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Mexico, Thailand, Peru, S.A., China among cleanest food exporters to Canada

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Subject covered in this blog will grow and expand, and may get included into the book eventually. This post is made after transcribing around 3,000 records and going back for some error correction and cleaning up of the data so far transcribed.

I look up at the statistics offered by the service provider who hosts my tonu.org blog site where I put up the WordPress blogs, most of which has been to do with food security in general, and Glyphosate in particular in the recent years.

One of the statistics provided is for me to see which area of the world had people that liked looking into and reading my blogs in the last few days. I could even check more details such as which particular blog post was or had been read, or which devices were used (computer, tablet, or smart phone etc). This is how I came to know that quite a few folks actually look at my blog using tablets and smart phones, and not necessarily computers. This was a sort of revelation for me, since I personally find a smart phone too small to read blogs. However, I understand that the so called smart phones are becoming very powerful and versatile gadgets where the “phone” service is only one part, and that there are increasingly more number of people that use just one device, such as a smart phone, for all their needs including browsing the net.

Who in the world is reading about glyphosate in Canadian food?

I also take note when folks from uncommon places, or places that do not seem to have heavy readership in the past look into my blog,

Russia had been an interesting cast. First, English is perhaps not the major language folks read or speak, though things are perhaps changing, and penetration of english as an international language is creeping into Russia as well. Also, Russia is largely a promoter of clean food. It has justification in being suspicious of the toxic agricultural technology coming out of the US. Also, a very large part of the total Russian food supply comes from home grown food – I think to the tune of some 40% or so. In other words, small farmer and home grown food is deeply enmeshed into the Russian culture. I feel this is a very good thing, in light of what is happening in the west with regard to industrially grown and processed stuff that goes in the name of food.

Clean Food exporters to Canada

And since my blogs mostly deals with the toxicity issue in industrial food systems that Russia appears to be wary of, and since my blog is invariably in English, I did not expect heavy readership from Russia, and am not surprised to see few hits from there.

However, I do see a persistent interest from the area of the three major Russian cities from the west – St. Petersburg, Moscow and Volgograd. These three names are sort of deer to me because of a different reason – I have been fascinated by Russian resistant to German invasion, and in particular the battles for Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad. Hitler lost all three of these battles, but the carnage and hardship endured by people in Leningrad (Ex Petrograd and todays St. Petersburg) as well as Stalingrad (today’s Volgograd) is unimaginable. This also confirmed to me that the Russian character (and not necessarily their past communist regime) has a fierce sense of patriotism and ability to withstand unimaginable hardships in order to endure and keep their nation from foreign subjugation. This is also borne out in the previous western invasions into Russia going back to the time of Napoleon.

I had read a vast number of books, of German, Soviet Russian, American as well as post Soviet Russian versions of the battles and the history continues to amaze me, although I abhor wars in general, I find the essence of the Russian character under stress to be something to learn from.

And so, when I see hits from these cities, two of which have changed their name after the end of Communism. They removed Lenin from Leningrad and gave back the original name, St. Petersburg. I am however, a bit confused about this. I know the town was founded by the Tzar Peter the Great of Russia and was named after him as Petrograd. However, the current name – St. Petersburg, implies it is named after a saint. Peter the great was a tzar, and although he is called Peter the great, he was a mortal and not a saint. So who is the current town named after?

Then, in random order, comes two areas from Africa. Africa has not been a place where my blog generates interest. Therefore I was happy to see Lagos, Nigeria, being one dot on the map. And there has been relatively consistent interest from South Africa, from towns such as Durban.

Regarding Alaska, I can make a faint guess as who it might be, since I had a recent exchange with someone there that has an interest in the subject of Glyphosate in food.

I noted Guadalhara, Mexico for two reasons. First, I find the name so charming – Guadalhara. I wish I knew what it meant and where the name originates from. The second reason is, Mexico is the only country in North America that provided consistently high quality food to Canada with virtually no glyphosate. I am preparing a fresh blog on countries that exported food to Canada, where the number of samples tested by CFIA is larger than a minimum of 40, and where the average glyphosate content per sample is less than 5 parts er billion.

Mexico tops the list with a few others, and stands like an exceptionally shiny example for North America, since the other two in the continent – Canada and USA go to the bottom of the pile as the countries that have the most toxic foods on average, with regards to glyphosate.

I am not yet ready for the blog since I have to delve into some specifics of which kinds of food are imported into Canada from these cleanest suppliers (of which there are a few more besides Mexico) and if there is something to be learned from that for the consumers.

Also, I made a sort of temporary halt to further transcriptions as I found some errors in the records between records 2,500 and 3,000 and decided to go back there with a magnifying glass and clean it up instead of leaving it for later. I did managed to clean most of it off, but lost some data in the process and am re-entering them, and feeling better for having done it this way.

Anyhow, on to the hit list map.

Buenos Aires, Argentina flashed up recently. I do not have much contact with folks there, but find the name Buenos Aires, very charming and understand that is means “good air” or something like that. Lovely !

I am very aware of the devastation going on with regard to industrial level growing of RoundUp ready GM soy in the pampas, where aerial spray of the chemical is suspected to be causing serious birth defects in the villages where the indigenous (first nation) people stay, and how laboratory tests in Buenos Aires conducted on flog embryo by subjecting the mother frogs to corresponding levels ( corresponding to body weight) of glyphosate resulted in comparable birth defects of the similar type that are being found in the newborns in the Pampas villages.

I am aware of the fact that most of this soy goes to China, for production of soy based food, which would have made me suspicious of the foods the Chinese are eating. However, the Chinese foods imported into Canada and tested by CFIA turns out to be very clean. This is another puzzle that I intend to dig into later. It is possible that Canada is not importing the toxic kinds of Chinese food, which may be left for the Chinese consumers. However, it also raises a second question – where do the Chinese restaurants in Canada get their soy sauce, or tofu from?

All these made me notice the spot – Buenos Aires, on the map.

Canada and USA has always been heavy readers of the blog, and the dots are so closely packed that I often cannot pick out unusual towns and villages from the map, exceptions aside, like Alaska.

Likewise in Europe. However, I have seen an increased level of interest of late from countries such as Poland. And today, I noted a repeat visit from Scandinavia, Ireland and Greece.

In Asia, India is a consistent visitor to my blog. Even then, I managed to pick up a new name – Bhawan, in the Himalayan foothills not far from Delhi.

Sihet in Bangladesh, Bangkok in Thailand, and Wuhan in China caught my attention. Thailand should be equally pleased with my next blog, since that is one more great country whose foods have been tested by CFIA coving a large sample base and found to be remarkably clean with respect to glyphosate poisoning.

From the middle east there has been some sporadic interests, often from Israel. This time UAE shows up.

That about sums it up with the blog hit map for today, as I ponder into the details of the few countries that so far seems to export very clean food to Canada, with regard to glyphosate poisoning.

Thanks for reading. Comments welcome.

Tale of two lentils – Canadian and Indian

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Hello folks.

Today I bring to you another fifteen minutes of rant – me talking to myself in a video, about glyphosate poisoning of food, as in north America, specifically from a Canadian’s perspective.

We are supposed to have monthly brainstorming meetings, to appraise each other of what is going on, and to get folk’s opinion on what to do about it all. Each brings his or her own perspective and view point, and we search for a path out of this topic jungle.

The first of these meetings has not yet happened, as Richard Miller is organizing it. Meanwhile, I could not wait and had to come out with his blog and a fifteen minute video – about lentil, as produced in two countries – Canada and India.

