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About glyphosate – God helps those that help themselves

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First there was this famous court case of Mr. Dewayne Johnson versus Monsanto, that ended in a historically significant first of its kind verdict in favour of Johnson, declaring Monsanto’s weed killer with glyphosate to be potentially hazardous to human health and that Monsanto had knowingly hidden the potential danger from its literature, thus failing to alert the user sufficiently, which in turn resulted in Johnson getting terminally ill with cancer.

And now, there is this second case, of Wade versus Monsanto, for pretty much similar issues. Monsanto’s efforts to have the case summarily dismissed has failed. Further, Monsanto’s efforts to block the details of the soon to be started proceedings from being broadcast to the public has also failed. Barring specific items that should not be broadcast, such as jury selection, the entire court proceedings may be preserved through audio and video recordings, for broadcast to the public.

These open the floodgates for all other patients that believe they contracted their illness from glyphosate, due to the maker hiding the danger inherent in products that use glyphosate, either from Monsanto, or any other vendor.

All this however, leaves a very big question unanswered, in my mind. The job of most product manufacturer has been to highlight good sides of their product and downplay potential questionable sides. The job of exposing the potential undesirable effects, and of judging if the product is safe enough for public release, is that of the Government, and not of the product manufacturer. IN the case of USA, that job belongs to the Environment Protection Agency, or EPA in short.

I believe EPA is extremely corrupt and regularly fails to raise the alarm adn block approval of dangly unfit products such as Monsanto’s weed killer. I believe EPA is the first candidate that deserves to be sued by the people. I believe the very approval of any biocide made with glyphosate needs to be overturned. I believe EPA should be stripped of its responsibility in approving pesticides because it is unfit to carry out its job.

I also believe the above paragraph is likely a fools dream that is not going to bear fruit because, to make it happen, the people of the US will have to turn its focus away from rogue corporations such as Monsanto, and refocus on rogue government agencies such as EPA.

Not only that, the people will have to understand that this is not a Democrat versus Republican issue, and that a vast majority of their House representatives and Senators are on the take from the industry. The industry effectively controls all three branches of the Government today – the Executive, the Legislative as well as the Judiciary all the way to the Supreme Court. Legal victories such as Dewayne Johnsons are a drop in the bucket, more an exception that proves the rule.

Meanwhile in Canada, there are also looming class action lawsuits against Monsanto/Bayer, and also, more hopefully, against Health Canada, the EPA equivalent arm of the US Government in approval of pesticides containing biocides such as glyphosate.

Mary Lou McDonald’s court challenge through her NGO Safe Food Matters, against Health Canada, therefore, is a more important aspect of the legal challenge focussed correctly, against the government regarding wrongful steps taken in approval of glyphosate.

As long as the people of the US fail to do their primary task, as long as they continue to waste their time, money and focus on effort to find a saviour such as Vandana Shiva, Jeffry Smith, Robert Kennedy Jr, or even Jesus Christ or Budhha, the status quo will continue. The only way to save the country is for each and every one to stop looking for some one else’s shoulder to fire from, and to step up to the plate and do what each can do within his or her capacity, to resist the degradation of their democratic system. To believe that someone else will fight your battle, is why the situation has gotten as shitty as it is now, and trust me, it is going to get much worse.

Borrowing another phrase from the Missionary priests, athough I am a Hindu born atheist – God helps those that help themselves.

Borrowing and tweaking a quote from John Kenney, I would day – ask not what heroes and heroines, such as Vandana Shiva, or Robert Kennedy, or Jeffrey Smith or anybody else, even Micky Mouse, can do to fight not just glyphosate, but the degradation of your democratic system that puts you in this distress. Ask instead what you can do yourself, without their or anybody else’s help, within your own capacity, to resist this attack on your citizen’s rights.

People do not need to be groupies to hang around other famous folks. People do not need to do oohs and aah about someone else that talks about or does something about fighting the system. If they deserve your admiration and respect, then show it by doing something like them yourself. Be an activist, not a wallflower.

Your first task is to fight for these institutions, which is to ensure you have clean and uncorrupted legislature, clean Judiciary and clean White House. Otherwise your country will be flushed down the toilet. And the US will take much of the rest of the planet along with it as it goes down the tube.

