Philadelphia: Walking over the graves of American history

     Recently 5,000 delegates from all over America attended a Netroots Nation convention in Philadelphia -- and one of those delegates was me.  And the proudest moment of that entire convention was when all 5,000 of us took to the streets and marched on City Hall to protest the fact that Honduran babies and little kids were being kept in cages like criminals -- not only at our southern borders but also even right here at Philadelphia's Berks Detention Center -- right in the beating heart of the City of Brotherly Love. 

     Remember back several years ago when football player Michael Vick became a national villain when he was accused of being mean to dogs and keeping them in cages?  Nation-wide outcry!  "Vick is mean to dogs!" 

     But now, when our very own government goes about caging human children, where is the outcry?  Vick is a villain -- and yet Trump is a hero?  Vick cages 50 dogs and get punished for it -- but Trump cages thousands of children and gets completely away with it?  Say what?

      After the protest march, I trudged off through the streets of Philly, just soaking in the ambiance of all that historic "Cradle of Freedom" stuff.  At Independence Hall, I met up with my guide for a walking tour of where Black history also took place back during Revolutionary times -- and right there in the very center of the Cradle of Liberty itself, our tour group stumbled upon a sweet, idealistic and hopeful group of young middle-school girls, standing next to the very place where John Hancock had signed the Declaration of Independence.  And these girls were holding up signs protesting the caging of children in America today.

     Wow!

     My first thought at seeing those signs was, "Geez Louise, America has really degenerated from fighting for Philadelphia Freedom in 1776 to behaving like Nazis in 2019."

     But by the time the Black History tour ended, I sadly realized that America had always kept kids in cages.  This current atrocity of keeping kids in cages was actually nothing new.  Our heroic ancestors had caged Black children first.

     Then our guide took us off to see a statue of Robert Morris, the man who almost single-handedly financed the American Revolution.  "He got his wealth by kidnapping people from Africa, submitting them to the horrors of the Middle Passage and then selling them on the auction block here."  And Morris treated Black children even worse than Michael Vick treated his dogs.  Much worse.

     So I wrote the word "Slaver!" on a Post-it note and pasted it onto the base of Morris's statue, telling the whole world the truth about him.  But then someone told me that there were cameras all over that area, spying on us tourists -- so I went back and took the Post-it note down.  So much for freedom of speech anywhere near Independence Hall.

     Next our tour group moved off to Washington Park.  "5,000 slaves died in Philadelphia during the infamous yellow fever epidemic of 1793.  Many of them are buried right here.  In unmarked graves.  You are standing on them right now."

     5,000 slaves.  5,000 Netroots Nation protestors.  Maybe we have come a long way toward Freedom after all.  Let us hope.

PS:  I just read where one Honduran mother had been finally reunited with her 14-month-old baby after 85 days, only to discover that her infant was covered with -- wait for it -- lice!  Yuck.  https://www.huffpost.com/entry/migrant-baby-returned-to-mom-covered-with-lice-lawsuit_n_5b401388e4b07b827cc07d3c 

     What kind of sick storm-trooper mentality allows those in charge of such hellholes as slave markets, Dachau, Abu Graib, Gaza and America's southern border to even begin to think that their behavior is acceptable?

     It's the herd mentality.

     "If the guy next to me is happily kidnapping babies, then it must be okay for me to also kidnap babies too."  Just google the "Stanford Prison Experiment" to see how that works -- or never mind.  I've googled it for you.  https://www.psychologistworld.com/influence-personality/stanford-prison-experiment

     Let's get this straight.  No matter what kind of weird shite the guy next to you is up to, it is never okay to be a mean sadistic bastard.  History has proved this time and again.  So.  Let's stop all this criminal inhumane madness.  Stop it now.  Or else history will be walking over our graves as well.

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Stop Wall Street and War Street from destroying our world.   And while you're at it, please buy my books.  https://www.amazon.com/Jane-Stillwater/e/B00IW6O1RM

"H-e-e-e-l-p!!!": Syria, Ilhan Omar and Netroots Nation

       While walking down a busy street in Philadelphia the other day after attending the Netroots Nation convention, I rounded a corner and there was Bernie Sanders -- giving a speech to a crowd of protestors who were angry because their only accessible hospital was being torn down by a Los Angeles developer in order to make way for said developer's upscale condominium project.  "800 pregnant women are going to have no place to give birth," said Bernie. And cancer patients who are in the middle of receiving their chemo treatments will be thrown out on the street, death swirling around their poor sweet hairless heads.  Yikes!

     At the Netroots Nation convention itself, I had a wonderful time, learned a lot about politics and even came back home with a bunch of free ballpoint pens.  What's not to like!  I even got to hear Senator Warren, Governor Inslee, Mayor Castro, Senator Gillibrand and most of "The Squad" speak (AOC couldn't make it).  And I'm here to tell you that Ilhan Omar can really walk fast.  She covered the space between the speakers' platform and the elevator in an even shorter time than it takes The Donald to tweet out yet another blatant hit on our morality and our paychecks.