This blog and update is prepared after going through the first 3,000 records entered by CFIA, covering almost whole of year 2015. It also reflects my frustration and bafflement as well as the difficulty in dealing with different entries of similar foods using different names or spellings, which makes it harder for the software to analyze the data. There is a famous saying about computerization – garbage in, garbage out. So I had to consider creating an extra column to the side and re-entering some of the sample identifications using more descriptive and standardized terms, which the computer can then pick up and analyze or compare. But doing that for thousands of records is backbreaking, tiring and frustrating.

Frustration also from the fact that I have not found a single regular wheat item or its derivatives such as flour or bread, in the first 3,000 records. I am extremely puzzled and frustrated about it.

But, in absence of any wheat item in the first 3,000 records, the next major food groups turns out to be rice and lentils. Rice turns out to be reasonably clean of glyphosate, though even here, Canadian Rice fair poorly against most others.

But this blog and video is about lentils, which has reasonably high glyphosate content, especially if it is grown in Canada. Samples from United States has not been considered for this graph and video. Perhaps it will be included for comparative study later on. Also, a large group of food samples that contain lentils are marked “unknown”. I might analyze them as described, i.e. “unknown”, which may not be too helpful, but I cannot help that. I suspect most of the unknown samples are of Canadian origin, but cannot prove it.

Readers may have to reach a decision on them by themselves, for now.

Anyhow, the tale of two lentils is as follows:
Canadian lentils have almost 90% samples containing glyphosate, and average content is 282 ppb.
Indian lentils have 40% samples with glyphosate, and average level is 25 ppb.

Tale of two lentils

The Rice Story

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Transcribing the data from CFIA on foods tested for glyphosate – thousands and thousands of records, has given me a new insight into the changing scene in North America with regarding to creeping toxicity in most foods, thanks to glyphosate and its indiscriminate use in our agriculture and in nature.

A lot of effort has gone into transcription of the data as well as trying to make sense out of it. A lot of sleepless nights. Somewhere down the line, it came to me that I should consider writing a book on it, perhaps an e-book on Amazon, sold for a couple of dollars, which will contain all the efforts to make sense of the looming catastrophe of increasing amounts of this most controversial herbicide that is likely at the root of all sorts of illnesses in humans and a white swatch of the living world that is exposed to it.

Meanwhile, I have yet to reach the halfway mark in transcribing the data from CFIA, but have covered over 3,000 records already, though proof reading, error correction and more of the same is going on.

But, there is enough material here to talk about, say, rice, in this blog.

The Rice Story

Out of the 3,000 odd records so far transcribed, one item that still eludes me is the major food group comprising of conventional wheat and the wheat products such as flour and bread etc. The only items with “wheat” in their name are fringe grains such as buckwheat, or terms like “wheat less”. Why standard wheat is still missing, out of the first 3,000 records, I do not know. Some friends are speculating that CFIA did not wish to test wheat because so much glyphosate is expected to be found there, that they did not wish to frighten the people.

Well, it is known that wheat mostly in not GMO, not RoundUp ready, and cannot tolerate glyphosate. Therefore glyphosate is used to desiccate wheat just before harvest. Therefore, glyphosate is expected to be in the wheat grains more than a roundup ready crop. And perhaps wheat was the first major cereal to be thus desiccated, and the practice may now be very widespread. So there is justification in the speculation that glyphosate content in wheat might be rather high today, especially for wheat grown in Canada and USA.

Nonetheless, I have not given up hope, and shall wait till I have transcribed all the data to check if wheat and its byproducts indeed does come up in significant number of tests. But its absence has made me wary for now, or wheat, and fostered my resolve to only have organic bread, if I must have bread at all.

And in comparison, rice seems to have been tested enough times and the readings are comparatively good. So I decided to check up on the results a bit, and come up with some comparative charts to show how rice from different countries stack up. Also, this has increased my interest in leaning towards eating more rice and less wheat, till he comparable glyphosate content for wheat is available.

There were 208 samples of rice, among the first 3,212 test records, out of which the biggest bunch comprises of rice from unknown source. This “unknown” country designation has vexed me throughout my effort to transcribe the data. However, unmarked bulk rice, which may be available in some stores, are, in my guess, more likely to be Canadian than from any other country. This is just a guess. I have no means to prove it at this point. Anyhow, for the sake of this chart, I combined Canada + Unknown as an added source. So there are perhaps seven countries from which rice has been imported, if we lump unknown with Canada. Out of them, Canada (along with unknown) has the most number of samples, at 43. The other countries are USA, Thailand, India, Italy, China and Pakistan. China and Pakistan each have only two samples so far, so they might not be statistically significant.

The chart, when compared with readings of other major grains such as legumes, and buckwheat, seems to indicate that rice has been comparatively clean, and with much less glyphosate than some of the other grains.

And within them, the best rice is from the bottom four – India, Thailand, China and Pakistan. If we discount China and Pakistan for low sample count as of now, then the major best source of clean rice in Canada might be those imported from India and Thailand.

However, some disturbing news is emerging out of India, indicating rice farming in some eastern provinces of India is beginning to introduce glyphosate desiccation. So, perhaps the story is not as rosy as it seems for the future of Indian rice. I am trying to get to the bottom of this issue and find out if this is true or untrue.

Then comes the top few, with relatively higher glyphosate content, of which Italian and US rice still looks good enough with reasonably low glyphosate count. The worst seems to be Canada, either lumped with Unknown, or standing by itself.

Its both galling and frustrating to learn that, even on a relatively clean cereal, Canada had to be about the worst producer when it comes to glyphosate concentration. Also, if glyphosate is not used for desiccation here in Canada, then the relatively higher concentration might be an indication of general level of glyphosate pollution here in Canada.

That is something that the government as well as the people, should think about and consider addressing.

Judy Hoy on Glyphosate and Wildlife

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I had a telephone interview with Judy Hoy on January 24, 2017, regarding effect of glyphosate (RoundUp) on wildlife. Judy is a wildlife biologist that has cared for wildlife all her life and is 77 years old.

She had a lot more to say beyond what is covered in this eight and a half minute video, regarding birth defects through glyphosate affected newborns, and how some of the deformation can be cured through the right kind of treatment, though the doctors do not like to acknowledge that, and claim the deformations are genetic, from the parents and cannot be cured. That conversation has not been recorded for inclusion in this video.

Here is her statement, and the talk recorded over the phone and converted into this video

I would like to address atmospheric transport of pesticides (an umbrella term that includes herbicides, insecticides and fungicides) and the consequences of those pesticides falling in rain and snow downwind of where they are applied. With regard to so called organic crops, rain containing pesticides, especially those extensively applied, like Roundup with its primary ingredient glyphosate, contaminate all of the foliage on which the rain falls, including organic crops. Such pesticides also contaminate the surface water used for irrigation of all crops, including the otherwise organically grown crops. This causes most organic crops to have measurable levels of glyphosate and/or metabolites, but much less than crops that are directly sprayed with Roundup. With regard to pesticides sprayed by aircraft, studies have shown that approximately 20 percent of the chemicals fall on the area sprayed. The rest of the chemicals are carried by the winds far from where they are initially sprayed, sometimes hundreds of miles in just one day.