Letter to Jagmeet Singh on glyphosate

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To: Jagmeet Singh, MP, Burnaby South, NDP

jagmeet.singh@ndp.ca

Date: Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Subject:  Suggestions on GMO, Glyphosate and proportional representation

MP Jagmeet Singh

Congratulations on your recent victory in your riding in the general election, and the position NDP is in with regard to possible participation in a minority Government under Justin Trudeau. I write this with a short list of suggestions that your party might consider, should it be asked to support  a Trudeau’s government. My requests are of national interest and not covering any personal issues. I shall never ask you for any personal favour.

  1. Reverse Bill C-291 on mandatory labelling of GMO as a starting point on pushing back at Glyphosate (many GMO crops are designed to increase sale of glyphosate).
  2. Bring Proportional representation in Canadian federal elections.

Before proceeding, I’d like to introduce myself as an Indian born Canadian citizen, a retired engineer and a food security activist focussing primarily on banning Glyphosate (Roundup and other branded herbicides) from Canadian agriculture, forestry, coastline and nature. I had a role in pushing the Harper Government into having CFIA to test thousands of food samples collected in Canada, for presence of glyphosate. A now retired NDP member of parliament, Mr. Alex Atamanenko, assisted in my effort to bring this matter to the floor of the parliament and forcing the hand of the then conservative health minister Ms Rona Ambrose. 

Thus the Canadian government became the only one so far to conduct large scale testing of all foods for glyphosate. My analysis of all those results, totalling near 8,000, proved that North America produces the most toxic foods on earth. This is the primary reason why Canadians and Americans are the sickest people among all developed nations. I composed a 400 page reference book with data and charts, titled ‘Poison Foods of North America’, for other research scholars, available on Amazon.

That glyphosate is safe for humans or other animals, has not been directly proven by anybody in the fifty years of its existence. The documents the Canadian government is supposed to have seen prior approval of glyphosate back in the 1970s and many times since, has never been made public. This hiding of safety document and data makes the very approval of glyphosate constitutionally illegal, in my understanding of the law. What the Government doles out in exchange, is carefully selected third party reports and opinions, that someone else found glyphosate to be safe enough, provided it was used carefully.

A few years ago, I had brought over twenty thousand signatures to my Delta MP and federal minister Carla Qualtrough, demanding that the then newly formed Trudeau government discloses all the documents it received from Monsanto covering safety tests and data on glyphosate. She took the documents to Ottawa but did not deliver. Ottawa continues to stonewall all public efforts to seek disclosure on this issue.

Although it is not difficult to conduct independent lab test to check if a substance such as glyphosate is or is not harmful to animals and organisms, the Canadian Government has not encouraged independent verification of this most used poison on earth – glyphosate.

I am aware of the ongoing sixth mass extinction and the effects of glyphosate spray over Canadian forests, practiced by logging firms and approved by provincial governments. I am aware of the fact that scientists and medical officers that raise alarm over this issue, end up getting fired and their voice silenced.

I am aware that your platform has been to bolster better government funded healthcare for people. I would like you to also consider the fact that the first step towards better health is prevention of diseases. What most people understand by healthcare is caring of the sick. I am talking about ensuring folks do not get sick to start with.

I am aware how bill C-291 of the Canadian 42st parliament — an Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (genetically modified food) , requiring mandatory labelling of GMO, was proposed by the then NDP and was defeated because Conservatives and most though not all, members of the Liberal party voted against it, while members of NDP and BQ voted in favour of mandatory labelling.

My own MP and federal minister Carla Qualtrough, despite my meeting and passing damaging information on glyphosate, and despite overwhelming support for the bill from Canadians, opted to kill this bill.

My first request for you is to force the hand of any coalition government with Mr. Trudeau, to reverse that anti-people vote by the Liberals, and pass a fresh bill mandating labelling of GMO as well as ensuring that the “definition” of GMO is not altered so much that what was considered GMO last may end up considered as “natural” now. This GMO labelling should be the first step, followed by independent and rigorous assessment of the safety of glyphosate, where promoters of the product or politicians in high places have no influence on the study, and to ultimately work towards banning the product and moving away from the concept of using poisons in agriculture and forestry.

