Michael McCarthy has been an investigative reporter and freelance features writer and has traveled the world extensively, writing about how to have adventures with purpose and meaning. In the first half, he shared his commentary about the global presence of China and the ways the Chinese Communist Party is secretly infiltrating Western democracies. In 1980, the US Congress gave China a most-favored-nation trading status, and corporate brands such as Heinz, R.J. Reynolds, Coca-Cola, American Express, Kodak, AT&T, Nabisco, and others jumped in to get involved with the country, he said. And over the last 30 years, American companies have managed to lower their manufacturing costs by 80% by shipping their jobs over to China, though salaries have gone down for the average American worker, he noted.
Given what happened with Russia attacking Ukraine, McCarthy doesn't rule out the possibility that China will try to take over Taiwan. In his native Canada, the Chinese "have made huge inroads into our economy and political system," he said, adding that citizens are starting to object. A similar situation has occurred with the US, he indicated, pointing out that China has bought up a massive amount of US treasury bonds. The top crimes in China are not related to murder and violence but have to do with criticizing the government, he said. The punishment for such infractions is death, he claimed, and the accused are not given a trial but taken away in "execution vans." 8,000 people a year are killed this way, he believes.
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Helané Wahbeh is the research director at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) and is clinically trained as a naturopathic physician. In the latter half, she talked about the science of channeling, consciousness, telepathy, and non-locality. She reported on the results of a telephone telepathy study that she'd invited C2C listeners to participate back in 2022. The study related to the idea that people sometimes know who is calling when they hear their phone ringing. The study examined whether this worked because people may have a sense about the future or precognition, or if the caller is thinking about the individual they're reaching out to, which is picked up telepathically. In the experiment, the latter notion involving telepathy resulted in more accuracy than there would be by chance, she cited.
Wahbeh announced an IONS initiative, funded by Linda G. O'Bryant-- a $100,00 research prize awarded annually to individuals or teams to advance the science of consciousness beyond materialistic views. The winning 2023 applicants proposed testable theories of non-local consciousness. She shared updates on channeling research and how when she grew up, she had relatives that practiced trance channeling, including her grandmother, who spoke in languages she didn't know. Wahbeh did a fascinating group study with five trance channelers – each of them was channeling a different non-physical being at the same time, and they were "actually having a conversation with each other," she detailed.
News segment guests: Christian Wilde, Jeff Nelken