     I also went to a Netroots symposium put on by the LGBTQ community -- wherein I learned just how nice, vulnerable, friendly and well-informed that Queers can be.  They took me under their wings, opened my eyes, gave me a glimpse into how life in the Gay Lane can be -- and even provided free lunch.  Philly cheese steaks.  Never had it before.  Never want to have it again.  Shredded beef slathered with Velveeta?  No thank you.  Even if it is free.

     I was also lucky enough to hear Ilhan Omar speak to a small roomful of conference attendees and then take questions after.  I, of course, just had to ask a question too.  But which one?  There are so many questions these days.  Death in the Middle East, death in the gulags at our southern border, death in our homeless encampments, death by fire and flood due to climate emergencies....

     I got up to the mic, cleared my throat and said, "700 billion dollars a year to the Pentagon.  Seven billion people on Earth.  Do the math.  Let's give each and every one of us a thousand dollars per year instead of wasting all that money on murder and bombs!  Every single year.  1,000 dollars in our pockets.  Then and only then will America be safe!"  Who would want to harm the goose that is laying all these golden eggs for everyone?  

      But was that an actual question?

      C'mon, Jane.  Think of an actual question.  Ilhan Omar herself is listening!  But I was drawing a blank.  Finally I just blurted out, "The Syrian people love President Assad because he kept their country from becoming another Libya!"  Now where did that come from?  Then I turned to the room and cried "He-e-e-e-e-l-p!!"  Help us, Netroots Nation.  Help us, Rep. Omar.  Help us, all you moral Americans and moral people of the world who are kind people and have good hearts.  Help us from being destroyed by greedy billionaires, condo developers, racists and murderous war mongers who just love to create collateral damage.

      But then at least I didn't totally embarrass myself by screaming "Blue Meanies!"

     After my impassioned plea, however, someone came up to me later and started ranting that Assad was a dictator who bombed a million of his own people.  No, he didn't.  America, the Zionists and the Saudis did that -- with a little help from their "rebel" friends in al Qaeda.  "It's well-documented," I added.  Boy, did that piss this person off.  Wrong answer.  I finally managed to escape to the restroom to lick my (psychological) wounds.  https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-waiting-for-new-idlib-offensive-us-continues-to-provide-syria-rebels-with-weapons-and-military-supplies/5683916

      Later, in downtown Philly, I got to chatting with a young U.S. Marine.  "I will be deploying to Syria in August," he said.  What?  See?  I was right!  It is those pesky Americans who are causing trouble in Syria.  I rest my case!  But at least he doesn't have to worry about being bombarded with Philly cheese steaks over there.  They don't have cheese steaks in Syria!  Yet.  But let's just wait and see what else the Blue Meanies are gonna be up to after August.

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Stop Wall Street and War Street from destroying our world.   And while you're at it, please buy my books.  https://www.amazon.com/Jane-Stillwater/e/B00IW6O1RM

Your vaccine preservatives: The gifts that never stop giving

     Wait, what?  Pharmaceutical companies now have vaccine commercials running on our TVs -- right next to all those other phony drug propaganda campaigns?  "Ask your doctor if this vaccine is right for your child...."  Except now there's another weird twist to their game. 

     At the end of all those other drug commercials that we are forced to watch, there comes a point where some trust-worthy-sounding voice-over guy is spozed to tell us what the side-effects are.  You know what I'm talking about, right?  And yet what actually follows in Big Pharma's new vaccine commercials is just dead airtime.  Total silence.  What?  No side effects are even mentioned?  No side-effects even exist?  Nothing could ever possibly go wrong?  Really?  Not even an "Ouch" from your baby?  How can that possibly be? 

      It's because our very own CDC has actually passed a law telling us that vaccines never have to list their side-effects.  Never.  Huh?  https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article24913978.html

    But does objecting to all this new false reality automatically make me one of those ostracized media-lepers with the dread label of "Anti-Vaxxer"?  No, no, no and no.  Truth be told, I actually sort of like vaccines.

    So many horrible and deadly diseases have been prevented due to the wonderful invention of vaccines.  If they had been around at the time of Columbus, for instance, approximately 20 million "New World" natives wouldn't have died painfully from small pox.

     And just imagine how different medieval Europe would have been if GlaxoSmithKline, Merck or Pfizer had just come up with a vaccine against Black Plague back in the day.

     And the reason that I myself haven't spent most of my life vegetating in some gross Iron Lung or limping around with a withered arm or shrunken leg is because someone invented a polio vaccine.

