Polluted America: GMO Manmade Biological Threats, Plant Diseases, Germ Warfare

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The Obesity Epidemic: It’s Really About Profit

March 16, 2013

By Kellia Ramares-Watson

News Item: March 11, 2013 Judge Blocks New York City’s Limits on Big Sugary Drinks

A state court judge found the Bloomberg Administration rules “arbitrary and capricious”. And right he is. Read the original New York Times article to get a better understanding of this confusing program.

Basically, Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire mayor of New York City, thinks he knows what is best for the health of NYC’s citizens. He has gone on the warpath against some sugary drinks, undoubtedly because obesity-related illnesses cost business and government billions of dollars in lost work time and insurance costs, as well as care for the uninsured.

A Wall Street Journal article from September 2012 reported that the cost of treating obesity doubled in the decade between 1998 and 2008 according to a federal study. The article also stated that researchers reported a 37% increase in the preval‎ence of obesity between 1998 and 2006. A more recent 2012 study from Cornell University reports that obesity now accounts for about 21% of all U.S. health care expenses.

But taxes on sodas and arcane rules about how big a cup of joe you can have and how much sugar can be served with it are not the answers to the problem. Far from it. Obesity is a complex issue that will require complex solutions that are more than the government saying “Stop drinking so many sodas and sugared coffees, ya big fatso!”

If government wants to really tackle the obesity epidemic, it must first see obesity for what it really is: a symptom, a sign of the times, as it were. Treating a symptom does not get to the cause of the disease that is producing the symptom. It’s our entire system, from our lifestyles to our food production, that’s causing obesity. Government, especially at the federal level, could deal with the major issues that result in the symptom of obesity, if it weren’t busy blaming the individual consumer and aiding and abetting the industries, including Big Food, that contribute to the epidemic.

I am 57 years old and thus old enough to remember when there was not an obesity epidemic, even though cake, cookies, ice cream, candy and soda were all around. I have also been overweight throughout my life, and at times clinically obese, even though I was never a big soda drinker and have not had carbonated beverages other than club soda in at least 7 years. I also gave up coffee entirely in the mid-70′s after OD’ing on caffeine during a final exam period in college. So Starbucks Frappuchinos and their ilk have never crossed my lips.

So what are the major contributors to obesity that the government should be paying more attention to rather than how many sugar packets the barista gives you with your coffee?

STRESS. The stress hormone cortisol increases belly fat. Fat around the mid-section, (the apple shape) as opposed to the thighs and rear (the pear shape) has been linked to various health problems, including increased risk for diabetes type II. We evolved a “fight or flight” stress response to acute stresses such as being chased by a predator. That response does not serve us well when the stress is chronic. Income inequality, job precariousness and the cost of living have increased with our waistlines in the last 2 or 3 decades. Additionally, many people react to stress by overeating, especially when other outlets for stress are not physically available or are too expensive. Government could address obesity by addressing the economic issues in our country that have made so many of us cortisol factories.

GROWTH HORMONES IN MEAT. In the book “Born with a Junk Food Deficiency: How flaks, quacks, and hacks pimp the public health” investigative journalist Martha Rosenberg writes: “Chickens were once slaughtered at 14 weeks old, when they weighed about two pounds, but by 2001 they were slaughtered at 7 weeks, when they weighed between four and six pounds.” Attention shoppers! Cooking will not destroy the growth hormones given to our meat and dairy animals. If these chemicals make the animal grow bigger faster, it stands to reason that they will make the consumers of animal products grow bigger faster.

FOOD ALLERGIES AND INTOLERANCES AND GMO’s. Allergies pile on the pounds without people realizing it. You may not know you have an allergy if you don’t break out in hives 15 minutes to a half hour after eating. Soy is one of the common allergens and today soy is in damned near EVERYTHING. A particular annoyance is the preval‎ence of soy lecithin as an emulsifier. That is a big word for something that blends two usually incompatible elements. Want the oil and vinegar in your salad dressing to stay mixed? Add a little mustard as an emulsifier. But why is soy lecithin in things that don’t need an emulsifier, like a bar of plain dark chocolate?

