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Dr. Don Huber talks on his work on Glyphosate in agriculture

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Dr. Don Huber, professor emeritus of Purdue University, Idaho, is a microbiologist and plant pathologist that has worked for over half a century on chemicals such as Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s patented herbicide Roundup. He is well aware of how the chemical damages plants, as well as soil organisms, and how it damages the colony of gut bacteria that perform essential symbiotic services for humans and other higher animals. IN short, Glyphosate in our environment is a disaster that will have long term effects, spanning several generations, and there seem to be no end in site of this avalanche of bad chemicals permeating our neighbourhood.

 I spoke with him a few times over the past one month, to compile a 37 minute podcast. Further, he has sent me a CD full of information of his papers and independent studies, powerpoint presentations, PDF files, charts and other material related to this subject.

 Salient points of the talks are:

  • Dr. Huber has been researching and working on the ill effects of Glyphosate and other herbicides for 55 years.
  • Glyphosate is not just a herbicide but also patented as an antibiotic. Both these functions, and its ability to chelate or capture important metals and minerals – essentially deny a whole host of micro organisms that depend on those metals to do their work, and often will kill classes of bacteria even in human guts, wrecking the persons biology and health.
  • It disrupts the Shikimate pathway used by many gut bacteria for biosynthesis of important amino acids that we need. Also, while such beneficial bacteria are denied sustenance and are often killed off by Glyphosate. Not just that. Some of these bacteria prevent space for some of the harmful pathogens that are also in the plants we eat, thus protecting us from harm. However, when Glyphosate damages the good bacteria, it creates vacancy in our gut that can now be filled by the harmful pathogens which are also insensitive to Glyphosate, dealing us a double blow.
  • Dr. Samsel and Seneff have worked on how Glyphosate helps increase our susceptibility to disease. These studies should be read and understood.
  • Dr. Nancy Swanson has plotted the correlation graphs from information obtained from official sources such as Centre for Disease Control that points to identical rise of Glyphosate application and rise of chronic illnesses reported in hospitals.
  • Soybean oil has been found to have 40 ppm of Glyphosate, which will kill all sorts of useful bacteria in our gut. The herbicide will also chelate and immobilize cobalt, manganese, iron, zinc and copper that we need ourselves for our own good health. Livers are affected. A very small part 1/10 of a ppm is often enough to cause serious harm. Even illness such as E.oli, salmonella etc can rise directly proportional to the increase of Glyphosate and GMO, along with autism, leaky gut, gluten intolerance,  Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, diarrhoea, and similar very major illnesses begin to come back in pandemic proportions because of the disruption and destruction of our micro-biome.
  • Once a patient’s gut bacteria has been seriously damaged, the only good cure may be fecal transplant. fecal bacteriotherapy or stool transplant. This essentially means taking stool from a healthy person and re-inserting it anally into a patient, transplanting the healthy bacteria to recolonize the gut. This has a high chance of recovery, but the patient has to onto organic diet, else he or she is likely to fall sick again.
  • Independent science research through public funding is nearly gone. Science is now mostly funded by corporations who have a vested interest in funding studies that find good effects of their technology rather than possible unwanted side effects. So, science and technology is losing its neutral position and objectivity. Normally, Dr. Huber would not get funding for his work that mostly finds the dangers of using Glyphosate. He managed to conduct his long term study by doing independent consulting work and then donating to the Purdue University as grant money to support his research on herbicides. In other words he was partially or wholly, funding himself.
  • There are written public statements of 26 scientists selected by the USDA to determine safety of genetically engineered plants, back in the 1960s. All 26 scientists wrote to the Govt. that they were unable to perform their work as the corporations would not provide access to information and were also prohibited to publish any finding to the public. Therefore they could not be objective in their investigation and without it the scientists could not do justice to the task.
  • When asked why so many diseases are increasing to pandemic levels, the official response is they do not know why. There is a perception that the relevant departments of the Govt does not want to know the cause.
  • Local troubles such as Yakima valley birth defect epidemic is a case in point where babies are still born and birth defects involving half the brain fails to develop in babies. This is suspected to be directly related to excessive application of Glyphosate in the farm and even in the water streams.
  • Some Cattle Farmers are going out of business because cattle fertility has dropped so much that half the newborns are still born and the business becomes economically unviable.
  • Europe is realizing they are in a dangerous situation with regard to Glyphosate, although their exposure is less than in USA. Yet, Dr. Huber laments that in USA people do not appear to be as alarmed as in Europe.
  • 300 million pounds  of Glyphosate is being used in agriculture annually in the US, and providing such food to animals and dumping such powerful herbicides in the environment indiscriminately – we can expect dangerous effects on our environment.
  • This is a crisis for our children. Autism is around 1 in 50 today. it is going to rise to 1 in 2 in the next seven to 14 years. Back in 1960 it was 1 or 2 in a hundred thousand.
  • Fecal transplant can be beneficial treatment for a number of illness – autism in kids, leaky guts, crone, celiac, Parkinson’s and even diabetes. Glyphosate is also related to cancer – childhood cancer. Dr. Huber does not know if fecal transplant can cure this kind of cancer once initiated by effects of Glyphosate. Seralini research is an example. Although his study was not set up to check cancer, it did show signs of cancer development in rats.
  • Regarding testing water, human blood or urine for presence of Glyphosate – Microbe Inotech Laboratories (http://www.microbeinotech.com/) can conduct these tests./ It might be useful to check with them if they also test for AMPA, especially if water sample are to be tested. IN Human Urine sample, presence of AMPA is expected to be rather small and could be ignored. AMPA is the first breakdown product of Glyphosate and is just as toxic as Glyphosate. Therefore, for testing soil or water, testing for both Glyphosate and AMPA combined would give a better result, since the percentage of AMPA can be more than 50% at times, the rest being Glyphosate that has not yet broken down.
  • If there is shortage of funds for large scale testing, then first concentrating on testing of Urine would be a better way to give an indication of exposure by humans to this dangerous herbicide.
  • How does one get rid of Glyphosate ? Detoxifying soil or water from Glyphosate is possible, through chelation. But if Glyphosate is in the human body already, it needs to be eliminated, and that can cause difficulties. Kidney failure in central America and Sri Lanka are relevant here, as Kidney shuts down and cannot handle the accumulation of Glyphosate.
  • Dr. Huber goes to Guatemala, as a consultant, regularly, as they in central America and many other countries there are trying to find ways to ban or remove Glyphosate from their environment. Their effort to ban Glyphosate is being challenged at courts, and the corporations have tried to confuse the issue and applying pressure on the Govts. A lot of farm workers in sugar plantations have died last year due kidney failure. Brasil and Argentina are also looking at banning Glyphosate. Hawaii has banned it but they are being sued now.
  • You can listen to the podcast by clicking the link below or check it up at iTunes as a podcast under my name (Tony Mitra).

