Jesus said, "Recognize what is in your sight, and that which is hidden from you will become plain to you . For there is nothing hidden which will not become manifest." Gospel of Thomas (5)
Dr Reiner Fuellmich is an international trial lawyer who has successfully sued large fraudulent corporations like Volkswagen and Deutsche Bank. In 1993, he has been an attorney in Germany and was also admitted to the Bar in California in 1994.
In July 2020 he co-founded the Berlin Corona Investigative Committee, investigating the legitimacy and global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. They have collected undeniable evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic is in fact a planned criminal operation. According to Dr. Fuellmich, a second Nuremberg trial may be needed, to prosecute all who are complicit in this unprecedented crime against humanity.
We are learning how our medical systems is corrupt and causing death. This Medical Professor calls out his own industry and tells you everything you need to know to avoid big pharma.
This lady trusted the medical community
They were not following the science
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci testifies during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies hearing, on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 17, 2022. (Shawn Thew/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
Health officials have been making headlines in the news for their recent comments that seem to be reversing previous COVID-19 public health messages.
Both Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and former White House COVID-19 advisor Dr. Deborah Birx, admitted that the COVID-19 vaccines are not particularly capable at preventing infection, reversing previous COVID-19 narratives that asserted the vaccine prevented disease acquisition and transmission.
Birx said on Fox News July 22, that she “knew these vaccines were not going to protect against infection…I think we overplayed the vaccines.”
This is a significant fallback considering that she promoted Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines when both were granted emergency use authorization in late 2020.
“This is one of the most highly-effective vaccines we have in our infectious disease arsenal. And so that’s why I’m very enthusiastic about the vaccine,” Birx said on an ABC podcast at the time.
On that podcast, she made no mention of concerns the vaccines might not protect against infection.
Fauci and Birx also made statements showing their “open” minds regarding a laboratory leak as a possible explanation for the original source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
It appears that the messaging around COVID-19 health policies is opening up, or is it?
Dr. Anthony Fauci, left, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases speaks next to response coordinator for White House Coronavirus Task Force Dr. Deborah Birx, during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on April 29, 2020. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
Changing Narrative Around COVID-19 Vaccines
Public health messaging regarding effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines has shifted throughout the two years of the pandemic.
“I think the whole COVID-19 vaccine program was over promised and it was too broadly applied. No vaccine against respiratory illness has been very effective in the history of medicine,” Dr. Peter McCullough, cardiologist and co-author of The Courage to Face COVID-19 told The Epoch Times during a phone call.
He reasoned that the reversals by Fauci and Birx were to negate the broad claims health officials made at the start of the pandemic.
McCullough said that there were three major false claims in the overall COVID-19 vaccine narrative.
“The first claim was that the vaccine would stop the virus and people wouldn’t get sick if they got the virus. That’s never happened with an influenza vaccine or pneumococcal vaccine,” McCullough said.
Even the American President Joe Biden claimed that the vaccine stopped people from getting COVID-19. His comments were later fact-checked by the Associated Press for exaggeration.
“The next false claim is that the vaccines would stop transmission,” said McCullough.
In a statement released on March 2021, a few months after the initial vaccine rollout, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated that the vaccination program “interrupted chains of transmission.”
However, papers were soon published showing that the amount of virus detected in vaccinated and unvaccinated people was the same. Since viral load is analogous to infectiousness, this finding indicated that transmission rates would be same regardless of vaccination status.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, answers questions during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing to examine the federal response to COVID-19 and new emerging variants at Capitol Hill in Washington, on Jan. 11, 2022. (Greg Nash/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
McCullough said that health officials are now down to their last few false claims including that the vaccines prevent hospitalization and death.
In the approval announcement for the Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine, the Food and Drug Administration wrote that “the vaccine is effective in preventing COVID-19 and potentially serious outcomes including hospitalization and death.”
In New South Wales, a state in Australia, over 96 percent of people over 16-years-old have received two COVID-19 vaccine doses, of which, 69 percent have received a third dose. However, the state’s health statistics show that the majority of hospitalization, ICU admissions, and deaths have occurred in the vaccinated demographic (pdf), with the majority occurring in people who had three or four vaccinations.
“There’s never been a randomized trial where hospitalization and death have been reduced by the vaccine…the only thing we’ve had is a series of biased papers that don’t account for prior immunity or for early treatment [which reduces hospitalization and death],” said McCullough.
Despite findings from other countries that indicate that the vaccine may not be reducing hospitalization and mortality risks, this claim has persisted in the United States.
Dr. Pierre Kory, a pulmonologist and critical care specialist, and the president and chief medical officer of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, gave an anecdotal explanation for why the hospitalization agenda is still going strong.
“When a patient enters a hospital and they show their [COVID-19] vaccine card…although they (the hospital) will enter the data of the vaccine card, it’s (the vaccination status is) buried in a nursing note. On the main screen, which categorizes them as vaccinated or unvaccinated, in many of the systems they go in as unknown,” Kory told The Epoch Times.
The few patients that do get submitted as “vaccinated” are those that got vaccinated by a doctor in that healthcare system.
“So I will tell you that the vast majority of patients in the hospital have an unknown vaccination status, and that’s interpreted as unvaccinated, and that is why the CDC is constantly pumping out this data showing all this protection…I cannot prove that, although I’ve seen that with my own eyes, and I have colleagues who’ve seen it.”
A major narrative of COVID-19 vaccines that has seen changes is vaccine efficacy.
When initially released, both Pfizer and Moderna promised over 95 percent efficacy, with over 90 percent efficacy in stopping COVID-19 transmission and symptomatic infection 6 months after the second dose.
However, once the Delta and Omicron variants emerged, the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines waned dramatically.
Studies found that up to 6 months after the second dose, the efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine against symptomatic infections dropped to 80 percent. Moderna dropped from 74 percent efficacy against the Alpha variant to 67 percent for Delta.
Once the Omicron variant arose, studies showed that efficacy against symptomatic infections fell to negative values six months after receiving two doses of either Moderna or Pfizer vaccines.
Comparing immunity between previous infection and Moderna vaccination, blue is previous infection, green is two doses, and red is three doses, according to data Weill Cornell Medicine–Qatar (The Epoch Times)Comparing immunity between previous infection and Pfizer vaccination, blue is previous infection, green is two doses, and red is three doses, according to data Weill Cornell Medicine–Qatar (The Epoch Times)
Backtracking on COVID-19 Messaging
Apart from vaccine usage, Fauci’s recent media commentary also contradicted previous messages on vaccine safety and COVID-19 immunity.
Both Fauci and Birx recently made news when they conceding that the vaccines were not very effective at preventing infection.
Fauci admitted that the vaccines do not protect “overly well,” against infection, though he argued that it offered good protection against severe disease.
Birx implied that the researchers knew from the beginning that the vaccine was not very effective at protecting against infection.
Kory said he was surprised at Birx’s admission, calling her concession a “small crack in their very consistent narrative.”