Studies have shown that the environmental toxins travel across North America in a northeasterly direction so a large amount of the pesticides sprayed here in Western United States goes across the United States and north into Eastern Canada. It has also been shown that most pesticides sprayed in the Northern Hemisphere north of the equator travel around and around the earth towards the north, eventually ending up in the snow and ice above the Arctic Circle. Environmental toxins sprayed in the Southern Hemisphere go around the earth in a southern direction ending up in the snow and ice in the Antarctic.

Animals all over the world now have the same birth defects, many being far from sprayed cropland. For example, Roundup is not used in the extreme backcountry of Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks, but the animals in remote areas of both parks have the same facial and male reproductive malformations reported in studies of big game animals and documented on domestic grazing animals here in the valleys of Western Montana. This observation is based on pictures of the animals in documentaries and photos taken by photographers who hike far from roads in the national parks to photograph wildlife.

The Forest Service person I contacted by phone emphatically stated to me that they do not and have not used Roundup on the National Forest here in Western Montana. That is because Roundup kills everything and the forest service does not want to kill the native plants and trees. Yet, the examined hunter-killed deer and elk that live on the Forest Service land full time, well away from the valley where sprayed fields are, have the same birth defects. And the birth defects there appear to be at the same high prevalence as the animals living in the valleys. I would like to state that when collecting the study data from accident-killed big game animals, I didn’t separate the animals I examined into valley animals and forest animals.

My biologist colleague and I have examined a fairly large number of mule deer and pronghorn antelope from Eastern Montana and the same birth defects were higher in prevalence on those from Eastern Montana than on our Western Montana mule deer. We don’t have pronghorn antelope here in extreme Western Montana where most of the white-tailed deer I examined came from. White-tailed deer from Central and Eastern Montana brought to my colleague or to me to examine have an equally high prevalence of underbite and a much higher prevalence of overbite than our white-tailed deer here in Western Montana. My colleague examines the bite of each animal when he cleans the skull for the hunter. Those animals lived on the open prairie or in small isolated mountain ranges until the hunter harvested them, so we don’t find much difference in the birth defects with regard to where the animals live. They all have the same birth defects at very high prevalence. Some birth defects, especially underdeveloped premaxillary bone and male reproductive malformations are close to or over 50%. Biology books state that any birth defect with a prevalence of over 5% should raise a red flag, so the prevalence of those birth defects on wild ruminant species here in Montana is 10 times more. It is far past time to raise that proverbial red flag.

Severely underdeveloped lower jaw or overbite was found on over 5% of the white-tailed deer taken to a butcher shop in New Brunswick, Canada. The butcher who reported the overbite on the deer did not look for underbite on other deer brought to his shop.

The evidence shown by the extremely widespread identical birth defects on the wild and domestic animals and the evidence that Tony Mitra reported was found in the Canadian glyphosate test levels, indicates a high level of contamination in the rain and snow. Most of the pesticides in the weather fronts that come through our area are on dust picked up by the winds as they move across the bare fields in the states to the west of us. The millions of acres of bare fields in states upwind of our Western Montana valley are the source of large dust storms when the autumn months are dry. Even if there aren’t large dust storms, when the wind in the weather front passes over the bare fields, the soil particles on the very top of the dirt in the field is blown up into the air. When Roundup is used as a desiccant and applied just prior to harvest, glyphosate and other chemicals in the Roundup are still on the top layer of soil just prior to winter. When the weather front carrying the pesticide laden dust particles hits the high mountains, it slows down, dropping the contaminated snow or rain on the mountains and into our Western Montana valleys.

The snow is especially significant because the toxins that melt out of the snow during the spring and early summer are released into the creeks, rivers and dams that provide the irrigation water. When the water evaporates after the crops are sprinkled with the contaminated water, it concentrates the Roundup and other toxins on the leaves and in the top surface of the soil. In the winter the highly contaminated soil from organic fields and directly sprayed fields is picked up by winds and carried in the weather fronts to be deposited in the snow and surface water downwind and the whole contamination cycle begins again. It will take years to rid the environment of biologically significant levels of Roundup if they never spray another drop for the rest of time.

As many researchers have stated and shown so emphatically in studies, the biologically significant levels of glyphosate that cause birth defects and health issues in developing young animals are hundreds or even thousands of times lower than what is present on the foliage, in the rain and snow, and in the air throughout North America and now likely throughout the world.

Judy Hoy

Meanwhile, for those interested might read up on a dozen year old report from environment Canada on the spread of pesticides through the Canadian estuarine and aquatic environment, and results of its presence from various such samples.

Click on the image for browsing the file from Environment Canada

Charts on glyphosate

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Glyphosate content in ppb.

Above chart with partial data (2,000 test results out of over 7,000 from CFIA so far looked at) is for buckwheat only. For those who like to eat buckwheat for health or other reasons, but do not like to have glyphosate with it, may consider a few options – consider buying buckwheat from China or Russia and avoid the other sources, or alternately go organic.

Glyphosate contamination in ppb in legumes produced in Canada and US (out of the first 2,500 records)

And above is the chart for legumes produced in just two countries. Samples of legumes tested elsewhere gives a different story. Some countries have far less glyphosate in them, but only a few samples tested. Some countries have very high glyphosate figures in some categories but not others, also with low sample number. Canada and USA stand out as particular bad example for legumes with regard to glyphosate contamination, and garbanzo is the worst.

There is so much data to go through, covering the CFIA test of foods collected in Canada for glyphosate content, that analyzing it meaningfully is a task that demands attention and also an effort to look at it from different angles and present views that might be easier to understand.

I wonder if I might some day have a book on the topic of glyphosate in food as collected in Canada. Some of the details are revealing, while absence of some foods from test is equally galling. Therefore there is likely a need for some effort that fills the gaps. Getting Municipalities to start testing foods is believed to be an excellent opportunity to fill the blanks.

And, here are a few charts from the data so far transcribed, about the CFIA test records.

This is a partial country breakdown, after transcribing 2,000 records. Some countries have low sample numbers so their indications may not be true representation. Canada & USA have high sampling numbers.

And then the table below. Food samples marked as Canadian are turning out less than American foods. I find that hard to believe when samples are being drawn from al corners of Canada. Equally puzzling is the largest chunk of the samples coming under “unknown” origin. I suspect these unknown foods are unlabelled bulk foods picked up from local stores all over the country, and are likely to be more of Canadian origin than any other. Also that makes the Canadian sample count to be almost twice as many as US samples. So I created a row with the combined Canada+Unknown items, and consider that to be a better representation of Canadian foods. This also brings the average glyphosate (and AMPA) count o the foods from Canada and USA closer to each other, which seems logicals since both have similar agricultural practices and Canada is so heavily (and in my view negatively) influenced by American agro-industrial influence.

The table below gives some of the basics.

One kind of presumably healthy food category that has really surprised me with astonishingly high glyphosate content – is gluten free food. So much so that I had to try and separate them from the rest and see how the figures play out.

Out of the first two thousand odd records, I find very very few gluten free items from any country except USA and Canada, so I ignored them and focussed on just these two. USA has 130 samples and Canada 99, that have “gluten free” in their description. Average glyphosate + AMPA readings for the US produced gluten free product is 248 ppb and that for Canada is 286.

These readings are between two and three times the national average for USA and Canada, which are already hight to start with. Somehow, anything that has “gluten free” mentioned has become suspect- in my mind.

This is but a preliminary report. I shall later check if Organic-Gluten free is any better, and if it is any better than standard, non-organic, non-glutens free, off the shelf conventional food.