Feel free to send me a note or a suggestion at  tony.mitra@gmail.com

Ukraine, Crimea and Russia – my first impression

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Ukraine has been in the news, for the past few days, but for the wrong reason.

Today I saw a video clip of Pro-Russian Soldiers patting the hand of a Pro-Ukraine counter part in a friendly gesture. This prompted me to write my first impression of the place. I remember visiting parts of Ukraine when I was 20 years old, on a ship, as a junior engineer. The ship was a general cargo vessel of 10,000 ton size and carried a variety of goods from India, to be off loaded in various Soviet Ports. My first port of call was Odessa, a black sea port, not far from the Rumanian border.

Yes, it was part of the Soviet Union at that time.

I remember the intense cold and mounds of snow everywhere. I remember visiting some of their large department stores. I remember the blast of hot air that came through the air ducts and me standing right next to it warming my hands. I was wearing a parka that I had bought just a few weeks before, in Las Palmas, which was a Spanish island at the entrance to the Mediterranean.

I remember visiting the Interclub, a sort of “foreigners club” that the Soviets set up for those that could not speak the local language. The club had an English Language Library, where there were not only English translations of Great Russian authors like Tolstoy, but also books like The Catcher in the Rye.

I had almost no money in my pocket, since the pay for a junior engineer working in an Indian shipping company was really poor those days. I had something like 5 US dollars to spend over the next ten days in Ukraine.

And yet, I had lots of fun. First of all, I got a free bus ride to the Interclub, from the port area. Since I did not know where to go, or how to get there and how much it might cost, I took the free ride.

Next, the women that attended the club, who spoke English, did help me get a booklet of transport tickets. These are actually very similar to the ones in Vancouver these days. The same passes can be used on a bus, a train, or a ferry. What was different for me, is that I got a booklet of a dozen or so tickets (forgot how many where there) without having to pay for it. Apparently, it was a present, from the Soviet Union.

So, armed with that booklet, I was free to take any bus or other transport anywhere, and it cost me absolutely nothing. This was a novel experience for me, since I had never been given a free travel pass in any other country.

I also remember few other incidences of basically meeting up young people that wished to speak with me, on the street, or in a cafe, but we could not manage much of a talk because they spoke Ukrainian, Russian or Romanian, and I spoke only Bengali, Hindi and English. Nonetheless, we smiled at each other a lot, shook hands, and I got patted on my back often.

A young women kissed me on my cheek, which caused quite a bit of embarrassment for me. Coming fresh from India, I was not used to sudden display of affection from strangers on streets. On the whole, I came away with really nice feelings about the people of the Soviet Union.