There has been a large influx of soy into the Western diet in recent decades. Tofu, soy milk, and the ubiquitous lecithin. But soy is not the only culprit. Gluten in wheat is another problem. Even people who do not have full blown celiac disease can find that gluten makes them gain weight. We are not eating the same strains of wheat that our grandparents did. The dwarf wheat that is preval‎ent today is high yielding but contains a variety of gluten proteins that make us fat and sick. Will Mayor Bloomberg try to ban sandwiches next?

We also don’t have a clear picture of the potential allergic effects of GMOs and their manufacturers (Monsanto, Du Pont and friends) are doing everything they can to fight labeling bills that would at least allow consumers to decide for themselves if they want to knowingly eat GMOs.

Where is the government in this? Busy playing revolving door with the GMO companies so that, for example, a Monsanto executive can write a plan he wants the government to OK, then become the official in the FDA who is in charge of approving the plan, then after a period of “public service” go back to the executive suites of Monsanto.

BIG FOOD’S PROFIT MOTIVES: Stressed-out people often reach for comfort foods. Comfort foods often are laden with sugar and fat. You will never see broccoli as a comfort food. We are hard wired to seek out sugary, fatty foods because, during most of human history, food supplies were unreliable. We took as much sugar and fat for energy use, now and later, as we could because we did not know when the next meal was coming. Now the opposite is true, but the body is still programmed for times of famine. Big Food serves up the addictive sugar and fat in larger portions so as to sell us more food, to make more profit. It is not unlike the Tobacco Industry, which was caught deliberately adding addictive nicotine to its products. Big Food is taking advantage of a biological imperative that we are supposed to fight with “will power” and “self control.”

THE REAL BOTTOM LINE: We all would be better off to fight the profit motive. Capitalism is killing us, and market socialism, however well intended, is not far behind. Nothing but ill has come of making profit off people’s needs. Be it the foreclosure crisis, high unemployment or the obesity epidemic, whenever we place profit over people, people suffer. To blame the people for the misery imposed on them by the systems they were born into is missing the point.

We must stop trying to turn everything we make and do into money. Because if we do not, we will do anything and everything we can get away with to make money. In the food arena this means coal extracts for food coloring, tons of sodium preservatives, three or four types of sweeteners in one food, sweeteners in things that are not meant to be sweet, growth hormones to shorten the cycle from birth to slaughter for meat animals, and GMO’s, including the so-called “Round up Ready” crops that are giving us superweeds.

But it is much easier for government to tell us that we are having too much sugar in our lattés than too much profit motive in our lifestyles. The answer to the obesity epidemic is for food to become a substance that is created for the purpose of real nutrition, to nourish human beings, not a substance that pretends to be nutritious but is really created for profit.

About the Author: Kéllia Ramares-Watson is a 57 year old freelance journalist living in Oakland, CA. She is an associate producer for WINGS – Women’s International News Gathering Service, a syndicated women’s radio program. She is also a member of demonetize.it, a European-based website and email discussion list dedicated to alternative economics such as non-market socialism, the gift economy, the commons, and de-growth solidarity. She holds a B.A. in Economics from Fordham University and a J.D. from Indiana University School of Law, Bloomington

http://www.leftistreview.com/2013/03/16/the-obesity-epidemic-its-really-about-profit/kelliaramares/

Polluted America: GMO Manmade Biological Threats, Plant Diseases, Germ Warfare

04Mar2013

By geobear7

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research

In the United States everything is polluted. Democracy is polluted with special interests and corrupt politicians. Accountability is polluted with executive branch exemptions from law and the Constitution and with special legal privileges for corporations, such as the Supreme Court given right to corporations to purchase American elections. The Constitution is polluted with corrupt legal interpretations from the Bush and Obama regimes that have turned constitutional prohibitions into executive branch rights, transforming law from a shield of the people into a weapon in the hands of government.

Waters are polluted with toxic waste spills, oil spills, chemical fertilizer run-off with resulting red tides and dead zones, acid discharges from mining with resulting destructive algae such as prymnesium parvum, from toxic chemicals used in fracking and with methane that fracking releases into wells and aquifers, resulting in warnings to homeowners near to fracking operations to open their windows when showering.

The soil’s fertility is damaged, and crops require large quantities of chemical fertilizers. The soil is polluted with an endless array of toxic substances and now with glyphosate, the main element in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide with which GMO crops are sprayed.