Gluten Free foods have been among the most baffling due to high glyphosate concentration.

But when you break it down to organic and non-organic of the gluten free foods produced in USA and Canada, the pictures changes dramatically, as below.

Non-organic gluten free stuff is way worse than national averages, and out of the two, the Canadian product sucks more

The confusion regarding Organic stamp and gluten free food

If you go to my blog, and download the initial 803 records, in searchable pdf, you can check each record that has the words “gluten free” and see the test results and what kind of food.

There still will be a problem. CFIA has removed the label and the true description of the source of the food sample.

So, if you find ten cases of gluten free flour of some kind, and see that nine out of those ten are having high glyphosate and only one is clean, it might be impossible to ascertain which specific brand, or store or place one must to to pick up the clean variety and not the nine dirty types. This is one reason I would say that gluten free this or that item is in general suspect, because the average glyphosate content (adding the glyphosate amount of the nine positive samples and dividing by ten total samples) gives a pretty high glyphosate parts per billion figure and chance of me getting a good doze of it from this item is high.

For those that are gluten intolerant, the problem is amplified and becomes circular. eating high glyphosate gluten free food on one side removes the pair or discomfort of taking in gluten, on the other side perhaps ensure that the gluten intolerance (it is now more or less established that gut bacteria damage is one of the root causes of gluten intolerance, and that glyphosate hurts gut bacteria) problem is likely to continue or worsen instead of get better, because of continued intake of more glyphosate.

It just so happens that “Organic” gluten free food, in general, are a lot cleaner than conventional gluten free food.

One could download the pdf file and check it for any kind of permutation and combination to arrive at suitable decisions that address one’s particular need.

As and when more data is transcribed, cross checked and error-corrected, more of it will be published on line.

Time to time I take a break and make a chart or two to address some things that appear puzzling or surprising to me.

Finding glyphosate content so much higher in gluten free food that the general average of all foods, came as a surprise since I used to think of gluten free as a healthier kind of food. I personally do not buy gluten free, do not have allergy to gluten and do understand that keeping my gut bacteria healthy has gotten to be very important for my immune system and general health.

We are living in a very difficult world, where the US and Canadian Government is constantly changing definitions of food stamps. Today they accept certain kind of contamination even within certified organic label and has invented multiple kinds of USDA-Organic stamp, with different colours accepting different percentage of the food to have non-organic content.

For example, I just learned from a scientist in USA that the “green label” USDA organic stamp allows 5% non-organic food to be within it. The black USDA-Organic stamp will allow 30% non-organic content in it and still have that black circular USDA Organic stamp.
I am trying to figure out Canadian Government standards on this. As far as CFIA records go, the foods are only described “organic” without any clarification.

For any that wish to investigate and help us with the general work, you may wish to read through the Canadian Safe Food (read Organic) regulation standard for 2017 and see if the Canadian Government is also following the US counterpart in allowing various levels of impurity into the food and yet agreeing to stamp it with different flavours of the circular “CANADIAN ORGANIC – BIOLOGIQUE CANADA”stamp. Click on the image below for the full pdf document and download for your study.

Click on image for the full pdf document

Some text here might appear long winded or a bit out of context. That is because I am aiming to eventually prepare a book or an e-book on the topic and am using some of these blogs as a store of some of my off the cuff write-ups.

I know the pro-Monsanto and pro-glyphosate lobby will snigger and pass condescending notes that the amounts mentioned are tiny, irrelevant and is not harmful to humans, based on yada yada yada reports.

But this blog, or my efforts, are not to engage in any argument with these characters. To me, no amount of glyphosate is desirable, because:

  1. Safety test records and data, based on which Health Canada approved glyphosate, is still kept hidden from the people, illegally I might add, and I am having a multi-year long battle to get them to disclose the data, without which I am unprepared to listen to these industry cronies.
  2. Science has been hijacked by industry. We need science funding to be taken away from industry, restriction removed so that Universities can test for both good points as well as potential dangers of glyphosate, without any interference from promoters, and let all the findings be part of the body of science. Let chips fall as they may. Let twenty years pass and enough material be collected to highlight both sides of the argument. Only then am I willing to even consider listening to reports or evaluations of the scientific community, on safety of glyphosate.
  3. Let someone prove Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff wrong by showing that glyphosate is NOT an analog (mimic) of glycine and it does NOT get picked up by our biology into the extra-cellular matrix, does NOT get into our cells, does NOT get used by our RNA to produce peptides or peptides which eventually end up as new proteins where glyphosate replaces glycine with disastrous consequence to the function of the protein. If such a proof is not produced, I am prepared to ignore all comments on mere toxicological tests and studies on safety of glyphosate.

Meanwhile, I intend to analyze the CFIA test record data with my own assumption that the only safe limit for glyphosate is ZERO, irrespective of what guideline CFIA, Health Canada, EPA or anybody else follows. This analysis is based on that assumption. Those that follow my reasoning, they may continue to read them Those that do not believe my reasoning – go someplace else. I have no time nor any inclination, to argue with you all. Just go.

Lentils and Chickpea/ Garbanzo beans

These have been a nightmare – since these readings are so high, often going into several thousand ppb (parts per billion – which is derived by multiplying the ppm or µg/g figures by CFIA) on some of the samples. I shall address those items later on on this blog. Meanwhile, I prepared some charts for India, since lentil is a heavily consumed group of seeds in India and since this is increasingly popular in the west and since North America is beginning to produce a lot of it, perhaps hoping to re-export back to India where production is falling behind rising demand.

Indian lentils seem to have rising amount of glyphosate, but nowhere as high as lentils produced in Canada (not shown in this chart)

The chart below shows, among all the foods imported from India into Canada, nearly seventy such samples so far seen out of 2,000 odd records, the worst group is the lentil + Chickpea group, compared to say, rice, or any other item.

Canadian grown lentils are way worse than the Indian grown. I shall show them later. Meanwhile, here is another chart about India, or rather, about the foods imported from India into Canada and tested by CFIA. Its the percentages of samples that contain glyphosate/AMPA.

Percentage of bad food among imported Indian samples. You may click on the image to get to the pdf file of the 800 odd records so far transcribed and put on line.

The above chart means, out of all the lentils imported from India, 50% are having glyphosate. Over 12% of the rice has glyphosate, though mostly trace amount, and among the rest – which include a whole gamut from pickles to snacks, over 71% have some glyphosate. However, the averages as you can see in the previous chart above, are still low compared to foods grown in North America.

I shall come back with more shortly. I am also trying out various chart types to practice on them, for perhaps putting in an e-book I might publish on Amazon kindle, about glyphosate in food.

General North American Food

Since readings between USA and Canadian food samples appear more or less similar when compared to foods imported from anywhere else, I have also combined to two for a general idea of glyphosate contamination in certain categories that appear to have high glyphosate contamination, without separating organic from non-organic labelling. The graph below shows that.

Suspect categories of North American food with regard to glyphosate contamination.

More later.

Gluten Free Food maybe suspect

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Over 1600 records so far have been transcribed, but error correction going on, and only around 800 of them so far placed on line in this blog.

The details are shedding light on many issues, but raising as many questions. So far, there seem to be no standard wheat, nor flour made from the wheat, nor standard bread, or Asian flat bread, or Pasta, made out of that wheat, has apparently beed tested. If I was a political analyst, a Psephologist and involved in tracking of trends, I might have concluded that CFIA has not tested any wheat or wheat product on purpose, to keep the people and the government in the dark about the one food item that is suspected to have the most glyphosate.