My next stop was in Kherson, at the mouth of Dnieper River. I was there for only a few days. The place needed a different set of travel tickets. I also managed to see a sort of musical play. It was not quite the Bolshoi ballet, but it was very good, in my untrained eye. How did I afford to buy the ticket? Well, once again, I was gifted by a free pass by the Soviet Union. It was one of the best seats, in the second row from the front.

I was invited to a “chess” game. Russians were champion chess players. But the game was invented in India. So I went to play. I knew the basic rules, but was less than an average player. Consequently, I lost both the games, one as white and the next as black. The opponent was a man about twice my age.

What I remember from the game is – we were sitting on the sidewalk across a small round table with the chess board on it. I had a mug of hot Russian tea (actually the tea came from India), while the opponent had Vodka.

People stopped to watch the game. Some stood around us, and spoke among themselves in whispers – probably discussing the game, and no doubt wondering why I was not making smarter moves. Some looked at me encouragingly and even tried giving me advise, which of course I could not follow.

My last stop was in Crimea itself, a small jetty near the Naval port of Sevastopol. I had learned about the recent Russian history, about Balaclava and the Charge of the Light Brigade. About the Yalta conference between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin. But it was while in Sevastopol that I learned that, for most of history, Crimea had been a part of Russia, and that a majority of the population in crimea were ethnic Russian. I knew by then that Russians were not exactly same as the Ukrainians. I had by then also learned a bit more about the links the place had with Tartars, Greeks and even Romans.

I did not know at the time, that I was never to return to those places again. I have had opportunity to visit the northern parts of Russia as well as parts of the former Soviet block nations by the North Sea. I was also to visit neighbouring Rumania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia etc subsequently. But never again did I get a chance to visit Ukraine on the black sea, or Crimea.

On the whole, I only have pleasant memories of the place.

Allan Patton’s effort of stopping GMOs through the Municipalities of Canada

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Allan Patton is the Director for Electoral Area “C” (Rural Oliver) and has been a full-time Oliver area farmer since 1981. He is a Past Director and Vice-President of the BC Fruit Growers Association, Past Director for BC Agriculture Council, Past Chair of Area “C” Advisory Planning Commission as well as Past Oliver and District Community Economic Development Society Director.

Allan Patton

He has been active in getting the Union of British Columbia Municipalities to pass the recent resolution to declare itself wishing to be GMO free. He is currently proposing a similar motion to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) who will hold its Annual General Meeting (AGM) at Niagara Falls this summer.

The motion states :

——————————

Claude Dauphin, President
Federation of Canadian Municipalities
24 Clarence Street
Ottawa, Ontario
K1N 5P3
 
WHEREAS The Okanagan Tree Fruit Industry and the Canadian Horticultural Council Apple Working Group are very concerned about protecting Food Safety and CanadaGap requirements and Asian and European export Markets;
 
AND WHEREAS Certified Organic producers and retailers have expressed grave concerns on the continued existence of their industry;
 
AND WHEREAS the public are expressing increased scepticism on the purported benefits of GE food and animal feed crops;
 
AND WHEREAS the Union of BC Municipalities, at their 2013 Annual General meeting, carried a resolution “to ask the Provincial Government to legislate the prohibition of importing, exporting and growing plants and seeds containing genetically engineered DNA, and raising GE Animals in BC and to declare through legislation that the Province o BC is a GE Free area in respect to all plants and animal species” and an identical addendum to send it to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities for similar consideration by the Federal Government;
 
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Federation of Canadian Municipalities recommend to the Government of Canada that:
A moratorium be placed on all present and future Food and Animal Feed Genetically Engineered registration application, subject to:
– a non-partisan review be undertaken by Parliament to assess all aspects of GE crops now in existence.
– a public and consumer input and consultation process be developed and undertaken across Canada with recommendations presented to parliament for consideration.

If you need any further information regarding this item please call Christy Malden, Deputy Corporate Officer at (250)-490-4146

Mark Pendergraft
RDOS Board Vice Chair

——————————

I spoke with District Director Allan Patton about his efforts to see that this motion does get tabled at the coming FCM and go to a vote, and does not get rejected and end up under the carpet.

I also asked him what the listeners, or the people of Canada might do, to help this motion along.

This is one more example of democracy working from the bottom up. The municipalities are the lowest level of Government and the closest to the people, and it is through them, rather than through the provincial or federal Government, that the voice of the people may get heard.

You can hear the podcast by clicking on the play button at the bottom of this page. You may also save it through my podcast channel in iTunes (search Tony Mitra) and play it through your music player off line.

I would welcome feedback – at tony.mitra@gmail.com

Thank you.