“They’ve employed multiple narratives, but this actually does backtrack on one of the original narratives…they’ve been saying for several months that the vaccines protected [against the virus], and now to hear that they knew that they weren’t, I think that’s pretty remarkable.”
“Well, the menstrual thing is something that seems to be quite transient and temporary, that’s one of the points,” Fauci said in an appearance on Fox News on July 25. “We need to study it more.”
His comments drew criticisms from obstetricians and gynecologists who have been observing severe cases of menstrual irregularities.
Dr. Christiane Northrup, a former fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists accused Fauci of discounting “the experience of thousands of women,” by dismissing the cases with “we need to study it more.”
“Unfortunately the menstrual problems we are seeing are far from transient and temporary. Many women have been bleeding daily or having heavy, irregular, painful periods for an entire year. And some of these are well past menopause. Something is way off here,” she told The Epoch Times.
Kory speculated that Fauci’s small admissions are “tactical,” and dismissive rather than a sign to engage in open, and honest scientific discussion.
“I still think it’s in the service of covering up this catastrophe. They’ve been dead wrong on innumerable policies,” Kory said. “I don’t see this as any concerted effort to be more honest or to show more integrity.”
McCullough speculated that officials are “backtracking because they know that the data are overwhelming refuting the false claims, and that public opinion has turned against the vaccines.”
Congress and Senate inquiries into vaccine safety have also exerted pressure on the health agencies.
Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) released a statement on March 24, 2022 announcing that he had sent 36 letters to the federal health agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), FDA, CDC, and NIAID health officials on vaccine oversight.
McCullough disclosed that Johnson has since sent many more letters but has been “stonewalled” by the health agencies.
The same day the interview with Fox News was released, Fauci was also seen making a surprising acknowledgement on The Hill that natural immunity indeed protects against COVID-19, despite strong assertions from the CDC presenting vaccinated immunity as preferential and better.
“We were always aware that if you get infected, you have a degree of protection against reinfection,” Fauci remarked in the video released on July 25.
He later said that the protection afforded by natural immunity and vaccination “wanes over a period of time,” which is “very, very different” from other infections like polio, smallpox, and measles.
Fauci claimed that individuals who have been infected and vaccinated have the best protection, describing that phenomenon as “hybrid immunity.”
Dr. Tracy Høeg, a physician based in California and an consultant epidemiologist for the Department of Health in Florida, tweeted on June 23, 2022 that the NEJM shows that “natural immunity (A) provides greater protection than vax (B) against future infection, but it [the study] calls into question the very idea of “hybrid immunity;” an extra vax dose (C) doesn’t seem to add much to nat[ural] immunity.”
Kory argued that despite Fauci’s shift in narrative from vaccinated immunity to hybrid immunity, the messaging “hasn’t changed.”
“[Rochelle] Walensky and Fauci have long been saying they believe that vaccination plus natural immunity is better than natural immunity. That’s not new.”
Laboratory technicians speak while working on samples to be tested for COVID-19 at a BGI laboratory in Wuhan, China, on Feb. 6, 2020. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)
Opening Up to Lab Theory and Lockdown Contradictions
Fauci also made other contradictory statements about keeping an “open mind” over claims that the SARS-CoV-2 virus may have leaked from a Chinese lab, despite long-standing assertions that the virus was of natural origin.
“We have an open mind but it looks very much like this was a natural occurrence, but you keep an open mind,” Fauci told Fox News on July 23.
“First of all, I didn’t recommend locking anything down,” Fauci said on the show, suggesting it had been a recommendation from the CDC.
However, in October 2020, Fauci publicly recommended that former President Donald Trump “shut the whole country down,” although it’s not clear what he meant, as presidents don’t have the authority to enact sweeping lockdowns.
“When it became clear that we had community spread in the country … I recommended to the President that we shut the country down,” he said in an event with students at the College of the Holy Cross in October 2020.
Fauci also publicly suggested multiple times in 2020 that bars and restaurants should remain closed, then arguing that there was a binary choice between opening schools or bars.
“You have a choice—either close the bars or close the schools. Because, if you have people congregating in bars, it’s likely you’re going to stay red,” the longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said in November 2020.
Parents, teachers, and students protest mask and vaccine mandates in Temecula, Calif., on Feb. 22, 2022. (Courtesy of Stephanie Dawson)
Shift in Public Opinion and Policies For the Future
McCullough says he is observing changes in both public and professional discourse surrounding COVID-19 health policies and is hopeful that more changes are coming.
“I don’t see any celebration of the vaccines. None. There’s health freedom rallies going on all over the United States where people are advocating for their civil liberties…No one is out there advocating for the vaccines,” McCullough said.
“The very low uptake of childhood and young adult vaccination, I think is a proxy for Americans being very concerned about the lack of safety and the lack of justification for these vaccines,” said McCullough.
He also observed shifts in public opinion and guidelines on early treatment.
Since the start of the pandemic, McCullough and Kory have been active advocates for using ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as early treatments to prevent COVID-19 disease. Despite the CDC and the FDA pronouncing these drugs unsafe and not beneficial, emerging studies from other countries have found these off-label use drugs are remarkably beneficial in controlling COVID-19.
“The message on early treatment has gotten out. It largely was responsible for taking us off that big peak that we had in January of 2021,” said McCullough. “The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons is now coming up on two years of having a home treatment guide (pdf).”
However, McCullough argues that it may be too early to see big changes in health policies and reversal of previous decisions.
“This is very similar to the relationship between smoking and lung cancer. There was data that existed for about 40 years as originally proposed by Sir Austin Bradford Hill, an epidemiologist, who said, by good criteria, that smoking is causative for lung cancer. It was about 40 years before there was finally capitulation recognition,” said McCullough.
“The same is true with the vaccine program. We’re into our second year of it; it’s a complete failure. It’s causing great harm…and I anticipate it’s just too early for recognition and stopping the public harm.”
McCullough expected a shift in talking points as health agencies rollout “second generation” COVID-19 vaccines, stating that the second generation vaccines are going to be better and safer than the first.
Kory, however, was not optimistic for major changes.
“[Healthcare] agencies are largely working in the service of vaccine manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies. So repurposed drugs…have long been the natural enemy, essentially of the pharmaceutical industry, and they have spent decades attacking repurposed drugs,” Kory said.
“I have no evidence that that system is going to change…I would be shocked to see that the agencies support a repurposed drug.”
McCullough said that doctors are also catching wind of the inconsistencies in public health messaging. A survey conducted on 737 primary care physicians in the United States in May 2021 found that 10 percent of physicians were ‘not confident’ in vaccines in general and less than 10 percent reported ‘somewhat to no confidence’ in Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
Physicians reporting ‘low confidence’ at around 30 percent for the J&J vaccine.
Nonetheless, a survey by the American Medical Association (AMA) showed that over 96 percent of doctors have received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.
“The vast majority of doctors were tricked into taking the vaccine. They want to believe that it’s safe…that it’s effective…so the doctors are having a hard time recognizing vaccine injuries because of the psychological fear of them understanding that the vaccine is in their body,” concluded McCullough.
