 59 (original version) I mentioned I would release.

So before I discuss some of the issues and provide some updated and corrected information, as I said in the original episode I’m not pro-vax or anti-vax I’m for safe vaccinations for those who want them. I hope you found part 1 and 2 interesting. I think part 2 audios of parents sharing information about their children whom they believe were vaccine injured is particularly compelling. If you haven’t listened to Part 2 yet, parents talk about their experience with their children shortly after their children received vaccinations (which included MMR – Measles, mumps and rubella, DTaP (Diphtheria Tetanus and Pertussis), Gardisal or HPV vaccine and flu vaccine. I think these experiences speak for themselves. The site where I obtained the audio from these videos is titled “Vaxxed on the Road” ( please read my disclaimer about external sites) and I have provided a link to the site where you can find 540 so far of these interviews with different parents.

In this updated episode 59, Part 3, I discuss some of the science of vaccines and the possible problems with the preservative adjuvant used in vaccines which have been linked to the proliferation of autism in the US in particular. I also want to update some information. I think you will find this very interesting. I want to thank Dede River who has some understanding of the science behind this issue, for sharing her knowledge and for sharing some of her research.

Before I go further, as some of you might be aware, the issue of vaccination is one that is intensely polarised, and people are ready with their views in absolute terms at the mere mention of the subject. This is not helpful. Please listen to the entire podcast before reacting. There are serious issues relating to health and they are mentioned in the insert that comes with each vaccine. Because these adverse reactions are mentioned by the manufacturers, it’s surprising that there is so much denial and outrage at the mere mention that children may be suffering adverse reactions to certain vaccines. So with that in mind, we need to, at least, look at how we can administer vaccinations safely (if that is possible), and minimise risks, particularly to children, to the greatest extent possible.

For those who cannot tolerate any questioning of the vaccination program, I’ll say there is far too much anecdotal evidence from parents to dismiss their concerns as “conspiracy theories”. No matter where one stands on the safety debates, when the CDC (Center for Disease Control) has researchers destroy research data, that is not standard science, and questions should be asked. Research was destroyed and that’s not up for debate. Thompson confirmed this in a Senate Committee, and said he retained his copy because he believed such destruction was wrong, and possibly illegal. The research that is in question may be debated, but if there were problems with the research, the answer is never to destroy the papers. This alone should raise questions.

The issue of thimerosal is one that saw it removed from most childhood vaccinations around 2001. It has been retained in trace amounts in many vaccines for some years, but has mostly been phased out. The major exception of concern is influenza vaccine, which the CDC recommends for use by pregnant mothers. Not all influenza vaccines contain Thimerosal as a preservative. But the ones that do contain Thimerosal are cheaper. This means that those receiving the flu vaccine live in poorer neighbourhoods are more likely to be exposed to Thimerosal. Also in poorer African American communities in the US there is a theory that mothers are not able to receive welfare assistance unless their child has all their scheduled injections so this may account for some of the problems because they are often given earlier on in the child’s life and that is often where the adverse reactions occur. But not only is Thimerasol problematic but all preservatives are problematic. Phenol and it’s compounds are also neurotoxins.

In any case, the issue is not vaccinate or not, but how to ensure vaccines are safe and delivered safely. Again, please listen to the podcast before reacting to what you think it might say.

As I have stated as a vegan I want to make clear that I am neither pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine. I’m not against the use of vaccinations. But having said that what I AM for, is vaccines that are safe, and that also do not use animals. It would seem after doing some research that vaccines are not completely safe, and of course most of us already know that each vaccine involves at least the killing of a chicken embryo and might I add it’s gruesome and distressing reading.

It is clear that if our society were mostly vegan, we would have already developed vaccines that did not involve killing of 9 days to 14 day old chicken embryos. That’s the problem when our society believes that nonhuman animals are our resources. We have no motivation to find alternatives. We have no motivation to do what’s right. And that’s why vegan education is so important because it’s only until we become a majority will anything meaningful and lasting happen in society.

And as I’ve stated in other episodes what we do to nonhumans eventually will be done to humans. Using human fetuses for cells lines for vaccines has become more common. These human fetuses are still alive when removed from the woman at the time of her pregnancy termination and fetal cells are removed from the still live fetus without woman’s prior knowledge or consent. We do something similar to cows in the dairy industry. We obtain the bovine fetal serum (which is fetal calf’s blood, a medium which is commonly used in experiments including the medium used for SuperMeat, or Clean meat and other forms of lab meat). And they obtain this by first killing the calf’s mother at the slaughterhouse, and then removing the dying calf from her abdomen and sticking a needle into the calf’s still beating heart and removing blood.