Sheryl McCumsy of Alberta and her efforts to ban lawn pesticides

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I met Sheryl in December 2013 during the GE Foods Talk event at Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She is among the many ordinary citizens of Canada attempting to engage in extra-ordinary work, of singly and collectively trying to wrench Canadian democracy back from the clutches of lobby power, in the field of food, health and environment.

Sheryl McCumsy

It has been my perception that this war on our soil, water and air by an unending avalanche of toxic GMO and pesticides in the name of corporate profit, will be won or lost not so much by bigwigs, famous people, NGOs, politicians, scientists or activists, but by the ordinary people like Sheryl McCumsy that are coming out of the woodwork everywhere, in their effort to do something to resist this menace.

Sheryl is a homemaker and a student with a background in microbiology. She intends to meet with the Municipality of Edmonton, Alberta, to enquire and cajole them into adopting a by-law that bans use of harmful cosmetic lawn pesticides. This is something that has been done by hundreds of Municipalities across Canada, but not so much in Alberta and not in Edmonton. She also intends to work with groups such as Albertans for food safety, to further take on the issues of Municipalities adopting resolutions to declare themselves to be GMO free.

I spoke with Sheryl on phone on December 22, 2013, to prepare this podcast of her hopes and plans. It is a 20 minute podcast. You can listen to it by directly clicking the player at the bottom of this page. You can also subscribe to it through iTunes, where my podcasts are available under my name – Tony Mitra – save it on your iPod, iPhone or other music players, and listen to them at leisure. The logo of my podcast in iTunes is shown at right.

Cartagena Protocol, GMO, and Canada

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Saturday, January 4, 2014

Bt.Eggplant, or BT-Brinjal, as it is called in the Indian subcontinent – is a Monsanto product that is banned in India for multiple reasons, the primary one being huge ground swell of resistance from the public. This was the first ever GM food being introduced into India on a commercial scale (the other product already introduced was Bt-Cotton).

The product was approved by the Agriculture Ministry. IN that sense – the ministry of Agriculture in India is very similar to that in Canada, and appear to be sharing its bed with the devil himself.

However, the product was banned through the Ministry of Environment, raising the issue that Genetically Modified crops are not only an subject of agriculture, but also an Environmental concern.

 There are two related court cases on this subject that is not so well known outside of India. These are :

Aruna Rodrigues versus India : An ordinary citizen of India, Ms Aruna Rodrigues, had taken the Government of India to the Supreme Court in a Public Interest Litigation, for releasing potentially harmful GMO products on the population without proper independent health and safety analysis. She has an even chance of winning her case. That case has brought lots of information to light, including how Monsanto may have been falsifying its own test records on the safety of its products. These issues strengthen the argument that asking the promoter of GM products to carry out honest safety tests produces a conflict of interest and should not be encouraged. I have spoken with Aruna myself, and created an awareness Podcast on it. You can find it here.

 The UN Convension on preservation of biological diversity is another watershed event in the sense that it encouraged individual nations to safeguard their biological diversity and prevent its contamination or theft by biotech corporations or unfair trade deals etc. The specific meeting that resulted in creating the frame work that nations could follow, happened in the town of Cartagena, and hence it is also often referred to as the Cartagena Protocol. Hundreds of countries signed into it. Canada signed it, but did not follow through. USA did not even sign it.

But, nations like India not only signed it, but created a special law following the guidelines of this UN convention. The law is called “Preservation of Biological Diversity” – an act brought into force in 2002. It stated that all organisms, be it plants, animals or micro organisms, that either lived in the land, waters of airs of the nation, whether naturally evolved or through generations of selective breeding by the people of India – are the collective intellectual property of the nation. No corporation may study, analyze, sequence, modify, tamper with, produce, patent, or aim to sell a product made from these organisms, without express agreement with the Government. Failing to do so places the offending body liable to be sued.

India versus Monsanto on Biopiracy: And then, another activist and member of an Indian NGO named Environment Support Group (ESG), Mr. Leo Saldana, found out that Monsanto had broken this law when it developed the Bt_Eggplant by “stealing” the genome of three kinds of Indian eggplant (eggplants originated in the Indian subcontinent, and India boasts 6,000 varieties of it today). So, Leo, on behalf of ESG sued the Govt of India in a provincial high-court, providing evidence that Monsanto and its partner had broken the Indian law, and therefore it was the duty of the Govt of India to sue Monsanto for “biopiracy”.

The court saw the evidence, was convinced of the misdeed, and has instructed the Govt to sue Monsanto. The Govt, wishing more to be in bed rather than estranged with Monsanto, has been dragged willy nilly by the court order and has now filed a case against Monsanto for stealing the Eggplant genome and breaking the indian .

I spoke with Leo Saldana about it and have covered it on another podcast.

I find both these court cases to be very relevant not just for India – but even for Canada. There is much to learn from these. To start with, there should be a push for Canada to enact a law like the one India has, so that Canadian biodiversity is not stolen from under Canada’s feet.

