Monthly Archives: October 2016

A blind and arrogant India

Posted on by

My puja greetings
___________________

India ranks 97th, near the bottom, of the 118 nation index of hunger. Indians do far worse than neighbours Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Iran, Iraq, China, or even Ghana, Senegal, Malawi, Congo, Uganda etc.

But we can take pride that India is less hungry than Pakistan, and a very short list of unfortunate countries like Haiti, Zambia and Central African Republic etc.

When thinking this item through, I can identify as the root cause of this to be no other than the voting and upwardly mobile middle class of India – people like you and me.

In the age of virtual world and instant messaging and electronic media and TV channels by the dozens, I see no mention anywhere of the fact that half of India’s population cannot get a healthy meal a day, that nearly half of all children of India are malnourished, or that India, despite all the hoopla about progress, is among the poorest countries when it comes to basic minimum food requirement and access to health care.

For the educated people of India, the other half dose not exist. It is not in their TV, nor in their incessant messaging on whatsapp, Facebook, pinterest, instagram or whatever other platform a huge number of folks are spending millions of collective hours every day to catch up with each other. The endless plethora of soap opera on Indian channels never cover the story of the hungry and dying India.

We are ignorant despite education, and arrogant without any justification.

So, on this so called auspicious occasion when everyone with a laptop, a smart phone or a tablet is wishing everyone else seasons greetings and শুভ বিজয়া, I would write the last paragraph of Tagore’s poem “হে মোর দুর্ভাগা দেশ ”
—–

দেখিতে পাও না তুমি মৃত্যুদূত দাঁড়ায়েছে দ্বারে ,
অভিশাপ আঁকি দিল তোমার জাতির অহংকারে ।
সবারে না যদি ডাক ‘ ,
এখনো সরিয়া থাক ‘ ,
আপনারে বেঁধে রাখ ‘ চৌদিকে জড়ায়ে অভিমান —
মৃত্যুমাঝে হবে তবে চিতাভস্মে সবার সমান ।

Happy holidays – ignorant and arrogant Indian middle class.

Beware of GM Mustard, and glufosinate tolerant GM crops

Posted on by

Glufosinate is as dangerous as glyphosate for our biology – not just because of its toxicity, or because of whatever else they put into the herbicide package, but also because glufosinate, like glyphosate, is an analog of (mimic of) one of the canonical twenty amino acids that are the basic building blocks of all life, from bacteria onwards to humans. Glufosinate is an analog of glutamic acid, while glyphosate is analog of glycine. Both Glycine and glutamic acids are two out of twenty amino acids that all life is made of.

And, our immune system is unable to distinguish between glufosinate and glutamic acid. Therefore, if it (glufosinate) is in our food, which it will be if the herbicide is used in agriculture, then it gets into our blood, and apart from whatever else trouble it, and its associate chemicals packaged into the herbicide brand, can cause through direct toxicity, glufosinate will also cross our blood-brain barrier, like a Trojan horse, or a spy, simply because it mimics glutamic acid which we are programmed to use and allow in. Then it proceeds to contaminate a whole swatch of our biology because it is picked up, in place of glutamic acid, to create many byproducts into our biology including thousands of kinds of proteins that were originally supposed to have glutamic acid. These proteins with glufosinate, instead of glutamic acid or its byproduct glutamine, will mis-fold, mis behave or render the protein dysfunctional – a trigger to all kinds of health hazards and illness.

Scientist Anthony Samsel of Deerfield, New Hampshire, USA, who has been studying glyphosate and its ability to penetrate our inner biology by mimicking glycine, speaks here with me, about the similar danger glufosinate poses to all living creatures, and how countries like India should be careful not to allow registration of GM crops that are designed as tolerant to glufosinate.

The talk covers a 16 minute video.

[youtube w7U24yhzwqs]

Samsel also speaks of European Food safety Authority issuing a restriction in use of glufosinate. The actual document can be read or downloaded by clicking here.

This is important information for those nations where glufosinate based herbicides are used in nature or in agriculture, and where glufosinate tolerant food crops are in the pipeline, such as the case of GM-Mustard (DMH 11) for India.