Zachary Stieber, Jack Phillips, Enrico Trigoso, and Rita Li contributed to this report.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Epoch Health welcomes professional discussion and friendly debate. To submit an opinion piece, please follow these guidelines and submit through our form here.
Congressman Thomas Massie clarifies the vaccine given to the military was not the Comirnaty vaccine approved by FDA but the Experimental vaccine that does not work.
“The President himself is contagious right now … So I just take a little bit of issue, that we are in a congressional markup still perpetuating this falsehood (that the shot stops the spread) that was propagated by the pharmaceutical companies …”
“I am absolutely saying that what the Secretary of Defense is doing right now is illegal. We know it. I would characterize it as a crime in progress … The emergency use authorization vaccine is all they’ve received, not a single member of the military has received the FDA-approved version
Hologram portals revealed. We have been duped far to long and this is how they do it.
Still believe everything you see? Question everything.
NASA insider explains how deep the space hoax goes and how they maintain their manipulation.
Everything is a Rich Man’s Trick is a documentary that explains the world is not as it seems.
Ordinary men and women are to small minded to govern their own affairs
This video has been deleted from every platform (including google) years ago.
9-Year-Old Dies Two Weeks After Taking COVID-19 Vaccine: VAERS
By Enrico Trigoso
August 2, 2022Updated: August 2, 2022
The most recent VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) data shows that a 9-year-old died in California two weeks after getting one dose of a Pfizer-BioNTech jab.
The female child had no listed preexisting conditions and was not hospitalized.
She experienced 2-3 days of “stomach ache, sore throat and chest pain; two weeks after receiving the vaccination,” the database states.
According to OpenVAERS, “VAERS is the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System put in place in 1990. It is a voluntary reporting system that has been estimated to account for only 1% of vaccine injuries.”
The VAERS system is designed to send safety warnings on vaccines, but its reports are unverified and “cannot be interpreted as evidence of a causal association between a vaccine and an adverse event,” according to its disclaimer.
Increase in Pediatric Adverse Reactions
Lawrence B. Palevsky, MD, a pediatrician, told The Epoch Times that he has been reading about “an increasing number of reported adverse reactions, and deaths, in the pediatric population soon after the administration of these injections. Unfortunately, they go unreported, and are tossed aside as having nothing to do with the COVID injections.”
“Before the implementation of the COVID injection into the pediatric population, it was uncommon to witness a healthy 9-year-old, without any medical conditions, simply die, out of the blue, for no apparent reason,” Palevsky said.
“Today, we are hearing many more stories about children of all ages simply dying, out of the blue, with no other medical conditions, other than a recent history of having received the COVID injections. Unfortunately, in today’s culture, and in the dominant narrative, it is inconceivable and unfathomable that COVID injections which we are told were tested for safety and effectiveness by our supposedly trusted authorities, would have any adverse reactions to the point of causing children, and adults, to die.”
Palevsky thinks that the COVID vaccines should have been studied and proven not to cause harm before being mandated on people, and especially on children who, he thinks, “makes no sense” to administer to, since they are not in serious danger from COVID.
“Sadly, this child will be buried, and no one in a position of authority will investigate whether [her] death was related to an adverse reaction to the COVID injection. And, even if there is an investigation, you won’t hear any news that [her] death was, in fact, related to an adverse reaction to the COVID injection, as has been the sad case for so many who have died, unnecessarily, before [her],” Palevsky said.
CDC Exaggerated COVID’s Threat to Children
On June 23, The director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) falsely said that COVID-19 has been one of the five top causes of death for children since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In addition, in March, the CDC removed tens of thousands of deaths linked to COVID-19, including nearly a quarter of deaths it had listed in those under 18 years old.
The health agency quietly made the change on its data tracker website on March 15.
The Epoch Times reached out to Pfizer and the CDC for comment.
Ashli Babbitt Was Murdered Under the Color of Authority on January 6: Use-of-Force Expert
By Joseph M. Hanneman
July 25, 2022Updated: July 25, 2022
Ashli Babbitt, the 35-year-old Air Force veteran shot outside the U.S. Capitol Speaker’s Lobby by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd on January 6, 2021, was “murdered … under the color of authority,” a use-of-force expert concludes after reviewing video footage of the incident.
Just prior to 2:45 p.m. on January 6, Ashli Babbitt began climbing through the side window leading into the Speaker’s Lobby and was shot in the left anterior shoulder by Byrd. She was pronounced dead a half-hour later at MedStar Washington Hospital Center.
Stan Kephart, who has testified in court more than 350 times as an expert witness on policing issues, reviewed the shooting in the new Epoch TV documentary, “The Real Story of Jan. 6.” The film is streaming on Epoch TV.
Kephart is a 42-year law enforcement veteran and former director of security for the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics. He has testified on topics including excessive force, police discipline, officer safety, and crowd control.
“My conclusion … based on what I saw and observed in the video clips is that Ashli Babbitt was murdered,” Kephart said.
“She was shot and killed under color of authority by an officer who violated not only the law but his oath and committed an arrestable offense,” Kephart said.
Police use-of-force expert Stan Kephart is interviewed for the Epoch TV documentary, “The Real Story of Jan. 6” on June 2, 2022. (Tal Atzmon/The Epoch Times)
Kephart said he saw nothing in the video evidence to indicate Byrd should have felt his life was in danger or that he was at risk of serious harm from the 5-foot 2-inch, 110-pound San Diego woman wrapped in a Trump flag.
“In order for lethal force to be authorized, the officer has to be able to articulate that he or she was in fear of losing his life, was about to be killed, or grievously injured,” Kephart said in the documentary. “There is nothing I saw in that film that would indicate that was possible or probable from what unfolded.”
Byrd’s attorney, Mark Schamel, in a statement to The Epoch Times called Kephart’s conclusion “unsupported and erroneous,” saying the Lieutenant was justified in the use of force.
“When Ms. Babbitt entered through the broken window and entered the inner protected area, wearing a backpack and refusing the verbal commands of multiple armed federal officers with weapons drawn, the threat she posed was clear and Lt. Byrd, as the first officer in the final line of defense, was absolutely justified in his use of force.”
The exact moment Lt. Michael Byrd fires on unarmed Ashli Babbitt, killing her. Byrd was cleared despite never doing a formal Internal Affairs interview about the shooting. (Jayden X/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
Aaron Babbitt, Ashli’s husband, said Kephart reached the same conclusion as other law enforcement experts, including former New York City police commissioners Bernard Kerik and Ray Kelly.
“I loved hearing that from him. He’s obviously well-versed in the use of force,” Babbitt told The Epoch Times, referring to Kephart. “He’s clearly a very smart man who has been in that business for a long time. He should be listened to.”
Ashli Babbitt with Bella, one of her treasured dogs, at home in San Diego. (Courtesy of Aaron Babbitt)
Babbitt disputed Schamel’s claim that his wife “refused” verbal commands from Byrd or anyone else. He questioned why Byrd was wearing a COVID face covering if he hoped to be heard shouting instructions.