Canola is a good example. It was a Canadian invention. But now, it is owned by Monsanto. More thefts are on the way – Alfalfa, Salmon, apple, etc.

To stop all these and further thefts, Canadians should, I feel, push its Government to protect Canada’s biodiversity, instead of confusing and obfuscating the issue to promote biotech corporate interests in the name of “Development”.

Meanwhile, having failed in India, Monsanto is busy trying to introduce it in neighbouring Bangladesh. Resistance groups in Bangladesh meanwhile seem to have coined a new phrase : BT = Biological Terrorism !

Harold Steves – and his battle to save British Columbia from GMO attack

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British Columbia, as much as all of Canada, needs a a few saviours that will stand tall, and fight long and hard, to save this land from the ravages brought on by mindless greed that brings toxicity into our food, our water, our air, and our lives, through GMO and its associated pesticide culture.

Harold Steves

And just like weeds and organisms are known to develop resistance to poison over time, some people seem to rise to challenge this newfangled toxic invasion in our lives.

Harold Steves of Richmond, BC is one such – a hero just in time, whose singular vision and effort may yet save British Columbian farmlands, as well as residents, from the ravages of GMO, and who efforts are being recognized and copied across the land, within and without British Columbia.

It is our hope, that Canada produces scores of Harold Steves across the land, and return Canada to what this country was decades ago, a land so beautiful and pure that it compared with our notions of Gods own land.

Apart from being an organic farmer that raises grass fed beef, Harold has been a city Councillor for Richmond, BC, continuously since 1977. His efforts to move the region against further encroachment of Genetically Engineered Organisms is an excellent example of how democracy can be taken back by the people, community by community, and municipality by municipality, from the clutches of Industrial greed, lobby power of the biotech corporations, and corrupt politicians.

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Shiv Chopra on how Corruption in Canadian Govt is spoiling our food

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Dr. Shiv Chopra compliments Dr. Thierry Vrain in the joint talk tour across Canada, alerting Canadians on how their food security and sovereignty may be compromised through corruption in the Government. Not willing to bow to corporate and miniterial pressure, he refused to accept the recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone from being approved by Health Canada bypassing safety checks and Canadian law on food safety. He paid for it by losing his job in Health Canada.

Now on a talk tour, he addresses a packed hall in Squamish on November 20, 2013 at the Sea to Sky Hotel, organized by many locals and hosted by Ms Kati Palethorpe.

Dr. Chopra explains five pillars of food safety – which are illegally into our food, each of which is harmful to health. These are :

  • Hormones
  • Antibiotics
  • Slaughterhouse waste recycled as animal feed
  • GMO
  • Pesticide.

All are used into the food cycle without independent testing. All are harmful to health. Europe, for example, bans or regulates at least four out of these five products. But Canada does not. As a result, Dr. Chopra argues, Canadian food has gotten to be among the most toxic in the entire planet. IF we can remove these ingredients, all food will be organic, and there would be no need for labelling.

Dr. Chopra with local volunteers and organizers

With the story of his struggle within Health Canada to protect Canada’s food and health, he often brought the house to thunderous applause, and Squamish was no different.

Not happy with only explaining how GMO is harming Canadian health, security and environment – he goes on to ask British Columbians what they are prepared to do about it – and how the people can snatch democracy back at the ground level from clutches of corporatocracy. Drawing examples of what Hudson, Quebec did twenty years ago, and what BC has done through UBCM more recently, he envisions a new dawn spearheaded by the people of the nation – to exert their divine and constitutional right – to feed themselves and their family with what nature makes. No corporation or Govt can force onto the people food that are considered harmful. And that is the reason Shiv Chopra started his second national pilgrimage from British Columbia.

Here we offer the video recording of his speech.

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We also have Thierry Vrain speaking to the crowd, presenting his “Gene Revolution“.

Gene Revolution – by Thierry Vrain

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Retired genetic engineer Dr. Thierry Vrain deconstructs the biotech myth that GMO plants :

  • reduce pesticide use
  • have no effect on environment
  • have improved yield
  • are safe to eat

One of a shrinking pool of scientists not yet muzzled by the Governments or the biotech scientific community, he shows how GMO technology is faulty to start with, and were not really designed to provide any benefit to mankind, and were basically produced to increase the sale of dangerous chemicals.

Drs Vrain and Chopra with local support group in Squamish, BC

Dr. Vrain and Health Canada scientist and scientist Dr. Shiv Chopra are on a cross country talking tour in Canada starting in November 2013 to alert the people about how the biotech industry is engaged in a campaign of misinformation, and their efforts are often helped by a corrupt political system in North America, where national regulatory systems fail to protect the people and allow what amounts to untested and potentially unhealthy foods to be marketed.