Glyphosate now shows up in wells, streams and in rain.

Air is polluted with a variety of substances, and there are many large cities in which there are days when the young, the elderly, and those suffering with asthma are warned to remain indoors.

All of these costs are costs imposed on society and ordinary people by corporations that banked profits by not having to take the costs into account. This is the way in which unregulated capitalism works.

Our food itself is polluted with antibiotics, growth hormones, pesticides, and glyphosate.

Glyphosate might be the most dangerous development to date. Some scientists believe that glyphosate has the potential to wipe out our main grain crops and now that Obama’s Secretary of Agriculture, Thomas Vilsack, has approved genetically modified Roundup Ready alfalfa, maintaining sustainable animal herds for milk and meat could become impossible.

Alfalfa is the main forage crop for dairy and beef herds. Genetically modified alfalfa could be unsafe for animal feed, and animal products such as milk and meat could become unsafe for human consumption.

On January 17, 2011, Dr. Don Huber outlined the dangers of approving Roundup Ready alfalfa in a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack. Huber requested that approval be delayed until independent research could eval‎uate the risks. Vilsack ignored the letter and accommodated Monsanto’s desire for monopoly profits that come from the company’s drive to control the seed supply of US and world agriculture by approving Roundup Ready alfalfa.

Who is Don Huber, and why is his letter important?

Huber is professor emeritus at Purdue University. He has been a plant pathologist and soil microbiologist for a half century. He has an international reputation as a leading authority. In the US military, he eval‎uated natural and manmade biological threats, such as germ warfare and disease outbreaks and retired with the rank of Colonel. For the USDA he coordinates the Emergent Diseases and Pathogens Committee. In other words, he is high up in his scientific profession.

You can read online what Huber told the Secretary of Agriculture. Briefly, the outcome of many years of Roundup Ready GMO corn and soybeans has been a decline in nutritional value, the outbreak of new plant diseases resulting in widespread crop failures, and severe reproductive problems in livestock, with some herds having a spontaneous abortion rate that is too high to maintain a profitable business.

Glyphosate is a powerful biocide. It harms beneficial soil organisms, altering the natural balance in the soil and reducing the disease resistance of crops, thus unleashing diseases that devastate corn, soybean, and wheat crops, and giving rise to a new pathogen associated with premature animal aging and infertility. These developments, Huber told the Agriculture Secretary, “are threatening the economic viability of both crop and animal producers.” The evidence seems to be real that genetically modified crops have lost their genetic resistance to diseases that never previously were threats.

There is evidence that the new pathogen is related to a rise in human infertility and is likely having adverse effects on human health of which we are still uninformed. Like fluoride, glyphosate might enter our diet in a variety of ways. For example, the label on a bottle of Vitamin D says, “Other ingredients: soybean oil, corn oil.”

Monsanto disputes Huber’s claims and got support for its position from the agricultural extension services of Iowa State and Ohio State universities. However, the question is whether these are independently funded services or corporate supported, and there is always the element of professional rivalry, especially for funding, which comes mainly from agribusiness.

The Purdue University extension service was more circumspect. On the one hand it admits that there is evidence that supports Huber’s claims: “The claim that herbicides, such as glyphosate, can make plants more susceptible to disease is not entirely without merit. Research has indicated that plants sprayed with glyphosate or other herbicides are more susceptible to many biological and physiological disorders (Babiker et al., 2011; Descalzo et al., 1996; Johal and Rahe, 1984; Larson et al., 2006; Means and Kremer, 2007; Sanogo et al., 2000; Smiley et al., 1992). . . . Although some research indicates there is an increase in disease severity on plants in the presence of glyphosate, it does NOT necessarily mean that there is an impact on yield.”

On the other hand, the Purdue extension service maintains its recommendation for “judicious glyphosate use for weed control.” However, one of Huber’s points is that weeds are developing Roundup resistance. Use has gone beyond the “judicious” level and as glyphosate builds up in soil, its adverse effects increase.

