Author Archives: admin

I join the Koo family

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Koo is a microblogging app for social media, an alternative to twitter, and originated in India in 2020 because of differences of opinion between the Government of India and Twitter, regarding freedom of choice. According to India, some anti-India terrorist type people from countries outside of India were assuming fake name and fake origin of being from India, in their membership of twitter, and then passing subversive or treasonous plans and recruitment drives in India to foment insurgency and terrorism. The government listed out the names of these members and wanted twitter to ban their accounts. Twitter did not agree. This started a spat that is ongoing.

Meanwhile, someone in India came up with an alternative app for Indians to consider boycotting twitter and supporting home-grown platforms.

https://www.bitchute.com/video/ChQwQBggc8TL/

 Lot of people did join up and the platform is growing rapidly. Initially, it was presumed that the people that supported the current political party that rules India – BJP, formed the bulk of membership. This was also supported by Government officials and politicians of the party as well as the government ministers including the Prime Minister. Then came many celebrities such as actors and sportspeople, followed by journalists and self employed. In general, it was conceived to be supported by the Indian right wing, or the so called pro-Hindutwa group, or people that feel proud of their Hindu origin.

A few people from the west, wanting to stay connected with, or to gain friendship or exposure, too joined up.

It is reported that the Twitter app has over 25 million users while Koo has just under 3 million, but is rising. In some countries outside of India, Koo has apparently become highly used when their respective nations banned the use of Twitter, such as Nigeria. Some high profile ministers of the Indian Government have joined Koo and brought one million and more followers.

 Lately, perhaps the platform is losing some of its pro Hindutwa distinction and attracting some of the middle-of-the-road noncommittal folks too.

I joined up partly out of knee jerk dislike of the controlling social media and IT bigwigs of Facebook, Twitter, Google, & Microsoft, and their apparent censorship when it comes to selective subjects such as covid, Donald Trump, etc. Partly, also was the concern regarding the propaganda on Covid and my desire to tell folks in India that Hindutwa and Covid should not be mixed up. Whatever is the agenda for the Indian government regarding secularism, its politicise on covid was wholly in line with the global dictatorship of promoting a fake propaganda for reasons other than safety from any viral epidemic. 

My time with Koo has been for around six months, of which I have been reasonably active for say four months or so, meaning making on average perhaps one post per day. And in this time, my follower base has risen from zero to almost 500. In Comparison, on Twitter, I have less than 400 followers, after having been there for 12 years.

In the attached graph, one can see there were not much rise in membership in the months of March and April, when I did not make much posts. This is an indication that a post a day ensure steady rise of followers, even if your views are controversial, non-standard, or opposite to the current flow. People will follow you out of curiosity, if what you have to say, is curious.

 Why is this important. Well, I feel covid propaganda is destroying the planet as we knew it, even if the state of affairs were horrible in many counts. Therefore, resisting the ongoing destruction of the human society becomes a primary task of any thinking human, without our own capacity and inclination, and without engaging in violence.

In that, I suspect India would play a crucial role, or it has the potential to do so. That is primarily the reason for my attraction to this app – to try and make a difference, however small.

But there are subtle differences. On Twitter, I post more often and some of my followers have the same interest, such as dislike for industrial chemicals and herbicides in food, or the fact that people are having their free speech curtailed by the social media giants.

On Koo, there is no such discernible pattern. People from differing walks of life seem to follow me at random. The only noticeable pattern is – if I do not make any posts for a few days, my followers do not increase, and in fact begins to drop off. On the other hand, if I make more posts, especially on topics off the beaten path, I gain more followers. The new followers rarely, if ever, click the “like” button or share my posts. So I guess they are more curious about what I have to say, and not necessarily agreeing with me. Neither are they disagreeing enough to voice their opinion.

When it comes to covid – almost 99.99% of the people do believe covid is a deadly virus and one needs to take all precautions possible to avoid getting infected or worse. I seem to be the only voice that spends words of caution about the reality of covid and also about possible harm from vaccine, not just on health, but also economy, freedom and democracy.

Curiously, Koo App has not yet gotten around to sanctioning me or censoring my posts that often ends up criticising the Indian government, or prime minister.

So far, it has been an interesting journey and I have been making more posts on Koo than on Twitter of late.

https://www.kooapp.com/profile/Tony_Mitra

Hummingbirds from my window

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I distinctly remember when I first saw a hummingbird outside of a zoo. I was in Jamaica, visiting on a freighter ship where I worked as an engineer. I could barely distinguish it’s details since it was so small and fidgety, moving from flower to flower at the entrance to someone’s house. I had known about them, but was not expecting them, when a local resident pointed it out to me. It was gone in a few seconds, suddenly shooting off like a bullet. I so wished it had stuck around for a little longer. Those days, I only had an instamatic point and shoot camera, not suited to take pictures of birds that small under it was sitting on your hand. The the experience of seeing it for the first time, never left me.

I had of course seen a somewhat similar bird of my own birthplace – the old world sunbirds. They are perhaps not directly and closely related to the new world hummingbirds, but the old world sunbirds, flowerpeckers and spider hunters sort of evolved to similar shape and size in a process known as convergent evolution. Distantly related creatures, when adapting to identical lifestyle, often evolves to similar shape and size. This is how whales, dolphins and porpoises, which are mammals and were once four legged land dwellers, begin to look like fish, which internally some of them still hold the bones of vestigial hind legs, while for some others the legs have turned into flippers or paddles.