“Witness testimony I’ve read, police included, said they heard no warning,” Babbitt said, adding that if they thought the situation was serious enough for deadly force, “the mask should probably come off your face. Complete disregard for human life and not following the use-of-force continuum.”
Video shot by political activist John “Jayden X” Sullivan through the Speaker’s Lobby windows shows Byrd had his finger on the trigger of his Glock pistol before Babbitt ever appeared in the window. He then removed his finger from the trigger for a short time before advancing on the open window and firing as Babbitt started to lean through.
Babbitt’s killing still hangs like a dark cloud over January 6. Questions remain about her death, even after the June 2022 release of a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) report that concluded there was insufficient evidence that Byrd used excessive force when he shot the unarmed Babbitt as she attempted to climb through a broken window.
Kephart said Byrd should have written a firearms discharge report immediately after the shooting. Byrd declined to give a statement to Internal Affairs detectives and was never formally interviewed before eventually being cleared of wrongdoing.
According to a June 2022 DOJ report, Byrd agreed to a “voluntary debrief and walk-through of the scene” with his attorney in late January 2021, in which he stated if the “mob of rioters” outside the Speaker’s Lobby gained entry, “it wasn’t going to go well.”
‘I Had No Clue’
In a 2021 interview with Lester Holt on NBC, Byrd said he could not see into the Speaker’s Lobby hallway through the glass, did not know if the person climbing into the window was male or female, and could not tell if the person had anything in their hands.
“It’s impossible for me to see what’s on the other side because we had created such a barricade, and it was high enough that the visibility was impossible,” Byrd said. He said he did not know there were three Capitol Police officers standing with their backs to the entry doors.
U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd was in command of police in the U.S. House chamber on Jan. 6, 2021. (Judicial Watch)
Byrd said police “were essentially trapped” in the lobby, and “there was nowhere to retreat” because entrances were barricaded. “It sounded like hundreds of people outside of that door,” he said. Byrd said he repeatedly shouted for people to get back—”I was yelling at the top of my lungs”—but added it was possible that could not be heard in the hallway.
When Holt asked Byrd if he knew whom he shot, Byrd replied: “I had no clue. I didn’t even know it was a female until hours way later, sometime later on that night.” He said he only found out later that Babbitt had no weapon. “There was no way to know that at that time,” he said. “I could not fully see her hands or what was in the backpack or what the intentions of…”
“I know based on my training and my policy, what I did was appropriate,” Byrd said.
Kephart said the shooting should have been evaluated using a litmus test from the 1989 U.S. Supreme Court case Graham v. Connor: whether force was ever needed and appropriate in the situation, the extent of the injury, and “whether the force was applied in a good-faith manner to maintain and restore discipline, or maliciously and sadistically.”
The DOJ report on the shooting was released in June by Judicial Watch, which sued the DOJ for January 6 case records.
“After a thorough review of the facts and circumstances in this case, there is insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Lt. Byrd violated Ms. McEntee’s (sic) civil rights by willfully using more force than was reasonably necessary, or was not acting in self-defense or the defense of others,” reads the undated 14-page document. The report referred to Babbitt by her previous married name. She married Aaron Babbitt in 2019.
Kephart said the standard set by the Supreme Court in Graham v. Connor does not refer to “willfully” using more force than necessary. “…They inserted willfully above knowingly, which is at best contradictory, and worst, disingenuous,” Kephart told The Epoch Times in an email.
Although Byrd refused to give a formal statement to investigators, the DOJ concluded that his apparent belief that Babbitt posed an imminent, potentially deadly threat was “reasonable.”
Ashli Babbitt (upper right) begins to fall back after being shot by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd on January 6, 2021. (Sam Montoya/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
About five hours after the shooting, Byrd met with Internal Affairs detectives from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, which investigated the shooting on behalf of the U.S. Capitol Police. He said he wanted to consult an attorney first. Byrd never made a formal statement to Internal Affairs investigators.
In his statement to The Epoch Times, Schamel, Byrd’s attorney, said “actual experts who train federal agents and officers in the use of force have described Lt. Byrd’s conduct as exemplary.”
Investigative Reports
A Metropolitan Police Department Internal Affairs investigator who reviewed video footage from Capitol security cameras from just before Babbitt was shot reported, “Ms. Babbitt does not appear to be carrying anything in her hands,” according to an internal police report released by Judicial Watch.
One U.S. Capitol Police sergeant who was in the Speaker’s Lobby when Babbitt was shot told Internal Affairs investigators at the time of the shooting “there was a lot of screaming” and “I heard somebody screaming, ‘Get back, get back,’ ” an Internal Affairs report said.
A Capitol Police officer who was in the Speaker’s Lobby with Byrd said before Babbitt appeared in the window, various officers were shouting for the crowd to get back. After Byrd fired his weapon, the officer said, Byrd was “shaky” and “teary eyed.”
“You know, you can just tell, like, I ain’t gonna say when somebody regrets to do something, when somebody just is just nervous, you know, they’ll rub their head, their (sic) pace back and forth,” the officer told an Internal Affairs agent.
One of the three officers stationed on the outside of the Speaker’s Lobby doors where Ashli Babbitt and other protesters were gathered told an investigator “he did not recall hearing any verbal commands being given from inside the Speaker’s Lobby,” according to a Jan. 6 police report.
One of the other two officers stationed outside the doors and facing the angry crowd was asked if he heard anyone inside the Speaker’s Lobby saying anything. “No, sir,” he replied. When asked if he considered using his firearm on rioters, he said: “So, you’re accountable for every round in, in your service weapon, obviously, you can’t shoot into an empty crowd. That’s so wrong.”
The third officer stationed at the doors also told investigators he didn’t hear any communications from police inside the Speaker’s Lobby, according to a Jan. 6, 2021, Internal Affairs report.
Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd had his Glock pistol drawn and pointed in the direction of U.S. Rep Troy Nehls (R-Texas) on January 6, 2021. Photo illustration courtesy of Aaron Babbitt)
A Metropolitan Police Department Internal Affairs Division summary from Babbitt’s Jan. 7 autopsy said the medical examiner determined “the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the left anterior shoulder and the manner of death was ruled a homicide.”
Kephart said he was shocked at a photograph from the House floor earlier on January 6 showing Byrd with his gun drawn and aimed in the direction of Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) and two other men.
“This man [Byrd] should be directed to submit to a fitness-for-duty examination immediately by his chief of police,” Kephart said. “Based on this photo alone he is not qualified to possess a firearm. He is clearly demonstrating a conscious disregard for where he is. His firearm should be at a ‘low ready’ position until target acquisition.
“Any qualified firearms instructor would be horrified at this photo in view of what transpired after the picture was taken, where he shot and killed Ashli Babbitt, disregarding officers in the backdrop, and did not advance and assess the shot or provide first aid and take control of the crime scene—all of which he has been taught, trained, and certified to do.”