But back to the vaccines: Why am I not against the use of vaccines? Because it could be viewed as one of those desert island situations. Yes. One of the very rare situations where there really is no alternative (that I am aware of to date) and I don’t feel I am in the position to dictate to any parent what they can and cannot do with their children under those circumstances. I would prefer to try and encourage more people to become vegan so we can get the numbers to eventually encourage alternatives to these animal sourced vaccines and its current production method.

When it comes to the issue of flu vaccines in particular for myself personally, instead of having flu vaccinations, I prefer to try and keep my vitamin D levels in the upper ranges by supplementing daily with vegan vitamin D and maintaining good hygiene habits, particularly when returning home from outings, but most importantly eating a healthy balanced plant based diet with plenty of lysine rich whole foods like beans. And of course as a vegan we should all supplement with B12 and if you wish to know why, check out my vegan resource podcast HowToGoVegan.org. But anyway, in relation to fending off winter bugs, this seems to work very well for me.

Prof Sherry F. Colb said about (ethical) vegans and the issue of vaccines, and medications:

On the question of medications and vaccines, ethical vegans take different positions… “Though the vaccine is not a vegan product, some vegans might take the view that in the absence of a vegan alternative vaccination, the existing flu shot is necessary to the vegan’s own or to others’ health.

For similar reasons, a vegan who is sick and needs a medication that is currently available only in a form that contains animal ingredients might conclude that necessity permits the use of the medication. At the present time, U.S. law also requires that all medications in the United States be tested on animals, and many are synthesized with non-vegan additives, so vegans often lack the option of taking a vegan version of the medicine. When health or safety is at risk and alternatives are unavailable, some people who consider themselves ethical vegans will take a non-vegan medicine, while others will not.”

Endemic or epidemic disease can affect millions of people, either directly, or indirectly as parents, siblings, children, friends and co-workers of those who contract disease. Many of the diseases for which we vaccinate cause chronic or acute effects, including death. Many are highly infectious. This is why vaccines have been developed. General immunisation in the population also protects those who are most vulnerable, particularly those who cannot tolerate vaccines: such as young children and the aged whose immune system is compromised.

However, the nature, frequency, and timing of vaccination needs to be considered, to avoid side effects, and additives, like antibiotics and anti-fungals, are not insignificant. This episode focuses on Thimerosal . This is a chemical used as a preservative used in vaccines in the US. It’s been banned in Australia for this use in 2001. It’s a mercury compound, mercury being a heavy metal known to cause neurological damage, brain damage. There is significant evidence that this is linked to the massive rise in autism and child death, especially in the US.

As I’ve mentioned in Part 1 and 2, the US also phased out use of Thimerasol in vaccines from 2001. Many vaccines were available without thimerosal by 2003, and today, only three continue to use thimerosal, one of the Diphtheria vaccines, a Meningitis vaccine, and many forms of influenza (flu) vaccines. But Flu vaccine is recommended by the CDC for use with pregnant mothers, to inoculate their children, and flu vax with thimerosal continues to have mercury levels of 25 micrograms per dose which is still significant.

Things to consider: there are claims that “it has been used safely in vaccines since 1930.” It has been used since 1930, but the number of vaccinations, and the age of administration, need to be considered when looking at impacts. When I was growing up in the 60s, if I remember right, the only vaccinations we got was for Smallpox, and the triple antigen; Tetanus, Diphtheria, and Whooping Cough. Triple Antigen was given in infancy, as 3-4 injections spaced between 2 months and 2 years, because they were diseases most often fatal in infancy and early childhood. Polio vaccines were just evolving. I remember getting it as an oral vaccine at about age 5. We got Rubella vaccines, developed only in 1969 at 12 or 13. That means, like most children, I had my first vaccine at about 2 months, had a few boosters in infancy, then only tetanus occasionally, to keep the immunity in case we were cut by rusty iron. Children never had more than one vaccination on a visit. Minimum spacing between boosters was 4 months.