In my home state, West Bengal of India, the sunbirds were called Moutushi (মৌটুসি). Like hummingbirds, it makes tiny nests hardly four inches or so wide, and lays marble sized tiny eggs and raises a few chicks. But unlike the hummingbirds with their straight beak, the sunbirds usually have a downward curved beak. The sunbirds are, on average, just a tad larger than the hummingbirds, and although expert flyers and some have been noted to hover motionless in the air while drinking flower nectars, they usually will perch while doing so, whereas hummingbirds at the ultimate flyers in aerial acrobatics. They can not only hover motionless in the air, but can fly vertically up, or down. They can fly sideways left or right, and even backward – something that no other bird, or even man made helicopters can do as of today.

 

Hummingbirds are birds of the Americas, found from Alaska down to Tierra Del Fuego. But their greatest concentration and variety are to be found in the tropical belt in south America.

Here in British Columbia, Canada, I have seen only two kinds of hummingbirds. One is more prominent and found more often than the other. This is a migratory species – the Rufous Hummingbird. It lives south of the border in USA, but ventures up north into Canada in the summer, feeds on the local flowers, makes nests, lays eggs and raises young, before heading back south for the colder months.

The other, is the only resident hummingbird of the land – Anna’s hummingbird. They are similar is size and appearance and are greenish on their back with iridescent colouring and beautiful georgette on the throats of the males. People can and do mix one up with the other. But the best way to distinguish one from the other is that the Rufous usually has brick coloured feathers on its sides while the Anna’s has no rufous colour anywhere on it, and the male has some white around the eyes.

I see a rufous hummingbird perhaps five or six times as often as I see an Anna’s. They come to our backyard, not just for the flowers or the feeders, but also for the insects. Hummingbirds, as well as sunbirds and their relative the spider hunters – will take flying insects too.

This year, out backyard is being visited by both kinds of hummingbirds and often. And some of the males are still chasing partners. And thus, I could see a glorious male looking around for a female and advertising itself on a thin branch of my plum tree. On occasion, I even got the pair, male and female on the same branch.

Contrary to the normal angle of observation, where the photographer is on the ground and the bird is above him, here the roles were reversed. I was at my window on the top floor, say the 3rd floor above ground. The bird was on a branch a floor below me, and I was watching it almost vertically down.

Also, I was wearing a baseball cap with a bit of a red marking on it in front. On occasion, the female, which was constantly moving around searching out the flowers and the feeders, and drinking from them occasionally, came close to check if that red thing on my cap was a flower. It would come to almost a food from me, while I was leaning out of the window, and hover there, intently watching that mark on my cap, before deciding it was not a flower. It would be still and hover for a second or two before flying off. It was too close for me to focus on it and take a picture, since I had a long lens on me which would not focus on anything close.

But, on the other hand, I got some great shots including normal and slow speed videos of the birds.

 

In a way, my day was made.

Year of the Pumpkin

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This year I seem to have a huge success in growing the general Cucubrita family of food crops. Although the season is in its early phase and the produce are not yet ripe, it appears that I shall probably have a successful harvest of pumpkins, squash, zucchini, gourd and cucumbers than any previous year.

I planted a lot of seeds in my starter pots. Most of them sprouted and were successfully transplanted outdoors. I had been careful to manually water the plants, both in raised beds and on portable fabric bags. The main difference in the raised beds were that the lower levels were fulled with wood, leaves and grass mulch, with the upper layer being soil – following the hugelkultur technique. Actually, I did not know of hugelcutur when I started doing it out of my own belief that this might work. And then, based on my pictures posted on social media, I got responses that showed that my efforts were already practiced long before and had a name – originating from Germany.

My raised wood walled vegetable beds
From hugelkultur.com.au

In more than one way, the Cucubrita family has contributed to my backyard turning into a food forest. The other major contributors are potato, tomato and the cabbage and cauliflower groups.

I am aware that the Cucubrita family of squash, gourd, zucchini and especially pumpkin are rich in vitamins, primarily vitamin-A. Also, the greens of these plants are great as food, either sautéed western style or cooked like saag Indian style.

I have not had any of these greens yet, but that is to come. As soon as a large pumpkin or two begin to grow on a vine, one can in effect cut off the remaining vine and leaves and cook them, while letting the pumpkins grow and the plant put more energy into them instead of into growing more vine.

Pumpkin on the ground
Pumpkin in the air
Pumpkin on the roof

I did not count how many plants I have put in the soil in my backyard, but there are perhaps a hundred vines, some are branches of the main, growing in all directions and are literally taking over the neighbourhood.

I can already count at least 8 pumpkin growing on the very roof of my garden shed, along with half as many squash. But these are merely preliminary figures. The vines are growing on the roof like crazy, and many more are claiming to the roof. Some are producing fruits hanging off the edge of the roof. So no telling how many will be linked to this one small garden shed roof alone. It is perhaps not an exaggerated expectation to state that I expect the total number of pumpkin, gourd and squash on my property this year might cross 50. In other words, if I was to eat one of them each week, it will cover the whole year.

At least half a dozen of the vines are happy to be climbing the red leaf cherry blossom tree nearby one of the hugelcultur raised beds.

Squash on a cherry blossom tree

As to the vines, there are perhaps a hundred of them growing everywhere. And this does not even include the cucumbers, which by themselves might produce almost 50 fruits.