However, I am just an engineer and do not fully understand nor sure about political analysis or psephology. So I shall wait till I have transcribed all the near 8,000 records before I conclude if wheat and wheat products have at all been tested or not. I shall likely be having further communication with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency about it, once the preliminary analysis of all data received is concluded.

One kind of presumably healthy food category that has really surprised me with astonishingly high glyphosate content – is gluten free food. So much so that I had to try and separate them from the rest and see how the figures play out.

Out of the first two thousand odd records, I find very very few gluten free items from any country except USA and Canada, so I ignored them and focussed on just these two. USA has 130 samples and Canada 99, that have “gluten free” in their description. Average glyphosate + AMPA readings for the US produced gluten free product is 248 ppb and that for Canada is 286.

Gluten free foods may be suspect – due to much higher glyphosate content. You may also click on this image for the PDF file uploaded with the transcribed data comprising of the first 803 records. The remaining records going to around 2,000 are still being proof read. There are yet another five thousand odd records to be transcribed, before this lot will be over.

These readings are between two and three times the national average for USA and Canada, which are already hight to start with. Somehow, anything that has “gluten free” mentioned has become suspect- in my mind.

This is but a preliminary report. I shall later check if Organic-Gluten free is any better, and if it is any better than standard, non-organic, non-glutens free, off the shelf conventional food.

Here is a two and a half minute video about eggplants. I made it because so far it looks as if this is one vegetable that somehow has avoided being contaminated with glyphosate.

And then below is a 16 minute video of the first 803 records analysed.

 

A few of the issues and tems I have so far found puzzling, are:

Wheat – so far, I have not yet found a single record of normal wheat grain, or popular items made from wheat flour such as bread.n The only wheats so far mentioned are esoteric varieties and special grains that carry “wheat” in its name, such as buckwehat flour,  Buckwehat kernels, gluten free buckwheat, and more buckwheat this or buckwheat that. Most of the stuff, even organic varieties, appear to have glyphosate. But regular no-fancy basement variety wheat grain, and the vast type and name brand of bread that is made from such bargain basement varieties of wheat grain – are so far completely absent from the records. Thus, a major part of human food in these regions, are without a test result. Meanwhile, all sorts of foods that are wheat-like, are tested, and their results do not look good. I am getting increasingly careful and worried about where I get my bread from and how much of it I should consider consuming regularly. My bread intake has been cut from two slices a day to three slices a weak, and I only buy organic bread, but at this point, I am not sure what they contain.

Chickpea and Garbanzo : These are turning out to be, nasty stuff. There are hardly any sample containing these foods have good readings. There are 20 samples tested with Garbanzo – not one of them are organic and all of them have glyphosate – a 100% record. Many have astronomically high glyphosate content and categorized as in “Violation” of whatever standard that CFIA is following. All these samples are picked up in only two regions of Canada so far – The Atlantic and Ontario. No samples from Quebec or West. Some of the very worst samples have been collected from Ontario and originate from the US. I have already gotten rid of unmarked chickpea and Garbanzo we had, and decided to either get organic versions, or do without them.

Brand Name and labels are missing from processed and packaged food. This makes it hard for people to distinguish one sample from the next, when their descriptions are very similar but their glyphosate content may not be.

Above is a good reason municipalities to test foods sold in local stores and make the data, including brand names, available to the people along with the test result. Ref: https://www.change.org/p/let-our-government-test-food-for-glyphosate?\

Regions within Canada have food growing provinces areas missing. The sample data, containing over 800 records so far transcribed – gives the areas within Canada where the samples were picked up. There are only four such areas mentioned so far – Atlantic, Quebec, Ontario and West. I presume Atlantic to mean the east coast maritime provinces of Lewfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edwards Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. I presume West to mean the land west of the Rockies, but basically British Columbia. This leaves aside Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba as the three major food growing regions of Canada. While many of the samples picked up elsewhere must have originated there, I wonder why no local collection has so far shown up in the records. Is there a story here or I just have to wait till those turn up too. Its very odd that these three provinces are missing, as are the northern territories. Not much food may be growing there, but one aught to pick up what food is being sold there, transported from elsewhere. I have been to White Horse, Yellowknife and Tuktuyaktuk. Most foods are packaged and processed, and there are not much food labelled organic there anyway. What are the average glyphosate intake in those foods? I would have wished those to be showing up in the tests too.

Atlantic and Ontario stand out negatively with some of the high glyphosate food items. This has been another major ensuing puzzle for me. Food items that appear to contain measurable and high amount of glyphosate, seem to only appear in samples collected i Ontario and Atlantic. The other two regions so far identified as sollection points – Quebec and West, seem to contain a few items with “trace” glyphosate content and zero measurable amount. How come? Also, where do the missing provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta fit in? The data so far transcribes answers some questions, but raises many more, and presents quite a few major puzzles.

USA & Canada: There are always more samples showing up from the US than Canada. This is extremely odd when all samples are collected in Canada,s since Canada is a major food producing nation, just as the US. Also, the foods identified as of “unknown” origin number higher than both USA and Canada. This is also very odd. I therefore suspect, but cannot prove at this point, that most all of the “known” (meaning unidentified) foods were picked up in food stores where origin was not mentioned, especially for unpackaged bulk food, such as some grains, seeds, flour made from ground seeds etc that were being sold in stores in bulk and without packaging.

I suspect most of these are of Canadian origin. Therefore I have also combined both the Canadian Origin and those that were entered as of “unknown” origin. This way, the total samples in Canada overtakes US samples, which makes sense for foods collected in Canada. This also brings the average glyphosate content below that of USA. The average glyphosate content should be of great interest for Canadians, but the US value is, I suspect, not a true representation of foods in USA. They at best represent American Grown foods that are available in Canadian stores. To get a better idea of what kind of food Americans are buying and eating, one would need to collect similar high number of food samples, local and imported, that are available in American food stores, and then analyze them for glyphosate and AMPA.

I am told EPA had started testing local foods in USA for glyphosate, but stopped its efforts soon after. The reason for stopping it, I am told, is that it ran out of funds and would need more money from congress. I find it strange that USA would not have funds to test its own food. Something very strange going on.

Meanwhile, I am extremely thankful that I managed to get this Canadian food test result treasure trove, and aim to do as good a job as possible, to bring it out to the people.

Tony

An older 10 minute quick update after 500 readings out of 7,000 transcribed.

Thanks and best wishes to all. Comments welcome.

About New Brunswick Herbicide Spray

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IN the last few days, I have had a number of exchanges from people in New Brunswick, regarding a near collapse of big game wildlife, suspected through herbicide spray over the forests on one side, and a long lasting sad story of people getting sick from the same as power companies spray the ground under power lines that border human habitation. Here are a few quick observations and calculations. New Brunswick is under a peculiar and undesirable condition of a single corporation having a stranglehold on the province and able to manipulate government regulations to suit its business model. It is also alleged that the spray chemicals might actually be paid for through taxpayer dollars.

Wall mounted deer head with overbite

Meanwhile, people of the province are pushing for a ban on spray and the effort is going door to door, having garnered tens of thousands of signatures in a province that is low in population.

Wild game meat cutting shops in Fredericton are reporting strange cases when they receive animals that were killed by hunters for butchering, where the deer heads show lower jaw severely under developed (having an overbite). Others have seen similar animals in the wild, including animals with only one horn developed. Same is also observed and a few of such heads are also collected by wildlife scientists, looking to have them meaningfully tested somewhere.