Today, children are inoculated for 15 diseases, often with multiple boosters, from birth onward, Even counting a vaccination for multiple diseases (up to six) as one injection, recommendations for children under 13 in the US include at least 33 injections. Pregnant women are now urged to get a Pertussis and an influenza injection during the third trimester, to immunise the developing unborn foetus against flu and whooping cough. Children may have multiple vaccinations on the same doctor visit. This means developing children may get significant doses of organo-mercury compounds. This is a recent situation, dissimilar to that in the early or mid 20th century. The proliferation of other chemicals in our environment is also a situation that really originated in the 1950s, and it’s increased geometrically. So we are not only inundated in a chemical soup, we have no clear idea of the interactions of all these. In this situation, we can have no clear notion of the interactions of the preservatives and other additions to vaccine, and bodies that are already affected by numerous chemicals, from the conception of their parents.
We also have no idea whether the alternative preservatives that have replaced thimerosal are safe. I’ll get to that shortly, but the issue is that a certain percentage of children seem to have adverse reactions to vaccination. Studies show no problem, but anecdotal account after account talk of devastating lifelong neurological damage on children after vaccination. Measles Mumps and Rubella MMR vaccine seems particularly implicated. Incidents in young women and young men after administration of HPV vaccines have also arisen. Neurological diseases are increasing very rapidly. The Center for Disease Control says that in children born between 1998 and 2004, the incidence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) increased from 6.7 in 1,000 to 14.6 in 1,000. This is more than a doubling in 6 years.

Debates on the pros and cons of vaccine-related injury rage. What should be noted is that autism and birth defects, including life-threatening allergies, are on the rise. The CDC information indicates:

About 1 in 6 children in the United States had a developmental disability in 2006-2008, ranging from mild disabilities such as speech and language impairments to serious developmental disabilities, such as intellectual disabilities, cerebral palsy, and autism

I don’t know how those statistics can be considered normal or acceptable. The number of stories of major changes in children after being given vaccinations continues to grow, and is backed by tragic accounts of parent’s experiences recorded on videos and if you’ve listened to part 2, you would have heard a few accounts. The CDC and others keep saying there is no causal link between vaccines and autism and adverse neurological outcomes. Yet why would a CDC researcher like Dr Thompson become a whistleblower. He came forward and handed over papers to a congressman? Why would Dr Thompson, a CDC autism researcher, call Dr Hooker, head of an autism group and talk about how ashamed he was of the destruction of scientific data he participated in? Thompson sent papers to a congressman, was granted whistleblower protection, but subsequently said nothing. Hooker looked at the data, and sent a paper based on it to a journal, claiming it showed links between the age of vaccination with MMR vaccine to higher rates of autism in African-American boys. Hooker became a subject of controversy, Thompson refused to testify in congress, and still works with the CDC, and will soon publish a book recanting his views and showing higher rates of autism for African-American boys is due to socio-economic factors.

The recorded information from Ben Swann and Robert  F. Kennedy Jr. on this podcast episode focuses on Dr Hooker’s work and on Thimerosal. But Thimerosal and MMR vaccine are not the sole problem. Something I’d like to add, is that in 2010, the Coalition for Mercury-free Drugs (CoMeD), Inc, wrote to the UN Environment Program, which posted the letter on their site. The link is included at the bottom of this podcast. In it, they talked about alternative preservatives, specifically phenol and 2-phenoxyethanol. They cite a paper from the Medical Science Monitor, available on PubMed that shows the relative cytotoxicity of the three compounds in vaccines. The observed toxicity index for Thimerosal on human neurons is over 330 times its toxicity to bacterial cells. The index for phenol is 12.2 times, and for 2-phenoxyethanol, it is 4.6 times. After discussions with Dede River who has studied toxicology, she said phenols are known to cause neurological damage, and so she visited the site PubChem, the source for scientific studies on chemicals, and found 2-phenoxyethanol. And in the toxicity section on that specific chemical, she found a number of links citing the toxicity of this chemical. And by the way, this chemical if often found in skin cream and other cosmetic products and is a very strong irritant amongst other issues.