I am kept busy daily, trying to help the vines find something to climb. I have criss cross the area is ropes and strings for these vines to climb, wrap around, or hand from.

About the pumpkins and squash, there is also a story to be told involving the front yard.

I had prepared part of the smaller front yard, removing the grass, covering the area with biodegradable cardboard to suppress the weeds, and brought some soil from my backyard, mixed with compost and placed it over the cardboards last year, to try to grow some food instead of just a toxic grass lawn that supports nothing. I wanted it to either go to weed which supports insects, bee, rabbits, birds and other wildlife, or grow food. For purpose of appearance, I chose to grow food. I had planted some beets last year.

This year, I added some wooden frames there to demarcate food zones for different crops and flowers there, and planted some Swiss chard and beets in one of the rectangles, and a dozen sunflowers on another. A large section was left for planting more food. I was thinking of putting some more turnips and perhaps carrots there.

However, a strange thing happened when I started watering the beets, Swiss chards and the sunflowers. The water droplets also fell a bit on the sup pounding area that had the good soil but where I had not yet put any seeds. Apparently, the soil transported from my backyard, from beds where I had grown stuff in previous years, carried some tiny potatoes the size of half a marble or so that often escapes attention, but are still viable, despite their small size. Also, somehow the soil contained a few pumpkin and swash seeds, no idea how.

So, in my front yard, suddenly some potato, squash and pumpkins sprouted, next to the planted beets and chard.

I was surprised, but did not uproot them. If they could be hardy enough to emerge in my front yard unplanned by me, they deserved to live, I thought.

And now they have taken over the vacant wood framed plot. One of the vines have grown on the soil and looking for something to climb. I am thinking of making them a ramp and scaffolding of wood. But I have to first do some wood work to provide support for the second tomato zone where the plants are outgrowing the bamboo support sticks.

Meanwhile, I am thrilled to watch my Cucubrita grow. This might just be the year of the Cucubrita, for me.

Darwin in my backyard – in a potato plant

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I have been growing potato for a while now. However, this year I noticed something different in some of my crop. For one thing, many more of the plants produced potato berries, or seed pods, than before. But that was not all.

One potato plant had a most peculiar development. IT was producing potatoes above ground, one at every segment where new leaves or a new branch come out. There, at the juncture, a fat round thing grew, almost like a tumour or something. A closer look proved it to be a sort of a potato, growing above ground and off the stalk itself. As it a tuber is being turned Ito a fruit.

Well, one could not call this a fruit since a fruit is to be the container for seed. This guy was not involved in producing seed pods. Rather, it was producing potatoes, but above ground. I had plucked a few larger ones and taken a good look at them. They showed faint signs of turning greenish on the skin – a trait that normal potato have, if they are exposed to the sun. This is the potato way to prevent animals trying to eat the exposed potato, but turning toxic. A half exposed potato will turn green on the exposed section, and remain normal for the bottom half.

Also, at the top end of this thing, there were clear signs of new leaves sprouting. It was, indeed, trying to create a plant, just like a normal potato. Unlike a normal potato, it did not have roots in the ground, taking nourishment. It was taking it directly from the plant itself, through its attachment with the stalk. I did see, however, some tiny thread like extensions from the bottom, a millimetre or two in length. I wondered if those were left over traits of the normal potato, seeing down roots, looking for soil.

A few of these were already attacked by some insect and the top section partially chewed off, the best I could tell.

I wondered if this is how evolution works and if I was seeing an example of it. This is a variant of the normal potato. Somehow it came to existence. We know five kids of the same parents will not be clones but will have variations, some of which will be different from either parent or any of its ancestor. This variant trait, if proven to have some clear advantage, then in natural circumstance that offspring would do better than others and might end up producing more kids with this trait. Eventually, if circumstance remains favourable, this trait might become one of the dominant features of a new group of plants that are substantially different from its ancestors. This variant is now on the way to become a new species.

Natural selection aside, this can also happen through personal involvement of a group of creatures, such as animals that prefer a certain trait in themselves or in other plants or animals it supports and nurtures. Humans themselves have managed to bring forward plants very different today, from the earlier versions they favoured and tended for over the millennia. This involves plants as well as animals that are now domesticated and a far cry from their original wild version.

I was clearing out this bed, to prepare it for fall planting of other tubers – beet, turnip and perhaps carrots. So I was uprooting and harvesting the potato. About this particular plant, I had already pulled off a few of the above ground potato attached to it, taken a look and buried them back in the soil. I have a habit of burying back organic matter that I grew but do not consume. The plants themselves are usually crushed, balled up and reburied in the same soil. It came from nutrients off the ground, and goes back in the ground, to be composted back by micro organisms – the natural recycling that the living plant is so good at.

Thus, I pulled this plant off too and reburied it, but I remembered at the last moment to take a few pictures to preserve the occasion. I checked if it had also produced tubers underground and if so, how many. Apparently it did produce underground regular tubes too, but not too many. So it was a halfway transient variant, able to produce tubers both underground and above ground, but not too many nor too large anywhere.

It came upon me to write about it the next day. To me, this is evolution at work. This is what mutation, natural variation and random change means – as observed by early stalwarts like Charles Darwin in vast varieties of living creatures and how Gregor Mendel figured out how heredity works in green pea. If this trait in the potato, of growing tubers above ground, is to be considered an advantage, then humans could replant the produce of this plant again and again, selectively filtering out those that produced more tubers underground, and filtering in those that grew more above ground. Eventually, it might lead to potatoes that only grew above ground, and, hopefully, were good to eat too – a novelty.