Then there is the case of continuing and long lasting history of the province under a crippling history of a higher percentage of people being sick and dying of all kinds of  ailments suspected from exposure to toxicity that are much less prevalent elsewhere. Some areas are so bad that almost every single family has dear ones that died, or are dying, or are suffering from severe illness, including permanent disabilities, even in young children and youths. And the suspected culprit is excess use of herbicides too close to these habitations for too long.

Deer killed by hunters with great overbite

The area is also well known for military testing of nasty chemicals such as agent orange and others that have been for decades and reportedly are still being tested over the ground in secret locations out of bounds for the people or media, and the effects may be spilling over to the local flora, fauna and humanity.

To make things worse, the province is under a sustained recession. There are no jobs except with the Government and a single corporation that owns everything, including involvement in the forest management and herbicide application. So, the people have nowhere to complain without risk of losing their job, and nowhere else to go. They are suffering silently.

It almost sounds like wilful genocide being committed on the Canadian people of the province through a sustained chemical attack ongoing for multiple generations.

Some of them contacted me.

My thoughts – it is neither easy nor perhaps the best idea to have the deformed deer heads sent off for some lab test for presence of Glyphosate. Why? Because:

  • Canadian labs are not offering testing of animal tissue or body fluids for glyphosate, to the best of my knowledge. They only offer glyphosate testing on soil, water and some kinds of food and plant matter (foliage might be tested by labs that test plant matter, but if they will accept samples from the public or only from Govt needs to be investigated, since only one lab does this plant matter test and I am not sure if they only do it for the Govt or also for the people)
  • The bone malformation in the deer are suspected to be caused through epigenetic effects from toxic influence while in embryonic stage in mother’s womb, or soon after birth while still going through major development process and before they have had time to develop a robust immune system. Therefore, testing for presence of glyphosate on an adult dead deer might not point to the root cause.
  • Glyphosate might not be the only chemical involved in this malady, although it is the most used herbicide and suspected to be linked to a whole swath of ailments in humans and the living planet. Other chemicals equally suspect could be Killex, Mecoprop-P, 2,4-D etc.

Next – it may be a better idea to actually start a practice of measuring pollution levels of these chemicals in soil, water, and plant foliage periodically over some suspected areas.

Average test using Liquid Chromatography (HPLC-MSMS), for glyphosate goes to say around CAD 300 to 400 per sample, and cost for ELISA test goes to just over CAD 100. So, a mix of the two systems used might result in an average cost of say CAD 200 just for a rough estimate. ELISA test is indicative but considered not accurate or consistent (repeatable) enough to hold up in court. However, if the results also show up similar in multiple tests or also show similar results in LCMS methods, they will be good enough. Also, any suspect results can then be cross checked and verified by a more costlier test.

So, with an average cost of CAD 200, if sample of ground water, soil and foliage is collected from a sample test area (three samples) and if tests are done say four times a year, to see seasonal variation depending on spraying cycle, foliage growth period, pregnant animal foraging period, and newborn period (say four seasons in a year), then a single area will have 3×4 – a dozen samples to be tested. At CAD 200 that makes it CAD 2,400 annually – from one area and for one chemical (glyphosate). This breaks down to a budget of say CAD 200 per month.

Now, if one wishes to check against five chemicals and not just Glyphosate alone, and assuming test costs will be very similar for other chemicals too, then a single area would need a budget of 200×5 = 1,000 per month.

If ten such places need to be placed under continuous monitoring, in order to get an idea of the degree of chemical pollution to environment, then a monthly budget of 10k x 10 = 100K is needed.

In other words, a million dollars will cover ten years of data accumulation, covering ten test areas, for five pollutants, from three kinds of samples, tested four times a year.

This kind of money is unlikely to come from volunteers or the people. This can however be made available from provincial government, even if started small and then expanded.

The trick might be gathering enough public support to lean on their government to cough up with this testing regime.

At the end of the day, this problem may not be dealt with purely on a scientific platform because of two basic problems with science today:

  1. Independent study and verification of the safety of the industrial biocides are not being allowed, on various pretexts.
  2. Scientific institutions by and large are no more public funded, and are supported by the same industry that benefits from the production, sale and application of these biocides. And industry is not interested in funding any science project that might find a problem with their herbicides. Therefore science has become biased, and has lost its neutrality and objectivity.

So, if it cannot be solved within the ambit of science, how might it be addressed? A million dollar question, but I suspect it cannot also be solved by money. In other words, people donating to a good cause will not solve the problem. Why ? Well, if money could be the deciding factor then the people have already lost the battle because the herbicide pushing corporations and lobby have far more money than the people, and can easily outspend the public and also buy the government if the government is for sale.

So then, in my thinking, the only ace that the public has that has not yet been taken away, is their vote – at the federal, provincial and municipal level. How the people might get together on this issue – remains a million dollar question. But building a grassroots movement to resist this chemical attack seems to be a good place to start.

The people of New Brunswick already have performed a near miracle – they have dedicated people working towards the petition to ban spraying in NB, and have garnered over twenty thousand signatures, going literally door to door. That is a support base that, if used properly, should begin to make a difference.

My heart goes out to the people of New Brunswick, and I stand in solidarity, helping them in whichever way I can, starting with, but not ending with, this blog.

Meanwhile, I am looking for people in New Brunswick who have a story or  an observation, or a personal statement, for making the rest of us more aware and alarmed at what appears to be a sustained chemical attack that the people of the province might have been subjected to, and how to find ways to stop this madness, and how initiate a public funded and transparent scheme of measuring the levels of toxic pollutants in the forest and residential environment, and how to trigger an independent analysis and study of the effect of such practices on the flora, fauna, people and biological diversity of the land, skies the estuaries and the oceans around New Brunswick. Everybody stands to benefit from such an endeavour, but most of all, it helps the people and the wildlife of NB who are at the front line of this chemical assault.

Any interested person – feel free to contact Tony Mitra by email.

Recent Blog attendance map.

Above blog attendance map shows degree of interest in the New Brunswick story. The red areas are sort of “hot” meaning multiple hits from them since this blog came up. Clearly, there is high level of interest from both coasts in Canada and also USA. It also shows some noticeable interest from pockets in western Europe as well as some of the eastern block nations such as Poland and also from the western part of Russia. This shows that some of the issues faced in New Brunswick might have a parallel, perhaps at a lesser extent, in matters of forest management in Northern Europe and Russia.

India has a long and sustained grassroots movement against GMO in general and a rising awareness about the herbicide that goes with GMO, though they are not, far as I know, too aware of herbicide use in forests. Anyhow, India has a healthy grassroots activism against chemicals in environment, who are also curious on similar goings on across the world. That might explain their level of curiosity here.

Then there are isolated points of interest in Taiwan, Malaysia, New Zealand, and the populated arc of south western Australia. Add isolated points of interest from Panama, Antigua, Colombia and Brazil – and that covers up central and south America. One would have to post in Spanish or Portuguese to get more response from there.

In the middle east, there is some interest from Israel and Iran – an indication that hazards of herbicide spray can find common ground among even arch enemies.

Africa is mostly missing, perhaps due to lack of internet access, or preoccupation with more pressing issues of their lives. Cape Town is the sole exception.

That’s all for today. So far so good.