Nehls has spoken repeatedly of his belief that the shooting was murder. Nehls served as sheriff of Fort Bend County, Texas, from 2012 until 2020. “The video was quite clear,” Nehls told Newsmax in 2021. “It was murder.”
Joseph M. Hanneman is a reporter for The Epoch Times with a focus on the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol incursion and its aftermath; and general news in the State of Wisconsin. His work over a nearly 40-year career has appeared in Catholic World Report, the Racine Journal Times, the Wisconsin State Journal and the Chicago Tribune. Reach him at: joseph.hanneman@epochtimes.us
This Is Why Bill Gates Wants to Reset the Food System
It’s all part of the script of The Great Reset – just look at who invested a half-billion dollars into this major online grocery retailer as government prepares to radically restrict livestock farming and meat production.
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
In early June 2022, the government of The Netherlands announced it would cut the size of livestock herds in the country by 30% to meet European Union nitrogen and ammonia pollution rules
According to Dutch Parliament member Thierry Baudet, the government is following the script of The Great Reset, which requires weakening the country, making it more dependent on food imports, and diluting nationalism by taking in more immigrants. To make room for immigrant housing, they need to take land from the farmers
The newly assigned Minister for Nature and Nitrogen Policy, Christianne van der Wal-Zeggelink, is married to Piet van der Wal, who together with his brother are heavily invested in the major online grocery retailer Picnic. In September 2021, Bill Gates invested an estimated half-billion dollars into Picnic, thereby becoming one of its lead investors. Gates’ involvement has raised questions about government corruption
At the same time the Dutch government is preparing to radically restrict livestock farming and meat production, Gates is gobbling up farmland back home. Despite land prices being at a record high, Gates purchased a 2,100-acre potato farm in North Dakota in June 2022, bringing the total land share held by the Gates’ Red River Trust above 270,000 acres
Gates claims he intends to lease the farmland to farmers. Viewed from the perspective of The Great Reset, it would then appear Gates may be engaged in the same kind of wealth-shift scheme as BlackRock and other investment groups that are buying up single-family homes and turning them into rentals. The end goal is to eliminate all private ownership and turn the population into serfs
In early June 2022, the government of The Netherlands announced it would cut the size of livestock herds in the country by 30% to meet European Union nitrogen and ammonia pollution rules.1,2 As a result of this “green” policy, many farmers will be driven out of business3 and they have gathered in protest across the country.
This is important because many may not realize that even though The Netherlands is a small country, it’s the second-largest exporter of agriculture in the world, after the United States.4 As with current energy shortages, the forced reductions in farming and food production are said to be an “unavoidable” part of the Green Agenda to improve air, soil and water quality.5
In a public statement about the new emissions targets, the Dutch government even admitted that “The honest message … is that not all farmers can continue their business.”6 Those who do continue will have to come up with creative solutions to meet the new emissions restrictions.
A Clear Case of Corruption?
The restrictions on nitrogen for livestock farmers have befuddled many. Why would government restrict farming at a time when food shortages and famine loom on the horizon worldwide? Some claim to have discovered conflicts of interest within the Dutch government that can help explain this irrational move.7
The newly assigned Minister for Nature and Nitrogen Policy (who created the nitrogen regulations and is responsible for overseeing the cuts to farming), Christianne van der Wal-Zeggelink, is married to Piet van der Wal, who together with his brother, Bouke van der Wal, own a massive supermarket chain called Boni.
As noted by The Conservative Treehouse,8 “when Dutch farmers sell product to Boni they are directly funding the wealth of the government minister who seeks to destroy their livelihoods.”
The van der Wal family is also heavily invested in a major online grocery retailer called Picnic. Picnic buys food at wholesale prices directly from Boni, which minimizes its operational costs. Picnic basically functions as a home delivery service for Boni.
In September 2021, Bill Gates entered the Dutch enterprise. He invested an estimated half-billion dollars into Picnic, thereby becoming one of its lead investors.9 Not surprisingly, Picnic focuses on selling the fake “food” that Gates is invested in and promotes, imitation beef in particular.
The CEO of Picnic, Michiel Muller, a Dutch climate change activist, has also publicly vowed to “change the entire food system” to be in line with sustainable goals,10 which falls right in line with Gates’ agenda.
The strong recommendation to replace beef with fake meat was made in Gates’ book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need,” released in February 2021.11 In an interview with MIT Technology Review, he also suggested that people could learn to like fake meat and, if resistance continues, regulations may be needed to force the switch.12
According to The Countersignal,13 “many participating in the ongoing farmers’ protests in Holland have openly stated they believe Gates may be partly responsible for pushing additional climate laws.” Curiously, July 10, 2022, a large Picnic delivery facility in Almelo, Holland, burned to the ground under mysterious circumstances.14,15,16
Why Get Rid of Farmers Amid Rising Food Insecurity?
The attempt to rid The Netherlands of livestock farmers really only makes sense if seen from the globalists’ point of view, with an eye on The Great Reset, the Green New Deal, Agenda 2030 and related Sustainable Development Goals.
Indeed, according to Dutch Parliament member Thierry Baudet (video above), that’s really what the nitrogen restrictions are all about. The Dutch government is following the script of The Great Reset, he says, which requires weakening the country, making it less independent and more dependent on food imports.
The Great Reset script also calls for diluting nationalism and weakening borders by taking in more immigrants, and to make room for immigrant housing, they need to take land from the farmers. So, the new nitrogen rules are basically a precursor to a land grab. They intend to put farmers out of business so they can take their land and stack it full of low-income, government-assistance apartment buildings.
Aside from that, farmers also pose a threat to the technocratic elitists because they don’t need to rely on government for basics such as food and shelter, and they can allow those who buy their food to maintain their independence as well.
The globalists’ plan is to eliminate access to as much real food as possible, and replace natural foods with patented foodstuffs so that the population becomes entirely dependent on them for survival. At that point, they are easily controlled. Eliminating independent food producers — farmers — is therefore a key to the globalist cabal’s eventual success.
Gates Gobbles Up Farmland While Pushing Fake Foods
At the same time the Dutch government is preparing to radically restrict livestock farming and meat production — likely with Gates’ blessing, if not due to his influence — Gates is gobbling up farmland back home.
Despite land prices being at a record-high, Gates purchased a 2,100-acre potato farm in North Dakota in June 2022, bringing the total land share held by the Gates’ Red River Trust above 270,000 acres — up from about 242,000 acres in mid-September 2021.
The following map, from AgWeb,17 shows the distribution of his land holdings prior to his North Dakota acquisition. As you can see, the vast majority is farmland.
Gates Plan: Turn Farmers Into Modern Serfs
However, as reported by AgWeb at the end of June 2022, Gates didn’t get a warm welcome:18
“North Dakota hosts ‘corporate farming laws’ that barres [sic] corporations and limited liability companies from owning and leasing farms and ranches. With the Gates’s new $13.5 million farmland purchase, North Dakotans — including the attorney general — are concerned the sale violates the state’s law. The North Dakota attorney general’s office sent a letter to the Red River Trust on Tuesday, alerting the trustee of the North Dakota land law.