I was not involved in trying to create any specific hybrids. Not in this late stage of my life, as a home gardener trying to produce my own food.

But I am an observer – with a habit of analysing what I see around me, and make sense of it. And thus, I decided to jot down my observation, while having today’s morning coffee.

Charles Darwin (from thoughtco.com)

 thought of including Darwin’s image in the same blog. After all, I did find something of him in my own backyard garden, even if I am completely unaware of him ever finding evidence of any evolutionary change of this kind in potato.

If you wish to comment, please feel free to use the comment box below. Thank you for reading this note.

A violet green swallow starts off my day

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In the morning, just after the sun was out and striking the top of the tall cedar trees horizontally from the north-east, I took a mug of hot coffee and stepped out on my backyard garden for a few moments of quiet time, watching my vegetables and planning out a to-do list for the day.

But when I lifted the blinds and opened the glass door to the back patio, I knew I had to take my camera. Backyard was full of birds. As the sun had started warming the air, the insect population comes to life, and along with it, the insect eating birds and spider. Also, as the seed eating finches were about, since many of the wild and not so wild flowers were dropping mature seeds on the ground or floating in the air. A flash of yellow streaked by and I notice gold finches flitting about – not so common a site in my backyard.

By the time I got a camera with a long lens on it, the gold finch was nowhere to be found. However, there were a few hummingbirds flying wildly about, often chasing each other and even zipping my me, where I could hear the whirring of their wings. These experts of aerial acrobatics have been a daily and near constant visitor to my backyard, not just for the flowers, including some fuchsia in pots kept specifically for these birds.

Fuchsia flowers
Hummingbird investigating a feeder

Clicking on these birds were not easy since they were so fidgety. But I had gotten a few pictures of it hovering under a feeder a few days ago. It reminded me of the slow motion video I got of an Anna’s hummingbird weathering out a gentle snow fall, which looked even more gentle in the slow motion video.

Hummingbird during snowfall

Back to the present, I had a northern flicker sitting on a wooden power line post on my neighbour’s property. This guy, apart from drumming on wood and bark to pry out grubs inside the wood, had taken to drumming on metallic objects. It was not looking fr food, but rather, advertising itself for a potential mate. Since drumming on metal produced a far louder and ominous noise racket, it hope t convince a potential partner, that this was a male that would be more than able to provide for the family and should be considered a good catch.

Meanwhile, above me, a violet green swallow sat on a wire and pruned itself leisurely. Looking at it from its underside, it is not easy to figure out what kind of a swallow it is, or why it is called violet green. However, the bird was constantly moving and twisting around, trying to clean out and rearrange its feathers, so I could spend time on on clicking it from different views. This bird has both violet on its rump and brilliant green on its back.

Violet Green Swallow above my garden

 

The swallow and hummingbirds were of course not the only visitors. I had the more reliable jackrabbit that was a near constant visitor to my backyard.

Then there were the constant whirring of bee population visiting the numerous yellow flowers of the Cucubrita family – that is pumpkin, various squash, gourd and cucumber.

Apart from the perennial chickadees, we also were having another bunch that had appeared of late – a few of the siskin family. I could see them sitting on a pine tree or even the roof of my garden shed. American robins kept watching out for early worms. House finches roamed by deck occasionally.

A collared dove sat on another part of the overhead wire, and watched me serenely while all this was going on.

Come to think of it, I had lost my bird watching group on account of covid vaccine. But thankfully, the birds had not abandoned me, In fact, they were coming home, right in my own backyard. Fancy that.

I finished my coffee, set the camera down on a chair, and opened the water to water the plants. Today I was going to sow late season seeds – turnips and beet, on a new bed that got a fresh layer of wood, twigs and mowed lawn grass and then a top layer of soil and compost. Some of the home made fertiliser came from powdered egg shells, while others came from worm compost castings and worm compost tea, as well as recycled organic matter.

Talking about worm composting, I lost my stock when I was in India for two years till 2019. Upon return back to Canada, I had to purchase a small batch for $20. That small batch, numbering abut a hundred or so two years ago, has now had a huge population explosion, expanding from my first bin to a second bin and numbering several thousand. These fast compost producing red wiggler worms are outnumbering themselves beyond my needs. So, should anyone wish to buy some of these wonder creatures at half price, let me know. I do not need the small cash, but giving it free often results in insincere people grabbing some and letting them go to waste.

Anyhow, time to head back indoor, watch the final soccer match between Italy and England for the Euro2020 cup, and then fish out my turnip and beet seeds, and perhaps a bit of the carrots too, and head back out again once the sun has passed its hottest daily phase and begun to lose some of its sting.

That was my todays story, of backyard visitors, mostly birds. Like I said – grow food, not lawns. You will be amazed how the life around you begins to change. It is good for the soul and for the health. Good for the pocket too. Growing your own food is like printing your own money. Think about that.

Farewell to my birding group

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I had been away from the local birdwatching group I used to hang out with. Firstly, the leader, a good friend, died suddenly. He was suffering from cancer, but somehow I did not know, and during the covid restrictions, going out together had been restricted. That Tom died suddenly, came as a big shock to me. I really liked the guy, and had dropped him off a time or two at his place when he did not bring his own big vehicle. He had been the leader for as long as I was with them, which is almost ten years. It felt as it the heart had gone out of the group.