If you are interested to learn more about glyphosate and what independent science is discovering – albeit outside Canada, since independent science is being killed in Canada, then I shall be most happy to meet with you some day to discuss.

My second suggestion is to insist that the new minority government passes a fresh bill so all future federal elections will be based on proportional representations.

Being an activist and encouraging people to find ways to raise issues of national interest with politicians,  I may circulate copy of this letter in social media, or read it aloud on youtube, to encourage others to also voice their views to elected public servants.

I also intend to send a copy of this letter to my own MP, ms Carla Qualtrough, for her reference. 

I look forward to a positive response and end this letter wishing you success.

Tony Mitra

10891 Cherry Lane, Delta, BC, V4E3L7 Canada

604-649 7535, tony.mitra@gmail.com

Canadian labs that test glyphosate

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Here is a brief list of CALA (Canadian Association for Laboratory Accreditation Inc.) accredited labs that test glyphosate. This list was prepared on the 19th of August 2019, from the CALA website linked above, using search criteria to show only those labs that test glyphosate.

Please note, not all fo these may be testing samples for the public, as a few may be in house and only do tests for their parent organisation such as the government or university.

This list only shows CALA accredited labs. There may be more labs, not accredited or listed by CALA, that also test glyphosate. Those are not listed here.

Not all labs test every kind of sample for glyphosate. A vast majority test only glyphosate in water. A few more would test soil and sediments too. Only one is accredited here, to test various kinds of food.

A few labs test the same sample for glyphosate as well as its first metabolite AMPA.

Contact name, phone number and emails may be used to clarify all these points as well as how much the labs would charge for single test and for bulk.

Far as I can tell, no Canadian labs have asked for accreditation for testing human or animal body fluids. Therefore, if you want to test your urine, or blood etc, best bet is to send samples to US labs.
 
This is a situation that Canada needs to fix. It took me many years of effort to get Canada to have at least one local lab that would test food, and not just water and soil.
 
Time is right for Canadians to also demand that the government and medical establishment starts testing human body fluids for determining accumulation of glyphosate. Only then labs will get themselves accredited – since it is expensive to acquire and maintain such accreditation, and labs are unwilling to engage in an area where they perceive there is no market demand.

Please also note, the contact details above are not hot linked. One would have to retype those to use them. This page is created only as reference to help people, but not as a channel for communication to the labs.
Thank you.

Amartya Sen, Economic science & the un-Nobel Prize

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I had taken a decision a while ago, to anchor most of my posts on socio-economic issues or my views on people, state of the planet, and various goings on – on my own wall on Facebook, or on my own blog, or as a chapter in my own books or booklets. I refrain from posting my views on someone else’s wall or intrude into someone else’s space.

Shyamantak Dutta tagged me on a long thread on Facebook, regarding what I might have said before about Amartya Sen’s grasp on economy.

It is interesting to note how much of a storm can be created over such a a trivial cup of tea – the Bank of Sweden prize on Economic Science that ended up wrongly being recognised as an authentic Nobel prize that Sen was awarded many years ago, presumably for contributing to “economic sciences” with his research work on Asian famines.

The long thread on Facebook is a good example of how the Bengali social media inhabitants can generate such a huge din with so little substance over a dead subject – a sign of the general degeneration of Bengali society. This extreme level of noise over an item of virtual zero relevance is a hall mark of Bengal. This includes people from Santiniketan, who get almost nothing of Tagore except blind following of meaningless symbolisms representing intellectual, cultural and social stagnation.

About Amartya Sen – until about the 1990s, I had acquired and read as many articles, essays and books authored by Amartya Sen as I could lay my hands on – spending considerable sums of my hard earned money. I would suspect that I might have read more of Sen than most folks reading Shyamantak’s post post and pontificating on it.

Many of those books are still on my shelf, collecting dust today as nobody else wishes to touch them. It took me over twenty years to rid myself of a blind adoration of Sen, and begin to question his contribution to the world of economics and same time – the very subject of economics itself. This issue – economics, appeared of increasing importance to me, with the backdrop of a world perhaps hurtling towards an socio-economic precipice sometime soon.