Update Sunday, March 8, 2020

This is an update on this over three year old blog. A lot has happened in these three years. My success in getting the Canadian Government to test thousands of food samples for glyphosate is one. Handing me over all that test data and me analysing them to discover that Canada along with the US produces far and away the most toxic food on earth with glyphosate poisoning – and publishing all that in the book “Poison Foods of North America” is another. Both of these actually happened before this blog was written.

And then there were follow up issues such as me warning folks from India that by importing toxic lentils or other grains from Canada, the nation was mass poisoning its own people. This warning reached the floor of the Indian Parliament and resulted in the food ministry, something that India has but Canada does not, deciding to test imported Canadian lentils for glyphosate, and the Canadian Government trying to impress India that there was nothing to worry about as the level of glyphosate was within safe limits. The safe limits in Canada is astronomically high without any proof of safety, while in India, which has not approved use of glyphosate in agriculture, the effective safe limit is zero – and so on.

I met Rod Cumberland last time we visited Fredericton, to speak about glyphosate years ago. Lately he got fired from the college of forestry on a cockamamie pretext, while the real reason was his continued objection to the use of glyphosate spray over forests. It made me so mad that I ended up sending a nasty public letter to the Governor of New Brunswick accusing the provincial government of acting like a regime of a fourth world warlord, a letter which the Governor chose not to respond to.

There are people that sent me emails and I ended up speaking with a few. There is perhaps a plan to make a video or two, with voice recordings of some of the NB residents and activists. Some concerned people from British Columbia are considering visiting New Brunswick to check up who all are already there trying to fight the Mono-corporation Goliath Irvin and perhaps join the fracas of other protesters, movement initiators and general noise makers.

On retrospect I do believe the poisoning of New Brunswick is rooted not just in glyphosate, but poisoning of its economic and political landscape. The people are either employed by Irvin or by the Government which appear to be owned by Irvin. There is nobody else. As a result most folks who have relatives earning wages from one of these two employers, are afraid to shout too loudly against the chemical attack for fear of their loved ones turning up unemployed. It is almost unbelievable that such a thing can happen in Canada. In olden days, at least in Europe and Asia, these are reasons why heads used to end up on pikes.

I wonder why the church does not stand up on behalf of the people and the land. They are supposed to have independent financial resources, do they not? God and Jesus used to be a powerful motivator once. I am saying this although I am a Hindu turned agnostic tending to be an atheist. I appeal to the various church groups to get together and lead the way, or try to find a path out of this nightmare.

Anyhow, I do believe this needs to somehow turn into a political movement, and not just for New Brunswick. I have been generally greatly disappointed by the political class the world over, but understand that ultimately, it is the fault of the people.

If Irvin has a monopoly on business there, it is unto the people to break that monopoly. If the government is violating its constitutional duty and working for Irvin, it is still the duty of the people to fix it. At the end of the day, the buck stops at the feet of the people. But, in all history, people only rise up when the right leader leads them to resist tyranny.

New Brunswick sorely needs a local leader that will shepherd the people. We the rest of Canada need to follow, support and learn from it.

A fresh blog may appear on this.  Link to such a blog will appear here.

Stay tuned. My email: Tony.mitra@gmail.com

Russia-China vetoes Aleppo ceasefire resolution

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Well, the goings on in UNSC is perhaps an indication of geopolitical shift in the issue of regime toppling efforts by western interests.

The issue is the town of Aleppo in Syria. There is a multi-pronged warfare going on in much of the country. A lot of different groups are trying to topple the current government of Assad.

According to the US, the people fighting the government are local Syrians that wish to topple a brutal regime there.

According to other reports, the country is infiltrated by jihadists, ISIS, mercenaries etc, sent there specifically to start the next phase of the middle east war, and to topple the Assad government.

Assad

To complicate matters, there are also Kurdish resistance groups who wish to have a homeland of their own, and currently occupy strips of Turkey, Syria and Iraq, and are treated as second class citizens most everywhere. I am not sure which side of the war they are on, but Turkey, who hates the Kurds (Because the Kurds in Turkey also want independence) would either like a piece of land carved out of Syria so all the Turkish Kurds could perhaps also go there and stop bothering Turkey, or perhaps hoping that all the Turkish Kurds would cross the border and join the fight in Syria, on whichever side, as long as they vacate Turkey.

Obama

These are reasons why the issue may be too complex to fully comprehend, and many folks have opinion based on one or another point of view.

There are other factors about Syria that might be relevant. Assad does not allow western banking and oil interests to benefit from Syria’s land or its assets.

Also, Syria, while Muslim, is largely secular and do not promote a sunni version of lifestyle. Women are not required to cover themselves or stay home.

There is also additional issues of two competing oil pipelines proposed to go through Syria. The US plan leads gulf oil from Qatar to reach the west via Turkey to the Mediterranean.

Putin

There is apparently another Russian plan to help Iran develop a pipeline going through Iraq and Syria and reach the west through a Syrian terminal facing the mediterranean.

Saudi Arabia, Israel and the US do not want Iran to benefit from pipelines, and do not want Syrian ports to benefit from the business, unless Assad regime is toppled and a pro-West, Pro-Saudi, Pro-Israeli group rules Syria.

IN the middle of all this, is the issue of the current legitimate government of Syria inviting Russia to come and help fight the opponents of the regime, who they claim are foreign terrorists being funded by Saudi, Israeli and US interests, and are using US weaponry. Russia accepted the offer.

Jinping

This pits Russian military in direct confrontation with US-Saudi-Israeli interests.

Things have reached a pitch where nothing USA says about Syria, including what comes out specifically from Obama and Hillary (before she lost the election) could be believed.

It was better to look for independent reports emerging from the ground in Syria, such as Canadian reporter Eva Bartlett

Now, the epicentre of the fight is concentrated around the city of Aleppo. It was completely in control of the rebels, and there were reports of horrific treatment of the civilians coming out from there too, including mass graves and using the people as human shields against Syrian forces trying to free the town.

Anyhow, now the rebels are apparently surrounded by the syrian forces who are also being supported (I am not too sure of the details) by Iraqi forces who also want ISIS and jihadists defeated, since they believe these people actually came from Iraq, and if they succeed in Syria, would turn and haunt Iraq again. Anyhow.

Maduro

Now the battle around Aleppo has apparently turned a decisive corner, and much of the town is liberated by the govt forces. The rebels, which are perhaps the concentrated mass of ISIS forces and mercenary soldiers on pay, are surrounded and cannot flee and regroup because their escape route through the desert is blocked by Russian missiles, fighters and bombers.

USA and its supporters have been pushing for a no-fly zone for a long time, specifically in areas where the rebels move around. But since the area is under control of the Russian air force intent on cutting off rebel movement, this pitches the US directly against the Russians. USA has not put their own airforce to enforce a no-fly zone here, presumably because US generals warned Obama that this move would trigger a direct war against Russia.

Hillary herself has spoken often about wanting a no-fly zone there, fully toting the Obama-military-industrial wish. Putin’s intensions are not very clear, but this much is accepted by most – Russia does not have a wish to control the assets of the region. Rather, Russia is more interested in ensuring the region does not become an US stooge and hostile to Russia.

So, now, three countries pressed a resolution in the UNSC to force the security council to adopt a 7 day stopping of bombings around Aleppo, in order to “pass humanitarian aid” to suffering residents of Aleppo.

What has happened today, is that Russia, China and Venezuela voted against it, and 11 other security council members (some non-permanent and some permanent) voted for it. Russia and China are permanent members with veto power.