A submission to the Environmental Protection Agency by 26 university entomologists describes the constraints that agribusiness has put on the ability of independent scientists to conduct objective research. The submission, in which the scientists are afraid to reveal their names because of the threat of funding cutoffs, is included as an item in one of the bibliographical references below. Here is the statement:

“The names of the scientists have been withheld from the public docket because virtually all of us require cooperation from industry at some level to conduct our research. Statement: Technology/stewardship agreements required for the purchase of genetically modified seed explicitly prohibit research. These agreements inhibit public scientists from pursuing their mandated role on behalf of the public good unless the research is approved by industry. As a result of restricted access, no truly independent research can be legally conducted on many critical questions regarding the technology, its performance, its management implications, IRM, and its interactions with insect biology. Consequently, data flowing to an EPA Scientific Advisory Panel from the public sector is unduly limited.”

Monsanto is not only sufficiently powerful to prevent any research other than that which it purchases with its funding, but also Monsanto succeeded last year in blocking with money and propaganda the GMO labeling law in California. I would tell you to be careful what you eat as it can make you ill and infertile, but you can’t even find out what you are eating.

You live in America, which has “freedom and democracy” and “accountable” government and ”accountable” corporations. You don’t need to worry. The government and responsible corporations are taking good care of you. Especially Obama, Vilsack, and Monsanto.

Short bibliography:

http://fhr.branditimage.com/hot-topic-letter-to-us-secretary-of-agriculture/

http://www.fooddemocracynow.org/blog/2011/apr/6/don-hubers-cover-letter-euuk-commissions/

Dr. Huber Explains Science Behind New Organism and Threat from Monsanto’s Roundup, GMOs to Disease and Infertility, 2012. http://vimeo.com/22997532

http://www.greenpasture.org/utility/showArticle/?objectID=7169

http://ourecovillage.org/2011/04/11/dr-hubers-cover-letter-to-secretary-vilsack/

http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/51-2012/14164-glyphosate-and-gmos-impact-on-crops-soils-animals-and-man-dr-don-huber

http://www.non-gmoreport.com/articles/may10/consequenceso_widespread_glyphosate_use.php

http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/huber-pathogen-roundup-ready-crops.aspx

http://southeastfarmpress.com/resistant-pigweed-plagues-central-georgia-cotton

http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/blogs/time-for-usda-to-wake-up-to-weed-resistance-and-ban-agent-orange-corn-once-and-for-all/

http://southeastfarmpress.com/resistant-pigweed-plagues-central-georgia-cotton

http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/blogs/time-for-usda-to-wake-up-to-weed-resistance-and-ban-agent-orange-corn-once-and-for-all/

Copyright © 2013 Global Research

Ed Note: Much of this info is not news to Food Freedom readers, but Roberts has a much louder microphone than most of us shouting about GMOS. We interviewed Huber when his letter first surfaced on the web, and have covered his interviews with other outfits several times since then. Some of you may have missed Huber’s 20-minute video from a year ago (also see above).

Much appreciation to Dr. Roberts for covering a topic near and dear to our focus. If anyone really believes over half of 95% of Californians changed their mind and voted to keep GMO-adulterated food unlabelled, there’s a slew of scientific studies explaining how electronic elections cannot be made secure.

http://foodfreedomgroup.com/2013/03/04/polluted-america-gmo-manmade-biological-threats-plant-diseases-germ-warfare/

Hunger Campaigns to Kill the Poor

14Mar2013

By coto2admin

By Sheesh
Food Freedom News

Nothing like a full wake up call to understand that governments are ready and eager to kill their own people.  For all their high-sounding programs to feed the poor, black, red, brown, sick and especially (violins, please) children in this country, the intention is as surely as high fructose (genetically engineered) corn syrup is disease on a stick.  The nice old Queen of England and the infallible pope and churches and government agencies in Canada went after Indian children there, starving them, intentionally subjecting them to lethal diseases (and pedophilia and torture and murder thrown in), and took the 99% of land that belonged to their peoples’.  Watch the ITCCS proceedings that end indicted the Queen of England and pope for genocide.

Dr. Otis Brawley, head of the American Cancer Society, has it only partly right when he says “The system is not failing …. failure is the system.”  What he doesn’t say is the system is intended to kill, and was created by the same banking and corporate entities – the Rockefellers who funded Hitler and genocide, and the Bushes, who got rich in Naz i Germany, attempted a fascist coup here, created a genocidal program against Native Americans, arranged a pandemic campaign that could force any lethal vaccine or drug or chemical on anyone in the country, and are strongly responsible for GMOs, which cause diseases, organ shrinkage, tumor growth and early deaths.