I was by then increasingly conscious that there was likely a fundamental problem with world economy and that the system being followed by western nations and being steamrolled across the rest of the planet, might be pushing the planet towards a major cataclysm that could result in an extinction of the living earth. Of course I was neither the first nor the last to come to this realisation.

Not being shy to approach experts, I had started writing to various economic experts including a few that got the same prize as Amartya Sen, but in more recent years and had written books raising questions on sustainability of the current economic system, primarily being spearheaded by the US and followed by everybody else – and the role of the World Bank, IMF, as well as later developments through the Doha meetings and the rest. I started getting some responses too.

Then came Amartya Sen’s cruel and vicious attack on Madhusree Mukherjee regarding her book on Churchill’s involvement in the Bengal famine of 1943. She projected views that did not tally with Sen’s own work done decades ago. Sen did not have the weight of data that Mukherjee had access to since a lot of classified data from the world war era had later been declassified and placed in public domain. Madhusree used such declassified information that Sen did not get to see.

I am not writing this in support of Madhusree because she was a friend. Although she had stayed at my home in Vancouver once, she unfriended and blocked me on Facebook due to my constant attack, on my own wall, on the liberal class of India, and my view that the so called liberals and left wings are, in India and in North America, primarily fraudsters masquerading as liberals. My attack upset Madhusree, who considers herself to be a. liberal, but falls for the same trap that equates criticising Modi is the righteous path for all liberals. She, a resident of Germany, was offended by my criticism of liberals on my own wall. So she blocked me, and informed me about it.

Thats OK. I remain convinced to my core, that left leaning and liberals of Indian extract, both in India and living abroad, are frauds. I am not the only person with this realisation. But many others do not wish to publicly announce their view. They do  not like making enemies. Some wish to get help from others in one way or another. I do not on principle, want to take help from anybody. I do not care if folks disagree with my view. I shall not keep silent about my views on important issues that plagues the world. That is me. I am willing to lose friends like Madhusree Mukherjee, or anybody else reading this post, over my right to express my view todays socio-economics.

Criticising liberals does not come with pleasure. I myself have been identified as a liberal among liberals by many, mostly Americans. I am yet to fully understand what makes a liberal liberal. Vaguely, I guessed the liberals were supposed to be the beacon for the rest of mankind to follow – like a guiding light. If a nation’s liberals are gone, the nation is doomed. So I thought. It is because of this reason that I found it highly irritating that the world was running out of true liberals, being replaced by pseudo-liberals and fraudsters. In such a world, the only outcome would be social collapse, which was actually happening. I blame the false liberals for spoiling the party, much to my regret and chagrin.

Duke, Mita, Leena Chatterjee, Amartya Sen, Tan Lee, (Mr and Mrs Varghese ??), Tony Mitra

Back to Amartya Sen’s attack on Mukherjee’s book on Churchill and the Bengal famine – this showed that Amartya Sen can be petty, vicious and in my view, unacceptably mean minded and unacademic, when it comes to protecting what he considers to be his own turf.

Never mind the lives of several million Bengali peasants that died in the second world war through a man made famine. Sen’s study on Asian famines and the recognition he got from it, was perhaps more important to him than the real cause behind deaths of millions of Bengali peasants. Also, having made his bed with both USA and UK with regard to his earnings through tenures in academic institutions of the west, he appears most reluctant to criticise those nations. He would rather find an easier target – Narendra Modi, to pin the blame for the ills of the world on.

I did have a conversation with him more than ten years ago while having lunch with him in Vancouver, on invitation from Tan Lee da. He asked me to send him recordings of his sister, late Supurna Guha, who had spoken with me on record about her memory of Santiniketan. Amartya Sen despite being the elder brother, did not have such voice recordings or other memories of his then departed sister, and wished me to pass him what I had. I sent him what he wanted at his Harvard contact. This, to me, showed another side of Sen. Too much of a big shot, too little time to to be in touch with even his own sister.

