To stop our pollinators from disappearing, our lands from becoming permanently toxic, and the destruction of our world’s food sources, we must unite to stop Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow, Bayer, DuPont and BASF.
No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.
Jacob Bronowski
The Queen of Amerindia
Somehow Bill Gates seems to be a puppet-master influencing policy and “science” behind everything from education, to food (GMOs), to the environment. Too bad he doesn’t build universities, fund college tuition, etc., rather than to spend on “advocacy” and “policy” groups. It would seem no matter how philanthropically motivated Mr. Gates attempts to picture himself, his main goal is always one of mega control and influence. Somehow he’s gone from the tech business to being an authority – and major influence – on just about everything. Whatever he’s up to, he keeps himself in front of influence and policy making – and the cameras, and often has a significant monetary investment in it also (Mondanto, GMO).
We haven’t posted in awhile. There is so much being posted in the social networks, and it’s being pushed, fed, emailed everywhere. However, we came across this video by a young girl from Canada who sums up everything, and sends a stunningly sensible, and also alarming, message to the world by a delivering a 5 minute commentary in front of the UN.
She manages to cover it all. Everything we teach our children (that is good), seems to be what adults can’t get through their heads. For adults who propose to be working on solutions, it’s clear they aren’t doing a good job, and most likely have more self interest in it than the sense of urgency needed to leave a better world for the next generation.
She’s right, we’re “fixing, fixing” but we don’t seem to get what’s broken, if it’s broken enough, we don’t care enough, don’t get organized enough, and probably, for all our talk, our meetings, reports, and billions and trillions(?) spent, don’t know how to fix it. The will to get it right, as this young lady has, is missing in our world leadership. And it’s critically important, imperative, that we get it right – now. It’s not good enough to have report after report of vanishing species, spreading illness, continuing war, conflict, starvation, disease. There seems to be more hunger for reports and discussion than hunger to actually get the job done.
As she points out, we have to see ourselves as all one people, which we are obviously having a difficult time doing. And we don’t see the absolute necessity of sharing, of spreading the wealth that is available. We are hoarders – of time, wealth, self importance, and solutions.
Please listen take 5 minutes to listen to this message, and then pass it along.
The girl who silenced the world for 5 minutes
Time to turn concrete back into soil and growing things, to make our environment sustainable. Guerrilla Gardening sprouts up in LA and is spreading everywhere.
Sustainable, healthy, environmentally and lifestyle – Design for Sustainable Lifestyle
The toll of oil drilling, and the inevitability of spills and its effects.
The toll of oil drilling
Turning land into farmland. Sustainable agriculture for farms and farmers, wherever they come from. A lesson that should inform everywhere.
http://www.grist.org/article/Kansas-City-pioneers-new-models-for-urban-farms/
A study going on in Vermont demonstrates how everything is connected, and begins with soil science. We “enrich” the land with fertilizers, pollute it with phosphates from sewage waste and runoff, and some is imbalance in the soil that is eroding away. It’s a loss of soil and a contaminate for our water.
Vermont studies soil, the consequences of phosphates and erosion
We just found this on Twitter. A variety of useful tips on how to save money, and also have an eco-friendly lifestyle.
http://twitter.com/Rubbingnickels
Monsanto, Sygenta, Dupont, Bayer, the “gift” of GMOs and pesticides. The gift that makes us sick, ruins small farming (if they don’t sue you to economic death first). This “gift” that is talked of as what will solve the world’s need for food, is on the march to eventually starve us all. We can’t believe that the executives of these companies eat anything they produce.
Changing their tag line from “Without chemicals, life itself would be impossible” to “Imagine.” Oh, we can imagine, and it’s a nightmare in the making. We in Amerindia think these companies are propagating a crime against the people. All people.
This article really sums it up:
http://www.foodfirst.org/en/node/2927
The Queen of Amerindia
“If you have an interest in sustainable living, then we’d like to invite you to join the Permaculture Guild in our mission to support the permaculture community and encourage the spread of more conscious ways of growing and distributing healthy, nourishing foods and promoting the use of renewable sources of energy.”
http://www.permacultureguild.org/
From this article:
“EEB has already calculated the annual loss of forests at $2-5 trillion, dwarfing costs of the banking crisis.
“Many economies remain blind to the huge value of the diversity of animals, plants and other lifeforms and their role in healthy and functioning ecosystems,” said Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (Unep).
“Humanity has fabricated the illusion that somehow we can get by without biodiversity, or that it is somehow peripheral to our contemporary world: the truth is we need it more than ever on a planet of six billion heading to over nine billion people by 2050.”
The more that ecosystems become degraded, the UN says, the greater the risk that they will be pushed “over the edge” into a new stable state of much less utility to humankind.
For example, freshwater systems polluted with excess agricultural fertiliser will suffocate with algae, killing off fish and making water unfit for human consumption.
The launch of GBO-3 comes as governments begin two weeks of talks in Nairobi aimed at formulating new measures to tackle global biodiversity loss that can be adopted at October’s Convention on Biological Diversity summit in Japan.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10103179.stm
High Fructose Corn Syrup is just that. They are going to change the name so you don’t suspect the chemicals used in it’s making, and this is a highly subsidized genetically modified crop. Bad science can’t defend it. HFCS Not!!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/business/02syrup.html?emc=eta1
US farmers fighting back against giant agrabusiness and animal factories – and winning.
