By Daisy Luther – The Organic Prepper
‘Survival Saturday is a round-up of the week’s news and resources for folks who are interested in being prepared.
This Week in the News
You just can’t trust anyone, or so it appears in this week’s Survival Saturday round-up. We’re all being programmed. Our culture makes the following things normal: food only comes from stores, kids must spend most of their time in a government-run school, and we all require constant entertainment. Industrial food, anything you view on television, and the school system all seem to have agendas that include making tons of money and churning out obedient little citizens who don’t question anything.
The flour recall is way worse than just the bags in your pantry.
Last week, General Mills announced a recall of three brands of flour due to E. coli contamination. The recall affects 10 million pounds of flour. Holy cow, that’s a lot of flour. In case you missed hearing about this, the affected products are Gold Medal All-Purpose, Gold Medal Wondra, and Signature Kitchens All-Purpose.
E. coli is an extremely serious foodborne illness that can cause bloody diarrhea and dehydration. The elderly, the young, pregnant women, and those with a compromised immune system are the most susceptible. You may recall the virulent Jack-in-the-Box restaurant E. coli outbreak of 1993. 74 stores across the nation served the tainted food that killed 4 children and left 178 more victims with permanent brain and kidney damage.
But, like a Ginsu knife ad, that’s not all. There’s more than just the original recall! A surprise gift from the processed food manufacturers.
The potentially tainted flour was also distributed to restaurants and food production companies. And they aren’t telling us which of those companies may have received and used the flour.
Huh. That’s nice. Well, don’t worry your pretty little head about it, because the FDA says you don’t need to know. “A spokeswoman for the FDA’s Office of Foods and Veterinary Medicine said the agency’s Coordinated Outbreak Response and Evaluation (CORE) Network did not include information in its outbreak notice about the flour sent to food producers because it would not have had meaning for the general public.”
We can probably look for some processed food recalls soon. Food Safety News said, “If the flour was used by producers for foods that are not baked or otherwise cooked before sale to consumers — such as raw cookie dough, pizza dough or pie crusts — there could be secondary recalls in the works.”
If ever you needed more reason to grow your own, buy from people you trust, and avoid all things processed, the massive recalls that have been occurring lately have to cause you to think twice about what you’re buying from the store. I got dinged myself with the most recent recall, products that should have been absolutely fine (that huge recall of frozen fruits and vegetables.)
Industrial food simply can’t be trusted. Buy local and cook from scratch. I promise. It’s not as hard as the mainstream would have you think.
Who really controls what people think?
If you haven’t noticed the extreme bias and outright dishonesty in the mainstream news, you’ve probably accidentally stumbled upon the wrong web page and it’s highly likely that I’m just going to make you mad or hurt your politically correct feelings.
Well, there’s a very good reason that the so-called news is propaganda. Six megacorporations own all of it. And that means that the propaganda goes further than just the news – it’s also positioned into “entertainment” too. Everything mainstream is touched by Comcast, The Walt Disney Company, Time Warner, News Corporation, Viacom, and the CBS Corporation. If they want the majority of people to think a certain way, they have the power to make it happen.Emmy award winning reporter Bernard Goldberg wrote a whistleblowing tell-all about the left leaning bias of the media that you’ve got to read.
Entertainment is designed to bias your way of thinking too. The word “program” for what you see on television could hardly be more apt, because it does just that: it programs you for a certain future, certain expectations in life, and to lean toward certain opinions. (Like: guns are scary, rules are good, and you need to become a debt slave so you can own cool new Product X.)
According to a great article on the topic by Michael Snyder, the average American watches/listens to 10 hours per day of programming. That means if you take the folks who don’t watch TV at all as one end of the scale, there are people watching MORE than 10 hours a day!
How do those folks get anything done? Oh….wait…..
A hacktivist group called the Ghost Squad Hackers dedicated this month to hacking the daylights out of the mainstream news corporations. They’ve hit Fox, CNN, and NBC with DDoS attacks. It appears that GSH has a loose affiliation with Anonymous, who was silenced last month as they attacked every major bank in the world. Nick Bernabe’s article sheds more light on this most recent hacktivist brouhaha. Wouldn’t it be fun if they managed to break into the news one night and actually tell some truth to the listeners?
8th Grade Curriculum Includes Quiz About Pimping Hos and Stealing Cars
Good grief. There’s an old joke math quiz that was floating around many years ago. It’s very politically incorrect, and not in that cool way that most of us like to be politically incorrect.
And some teacher in Alabama decided to give the quiz to her 8th graders. It’s loaded with references to pimping hos, selling drugs, knocking up girls, whacking people, and car theft. You can see the entire horrible quiz here.