I did ask him during the course of that lunch, about world economy. Was this practice of creating large sums of money out of thin air and without any backing (US dollar had been delinked from gold for three decades by then – and the dollar was well entrenched as the world’s reserve currency and the primary currency used in sale and purchase of oil across the world – while speculation was rife about an approaching Peak Oil). I asked if this limitless creation of money out of thin air  as a lubricant for a GDP addicted economic policy was not a prescription for an eventual collapse. Also what, scientifically or mathematically speaking, was the value of such instantly created virtual money ?

Sen grudgingly agreed, in a kind of shifty way, that my suspicion might be correct. Money no longer had any intrinsic base value. Continued creation of limitless money out of thin air ensured that eventually, financial collapse was a mathematical certainty. But he added that I need not worry too much since that collapse may not happen in my own lifetime. I found his entire response to be unacademic, unscientific, unsure, and most unsatisfactory.

Systemic collapse of the economy dove tails with simultaneous collapse of multiple systems. Many other scientists have been predicting it. Some calculate that this 21st is the last century when the world and human civilisation, followed a business as usual model for a while. Before this century comes to an end, all hell is very likely to break loose. Some predict a collapse of the human population, down to less than a percent of the current level to survive the end of this century. Many believe, myself included, that the only people to survive will be those, like the aborigines of the Andamans, or the Kalahari desert, that have no use for money.

Clearly, economists have a lot to explain, apart from environmentalists, ecologists and politicians. Some scientists are doing their bit already. Main stream western media, which no longer represents either free speech or journalism, and have become a copy of the old soviet style arm of propaganda, refuse to touch negative news such as possible collapse of the system in the next generation or two. Nobody likes a defeatist story that does not give hope, we are told. As a result, the public is being kept drugged, and unaware of the impending doom. That the living planet is facing am immediate doom right now, is accepted in scientific and academic world. The planet is facing its sixth mass extinction phase. The previous one, the fifth, happened sixty five million years ago, which put an end to the dinosaurs. That happened because of an extra terrestrial event – the earth was struck by an asteroid massive enough to cause irreversible and permanent alternation of the planets flora and fauna.

This time, the cause of the ongoing mass extinction is not extra terrestrial. This one is wholly and solely man made. Man has made is impossible for 99 percent of the rest of the living creatures, to survive. That man himself may not survive if 99 percent of the rest cannot, has not filtered down into the psyche of the so called intelligent creature called man – the singularly most toxic species to ever evolve out of the primordial soup.

And the bulk of the blooming economists, Amartya Sen included, has missed the bus on the real reason – that the primary economic theories, from the days of the rise of the Calvinists – are all bunkum. Those might have been viable for a planet of infinite mass and infinite resources. Unfortunately, no such planet exists.

Actually, Rabindranath Tagore, never claiming to be an expert in economics, did a much better job of identifying the root cause of an impending planetary doom where the world will be unlivable for all creatures including man. He identified the basic pillars of western civilisation based on manufactured public opinion through advertising and doctored media, reckless consumerism and war mongering for profit, to be the root causes for this super-destruction. Understandably, few western economist of philosophers were willing to bell their own cat. Western educated Indian born economists and wannabe philosophers such as Sen are the worst collaborators.They don’t have a clue.

Response on my questions on fundamental economic sustainability did come back from other economic stalwarts including those that also got the Swedish prize same as Sen, but more recently. They had, unlike Sen, studied the topic of global economy and creation of phoney money. They shared my view that creating money without a fall back value was same as counterfeiting. Only thing is – if we do it, its illegal. But Governments do it and allow some banks and financial institutions to do it – recklessly, but legally. Worse, nobody really had an accurate tally of how much of such money was floating around. Asking experts can result is a bewildering array of answers. Anywhere between twenty trillion to two hundred trillion dollars might be out there, and no one has a clue to the exact figure, or how much more is being pumped in every day. No government has a clue, including the US government, the main promoter and perpetrator of the current system.

These economic stalwarts that did respond to my questions, were by and large a lot more honest, direct, detailed and without beating around the bush. Some of them would write books about it, while others did not.