‘Our office needs to confirm how your company uses this land and whether this use meets any of the statutory exceptions, such as the business purpose exception,’ wrote Drew Wrigley, North Dakota attorney general.”
MoneyWise19 followed up on the story, reporting that by July 5, 2022, Gates had secured legal approval for his farm purchase — a decision that has raised the ire of many North Dakotans who don’t believe Gates has good intentions.
According to MoneyWise, “The anti-corporate farming law does allow individual trusts to own farmland if it is leased to farmers — and that’s what Gates’ firm plans to do.” Viewed from the perspective of The Great Reset, it appears Gates may be engaged in the same kind of subversive wealth-shift scheme as BlackRock and other investment groups that are buying up single-family homes.
They buy them, often sight-unseen and at above-market prices, with the intent of turning them into rentals. This too is part and parcel of The Great Reset and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.
The intent is to eliminate all private ownership and turn the population into modern serfs. “Serf” is a term that describes people who are required to work for the “lord” who owns the land they live on, or who are otherwise underpaid, overworked or exploited in some way.
That’ll be all of us, one day, if the world doesn’t wake up and refuse to go along with the globalist cabal’s Great Reset plans. The plight of the Dutch farmers is just the beginning.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Epoch Health welcomes professional discussion and friendly debate. To submit an opinion piece, please follow these guidelines and submit through our form here.
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Your body is your temple and it is how we live in this world. Perhaps the process food plants were destroyed for a reason. Watch the Short video below and see why.
Today, be the energy of love that surrounds all living things, starting with yourself.
Alex Newman Explains UN Agenda 2030 Behind Farming Restrictions
By Ella Kietlinska and Joshua Philipp
July 20, 2022Updated: July 20, 2022
The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for sustainable development informs government policies to restrict farming and transform the food systems in different parts of the world, said Alex Newman, an award-winning international journalist who has covered this issue for over a decade.
The 2030 Agenda is a plan of action devised by the United Nations (U.N.) to achieve 17 sustainable development goals (SDG). The goals and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development were adopted by all UN member states in 2015.
Then-Secretary General of the U.N. Ban Ki-moon called the 2030 Agenda “the global declaration of interdependence,” (pdf) Newman said in a recent interview on EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program.
“In my opinion, [it] was a direct swipe at our Declaration of Independence … So instead of being independent nations, we will all be now interdependent.”
The 2030 Agenda “covers every element of human life, every element of the economy,” including global wealth redistribution not only within the nations but also among the nations, Newman commented. The Agenda “specifically says that we need to change the way that we consume and produce goods,” he added.
Goal number two on the 2030 Agenda deals specifically with food, Newman said.
In September 2021, the U.N. held the Food Systems Summit, which emphasized the need “to leverage the power of food systems” for the purpose of achieving all 17 sustainable development goals by 2030, according to a U.N. statement.
“Everyone, everywhere, must take action and work together to transform the way the world produces, consumes, and thinks about food,” the statement said.
The sustainable development agenda emerged in the 1970s when the United Nations tried to define it at a conference in Vancouver, Canada, in 1976. Newman said.
The conference, which was the first U.N. Conference on Human Settlements known as Habitat I, adopted the Vancouver Declaration (pdf), a report that provided recommendations for U.N. member states.
Newman quoted an excerpt from this report: “Land cannot be treated as an ordinary asset controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth, therefore contributes to social injustice.”
Newman said that, in his view, the U.N. ultimately wants to get rid of private land ownership. “We see this all over the world. This is not just happening in the Netherlands.”
He thinks that a war is taking place against farmers and ranchers, especially those who are independent or those who are not part of the system. “They want to remove small farmers, even medium farmers, from their land, and they want to bring it all under the control of these—I think there’s no other term to describe it—fascistic public-private partnerships.”
Newman noted some examples to illustrate his opinion: The Chinese regime forces peasants to move to megacities, farmers are killed in South Africa, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the United States proposed a new rule that could bankrupt small and medium farmers.
U.S. farmer Roger Murphy puts fertilizer in the ground near Dwight, Ill., on April 23, 2020. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
In March 2022, the SEC proposed a regulation that “would mandate publicly traded companies to report on their carbon emissions and other climate-related information,” as well as report similar information from any companies with which they do business, according to an SEC statement.
As a consequence, all companies in the business supply chain of a publicly traded entity would have to report their carbon emission and climate-related data.
U.S. Sens. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and John Hoeven (R-N.D.) led 30 lawmakers to urge SEC to repeal its proposal, calling it a “regulatory overreach.”
”Imposing regulatory overreach on farmers and ranchers falls outside of the SEC’s congressionally provided authority,” the senators said in a statement. “This substantial reporting requirement would significantly burden small, family-owned farms.”
The American Farm Bureau Federation said in a statement that the proposed rule could create “substantial costs” for farmers because they do not have teams of compliance officers or attorneys like large corporations. Moreover, it may push out of business small and medium-sized farmers and force food-processing companies to look for agricultural raw products outside of the United States, the statement asserted.
Centralizing Food Supply
People shop in a supermarket as inflation affects consumer prices in New York on June 10, 2022. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters)
“If you control the food supply, you control everything,” Newman said.
“One of the things that the communists loved to do is create scarcity and create dependents. As long as you have independent people who are able to take care of themselves, there really is no need for the government to run your life and to control everything that you do,” Newman said.
“Americans are good examples,” Newman continued. “As long as the food production is widely diffused, and it’s in the hands of independent producers, it becomes very difficult to get people to bend to your will.”
The whole idea of using food as a weapon has been a hallmark of communist regimes for 100 years, Newman explained. “It’s also been a hallmark of the very same people who are openly promoting the U.N. Agenda 2030, the sustainable development goals, and even the World Economic Forum.”
Those who contrived “the controlled demolition of our food supply … want to completely restructure it,” in order to gain total centralized control of that because it gives them absolute power over everybody under their jurisdiction, Newman said.
For example, the Chinese regime and the mega-corporations formed a public-private partnership to centralize control of the food supply, Newman said.
It’s similar to what occurred in Nazi Germany, where on paper private companies own the business and ostensibly manage their businesses, but, ultimately, the private companies will be taking their orders from the government, Newman explained.
In the United States, the ESG metrics are used to “hijack control of the business sector, of the individual companies, and put them at the service of the goals of what I call the predator class—the people behind the World Economic Forum, behind the United Nations,” Newman said. (ESG stands for environmental, social, and governance criteria that are used to evaluate companies on how compliant they are with sustainability.)
The food supply centralization is just one component of their agenda, but it is a very critical one, which along with energy and other things, allows them to control humanity, he added.
World Economic Forum Involvement
Founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum Klaus Schwab delivers remarks at the Congress center during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on May 23, 2022. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)
In January 2021, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the government of the Netherlands launched a new initiative called Food Innovation Hub, according to a WEF statement. The Hub, joined by several public and private sector partners, is a key platform that will use technology and innovations for food systems transformation, the statement said.
