Vault 7, an Unsurprising GMO Conflict of Interest, and Daylight Savings Time Angst

By Daisy Luther

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

This week on Survival Saturday, we’ll talk about Vault 7, a GMO study conflict of interest, and the annual angst that is Daylight Savings Time.

Vault 7: At least we know there’s always someone listening.

This week, Wikileaks divulged a bunch of CIA documents that even topped the Snowden revelations. Someone is listening, all the time. And we ain’t talkin’ about God here. We’re talking about the government.

Don your tinfoil, though. Because that may only be the tip of the iceberg.

In the video below, a rather horrifying thought is voiced. Do they want us to know they’re listening?

This brings to mind one conspiracy theory that came to life shortly after the election, after Julian Assange had disappeared. There was a desperate post on Reddit that claimed Assange was dead and that the CIA was in control of Wikileaks. The person said that Wikileaks was utterly compromised. Some people still assert that there has been no credible proof-of-life for Assange, even excluding the Hannity interview as evidence.

If what the person posting on Reddit said was true, then what the video above asserts holds a lot of chilling credence. Maybe these “revelations” are all part of yet another giant hoax perpetrated on the American people.

Do you hate Daylight Savings Time?

Back when I worked outside the home and my kids went to school, I roundly cursed the time changes twice a year. Little ones really don’t care what time the clocks say it is, and it always took us a couple of weeks to successfully change our sleep schedules.

Well, now science has proven that the angst is real. They’ve linked all of the following bad things to the days around the annual “Spring Forward” sleep loss.

• Car accidents
• Strokes
• Heart attacks
• Judges impose harsher sentences
• It hurts retailers because spending drops

Daylight Savings Time was supposed to save energy, but research shows it has little to no positive effect – in fact, in Indiana, energy usage actually increased.

Unfortunately, this means little to the powers that be. Tonight, you’ll still need to set your clock forward one hour and lose some precious sleep.

Guess who funded the National Academy of Science’s GMO safety report?

I won’t keep you in suspense. Monsanto, DuPont, and Dow. Gee, I bet nobody saw that coming. The quotes below are from a report on MotherJones.com

Last year, the National Academy of Science issued a massive 584-page report on the safety of genetically modified crops. They assessed the health, environmental, and economic effects on GMOs in agriculture and their conclusion was that the Frankencrops were neither harmful or helpful:

GMOs have so far proved to be neither a disaster nor a triumph. They haven’t been shown to pose a threat to human health, as some critics have argued they do; but they also haven’t discernibly raised crop yields, as some boosters insist they have.

But, as always, there’s a catch. A new paper, issued by the peer-reviewed journal PLOS-One, indicates a significant conflict of interest in the study.

The authors—Sheldon Krimsky, a professor in the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts, and Tim Schwab, a researcher at Food & Water Watch—found that 6 of the 20 scientists who contribute to NASEM’s GMO report had ties to the ag-biotech industry that weren’t disclosed in the paper. Five of them “had patents or industry research funding” while they served on the committee, and another one “reported receiving industry research funding” a few years before.

As Krimsky and Schwab note, the NASEM paper states that the GMO assessment, launched only after face-to-face conversations, “determined that no one with an avoidable conflict of interest is serving on the committee.”

They also uncovered another undisclosed potential conflict: The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, a nonprofit institution, has had substantial funding from the very companies whose products were assessed in the report: “The organization’s annual financial reports do not give exact figures but note that three leading agricultural biotechnology companies (Monsanto, DuPont, and Dow) have given up to $5 million dollars each to the NASEM.” The National Academies even hosted a 2015 workshop on communicating the science of GMO crops to the public, funded in part by Monsanto and DuPont.

This Week in Preparedness…

This week in preparedness, I have a couple of announcements.

My new book is out, several weeks earlier than expected!

I’m delighted to introduce The Prepper’s Canning Guide: Affordably Stockpile a Lifesaving Supply of Nutritious, Delicious, Shelf-Stable Foods. This has some of the same recipes of my self-published canning book, but it is greatly expanded and contains loads of advice that is pertinent to preppers such as:

• Off-grid canning during a power outage
• The canning supplies that preppers need to store for the long-term
• New recipes
• Why canning is the perfect food storage method for preppers

And much more! Please check it out here. Also, if you like the book, nothing is more helpful to authors than 5-star reviews on Amazon that contain a few reasons why you recommend it. 🙂

There’s a new podcast for preppers!

Todd Sepulveda of the go-to destination for preppers, Prepper Website, now has a brand new podcast, just for us! The press release states:

The Prepper Website has launched a new podcast with a spin. Articles linked on Prepper Website will be provided in audible format for audiences to download through their favorite podcast network like: iTunes, Google Play and Stitcher.

Audiences can also listen online at www.theprepperwebsitepodcast.com. Technology continues to improve. As technology continues to allow the free movement of information, one such avenue of information that is extremely valuable are podcasts.

In an effort to reach a broader audience with the message of preparedness, Todd Sepulveda, owner of Prepper Website, has launched a new podcast with the purpose of reading, or providing audible versions of the articles he links to on Prepper Website. The podcast, The Prepper Website Podcast, will be a weekday podcast with 2-5 articles that have been linked recently on Prepper Website.

Tune in – this is another way to prep when you’re just too busy to sit down and do a lot of reading, a topic I discussed in one of my articles this week. Speaking of articles, check out some prepping articles from this week:

• 10 Things You Can Do When You’re Just Too Busy To Prep
• Small Space Prepping: 25 Ideas for Stashing Your Stockpile
• Prepper’s Guide to Dental Equipment and Dental Exams
• 10 Awesome Tips You Never Knew About Woodstoves That May Change Your Life
• How to Use the Moon to Plan Your Gardening Season

Other Items of Interest

• Are we witnessing the weirdest moment in economic history? There are some events coming up that could change EVERYTHING in our economy.
• 6 Secret Cities That Prove We Don’t Know What’s Really Going On The only thing that isn’t a secret is that governments hide things from the people.
• Russia’s Largest Bank Confirms Hiring Podesta Group To Lobby For Ending Sanctions Oh, look. Russia really did have financial ties to people involved in the election…but those ties weren’t to the Trump side.
• What’s Behind the AT&T 911 Outage? AT&T Remains Mum Last week, AT&T customers were unable to call 911, and many were unable to make outgoing calls at all. And no one is saying why.

Anything to add to Survival Saturday?

Do you have any news links you want to share? What are your thoughts on the topics above? Now’s the time! Please post your links in the comments section below and join the discussion!