I took me some more time to come to the conclusion that Amartya Sen did not know much about economics. He was busy creating distance from the subject and trying to fashion himself as a philosopher that likes to comment on social justice, and in particular, criticise Narendra Modi. Yes, Modi was instrumental in getting him out of the newly formed Nalanda University in India. It is uncertain if Sen carries a grudge because of that. But having seen Sen’s reaction to Madhusree Mukherjee, I would suspect the reason Sen dislikes Modi is more personal, than political. Either way, Sen knows little about either Modi, or economic sustainability, or much else, in my own personal view. He is not even an honest leftist. 

I see him as a fraud, unqualified to speak on economic trends. I started considering him to be an irrelevant economist, a second rate one, that can give no answer to todays or tomorrow’s problems.

He even had the audacity to call me a “reactionary” during that lunch in Vancouver. Not being familiar with communist vocabulary, I did not really know what exactly a “reactionary” was, and had to ask a lot of left wing Bengali intellectuals of the time to explain its meaning and relevance to me. Eventually I concluded that nobody really knew what being a reactionary implied, and how such as person was supposed to think or behave. The term was used as a a generic insult or an abuse targeting anybody the leftists did not like.

I have come to the conclusion years ago, that economics was not a science at all. Addressing the subject as “Economic science” was an oxymoron. Economics had more to do with speculation and voodoo, than any hard science.

I also find Sen to be not just a second rate economist, but also a third rate political or socio-economic analyst. I would have had a lot more respect for him if he decided to turn his focus on his adopted country of residence, USA, and analysed what the US was doing to the planet. The US civilisation is based on extreme and unsustainable exploitation of the rest of the world, permanently harming both human and natural resources globally and ushering in a planet wide ecocide or climatic collapse. Sen, if he wanted to be a socio-political analyst and a philosopher, should have focussed on the US’s behaviour and the survival prospects of mankind, instead of  being sanctimonious and picking on Modi.

But Sen would not touch the American Pandora’s box. Firstly I suspect him to be incapable of analysing it. Secondly, his bread is buttered on the US side. Damned if he will bite the hand that feeds him, opportunist that he is.

People like Sen are the small cogs that are used to keep the western destructive socio-economic wheel lubricated and turning. His left wing cover is an illusion, another example of a fraudster’s bag of tricks.

And yes, he got his prize because  the Rothschild family pushed for it. If you guys want to know more – study what the Rothschilds do across the planet. It would be a good education.

No self respecting leftist should touch a Rothschild with a ten foot pole. Cheers.

Glyphosate, Codex & Canada – a letter to PMRA

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To: Peter Chan,
Director General, Health Canada, Pest Management Regulatory Agency – peter.chan@canada.ca
Date: Thursday, July 25, 2019
Cc: Dr Marcos Alvarez marcos.alvarez@canada.ca, Ms Reem Barakat reem.Barakat@Canada.ca, Mrs Nathalie Doré nathalie.dore@canada.ca, Mr Paul Enwerekowe paul.enwerekowe@canada.ca, Mr Alan Schlachter schlachtera@croplife.ca,

Subject:  Codex Committee on Pesticide Residue, MRL for glyphosate

Mr. Chan,

I write this email to you, as your name is mentioned in the document from Codex Alimentarius as the leader of the delegation from Canada that attended the recently concluded 51st session of the Codex Committee on Pesticide Residue, conducted in Macao special administrative region of China in April 2019. The letter deals with rising levels of MRL accepted as safe by both the Canadian Government and the Codex Committee, for various pesticides, but in particular, about glyphosate. This letter is also copied to the other attendees from Canada.

As an introduction, I would mention that I am a Canadian citizen and a retired engineer that was born in India. I had, some years ago during the Harper regime, tried to get Health Canada to get engaged in testing of foods for glyphosate, or at least set up some labs that would test foods for glyphosate in Canada, so the public could spend money out of their own pocket to test how toxic Canadian foods had gotten, if the Government was uninterested. At the time, Canadian labs accessible to the public would only test glyphosate in water and soil. The Harper government initially did not bother to respond to my letter. Then MP Alex Atamanenko took up my case and brought the topic to the floor of the parliament, demanding that the health minister, Ms Rona Ambrose, answered me.