In this video, Dr. Vrain presents his case – Gene Revolution, a tale of two molecules, in the beautiful hill town of Squamish on November 20 at Sea to Sky Hotel. The event was organized by residents and health food promoters who wish to see Squamish declare itself GMO free.

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And here is Shiv Chopra – presenting his case about the Corruption in Health Canada and what people should be doing to snatch democracy back from the clutches of corporatocracy.

Why Canada is failing to protect itself from GMO

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Why Canada is failing to protect itself from GMO

I have been thinking of writing a few eBooks on the GMO, vaccine and stuff – and have decided to dip my toe into it within the next month. This will not be the first time I created an eBook, but it would be the first time it will be put up on the web, for purchase by prospective readers. Price – 1 dollar, or perhaps 99 cents, if that is possible.

Why ? Well, the trend these days is to have printed matter no more printed but available online. Also, this brings down cost of publication, and removes the need to have a middleman (publishing house), while, properly advertised (think Global) – it can have wide reach – from pole to pole and from pillar to post. Hahh !

Corporate encroachment into public health through corrupt politicians has been an engaging topic – but I have not had much chance to discuss how these could be turned into eBook this with anybody, barring perhaps Shiv Chopra.

There are lots of people that write important articles – Debal Deb, Jagannath Chatterjee and Devinder Sharma of India come to mind. There are many others across the world. Or one could consider the case of MP Alex Atamanenko of BC. He is serving his third term. He has been a friend of the farmers, or sustainable living, and of resisting degradation to environment and against encroachment of GMOs. He has issued bill after bill to try and stop the GMO juggernaut. But the bills don’t pass because not all MPs share his principles, nor ability to rise above parti politics and corporate pressure and to judge issues on their own merit, and keep focus on what serves the constituent’s best interest.

And now, Alex is retiring from politics. He did not make a public comment on the real reason for his retirement. Age of course is a factor. But, I suspect, he lost heart because of the level of corruption that has entered politics.

We can draw a lesson here – good politicians are either leaving, or converting to bad politicians. And this is Canada – not a Mickey mouse country five miles long.

You can consider David Suzuki’s comments on the Harper Government. You could discuss issues till the cows come home. But instead of discussing, I though tI would place them on the web and let the experience teach me if it was a good idea, or if the format, the content, the length, language or tone etc – needs to be altered for higher penetration and sale.

There are, of course, lots of people with lots of opinion on GMO. Take mainstream media – every Tom Dick and Harry, as well as every other name in between, are busy writing about it, whether they understand the wider effect of the issue or not. But mainstream writers have one major advantage and a major drawback. The advantage is that they get corporate funding. The disadvantage ? The same. I, on the other had stand on the opposite end – with a disadvantage (no corporate fund) and an advantage – free from the clutches of corporate diktat.

Mainstream writers do it for their job – so they can and do write crap. I do it because I care for the planet. OK, so the mainstream is taken care of. But how about others that also write on passion?

Look, I am fairly well versed on the eBook and Audio Book scene. I am a heavy consumer of both. There are NO good eBooks or audio Books on GMO, or on sustainable agriculture, or the menace behind biotech promoted vaccines, or the biotic control of the medical practices. There are a small number of audio books out there – such as “A town that food saved”. But these are like needles in a haystack. Not enough by any count.

Besides, not many can write outside of their comfort zone of a single nation, a province, a continent, or a sector. Very few have a global perspective on food security or agribusiness and the element of exploitation that goes with it. People like Vandana Shiva are a rarity. But even Vandana, who I have spoken with at length once to create an audio podcast – does not have a single audio or eBook.

Besides – Vandana writes what I consider to be a more generic and single minded attack on the biotech corporations, along with a necessary promotion of seed ownership and supporting local farmers. But she does not dwell on the unpopular task of why the resistance to GMO is having such a hard time. That the biotech industry is steamrolling across the planet is known to any serious observer. But why is that happening, especially in the west where “democracy” is supposed to be well entrenched ? Why ? The clue must point to a fault in the functioning of that democracy. The fault, ultimately, must lie at the feet of the people.

Monsanto may not be as big a culprit for hijacking the worlds agriculture, as the common man is, for allowing Monsanto to get away with it.

But, the common man is today hard to define – it is not a homogenous body, even in the North American continent. I would rather look at the groups that exist just above the lowest strata – various organizations whose projected goal is to protect the people, from such abuse of power from the big. These organizations, both public funded and private – are failing in their primary duty. It makes one think why and how these organizations – Government departments at federal, provincial and municipal level, are failing in their duty. How private NGOs and various sustainable groups are failing in their duty.