In essence, this perhaps is the first time China has openly joined Russia in a veto about the war in Syria.

I take that as the beginning of a new phase of China. They are also, slowly, beginning to bring assistance to the Assad regime, in paramilitary and military sphere.

I believe one of the main reason for China to decide to help Syria and defeat the insurgency, even at the cost of openly opposing western commercial and military interests, is because China itself has a lot of boundary provinces with substantial muslim population, and it believes some of the Islamists and Jihadists are fomenting trouble in those Chinese provinces, hoping to start a revolt and turning those areas into an expanding Islamic state. China believes some of the mushrooming or budding terrorists from these regions have already been recruited and are right now being trained first hand in insurgency through the war in Syria.

Therefore, China would like the rebels to be defeated. It considers this mushrooming of Islamic terrorism that spreads from nation to nation, and is apparently supported by Saudi Money, Israeli political support and US weaponry, poses a threat to China’s own security and integrity. In other words, its not a joking matter for them.

Ohh.. well .. we are all living in interesting times..

Ag Ministry of Saskatchewan joins the glyphosate testing deniers

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The petition for local governments to test local food for glyphosate is slowly gaining ground. As more people are joining up, I am getting more feedback on potential decision makers to enter into the petition. One such recent entry has been the minister of agriculture for the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.

I was impressed by the promptness of the response, but not by its content. Passing the buck and sidestepping the demand to test local food for glyphosate and not depend on another branch of Government which is obviously not testing anything for the people – seems to be the preferred method used by politicians to tap dance around the burning necessity for letting the people know the quantity of glyphosate in their food, and to deal with it in anyway they like.

These answers are not considered to be depressing. It gives us knowledge of what to expect from the fence sitting governments. It also bolsters the notion that the petition is needed more as a tool to develop grassroots movement, where people pressure begins to trump corporate lobby, and clean food trumps toxic one.

Anyhow, I wished to preserve this piece of information, not only because it deserves to be in the general body of information attached to the petition, but also as a blog and perhaps a near future book of essays, on my experience as a food security activist, and the journey of trying to push back from the toxic avalanche we are all subjected to.

tony mitra

Demonetization – another set of views received from India.

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Prime Minister Modi

I asked three persons in India to give their view of what is going on.. and the response has been varied. One person is a mom and pop kind of businessman in a small town. The other is a media person. The third is a young educated entrepreneur engaged in organic type chemical free farming in rural are and also working with a some local farmers trying to wean them away from chemicals and patented seeds, in a small way.

One of them thought the ruling party did it to win a local election in a populous state, which is now due, among other things. Although a harassment, and likely to cause a sort of recession temporarily in the economy, he did not think this was going to greatly hurt India.. just another example of the rich and powerful politicians doing stupid things.

The newspaper guy thought this is pushed mostly by a foreign investor-banking cabal trying to get their hands on all the small wealth belonging to rural india, etc. In this, he was perhaps pushing the general view from news media, criticizing Modi for some hidden agenda.

But the third person had a different view, and appeared to be have enough details observed, to present a non-mainstream opinion about it all. This is the view that impressed me most, because of the details her had observed, or heard from folks.

Apparently, a large swath of the commercial media is against Modi’s demonetization. However, just like the mainstream media in the west misread ground sentiment about Trump, especially in rural USA, apparently the media is misreading ground sentiment in rural India and even in urban India, about the demonetization effort.

Yes, there are long lines of folks trying to change their money. However, there has not been a single riot in protest, in a country where riots happen at the drop of a hat, and are kept out of media as far as possible. Here, some of the media has been caught on cell phone camera urging folks to show their disappointment in more forceful manner, and asking why they are not angry and protesting it etc – and in almost all cases, the people in the line have shooed these media people away.

In other words, much of the media, not all, are carrying their own agenda. Therefore a similarity with the western neoliberal Hillary-Obama-Warmongering support while pretending to be pro-poor pro-immigrant etc – is interesting.

The main reason people are generally supporting it, is their hope/belief that this will take away that part of the black money in circulation, which promotes and supports the never-ending cycle of corruption through bribery in their daily life. Partially educated common men believe, and perhaps with justification, that this babugiri (bureaucratic corruption) and demand for bribe at every walk of life is the main reason India has not been able to shake off its shackle of poverty and misery in three generation of independence.

This is why a policeman, who pays several lakh or even crore rupee to get a job as a policeman, by borrowing it, a bribe that ended up in the big boss or even the local politician’s pocket, has to be utterly corrupt as a policeman to be able to pay back in his working life. This is just one example of how bribery is affecting every aspect of society. It is this reason why majority of folks facing harassment due cash crunch right now, are still supporting it.

Some small store-wallah are lamenting that their business this month will suffer at least a 20% slow down, and yet are supporting the idea for the hope that bribery will reduce if not be eradicated.

Most of these folks know that taking out some of the black money from the heartland is just one step – many many more need to be taken to eradicate this problem – and it remains to be seen if Modi is up to it, or is in bed with the mega industrialists and avoids going after them for theft of national assets, where proof is available, or where proof is being hidden due to the very corruption we are talking about.

Some of the folks most affected by this sudden demonetization, apart from the hassle the common man faces now to get their old currency deposited and / or converted are:

  • Politicians in general
  • Underground money transfer (hawala) dealers
  • Real estate mafia
  • Dealer of counterfeit currency
  • Terrorist organizations that use this fake money
  • Illegal betting on sports
  • Privatized schools/colleges that demand huge bribes to admit students
  • Fake charity funds and Ponzi schemes.
  • Rich agricultural land owners
  • Film Industry

Common man on the street largely believe, whether true or not, that Modi did not discuss this plan even within his own party of elected MPs, and that is how many of his own party folks are caught wrong footed. He is “believed” to have kept this close to his heart, with a handful of people.

Most of them believe that the media should stop witch hunting Modi on this issue and wait to see what happens, and do some more in depth investigation, especially trying to judge the feelings of the people in the heartland instead of using their own beliefs and passing them as news.

There is apparently a new kind of money laundering going on – the rich are giving 50,000 to each poor villager, to go to bank and deposit, which would escape taxation. Then, when things have settled down, they can keep 10,000 and return the remaining 40K to the rich guy. Officials are finding it nearly impossible to curtail this kind of laundering, but are keeping a tab, where possible.

Also, there are some corners of India which is near tax free due to be backward regions etc etc. North East India has some such pockets, where people can deposit large sumps of money at the bank and convert them in due course to smaller denominations or new currency notes without tax department wanting to apply tax on it. As a result, some charter planes from rich corners of India have been caught, carrying plane load of cash to these regions, for laundering. The travel records of these planes seem to reveal that there already have been dozens of such delivery flights already concluded.

So there is a lot going on that is not reported in the media.

Lastly, the long lines apparently are coming to an end.

This is what I so far learned, apart from what the general media comes out with.

Now, appreciate discussion on it. I would not like being hounded out and my own character being questioned by Facebook liberals for daring to present another view of this critical issue.

Modi may not be pure as driven snow – but there are some in India that are not comparing him with Hitler, but instead comparing him with Lee Kuan Yew’s thirty year battle to clean up corruption from Singapore society, even if his methods were heavy handed.

I’d wait for a bit to see how the chips fall, and if this is indeed an anti-people anti-poor policy to help big banks profit out of little guys earnings, or if it is an effort to restrict runaway corruption in daily life by unscrupulous middle men, or if this is a mixed bag.