Subsequently, the Canadian Government did influence some labs to get accredited to test various foods for glyphosate and did initiate a large project to test thousands of food samples for measuring residues of glyphosate and AMPA. I obtained a copy of all results through an access to information act appeal to CFIA, analysed the data and published a book on Amazon titled “Poison Foods of North America”. The book shows that CFIA tests indicate seed based crops grown in North America to contain significantly higher levels of glyphosate, and therefore, in my judgment, constituted the most toxic foods on earth. Also, within North America, Canadian crops contained measurably more glyphosate than even US grown crops, making Canada the epicentre of toxic foods on earth, when it comes to glyphosate contamination.

I warned the Government of India early in 2018 to be wary of imported lentils from Canada because of high level of contamination from glyphosate – a molecule that was not approved by India for use in agriculture. This resulted in the issue being discussed in the Indian parliament before the minister of food and the Food Safety Standard Authority of India issuing a directive to test all imported lentils for glyphosate.

In March this year, an English language magazine published in India, “Agriculture World”,  with over 10 million in circulation, Published a lead story authored by me, titled “Glyphosate, a slow moving horror”. I am told some 3,000 copies of that issue had been taken by attendees from India, to distribute among other Codex Committee attendees in Macao, China in April this year, which was also attended by you. Perhaps you saw a copy of the magazine and read the article.

Now, I write this letter to ask you a few questions.

1) Proof of safety of glyphosate
The Canadian Government has not released the safety test raw data and report received by it back in the 1970s, which was submitted by Monsanto, to prove that glyphosate was safe.

I have a separate running case with Health Canada, demanding a copy of all those pages, or be informed in writing that I, a Canadian citizen, do not have the right to see them. I have been assured that I have the right to the documents. However, the government has been dragging its feet for years.

My question to you is – can you help expedite the process, using your position and influence, to release all those hitherto hidden documents and raw data, that are supposed to prove to Canadians that glyphosate did not and does not harm higher animals such as mammals?

2) Periodic raising of Maximum residue Limit (MRL)

Canada has been raising the MRL for glyphosate for individual crops over the years. While one can see the current MRL in various crops from Government published document, I have been trying to obtain a table that shows when MRLs for each crop was raised, from what level to what level, and on which date.

My intension has been to ask the Government for evidence that on each instance, it actually verified that the raised MRL levels were safe. I have reason to suspect that the Government has seen no such data, and has been raising the MRL because earlier limits were already crossed or about to the crossed. In other words, I suspect the Government has been protecting the industry in continuously increasing toxicity levels in foods without any proof that it was safe at any level.

I request you to send me this table of raising of MRLs for glyphosate, so I can seek more information on procedure followed when those limits were raised.

3) I refer to comments submitted by the National Health Federation (NHF) to the Codex Committee (CRD28, April 2019) about establishing the Maximum levels of pesticide residue in food and feed (CX/PR 19/51/5). This 4 page comment, attached as a file to this letter, stresses how the Codex Committee on Pesticide Residue (CCPR) has been lagging in solid science and is becoming increasingly out of touch with consumer demands and the marketplace, particularly with regard to glyphosate.

My question to you is – can you offer a response to this comments by NHF from the point of view not so much of the Codex Committee, but of PMRA and the Canadian Government, which too, like the Codex, has been raising MRL for glyphosate and appears also to be lacking solid science and being out of touch with reality.

Please note, this letter may be shared with the public, to encourage residents to start asking more  questions on deteriorating food safety and resultant rise in ill health and destruction of biodiversity in Canada.

Thanking you

Tony Mitra
(address, phone number, email and signature)

Putin’s observation on liberalism

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I decided to preserve some of the comments I made on Facebook, and then retool them for a possible essay or a chapter in a. book – as my view of the fast changing world. It starts with a news outlet on Putin speaking with a reporter about the denigration of western liberalism.

BBC News Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48795764?SThisFB&fbclid=IwAR34d_yKvbbKb5NrTTZWJdfDE6jku6jBEt_AIXPNB0bCE-qYApFiehz35QQ

Vladimir Putin has said liberalism is “obsolete” in an interview before he left for the G20 summit.