How to move from a lost environment to a renewed environment, climate, and society. Save 20″ to see this worth every second video.
Willie Smits restores a rainforest
We have to seriously reduce, marginalize, eliminate the need for plastics, much of it packaging, and much else that is just junk or could be made of something else. Plastic can be recycled into some useful products, however, recycling in general just uses up more energy, and then we’re making more plastic and the cycle goes on. Until more and more of it shows up in our environment, as giant globs of plastic forming in our oceans and polluting our shores indicates.
Once the word was “Plastics!” (made famous by “The Graduate”). Now it should be “Plastics – Not!”
Plastics in our oceans and on our beaches
We have commented on many issues as US administrations have come and gone, and as the world of nations elbow their way into, or fall away from, the progress of nations into the contemporary world. But our comments quickly become dated, so we leave specifics and details for another time. Our comment for today is that we need, everywhere, more responsible, grown up leaders. We need leaders who see beyond their own gain, and instead work for a Sustainable Good that they can leave behind. We need this from all the princes, presidents, CEOs, and other leaders of our time.
We wonder why the promises of a healthy, civilized society do not materialize as promised. More is not better, false science betrays, cures can become an ill begotten cause, choice becomes confusion, complexity obscures, and money purchases opinion, understanding, and leadership. As the world seems to shrink, we struggle with world problems that continue to be bigger than we are. Economy, politics, agriculture, environment, water – on a world scale much is not well. Hunger, poverty, disease, human rights, war, inequality – band aid solutions, token attempts, and even some very good and well intentioned ideas too, are not enough to stem the march into problems we can identify. And there is an angst that we no longer have another place, another neighborhood, another country – another earth, that we can escape to.
We see a fundamental issue that many leaders are as a child, or adolescent. First a child feels only for himself, then hopefully grows to understand the rights, feelings, and needs of others. Then comes adolescence, full of energy and drive, but still full of self. And adolescence is known for taking risks, a sense of invulnerability, and often not making the connection with future consequences.
But we hear “How could I have known?”, “I must have been wrong [ for 30 years]“, “there were no such memos – we had no idea”, “I don’t remember”, “we actually didn’t understand what derivatives were”, “I don’t know where the money went”, “the research proved it was safe”, “the data was flawed”, “unsubstantiated fears”, “it’s safe for humans”, “it was pilot error”, “we have no idea where the contamination came from”, “it’s the fault of the media for making it public”, “it’s technically legal”, and on and on. This sounds like the infamous “the dog ate my homework.” In other words, I’m not responsible for what happened, even though I’m in charge, and I don’t expect there to be consequences. Adolescent thinking.
This is true now with unimaginable Greed. The thought that one can take any amount, endlessly, regardless of the methods, that no one will catch on, I can bully my way out if they do, that I can buy the important things, it will make me all powerful and popular [forever], and there will be no consequence I can’t get out of. Adolescent.
It would seem to us that much of our problems are created by those who have not achieved full maturity.
Companies and kings, leaders of all kinds, many cannot think what their actions will get them in the long term. They do not see that power and wealth, no matter what you think it gets you now, you will not have it always. It will not buy you trust and true friends; it may get you compliance but with fear, not respect; true loyalty is not for sale . You will get sick, you will get old. Whatever you took from this world, no thing will leave it with you.
We need leaders who can live not at the expense of others, who are not afraid of transparency, who are ready to be accountable, and understand that our value is a measure of what we give, not what we have taken. We need the people to be fully informed of the whole truth, and to be strong and wise enough to demand the rightful behavior of leaders who guide our life on this planet, and life for the next generation.
The Queen of Amerindia
Kenyans attempted to keep out Monsanto genetically modified corn arriving from South Africa. Monsanto and all its Roundup genetically modified seed should be kept out of all Africa. This is not a food solution – it’s another situation of Monsanto taking over the food market and the chemicals that feed it (and feed it to people). These are bad crops that are more likely to fail and add to the hunger problem.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8609316.stm
Comments on an article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences via BBC News
A pilot study has been done on 6 cloned animals, two beef and 4 cows, all derived from a single cow and a single bull. It has been determined that, even though the meat and dairy products produced from these animals have higher levels of fat and fatty acids, the products still fall “within the beef industry standards.”
Studies will be continued so that products from these animals can be labeled “safe for human consumption.” People will be reassured and encouraged to consume these products because they are within industry standards – “safe”, even though Americans (and increasing numbers of people in other countries that eat like Americans) are obviously having problems falling within acceptable weight standards. Americans are getting too fat, and they are being told to consume less fat. But we’re creating a more fatty product for them to eat. Go figure.
It is also stated in this article that “the team say that their results suggest cloning techniques could be used to boost food production, particularly in developing countries.” Not that these animals will be produced any quicker; it’s still going to take a cow to produce a cow, cloned or otherwise.
Also, one wonders how this will boost production, since the article also states that “most cloned animals to not make it to term before being born, and many of those that do are born deformed.” And there are some worries that seemingly healthy clones my have subtle defects that might make it unsafe to eat.
Between the juggling of “acceptable standards”, reproduction drawbacks and other caveats, there is one thing that is clear. Cloned animals can be patented. They can be “owned” and therefore can be a controlled (and more expensive?) food source.
Between the lines, it would seem that all this research effort is not focused on the physical or economic health of the consumer. But someone will be making a lot of money on it.
The Queen of Amerindia
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