Tom Bearss

Meanwhile, time went by under the gathering clouds of covid. I did not get the feel that the flu was dangerous enough for the world to stand on its head, and smelled a rat – but I had no idea how large this rodent was going to be.

Anyhow, getting together was now a chore with social distancing and restrictions to numbers and many other more or less outlandish requirements that had no basis to scientific facts far as I could see. Unfortunately, the public bought it hook like and sinker. Even the guy at the auto service centre where I went to tune up my car, told me if I did not believe in covid, I must not be watching the TV. Well, I did by then believed that the best way to rid yourself of covid was to throw the damned tv out of the window, after unplugging it first.

Life was not going to be the same again, I gathered. As it is, the bird population in North America was plummeting in a free fall. Many of the birds we saw would not be around for the next generation. Everything was going up in smoke, and not just from covid.

Local birding trips with the old gang came to an abrupt halt for now. I went birding alone, or with neutral friends. I managed to meet up a few of the old gang here and there, often pairing up in small groups that I would meet up by chance. I would on occasion go birding with my wife, who took the morning walks along the Boundary Bay dyke by the 72nd St, next to the Boundary Bay airport. We would sometimes come across new folks in the lonely dyke road, like a couple riding their horse. It used to be nice.

We did see the usual birds. A short eared owl sitting on a fence post would be a treat. This was one of the few owls found in these lands that hunted in the day. Although never too numerous and usually hard to find, the dyke was a good place to find one, especially in the winter and early in the morning. You might even chance upon an even more rare barn owl, at the fringe of its range up north hereabouts in British Columbia.

My time and interest incrementally shifted to the ongoing covid drama across the planet, as well as on the need to grow much of my food in my own backyard. These two, in my mind, were not unconnected. From a bird watcher, I was turning into a lockdown protester on the streets on Surrey and Vancouver, as well as a dogged home gardener with the message – Grow Food, Not Lawns.

I would occasionally meet up with some of the people from the old birding group, but without Tom and without a good crowd, it was not the same.

Thankfully, his Highness Bill gates had not yet declared that an unvaccinated person without a mask trying to take a picture of an equally unvaccinated and maskless wild bird would trigger and end of all existence. So I could still click at birds without fear of triggering a reversal of the big bang.

But the dark clouds of covid, getting darker by the day, much preoccupied me. I was slowly waking up to the conclusion that life as we knew it before covid, was never going to come back again. Also, protesting on the streets were symbolic but not producing much meaningful result. The vast majority of the population either wholly believed the propaganda, or were mortally afraid of losing their jobs, or influenced by peer pressure, and simply replaced their prophet by the TV. It came to me that when the chips are down, the only people that might survive, for a bit, might be those that can grow their own food.

Thus, I turned from a long term anti-glyphosate food security activist and  a lifelong birder, to a lockdown and c-vaccine protester, freedom fighter, to a more focussed backyard organic farmer.

Time went by, and I am fast forwarding to the present. I had lapsed in my annual membership payment for the birding group, mainly because I used to pay cash by hand earlier during meetings. But since physical meeting was more or less shelved and I was not seeing these guys, payment in person could not be made.

And then, just today, I got an email posted to their group email – in which I was still a recipient. It talked about birding trips in the next few days. That brought back memories.

My gardening was now stable and I could spare a few hours in the morning after watering my plants, to go birding and return back in the afternoon. So I sent a reply, explaining my situation, that I had not kept my membership valid was was wiling to pay up if there was a convenient way to do so, and that I did not want to wear a mask during birding and if that was OK.

The person in charge called back. I could pay online. Mask was unnecessary. But, I must be vaccinated.

That was a mega shocker. No vaccine had yet been approved by FDA. They were merely released under emergency and people could voluntarily take them if they liked, taking the risk that should they be harmed, they alone were to blame. I knew enough about the messenger RNA and DNA vaccines not to ever offer to take then voluntarily. I knew the reason behind the vaccines were goals other than safety of health. I had not taken any vaccine in sixty years and I had not gotten sick with any infective disease in that period. I was horrified that the group would even consider making  vaccination a mandatory requirement.

I told the person the same thing, and informed him that there was no way I was going to take a vaccine just to join this birding group. Birds will be there, and I will be there, without vaccine. That is all there is to it.

And thus, it was farewell to my birding group, drawing curtains over a long association. I wished Tom Bearss was still alive. But, what happened to me, is a small snapshot of what is happening around the world. Looting of public funds and destruction of liberty using the pretext of public safety.

Goodbye friends. Nice knowing you.

Vegetate under covid restrictions, or live life?

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Question was raised by a friend on Facebook post, about older people in India more or less confining themselves indoor, separated from their world, and just counting days doing nothing – was this a worthwhile mode of existence?

This prompted a response from me, as follows:

Not all your friends are living indoor and doing nothing except count the hours going by.
Yesterday I wrote to Narendra Modi accusing him of ruining India and looting it for the benefit of corporate and NWO overlords and asked him to explain to the people why he should not be tried for treason. I copied it to Prashant Bhushan in Delhi who is representing four like minded citizens suing the Indian Government at the supreme Court for pretty much the same reason.
That, and spending long hours in the sun, growing potato, tomato, pumpkin and a dozen more organic crops in my backyard and conversing with people across the planet- should count for more that just waiting to die of old age.
When I go to buy milk and am requested to wear a mask inside the store, I wear a specially ordered one, keeping my nose out of it and refusing to breathe my own exhalation. The specially printed text on my mask says – THIS MASK IS AS USELESS AS MY PRIME MINISTER.
So I guess I am among the exception that prove the rule.
You take care.