Geez. Speaking of programming. Let’s make drugs, irresponsible sex, and crime really cool and funny, shall we? How else will we populate the industrial prison system with the next generation of slaves who are forced to work for 13 cents an hour?
Hello, homeschool.
Meanwhile in Venezuela
If you’re watching Venezuela like I am, you know that things have gone from abysmal to the 3rd level of Hell. People are starving. Not like, hmmm…it’s bedtime but I’m hungry and maybe I should make popcorn but maybe it’s too much work…kinda hungry. Starving. Literally.
You need to take notes because we in America could be on the same slippery slope.
Hyperinflation has hit the country. A carton of a dozen eggs costs $150. A pound of powdered milk costs $100. (Here are the details about the insane prices, from an interview with a single mom who is trying to keep her children fed.) Solution: stock up on long-term emergency food and high-quality dry milk while you can.
In a collapse situation, the failure to prepare can lead to nutritional deficiency diseases that are nearly unheard of these days. Each of these links tells you how to prepare to prevent specific nutritional deficiency diseases.:
Pellagra
Biotin Deficiency
Scurvy
And speaking of collapses, shortages of medicine, poor nutrition, and health issues, this is one of the most interesting book reviews I’ve read in a long time.
Protesters who are tired of standing in long lines at government-owned grocery stores only to be turned away when the food runs out, marched toward the Presidential Palace. They were stopped by police in riot gear. This time. Although the Venezulean leader blames everyone and everything but his own (and his predecessor’s) Socialist leadership for the collapse, I think it’s only a matter of time before President Maduro ends up facing the angry mobs directly. Scenes from the French Revolution come to mind.
For a gritty look at life during an economic collapse, this book was written by a fellow who survived the collapse of Argentina. It’s not for the faint of heart.
Also keep in mind that when things go downhill, so does water quality. Not only are people starving, but, via Zero Hedge, the water flowing from the taps looks like this:
You’ll want to also focus on water preparation (read my book on the topic!) and invest in a high-quality filtration device like this one.
Build your pantry. Learn to grow food. I’ll bet the folks waiting in those lines wish they’d done just that before the SHTF in their world.
The Bookshelf
Poisoned: The True Story of the Deadly E. Coli Outbreak That Changed the Way Americans Eat
From Scratch: Traditional, whole-foods dishes for easy, everyday meals
Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News
Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV
Venezuela Before Chávez: Anatomy of an Economic Collapse
The Pantry Primer
The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse
The Prepper’s Water Survival Guide
Survival Mom: How to Prepare Your Family for Everyday Disasters and Worst-Case Scenarios
Want more info for self-reliant lifestyles?
The countdown is on! Next week, I’ll be sending out invitations to join a new intensive preparedness course with my buddy Lisa Bedford (of Survival Mom fame).
This unique and interactive online school is designed for a small group of highly focused students, willing to commit their time and energy to insure their homes and families are prepared.We encourage students to make Summer Prepping Intensive their own, choosing the classes, assignments, reading selections, and other activities that will best help get them prepped in a hurry.
In just 10 action-packed, intentional, and rigorous weeks, our students attend comprehensive online classes taught by some of the most influential names in the prepper and survival world. Classes are interactive, with time to address questions and concerns. Just a few of our instructors are:
Author and EMP expert, Arthur T. Bradley
Survivor of Argentina’s economic collapses, author Fernando Aguirre (FerFAL)
Michael Snyder, author and editor of The Economic Collapse
Herbalist, author, and podcast host, Cat Ellis
Author of the bestselling book, The Prepper’s Blueprint, Tess Pennington
Be on the lookout for an email with all of the details. Our subscribers will get the first shot at enrollment in this limited-space Summer Prepping Intensive. (Scroll up to the top of my homepage to be sure that you’ve subscribed!)
Anything to add to Survival Saturday?
Do you have any news links you want to share? Now’s the time! You are absolutely welcome to post your links in the comments below. (Your participation is what makes this feature so unique out here in Bloggerland!)
This article first appeared at The Organic Prepper: Survival Saturday: Is Your Family Being Programmed by the American Way of Life?
About the author:
Daisy Luther lives on a small organic homestead in Northern California. She is the author of The Organic Canner, The Pantry Primer: A Prepper’s Guide to Whole Food on a Half-Price Budget, and The Prepper’s Water Survival Guide: Harvest, Treat, and Store Your Most Vital Resource. On her website, The Organic Prepper, Daisy uses her background in alternative journalism to provide a unique perspective on health and preparedness, and offers a path of rational anarchy against a system that will leave us broke, unhealthy, and enslaved if we comply. Daisy’s articles are widely republished throughout alternative media. You can follow her on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter,.
Filed under: How To Prepare, News/ Current Events, Prepping, Survival Gardening