Which brings us to feeing the poor in order to kill them.  Food Fight! doesn’t blame people or ignorance or the system, it points to the culprits and is dead on.  And then Ron Finley’s Guerrilla Gardening shows absolutely what has to happen.  No mucking about talking or waiting on anything or anyone, just getting out there and doing it – planting food everywhere possible. ln all three cases, blacks are getting the message out bluntly – the system is killing people.

But it’s not just that the food is sterilizing and increasingly poisonous (FDA says the neurotoxin aspartame is fine for milk, and doesn’t need to be labeled), the vaccines are sterilizing and poisonous, the water is poisoned with sterilizing and disease producing aluminum waste (fluoride), the baby toys that kids put in their mouths and the storage items for food are poisoned with BPA and BPS, the air is filled with chemtrails, the feed animals are going sterile themselves and are passing on antibiotic resistance.

Because it gets worse.  Here comes the Obama administration with trumpeted plans for community gardens, out of the (violins) “deep concern for the obese and sick poor.”  Only it’s bureaucracy-speak.  What is offered are applying to get into meetings where the outcomes is not food but papers and brochures and the food part is at best limited plots of land to grow gardens that come with long waiting lists and fees.  Meanwhile behind the scenes, the government has not been waiting or writing brochures – they’ve been getting cities to rip out the poor’s gardens in housing projects, gardens the poor already had, already knew how to grow because they learned it from their families.  All this they were doing just fine, without the red-tape government courses that lead to the waiting lists for limited plots, for the fees  The good and free food people were already depending on for real sustenance?  Jerked away.  To hell with the poor.  To graves with the poor.

And that leaves what for those who aren’t allowed to grow their own food and have no jobs or money?  In come the big hunger campaigns.

They are providing exactly the food that is killing people – GMOs, high fructose corn syrup, things heavily laden with GMO-sugar, with GMO-soy, with GMO-canola.  The slow kill by the oh so concerned NGOs and government agencies all pushing stuff that literally kills, while pretending they are helping the poor, pretending they have driven the poor into this death trap by getting rid of jobs and then putting them on government assistance programs that hand out sterilization and death – for free!

http://foodfreedomgroup.com/2012/10/24/arranging-a-us-famine/

On top of that, getting that food (and the poor have little other means to get any), the WIC program for mothers and babies who serves up soy baby formula linked to sterilization, and other programs, all require compliance to taking drugs and vaccines.  In Mississippi where they have many poor blacks and only one means of exempting out of those vaccines, a medical exemption that is impossible to secure, parents can’t be food for their children if the children are not completely up on the life-threatening CDC vaccine schedule, and if the parents do not also take the vaccines.  Refuse the vaccines as so many educated families are doing, and the poor can lose their children.  How can the poor possibly refuse the antibiotic and hormone filled, pesticide covered, HFCS and aspartame bearing food, as the educated, still employed in this country are increasingly doing?

Millions of poor blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans and other poor, have been carefully driven into a trap, to force their slow sickening and demise.  Government funding pays for this.  NGOs seek donations for it.  Both play on sympathy as they intend and profit from crippling and killing people.

And then the final slamming of the gate behind the trapped poor – the collapse of the economy.  No money, no government hand outs, only DHS with its tanks and preparation for a civil war. Will they get one?  Certainly the govenment has been arranging a famine here.  Perhaps the American people will foil the corporate expectations by simply helping each other out, family to family.  Less for each but enough for all, and community forged to get everyone through.

Such an idea seems far from what Michelle Obama is doing.  She has an organic garden.  But did she ever once say to the country, and especially to poor Blacks, any of the following?  ”Every home needs an organic garden.  This is your way to freedom from high prices, freedom from disease, freedom from fear if the economy fails and the government cuts you off with nothing.  Organic gardening is the way to self-sufficiency and health and community.”

She might be less likely to refer to the background reality driving all this:  ”Beware the slow kill this administration is rolling out for you.  And the famine created for everyone.  They, who call themselves the Good Club, want to get rid of 90% of people, and you are not among the 10% they want.”

http://foodfreedomgroup.com/2013/03/14/hunger-campaigns-to-kill-the-poor/