And on a follow up message, I wrote further – 

from my point of view, things are just as bad in the west as they are in the east – in particular, small business, mom and pop shops, small entrepreneurs and self employed people are designed to lose their way of living and go extinct, and all their work is designed to be captured by bigger corporations. In Bengali, there used to be a term – মাৎস্যন্যায় – where big fish eat up all the small fish.
Sitting in any one corner of the world – it might appear that the other bank of the river is greener.
IN my unique perspective of having bridged various lands and in touch with people on the ground in all continents barring Antarctica, I see this as a global phenomenon. IN my assessment, the west is going to take the hardest fall, since its society had gone higher up in the ladder than others, and faces the greatest fall. Many smart people around the world are beginning to see this. Unfortunately, not everybody has an analytical mind and few are able to see beyond the haze. Many believe the TV, or politicians, or are greatly influenced by friends and peer pressure.
I believe the world as we knew back in 2019 is never ever coming back. I also see a systemic collapse happening across the planet, either in stages and planned, or catastrophically and unplanned, that will be like no other global economic collapse known in history.
I also have a suspicion that, among the rubble of the ruins, countries like India will survive better than many others – but not because of the upwardly mobile west-influenced new westernised youth, but the unseen, non-english savvy non-internet browsing other-India. That uncontaminated group is still numerous and not yet extinct in India, but are more or less vanished from the west. It is that crowd, in my judgment, that will emerge as major survivors and pull India up by the bootstraps.
I myself will most likely not be around to see the end result. Very few of us will be.
Meanwhile, we are all in for a hair raising ride. Hang on to your seat belts and sing that Tagore Song –
এবার তোর মরা গাঙে বান এসেছে, ‘জয় মা’ ব’লে ভাসা তরী॥
ওরে রে ওরে মাঝি, কোথায় মাঝি, প্রাণপণে, ভাই, ডাক দে আজি
তোরা সবাই মিলে বৈঠা নে রে, খুলে ফেল্‌ সব দড়াদড়ি॥
দিনে দিনে বাড়ল দেনা, ও ভাই, করলি নে কেউ বেচা কেনা
হাতে নাই রে কড়া কড়ি।
ঘাটে বাঁধা দিন গেল রে, মুখ দেখাবি কেমন ক’রে
ওরে, দে খুলে দে, পাল তুলে দে, যা হয় হবে বাঁচি মরি॥

 

মোদী, ভারত, এবং বর্তমান সভ্যতা-সংকট

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ফেসবুকে আমার ছেলেবেলার এবং আজীবনের বন্ধুদের অন্যতম স্যমন্তকের একটি মোদী-বিচার লেখা পড়ে মনে হল যে আমার হয়তো উচিত নিজের বক্তব্যটা পেশ করা, যদিও আমি অন্য লোকের উঠোনে গিয়ে নিজের মন্তব্য জাহির করাটা একেবারেই পছন্দ করিনা।

কিন্তু বিষয়টা আমার কাছে খুবই সাম্প্রতিক ও গুরুত্বপূর্ণ। তাই তাতে আমার বক্তব্য রাখতে এবং অন্যের ঘাড়ে চেপে না চেঁচানোর সিদ্ধান্ত থেকে না সরতে গিয়ে, একটা ব্লগ লিখে ফেললুম বাংলাতে – ঔ উভয় সংকটের মুশকিল আসানের সন্ধানে।

স্যমন্তকের ফেসবুক পাতার শিরোনাম চিত্র

স্যমন্তক,

আমি সাধারণতঃ অন্য লোকের উঠোনে উচ্চারিত নিজস্ব বক্তব্যের ওপর খবরদারী করতে বা সমালেচনা করতে আসিনা। তবে এইবার তোর উক্তিটা চোখের সামনে এল এবং বিষয়টা গুরুত্বপূর্ণ মনে হল বলে ভাবলাম Facebook’এ আমার ব্যবহারে একটা ব্যতিক্রম হয়তো আনতে পারি এবং মনে করছি তুই অখুশি হবিনা। তাত্পর্যপূর্ণ বিষয়ে মতানৈক্য থাকতেই পারে, যদি তা সসম্ভ্রমে পেশ করা যায়।

স্যমন্তককে আমি আনন্দ পাঠশালা থেকে চিনি এবং একই ক্লাসে একই বছর ইস্কুল পাশ করেছি।

নরেন্দ্র মোদি আগামী নির্বাচন জিতবে কি জিতবে না জানি না – সন্দেহ করি জিতবে, কিন্তু জেতার অন্যতম মূল কারণ নিজগুনের চেয়ে বেশি হবে বিশ্বাসযোগ্য বিকল্পের অভাব।