Nobody admits they are failing – but then none of them produce any record, any analysis, of what the situation was, say with regard to GMO, last year and how it is this year, and thus, has the situation changed for the better or the worse. This analysis should be simple to make, and by that, one should be able draw a conclusion on if these organizations are making any meaningful difference, or not. To me, pretty much every organization within Canada that claims to work towards safeguarding Canadian food, health and environment, is failing and it know it is failing.

And yet, business as usual is the norm. The NGOs and groupings keep passing posters, pamphlets and postcards, they keep asking folks to sign petitions. They keep asking for volunteers and for donations. And while all these noble tasks are underway, Canadian food and health is literally being raped, by biotech corporations that dictate terms with the politicians.

Some even believe that kicking out Stephen Harper will change things for the better. They spend their energy to that end. I shall leave it to you to decide if they are making any headway.

Folks in the US thought kicking out the Republicans and bringing in Obama, will solve all their problems. Even the Nobel committee did the extraordinary thing of awarding the Nobel peace prize to Obama, not because of his achievements, but merely on the promise he made, and subsequently failed to follow through.

Changing the political head did not make a difference in the past, and my guess is – it will not make much of a difference if the current leaders are booted out. These are not leaders – they are just masks of leaders, like puppets. One needs to think who the puppeteers are.

Stephen Harper is not why Canada is being massacred with GMO. It is not about Conservatives, or liberals or NDP. It is not about CBAN or The Council of Canadians, or Vandana Shiva’s Navdanya or David Suzuki’s foundation or GE free BC. None of them are going to make any difference while all of them will ask you for donations and support.

Canadians are scared to face truth. Americans are scared to face truth. People like Vandana, or David, due respect to their great achievements, who have become public icons, make lot of noise noise in an already noisy place. A thousand Vanadnas and a thousand Davids will make no difference except increase the din.

And that is where the crux, in my thinking, lies. It is the Canadian public that have failed themselves.

My writings will dwell on these. Of course, I could be wrong. I could be an opinionated so and so. But I intend to write all that down and place it on the web as essays on an eBook. This is going to be perhaps the first chapter of the book, or the prolog. It took me 35 minutes to write. I usually dislike checking spelling or grammar but would do so before the eBook is put online in a store. Spelling and grammar are important, but not more important than the message itself.

We are crossing the ’T’s and dotting the ‘i;s to death, so our literature about the dangers of GMO are linguistically perfect, and functionally useless on the street and deserving to stay in a library for ever.

I intend to collate a few such writings together and put up the first eBook on the web, and try charging a dollar for it, and tell folks I know to help sell a few, even if it criticizes them. They in turn are free to call me an opinionated son of a gun or whatever. I had already sent out a sample of this writing on an email to one of my group lists. It had some 400 recipients from around the world. about 25 responded within a few hours – mostly encouraging. One of the briefest but cutest support note came from Felix Padel. Some day, I shall have to write something about that mystic Englishman that made India his home. Meanwhile my friend Rose Stevens from Manitoba, who I sometimes refer to as the Fire-Eating-Woman, promises to be the first to buy the eBook and to promote it. Shiv Chopra sent a note – calling this an inexpensive gem, and the idea very well worth exploring. Each of these people and the others who respond, have their own followings, their own circles – word can spread – about an opinionated so and so writing dollar novels as eBooks, where the hero and the heroine are undefined, but the villains are in sharp focus.

The whole proceeds of the sale are not to go in my pocket. My idea at the moment is to split the proceeds half and half, with half going to my own upkeep and the other half going towards charity work relating to resisting GMO in unconventional ways. What the ways are – I have not the faintest clue at this time, except that it has to be legal, and grassroots, and different from whatever folks are doing right now. Whatever everyone is doing now – is not working. More of the same will not solve anything. SO this is my first chapter, or rather – the prolog.

How do you like it so far ? Tony Mitra

tony.mitra@gmail.com

Dark halo behind Golden Rice

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It is always a pleasure and enlightening, to speak with good people. There are those that have an unbiased knowledge and analytical prowess. These abilities help them to peer through the smoke and mirror of industry spin and the cobwebs created by science, pseudo-science and voodoo science. Looking through all that, some can still emerge with clear thinking that cuts to the bone of an issue without circling around in the periphery. It is even better when such a person is not afraid to call a spade a spade, and do not sanitize a topic to the extent that it loses its texture and depth, to become a politically correct blend of bland gray that is both confusing and misleading, to the casual public.Devinder Sharma

Devinder Sharma is among those few. And it is a privilege to speak with him.