The Food Innovation Hub secured “multiyear funding “ from the Netherlands’ government and established its Global Coordinating Secretariat that would coordinate the efforts of the regional food hubs as well as align with global food processes and initiatives such as the UN Food Systems Summit, the statement read.
The global food Secretariat would be located in Wageningen, Netherlands, at the heart of the Dutch agrifood ecosystem, and would direct the development of global, regional Food Innovation Hubs, according to the “Invest in Holland” website.
“The work of these regional hubs is already underway, with more than 20 organizations leading the initiative across Africa, ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations], Colombia, and India, and the European hub,” the website said.
Ramon Laguarta, CEO of PepsiCo, said in the WEF statement: “Food is one of the main levers we can pull to improve environmental and societal health. With the right investment, innovation, and robust collaboration, agriculture could become the world’s first sector to become carbon negative. … Unlocking this potential will take ambitious multi-stakeholder, pre-competitive collaborations to transform the food system—exactly what these Hubs are designed to cultivate.”
Among the solutions advocated by the WEF to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions is replacing livestock-derived foods with alternative forms of protein, such as insects, and lab-cultured proteins, according to a 2019 white paper (pdf) commissioned by the WEF.
In response to this recommendation, several indoor agriculture start-ups have emerged, including Ÿnsect, “the first fully automated vertical insect farm in the world, able to produce 100,000 tons of insect products a year,” a WEF report said.
In March, France-based Ÿnsect acquired Jord Producers, a U.S. mealworm manufacturer, to expand its operations in the United States by entering the American chicken feed market, said a company statement.
How People Can Stop Food Takeover
Customers browse among the farm stands at Sun City Farmers’ Market in Sun City, Ariz., on April 7, 2022. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)
If people want to prevent food supply from being used as a tool to control them, they need to find alternative sources of food locally, Newman said. “You need to have a relationship with the local farmers in your community, get to the local farmers market, deal with the local farmers, come up with some agreement,” such as getting delivery of fresh, seasonal produce from the local farms for 100 bucks a week, he said.
“We need to really start providing an alternative economic structure, because if we let them get control of the entire food supply, I guarantee you, it will be used as a weapon to take your freedom, to get you to do things you otherwise wouldn’t want to do, to undermine the sovereignty of your nation, whether you’re in the United States or another country, and ultimately to dispossess people of their private land and of their freedom.”
“If you have agricultural land, do not sell out to these people. They’re trying to bribe the farmers to leave their land.”
Joshua Philipp is an award-winning investigative reporter with The Epoch Times and host of EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program. He is a recognized expert on unrestricted warfare, asymmetrical hybrid warfare, subversion, and historical perspectives on today’s issues. His 10-plus years of research and investigations on the Chinese Communist Party, subversion, and related topics give him unique insight into the global threat and political landscape.
Dutch Farmers Update Global Freedom Movement
Cargo ships full of goods are stuck outside California harbors as far as the eye can see.
How to Grow 4,400 Pounds of Food a Year in the Backyard
Growing food at home undergoes resurgence as inflation, supply chain worries increase
By Charlotte Cuthbertson
July 20, 2022Updated: July 20, 2022
A vegan family of four, without any gardening experience, can grow all of their own food for a year using 1/20th of an acre.
That’s 4,400 pounds of food per year, grown in six garden beds using the “predictable” and formulaic Mittleider gardening system, said Lucinda Bailey, co-founder of seed bank company Texas Ready.
“I’ve taught 40 different methods at community college level and this is the only system that I could say, ‘If I do a half hour of this kind of labor, I put in this many dollars, I will get 70 pounds at the end of the season,’” Bailey told The Epoch Times.
“In a down economy, we’ve got to produce the calories for our family. It’s a change in lifestyle—it really is—to get people to be able to grow all their groceries in their backyard, but it’s entirely possible.”
Bailey said an 8-year-old girl recently produced 4,325 pounds of food in her first year of trying the Mittleider system, which is known for high yields and the ability to thrive in any soil condition and wide climate variations.
“It’s not a difficult system. She followed the checklist,” Bailey said.
In the past, Bailey would tell gardening novices to grab some seedlings from Home Depot or Lowes and “just keep them alive for 90 days” in the first year. In the second year, start growing from seed and in year three, learn how to save your own seeds, she said.
Now, due to socio-political stressors, she’s encouraging people to get started right away and learn it all at once.
“I just think people ought to begin growing their own food because I don’t think there’s any good answers on the market,” Bailey said.
“It takes about three months to even get something that you’re really going to be able to chow down on. You don’t throw the seeds in and tomorrow you have salad—that isn’t how it works. It could take 60, 90 days before you’re really having that hearty soup.”
Vegetable garden beds using the Mittleider growing system. (Courtesy of Texas Ready)
In 2020, government-imposed lockdowns kept people at home and many turned to growing their own food—either as a hobby or as a way to combat concerns about the food supply chain.
Once the country opened up, soaring food prices and rising inflation added to food security concerns and again, more people turned to home gardening.
“We’ve really seen—as far as it relates to the food supply chain, and particularly more recently, the cost of food within the supermarket—people wanting to take more control over that,” said Bill Hageman, owner of Peaceful Valley, the largest independent U.S. retailer of organic food production and gardening supplies.
“To be able to grow food within your own home and not have to go through retail chains and other distributors, that’s going to have a more pronounced impact going forward.”
The demographic of who is growing food at home has also shifted dramatically in recent years, said Hageman.
“For our segment within organic gardening, if you look back three or four years, the top demographic would more likely be someone who’s either retired or semi-retired,” he said, citing trends from the company’s online nursery groworganic.com.
“The No. 1 demographic within our website right now is the 22 to 35 [age group]. And it’s split half between male and female. It’s individuals that are craving knowledge that probably didn’t grow up in an environment where they were exposed to their own food production.”
A woman tends a microfarm home garden in Los Angeles on May 23, 2021. (VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images)
Community gardens are springing up in more places and gardeners are documenting their successes and failures on social media, as well as sharing information on how to solve common issues.
“Where it would have been something that was individualized before, I think people are very proud of their accomplishments and it helps keep them motivated through the hard times when you lose some crop, or you’ve got a pest that you were able to control,” Hageman said.
Hageman has seen a migration in shipping patterns over the past three years from traditional city centers and suburban areas on the West Coast near Los Angeles or San Francisco to areas such as Sacramento, Spokane, and outside of Boise.
“It’s not just a West Coast phenomenon. We’ve seen a lot of people leaving Miami and New York City and moving to suburbs in Atlanta or Nashville,” he said.
Growing enough food to cut out reliance on the supermarket can seem daunting, but experts encourage people to just get started.
Hageman encourages people to “just get their hands dirty.”
“Spend a little bit of time online educating yourself on what resources you would need to be successful,” he said. “It’s really easy to get discouraged. Growing from seed is not always the easiest thing [and] there are certain varieties that will grow easier than others.”