মোদীর লোকপ্রীয়তার অন্যতম কারণ ছিল ভারতবাসীদের অনেকেরই ইংরেজদের দাক্ষিণ্যে পাওয়া ভণ্ড-ধর্মনিরপেক্ষতার নামে মুসলমান-পোষণ ও হিন্দু-বিভাগ নীতির ধারাবাহিক সম্প্রসারণের ওপর অরূচি। তাই, দেশের একটি বৃহত গোষ্ঠীর অনেকদিনের জমানো ক্ষোভকে স্বীকৃতি দিয়ে ভাজপা দল ক্ষমতায় এসেছিল। ছোটবেলায় বিজ্ঞান পাঠে শিখেছিলাম – প্রকৃতি শূন্য সহ্য করেনা, তাই শূন্যস্থানকে ভর্তি করে দেয় পূর্ণতা রক্ষা করতে। জনতার বৃহদাংশ হিন্দুদের বঞ্চিত থাকার অনুভূতিটা একরকম রাজনৈতিক শূন্যতা – যা রাজনৈতিক ক্ষেত্রে পুরণ করার সময় এসেছিল এবং ভাজপা তা বুঝতে পারে এবং তাকে ভর করে এক রাজনৈতিক আন্দোলন শুরু করে, যার আধুনিক ফল হল নরেন্দ্র মোদীর কত লোকেদের উত্থান। তবে ক্ষমতায় আসা, আর ক্ষমতায় টিকে থাকা – দুটো দুরকম সমস্যা – এবং সমাধানও সবসময় একই পরিকল্পনা থেকে আসে না।

স্যমন্তক বলেছে ছোটখাটো ছাপোষাদের ঘুষ ও চুরিচামারির রাস্তা বন্ধ হয়েছে। আগের মনমোহন সরকারও একটু একটু করে সেই রাস্তা বন্ধ করার পথে নেমেছিল – মোদী সরকার সেই রাস্তাকে আরও প্রশস্ত করেছে। এক ঝলকে দেখলে তাতে লোকেদের খুশি হবারই কথা, এবং মোদী সরকার তাকে সবার দৃষ্টিগোচরও করেছে নানা প্রকার ঢাক পিটিয়ে। আরও নানা যায়গায় সরকার দেশকে স্বাবলম্বী করার নামে নানা রকম উদ্যোগও নিয়েছে – মানছি।

কিন্তু, দূর থেকে নিরপেক্ষভাবে বিচার করলে মনে হয় যে – ছোটখাটো লোকেদের চুরি চামারি, দুর্নীতি এবং আমলাতন্ত্র থামিয়ে মোদী সরকার বৃহত কর্পোরেশন এবং ধনকুবেরদের রাষ্ট্র লুঠ করার পথ খুলে দিয়েছে এবং রাষ্ট্রকে দেশী বিদেশী অতিধনী গোষ্ঠীশাসনের অধীনে আনার জন্য কাজ করে যাচ্ছে। চুরি এখনও হচ্ছে এবং মনে হয় আগের চেয়ে আরও ভয়াবহ রুপ নিচ্ছে সেই দূরাচার – এবং তাতে লাভবান হবে মিচকে চোরেরা বা সাধারণ প্রজারা নয়, অন্য এক শ্রেনীর অতিক্ষমতাশীল প্রভুদের দল, যাদের পকেটে সব রাজনীতিবিদরা থাকে এবং মনে হচ্ছে মোদীর জন্যেও এক বিশেষ পকেট তৈরি ছিল শুরু থেকেই।

নানা দেশী এবং আন্তর্জাতিক কারণে ভারতীয় এবং পৃথিবীর জনগন আজ এক নজিরহীন মহাসংকটের সামনে দাঁড়িয়ে – সব দেশের সব রাজণৈতিক দলই এই মানবতালুণ্ঠনে অংশীদার ও ঠিকাদার  মনে হয় – তফাতটা খালি কে কিরকম লিপস্টিক লাগাচ্ছে এবং কিরকম পাউডার মাখছে গালে – ততটুকুই।

আমার নিজস্ব মতে দোষটা জনতার। রাজা হল জনতার প্রতিফলন। জনতা যদি দূরদৃষ্টিহীন, স্বার্থপর, কাপুরুষ বা মেরুদণ্ডহীন, ভীরু হয়, তবে তাদের প্রাপ্য মুখোশপরা সরকারই তারা পাবে।

এতে সবচেয়ে শিক্ষণীয় পাঠ হল – স্বাধীনতা, ন্যায় ও সুবিচার আকাশ থেকে পড়ে না – তাকে অর্জন করতে হয় – তার জন্য মাথার ঘাম ফেলতে হয়, এমনকি রক্তও দিতে হয়।

দুঃখের বিষয় – সুভাসবাবুও জনরক্তস্বল্পতায় কাবু হলেন এবং রবীন্দ্রনাথের বর্ণিত হালের কাছের মাঝি  ঔ ভীরু জনতার অবহেলায় আজ সুদূরে বিলীন।

বেশি বলে ফেলেছি মনে করলে নিজগুনে মাফ করে দিস বাবুয়া।

সবাই ভাল থাকবেন।

C19, Fauci, & India

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There is a legal challenge to the government of India against implementation of untested and potentially harmful covid vaccines. Four individual citizens have brought that challenge to the government directly in the Supreme Court.
One of the high profile Supreme Court lawyers of India, Mr. Prashant Bhushan, is representing them free of charge.
This is his statement on twitter about Fauci, covid, and HIV.
The 2nd Tweet on a similar issue involving Fauci, Corona and Vaccine
As it happens, a decade ago, the same Mr. Bushan represented a single Indian woman on her Supreme Court challenge against the Government of India on account of introducing untested and potentially harmful GMO crops. As a result of that court challenge, the Government of India has till date not approved of any GMO to be introduced as main food crop.
I interviewed this Mr. Bhushan some five years ago, regarding Canada not having the same constitutional rights for the people to stop the toxification of the land and the people with pesticides such as glyphosate, and what one might do about it etc .
I put that conversation up on Youtube in an 8 minute video at the time.
Meanwhile the circle seems to have come around again, where the same Mr. Bhushan is now engaged on yet another groundbreaking Public Interest Litigation directly against the Union of India on account of flooding the nation with covid vaccines. Here is his statement on Twitter linking Fauci in directly threatening Indian scientists.
I suspect Mr. Bhushan will collect all these evidences in his representation of the situation where western Big Pharma and interest groups have used force to shut off discerning voice and free and fair investigation of aspects that reflect on public health and safety.