 I called Devinder the other day to ask about Golden Rice. I have spoken with Debal Deb once about it, and created a podcast and a video, which one can find on my blog (www.tonu.org). I had checked with others too on the issue. But lately, the subject has resurfaced partly due to the famous televised debate between Canadian school girl and young anti-GMO crusader Rachel Parent and Kevin O’Leary where she blew away the industry shills, where the issue of Golden Rice was touched upon by Kevin, using an emotional pitch that poor kids in Asia are going blind and dying due to vitamin deficiency, which this Golden Rice will solve etc. This sentimental pitch is the worst kind of emotional blackmail that the media savvy people try to use to befuddle the listeners. But Rachel did not fall for it and cut him short stating that Golden rice does not even work, so lets stop talking about it.

The issue is of course a lot deeper than that, and encompasses the whole gamut of malnutrition and hunger on a global scale, and if that is because there is insufficient food, or there are too many middlemen making a buck and ensuring food prices remain high, even going waste if it has to, so the middlemen can make a profit, which the poor starve because they cannot afford the artificially jacked up high cost of food.

It is ironic that India has stockpiles of excess cereals, and exports large quantities of it, while there are more hungry children in India than likely in any other country. The reason for this is – some folks make money through the export, and it increases GDP and stock market values of nations and corporations. This helps investors with spare cash get richer. And if in the bargain there are millions of people starve – then why not use that as a tool to gain further access into the market, so some of the middle men can make even more money?

Food as a commodity is subjected to the same calculations that go beyond creation of a smart phone or an automobile – how to make more money out of it. These commodities are not designed to solve world hunger, or planet ecology, and national economy, or food security. These are created to make corporations and their stock holders rich. Period.

Food needs to be de-commoditized. Agriculture universities and colleges need to be funded by the public and not by biotech industries. It is better for the public taxes to be spent to safeguard public interest, than to hand over the stewardship of public policy making into the hands of corporations that created half the problems of the world to start with.

Like Einstein had said – the kind of logic that became the cause for subsequent problems, cannot be used to solve those problems. New logic and a different mindset is needed here.

Lately some documents on Golden Rice is being circulated in Canada for distribution among the sceptics of GMO. But I find the critic to be lukewarm and bypasses most of the serious issues behind it – including the exploitative philosophy behind the very creation of transgenic foods including Golden Rice. Even more importantly, Canadians, I feel, are in dire need to save themselves first from the bad-food epidemic that is sweeping across the nation, instead of pondering difficult issues of the third world and what Golden Rice can or cannot do.

The statistics of obesity, dramatically rising percentage of overweight people, of people with rising levels of various hitherto less known ailments and autism – should be life and death issues for Canadians. Let them concentrate on their own pathetic situation and leave the third world alone to solve their problems. Without intentional and unintentional western meddling, the third world can and will likely solve their own problems without having to be enslaved to western corporate interests.

Anyhow, Devinder Sharma provides another fresh outlook on the issue of Golden Rice. Important issues here might be :

  • How western media is used to present muddied and misguiding news about technological breakthrough in agriculture. One good example is the case with DDT which drew cover page rave reviews on the most famous western magazines, only to be banned across the planet a generation later, but not before it did irrecoverable damage to the planet.
  • How Ingo Potrykus, the creator of Golden Rice, had a less than pleasant exchange with Devinder Sharma.
  • How Ingo Otrykus was against independent verification of the value and utility of Golden Rice.
  • The humbug of Pro-tato, Po-mato and all other kinds of similar absurdities.
  • The famous case of agricultural development model pushed in India and exposed by Devinder Sharma and others, where nutritious human food grown in India was to be exported as cattle feed for the west, and cattle food grown in the west was to be imported into India for human consumption – all in the name of development and westernization.
  • The food storages are full in India, and yet the poor do not have access to it. The issue of hunger is not related to quality or quantity of food. it is related to structural injustice where the food is out of reach of the poor due to distribution issues and profiteering. Biotech cannot solve that – in fact biotech products are designed to increase profiteering by the middle man.
  • World Food summit followed up by the World Hunger Summit in Bonn around 2001, which Devinder attended, and how the conferences goal of abolishing half of world hunger by 2015 – was a joke and only helped muddying the issue of hunger – and displays part of the international dishonesty, in dealing with world hunger.
  • Last year, the world produced enough food for 13 billion people, almost twice the current population and higher than the projected maximum world population (2060) before it starts coming down. So, the world has far in excess of what food it needs for its people – now and generations into the future.
  • The hunger is a product of the systems put in place large through western efforts into the pricing, subsidy, trade negotiations and arm twisting in creating a warped distribution and trade infrastructure. There is a whole lot of bogus talk and untruths going around in the name of helping the poor.

The podcast can be listened to by clicking on the play button at the bottom, or finding it on iTunes by searching my name among the podcasts.

The original talk with Devinder covered more than an hour. Here the topic of Golden Rice is covered in 30 minutes.

I shall be glad to hear your comments on it. You may respond back to tony.mitra@gmail.com