Imagine not being able to board a plane because you forgot to pay your water bill… or being denied access to a train because you jaywalked.

It sounds like something ripped from the pages of George Orwell’s 1984. But this will soon become reality for people living in China. That’s because the Chinese government is getting ready to roll out a social credit system.

Basically, the Chinese government will soon prevent people from accessing everyday services if they aren’t deemed “good citizens.”

It’s one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever read. Still, most readers won’t care about this. That’s because “this sort of thing could never happen in America!” [Full article]

The DC-3 airplane, heavily guarded by uniformed Panamanian soldiers, sat on the far side of the jungle clearing at Penonome, 60 miles southwest of Panama City. Its cargo doors were wide open and chocked tight against the fuselage. The right engine idled slow and rough; the left engine was shut down for the loading operation. Soldiers in two Jeeps outfitted with .50-caliber machine guns guarded the pane fore and aft. One gunner trained his weapon on the loading crew; the other .50-cal was pointed at the cockpit and the unarmed American flight crew.

The pilot, Wayne Howard, stuck his head and left arm out of the cockpit window and waved a small white flag. The soldier in the Jeep waved back and gave a thumbs-up. A line of cargo handlers hurriedly stacked white plastic sacks on pallets; others inside the plane slid the heavy pallets forward and secured them for the 680-mile flight to Costa Rica. [Full article]

In contrast to at least 6000 years of the practice of natural medicine, Western medicine treats the body as a collection of parts instead of as a synergistic organism. When it comes to treating broken bones and injured body parts, mainstream Western medicine is unequaled. When this same approach is used to treat illness and disease – fixing or repairing the parts where the symptoms of underlying illnesses manifest themselves, modern medicine fails miserably. [Full article]