Vegetable seedlings growing in pots ready to be planted in the garden. (Getty Images)
Knowing which USDA hardiness zone you’re in can help avoid failures, Hageman said.
He suggests for first-time and casual gardeners to try starting seeds in a tray and then gardening in a raised bed or containers.
“There’s a pretty low barrier to entry around that,” he said. If you’re growing into the ground, “you really need to understand what’s in your soil.”
Additionally, more and more solutions are hitting the market for people living in urban areas and small spaces.
“Because of the growth of gardening overall, there’s been a lot of new products that have come out over the last two years or so that’ll help homeowners in cities,” Hageman said. People can now “easily” grow tomatoes in containers on a patio or fire escape, he said.
“Within the home, too, I’d say growing herbs, growing spices, growing things in your windowsill. That’s also an attractive way to start.”
For those new to gardening, or living in small spaces, a windowsill garden is a good start. (Getty Images)
Matthew Elsey, merchant of fertilizers and seeds for The Home Depot said the mega-chain has seen an increase in people growing food over the past few years.
“One of the best ways to grow vegetable plants and herb plants in your own yard is in a raised garden bed. Elevated garden beds make it easier to control the soil and protect against pests,” he told The Epoch Times via email.
Elsey said the stores’ top-selling seedlings are tomatoes and hot peppers.
Heirloom Versus Hybrid Seeds
Seeds can be categorized into two general formats—hybrid and open pollinated.
Open-pollinated seeds are the most stable and those that have been around for at least 25 generations can be labeled as “heirloom,” Bailey said.
“The heirloom then is going to be the most stable of the stable. And that’s what you want in a down economy where you have to make sure that you’re feeding your family. There’s no room for mess up.”
To explain a hybrid seed, Bailey likened it to the designer dog labradoodle in the animal world—an intentional breed between a labrador and a poodle.
“But let’s say next year, the dogs get out” and mate, she said.
“You’re not getting labs, you’re not getting poodles, and you’re sure as heck not getting labradoodles. You’re getting mutts. Well that’s exactly what happens in the garden.”
Bailey said hybrids generally produce great food the first year, but beyond that, one of several poor outcomes are likely, including sterile seeds or “you plant a cucumber but you get a gourd” or “you plant a tomato and it reverts up the genetic chain.”
Neither heirloom nor organic seeds are genetically modified (GMO), but organic seeds can be hybrid, she said.
“Just because it’s organic, it just means it was grown in pretty dirt. It doesn’t mean that the genetics are what we want them to do,” she said.
A person holds seeds during a school lesson on planting a vegetable garden. (DAVID MCNEW/AFP via Getty Images)
Texas Ready sells seed banks for different-sized families, from the 10,000-seed “Piggy Bank” for two adults, through to the 200,000-seed “The Treasury” for 30-plus adults. The kits include at least 70 different varieties of produce that, used together with the Mittleider system, are geared to provide the annual caloric and nutritional requirement for the group. All of her seeds will grow in the continental United States, she said.
“Our seed banks are based on nutrition,” Bailey said. “So we have two or three things of every vitamin or supplement that is needed.”
Hageman sells organic seeds—sourced locally where possible—as well as plants such as fruit and nut trees. “It’s a higher quality product. We focus on health benefit overall, we focus on nutrition,” he said. The website is packed with gardening products and tips, including how to deal with pests organically.
Seed and Fertilizer Shortages
Seed sales are a litmus test of wider economic and political changes.
Kurt Nauck, co-founder of Texas Ready, said when Barack Obama was president, sales continued to climb. He called Obama “salesman of the year” for several years. The company was selling three or four seed banks a day. However, when President Donald Trump took office, seed sales dropped so low (to two banks per month) that Nauck and Bailey decided in February 2020 to put the company on ice.
Then the pandemic hit and government lockdowns followed. The governor of Michigan banned sales of seeds and gardening supplies from the big box stores that she had allowed to remain open in the state.
“Since that time, we have remained extremely busy,” Nauck said.
“Our customer, I would say, is 95 percent-plus individuals who are pretty new to gardening. That’s always been the case [and] that really hasn’t changed.”
However, Nauck said, the customer base is much broader than before and even farmers are calling to find seeds to plant acres of food. “We didn’t used to have farmers calling us,” he said.
A boy harvests some large carrots with his mother in their home garden. (Getty Images)
Bailey said she has recently had difficulty sourcing some seeds due to more crop failures and other factors.
“I had never seen that quantity of crop failure. One or two a year, breeds that don’t produce, that makes some sense to me. But 10 or 15 varieties, that makes no sense to me,” she said.
Hageman said he doesn’t foresee a seed shortage to have a “massive impact” on the home gardener.
“I’d say that as it relates to specialty or unique seeds, what we’ve observed is that the price is going up more than the availability is going down,” he said.
Fertilizers are growing in price and potentially getting more scarce. Bailey suggests stocking up now on what’s needed to guarantee success with the Mittleider system—nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, as well as Epsom salts and trace elements. “I could store five years worth for a family of four under a single card table,” she said.
An array of vegetable and herb seed packets on display. (Getty Images)
Storing and Saving Seeds
USDA-certified seeds that are stored at around 40 degrees F will last about five years with a germination rate of about 85 percent, Bailey said.
“Seeds are living organisms, so you certainly don’t want to vacuum pack or suck all the oxygen out—there has to be a slight amount of oxygen transfer.”
Beyond the first year’s crop, gardeners should start learning how to save their best seeds for next season—a whole science in itself.
“We believe the old ways were best. Everybody in America at one point knew how to save seeds because that was how they were going to feed their families,” Bailey said.
“There are 17 major seed-saving families. By that I mean, watermelon, cucumbers, squash—those are all done exactly the same way. These aren’t difficult things, but they’re things that you would never guess to do.”
She recommends the book “Seed to Seed” by Suzanne Ashworth as a how-to guide.
“If just a few of us could get good at saving seeds, and we have in our hearts to benefit our neighbors and train them to do it, this thing can go exponential and there is food for everybody. There is no need for food shortages, hunger—nothing like that,” she said.
65.8Questioner: Are you saying then that this possible condition of war would be much more greatly spread across the surface of the globe than anything we have experienced in the past and therefore touch a larger percentage of the population in this form of catalyst?
Ra: I am Ra. This is correct. There are those now experimenting with one of the major weapons of this scenario, that is the so-called psychotronic group of devices which are being experimentally used to cause such alterations in wind and weather as will result in eventual famine. If this program is not countered and proves experimentally satisfactory, the methods in this scenario would be made public. There would then be what those whom you call Russians hope to be a bloodless invasion of their personnel in this and every land deemed valuable. However, the peoples of your culture have little propensity for bloodless surrender.
Kephart said Byrd should have written a firearms discharge report immediately after the shooting. Byrd declined to give a statement to Internal Affairs detectives and was never formally interviewed before eventually being cleared of wrongdoing.