The PubChem report stated:

None of the compounds commonly used as preservatives in US licensed vaccine/biological preparations can be considered an ideal preservative, and their ability to fully comply with the requirements of the US Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) for preservatives is in doubt. Future formulations of US licensed vaccines/biologics should be produced in aseptic manufacturing plants as single dose preparations, eliminating the need for preservatives and an unnecessary risk to patients.”
This makes sense to me. While phenoxyethanol might be safer than thimerosal, it’s still a neurotoxin. Why add neurotoxins to vaccines we’re giving children, especially unborn children? Why add it at all, when there are alternatives without any of these toxins? Again, I’ll reiterate that in presenting this podcast episode, I am not opposing vaccination. I do think there are disturbing issues, both relating to unknown causes, and some obvious issues with obvious remedies, like eliminating neurotoxic preservatives from vaccines, and going to single-dose vaccines made under aseptic conditions. As to some of the other issues, the role of MMR vaccines in autism and other conditions, the evidence is murky, and it seems at least part of that murk is due to intentional muddying of the waters by institutions that are designed to protect the public.

Anyway, here is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaking on vaccines and Thimerosal. It’s worth listening to, particularly for anyone having children or who have grandchildren.

This is no transcript of this audio of Ben Swann and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
___
From a vegan perspective, production of many vaccines and of many tests involving monoclonal antibodies, is problematic. Flu vaccines, for example, are made by first, injecting fertilised eggs at 9 to 12 days, with virus and working out what optimum conditions are for growing the virus in eggs, then thousands of fertile eggs are injected with flu daily. At peak production, Glaxo-Smith Kline’s Dresden factory in Germany uses 360,000 eggs daily. And there are similar factories all over the world. The virus grows in the egg white, and is ‘harvested” after 2-3 days killed, and used to make vaccine. See the links below. Note, Many vaccines use eggs in production, with various impacts. Flu vaccines just have more information.
Non-egg alternatives are available. The CDC has written about viral production from mammal cell culture in a link I’ve also provided. This would probably use tissue culture techniques, so that only an occasional biopsy is necessary as explained in the techno-meat podcasts I did. But unlike technomeat which requires a huge production facility to make hundreds of thousands of kilos of muscle cells for human food, one only needs a relatively small bioreactor to grow cells that produce virus, and each cell may produce thousands of virus copies. Since what is needed is the virus to kill, the scale is quite different. It’s possible to keep a culture going and extract virus from medium. There are still technical problems, but if the cells come from humans who have voluntarily donated them, many of the ethical problems with using non-human animals don’t apply.

While cell culture presents a range of problems for vegans, the reason the CDC are talking about it is that mammalian cells produce antigens that are more effective at creating an immune response more effective against human disease. Logically then, since cell culture only requires a biopsy or blood sample, there is no reason human cells couldn’t be used, and antigens from human cell cultures would be closest to virus in human bodies.

The last part of this transcript is missing.

********************************************

For more information:

Thimerosal

http://www.unep.org/hazardoussubstances/Portals/9/Mercury/Documents/INC3/NGO%20-%20CoMeD%20-%20%20One-Page%20Document%20-%20English1.pdf

https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/2-phenoxyethanol#section=Human-Toxicity-Excerpts

/ALTERNATIVE and IN VITRO TESTS/ In vaccines/biologics, preservatives are used to prevent microbial growth.The present study examined: (1) the comparative toxicities of commonly used preservatives in US licensed vaccines to human neurons; and (2) the relative toxicity index of these compounds to human neurons in comparison to bacterial cells. Using human neuroblastoma cells, the relative cytotoxicity of the levels of the compounds commonly used as preservative in US licensed vaccines was found to be phenol <2-phenoxyethanol < benzethonium chloride < Thimerosal. The observed relative toxicity indices (human neuroblastoma cells/bacterial cells) were 2-phenoxyethanol (4.6-fold) < phenol (12.2-fold) < Thimerosal (>330-fold). In addition, for the compounds tested, except for 2-phenoxyethanol, the concentrations necessary to induce significant killing of bacterial cells were significantly higher than those routinely present in US licensed vaccine/biological preparations. None of the compounds commonly used as preservatives in US licensed vaccine/biological preparations can be considered an ideal preservative, and their ability to fully comply with the requirements of the US Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) for preservatives is in doubt. Future formulations of US licensed vaccines/biologics should be produced in aseptic manufacturing plants as single dose preparations, eliminating the need for preservatives and an unnecessary risk to patients. Abstract: PubMed
Geier DA et al; Med Sci Monit 16 (5): SR21-7 (2010)
Egg use for Flu Vaccine
http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/notes/h1n1_vaccine_20090806/en/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/pharmaceuticalsandchemicals/11138586/how-a-flu-vaccine-is-made-from-chicken-egg-to-syringe.html

Cell culture use for Flu Vaccine

Increased incidence of Autism and other neurological problems.

 

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