     However, my own polio vaccine was administered orally.  And my small pox vaccine was administered topically.  But that was old-school  For most vaccines nowadays you get shots -- shots that go directly into your bloodstream.  72 different doses of injected vaccines are currently required for our babies and little kids alone.  72 doses going directly into their cute little bloodstreams, each one swimming in a preservative usually consisting of aluminum, formaldehyde and one of the main ingredients in "Round Up".

     That's gotta hurt.

     But, wait.  That's not even anywhere near the end of us getting shot up.  There's even more shots to come!  Now the pharmaceutical industry informs us that we also gotta have a measles booster every five years and a flu shot every winter for the rest of our lives.

     None of that bothers me however.  I've already been given the polio vaccine and the small pox vaccine.  And I've already actually had the mumps, chicken pox and measles.  I don't need flu shots because I never get the flu.  I'm good.  I never have to be injected with sleazy vaccine fillers and preservatives for the rest of my life.  The pharmaceutical industry hates people like me.  We are not their gift that keeps on giving.

     But our children and grandchildren are.

     And apparently Americans can live with that.

    But suppose -- just suppose -- that those gross fillers and preservatives in vaccines do cause autism, altzheimers, eczema, multiple sclerosis, androgyny, Parkinson's, ADHD, increased auto-immune diseases, the sudden and weird increase in "childhood cancer" and a whole list of other health issues that have cropped up so heavily since 1989, the year that Congress allowed vaccine manufacturers to become far less regulated and leashed.  Shouldn't we be just a little bit upset that no research is being done on possible side effects?  That we just take Big Pharma at its word?  Seriously? https://thevaccinereaction.org/2019/06/a-nation-where-half-of-the-children-become-autistic/

     Everyone gets their knickers all in a twist because certain breakfast cereals may contain a Round-Up ingredient -- yet no one seems to care when we pump this same dangerous ingredient into our babies' bloodstreams?  What's up with that?  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/glyphosate-breakfast-cereal-still-contains-roundup-ingredient-study-finds/

     And we are all sternly warned not to cook with aluminum foil due to health risks -- and yet aluminum is still a major preservative in those vaccines that are shot right into our helpless babies' veins on the very day they are born and then for the rest of their lives -- but nobody seems to mind about that either?  We live in a very strange world.  https://www.healthyandnaturalworld.com/aluminum-foil-risks/

      But even if Congress actually did force Big Pharma to finally allow science to actually do any research on the side-effects of vaccines' preservatives -- and even if this research did prove that Round-Up, aluminum and formaldehyde actually did have side-effects when shot directly into the human bloodstream, none of this research would effect me.  I'm safe.  Your babies aren't safe.  You yourself aren't safe.  But I am.  I'll never be required to get another shot.  Or be guilt-tripped, shamed or brainwashed into getting any more shots either.

     Vaccine fillers and preservatives are truly the gifts that keep on giving -- to Big Pharma only, over 60 billion dollars in profits recently.  But all we get are...shot. 

     Shouldn't we be doing something about this disaster?  If nothing else, for instance, let's demand that pharmaceutical companies invent vaccines we can swallow instead of getting shot with.  Chocolate flavored vaccines?  Sure, why not.

PS:  Let's suppose, just suppose for one minute, that the rapid increases in all these miserable diseases that currently effect us actually are the result of all those yucky fillers and preservatives gleefully administered to you in a constant life-long parade of vaccine shots?  Drug companies would be (and are) totally delighted with that situation too.  Now almost every single red-blooded American in this great land will now constantly require ADHD medications, eczema creams, Alzheimer pills, heart medications and on and on and on.  Endlessly.  Drug profits through the roof!  Better run out and buy stock.

PPS:  I actually have done some of my own personal (sort of) scientific research on this subject.  For instance, one of my daughters received the MMR vaccine and immediately developed eczema -- which she still has to this day, 30 years later.  Yuck.  https://thevaccinereaction.org/2019/06/another-mmr-failure-with-mumps-outbreak-in-florida/

     Further personal research:  I also gotta confess that I actually did get vaccinated a few more times -- with disastrous results.  When I went into the Peace Corps back in 2009, they forced me to get a whole bunch of shots.  "Either that or you go home."  Oh.  Okay.  Just like all those thousands of American soldiers who were forced to get all kinds of shots during Bush Senior's dirty little Gulf "war" -- and who later got all kinds of horrible life-long reactions as a result.

     The good news?  Thanks to the Peace Corps I am now theoretically protected from catching rabies, hepatitis A and B, meningitis, diphtheria and tetanus -- plus I also shot up with vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella and polio (which I'd already had) for good measure.  The bad news?  I passed out cold after each shot -- and then became so disoriented over the next few months that they had to ship me back home anyway. 
It was almost like having Altzheimers -- or being autistic.

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Stop Wall Street and War Street from destroying our world.   And while you're at it, please buy my books.  https://www.amazon.com/Jane-Stillwater/e/B00IW6O1RM