These are some of the reasons I suspect india might help turn the corner, but that this movement, if it happens, will not come from tech savvy, English speaking, social media active masses of India (exceptions aside), but from those “backward” people that refuse to follow the TV, the social media and the modern crowd and their peer pressure, and instead use a vanishing commodity – common sense and logic.

mRNA vaccines – Worse than the disease?

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Following received from Stephanie Seneff.

Aloha friends and family:

I wanted to send out a brief email message to alert you to what I have been up to in recent months, and to let you know about some of the web links where you can read my articles and/or watch interviews with me.

I have become very concerned about the possibility that the new mRNA and DNA vector vaccines have a risk/benefit ratio that makes it extremely doubtful that getting these experimental injections is a good idea.

I am doing my best to try to educate the general public on the potential dangers of this new technology, based on solid science.

It greatly concerns me that governments have rushed into this massive vaccination campaign with little regard for the possibility that it could be a huge mistake – a giant experiment where the citizens are served up as guinea pigs in a trial that may turn out to be catastrophic.  I hope I am wrong but the science is telling me otherwise.

1. Together with Dr. Greg Nigh (a naturopathic oncologist), I published a long peer-reviewed article on the mRNA vaccines, which you can access for free download here:

https://ijvtpr.com/index.php/IJVTPR/article/view/23

Stephanie Seneff and Greg Nigh.
Worse Than the Disease? Reviewing Some Possible Unintended Consequences of the mRNA Vaccines Against COVID-19.
International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research 2021; 2(1): 38-79.


It gives a comprehensive review of the technology and then explains the many ways in which the mRNA vaccines may be causing unexpected but ominous outcomes both short-term and long-term.

2. I just completed a new blog post on https://stephanieseneff.net, titled:

SARS-CoV-2 Vaccines and Neurodegenerative Disease.

It is available here:
https://stephanieseneff.net/sars-cov-2-vaccines-and-neurodegenerative-disease/

In this article, I explain the science behind my prediction that both the mRNA and the DNA vector vaccines will lead to a significant increase in the prevalence of neurodegenerative diseases in the future, particularly Parkinson’s disease, and that they will also cause these diseases to appear much earlier in life than they do now.

3. Over the past couple of weeks, I did two long interviews with Dr. Mercola, and the second one was a three-way interview which included Judy Mikovits, an expert in virology and a strong critic of vaccines in general and of these vaccines in particular.

My solo interview was aired on May 23:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/05/23/stephanie-seneff-covid-vaccine.aspx

The three-way that included Judy was aired on May 30:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/05/30/covid-19-vaccines-causing-damage.aspx

4. Finally, we are just one month away from the launch of my new book on glyphosate:

Toxic Legacy: How the Weedkiller Glypohsate is Destroying Our Health and the Environment.

You can find links to multiple booksellers’ pages where you can pre-order the book here:

https://stephanieseneff.net/book

It will be released on July 1.

That’s all for now.

I hope you are all staying safe and sane in these insane times.

And I appreciate all that you are doing to help change the world for the better!

Mahalo nui loa!

Stephanie


—
Stephanie Seneff
Senior Research Scientist
MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

 

Abstract from the peer reviewed article:

Operation Warp Speed brought to market in the United States two mRNA vaccines, produced by Pfizer and Moderna. Interim data suggested high efficacy for both of these vaccines, which helped legitimize Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) by the FDA. However, the exceptionally rapid movement of these vaccines through controlled trials and into mass deployment raises multiple safety concerns. In this review we first describe the technology underlying these vaccines in detail. We then review both components of and the intended biological response to these vaccines, including production of the spike protein itself, and their potential relationship to a wide range of both acute and long-term induced pathologies, such as blood disorders, neurodegenerative diseases and autoimmune diseases. Among these potential induced pathologies, we discuss the relevance of prion-protein-related amino acid sequences within the spike protein. We also present a brief review of studies supporting the potential for spike protein “shedding”, transmission of the protein from a vaccinated to an unvaccinated person, resulting in symptoms induced in the latter.We finish by addressing a common point of debate, namely, whether or not these vaccines could modify the DNA of those receiving the vaccination. While there are no studies demonstrating definitively that this is happening, we provide a plausible scenario, supported by previously established pathways for transformation and transport of genetic material, whereby injected mRNA could ultimately be incorporated into germ cell DNA for transgenerational transmission. We conclude with our recommendations regarding surveillance that will help to clarify the long-term effects of these experimental drugs and allow us to better assess the true risk/benefit ratio of these novel technologies.

I was going to post this warning on Facebook, but before I could even complete the composition of the text, I got an alert from Facebook, basically informing me that the post is going to be restricted by Facebook, which probably means it’s visibility to others will be restricted and that my post will be effectively shadow banned. Below is a screen shot of the warning. S I decided not to post it on Facebook and put this up as a blog.