My original comments:

Interesting report.
I suspect the tone of Putin’s comments might have been altered through translation in English and the mind set of the reporter. Most Americans have a hard time analyzing the world without the American tinted glass.

Putin, I have observed, is very astute in his analysis of trends and is usually more spot on as well as articulate than almost any other political leader in the world today.

Yes, he grew up in the soviet era. Yes, he worked for KGB at one time. And yes, he is presiding over a new age Russia with a considerably weaker economy (compared to soviet era) and engaged in rebuilding his nation under a free market design where the largest player, USA, is hell bent to keep Russia out, along with China. These trends, or rather, this efforts by the US to geopolitically isolate China and Russia and militarily surround and choke Russia and use a phoney “Russia threat” to bolster its own military expenditure, along with denying China a fair stake in the global economic pie, appears to be the driving force of the US foreign policy of late. But, one also needs to understand – US is facing an existential crisis, if it allows leadership to slip out of its hands in the current unilateral and unipolar world.

While the planet is being flushed down the environmental and ecological toilet, humans are in a death grip to decide who stays afloat till the last moment.

What I liked about Putin’s comment is about liberalism. I wonder what he actually said in Russian, which got translated into liberalism being obsolete.

I have been talking about it for a while myself, from my own perspective, being born in India and living for several decades now in North America.

I do not say liberalism is obsolete, per se. Rather, true liberals have gone extinct, and the world is chock full of phoney or pseudo-liberals. They, the current group of liberals, mostly living in or influenced by the American culture, are the groups that have killed liberalism and permeated the human space with parallel reality.

Regarding rising populism, or multiculturalism – I am not ready to make comments right now since I have no hard opinion about these at this point. I have one observation about multiculturalism and scientific research though.

Both Russia and China have a long history of sustaining and encouraging high value scientists and scientific research. As a result, I suspect, they will produce new technologies as the need comes, as long as their states can give opportunity for their bright people to do their work.

For USA, the situation is reverse. Unlike China or Russia, USA needs constant infusion of bright people from the rest of the world, to keep up with technological advance. This is where USA is extremely vulnerable and it has something to do with its culture and education system, not to mention affinity to promote extreme junk food and junk materialism.

India is in an interesting study point. For earlier generations, all the bright people aspired to migrate to the US and become techno-coolies, being nuts and bolts and cogs for the US giant wheel. This has also largely shaped the “westernized and liberal” mindset of the upwardly mobile Indians who look up to the US as the place analogous to heaven on earth.

But, there are signs of tell tale change. I feel India is beginning to understand that it backed the wrong horse and needs to provide opportunity for its bright people to excel in their own country. If the efforts prove successful, India will begin to promote in house technological innovations. Historically, China and India have been the techno-leaders of the world for over a thousand years, before foreigners subjugated these nations and flipped the equation. China has been busy for more than a generation to redress the balance. India is just waking up.

Meanwhile, Putin remains one of the more astute analyzers of the world, in my book.

My follow up comment (1):
I can understand your annoyance with President Trump for daring to interfere with India’s own security and trade decisions.

However, according to my judgment, Trump interferes because USA can, and the reason is less to do with Trump and more to do with India’s own design of economic development.

India has not promoted in-house generation of commerce and wealth and banked too much on being back office service provider for the US economy. Also, its investment and share market is too dependent on foreign direct investment (FDI), meaning investment from the US. You can hardly read an economic report or discussion without mention of what would increase FDI and what would not, and how absence of FDI would hurt Indian economy.

Net result of all this is – a small part of the US economy depends on India, but a large part of India’s own economy depends on US involvement.

This is precisely the US geopolitical goal, to be able to control the rest of the planet by dictating terms through carrots and sticks, and this policy works excellently with India. However, this does not work that good with Russia or China, because they have been conscious of these problems and balanced their development with some measure of alternatives and generated in house mega corporations.

IN India, many of the new technology, new market, and new business is wholly owned by western (Read US) corporations.

These developments have not been the Hall mark of the current Indian Government, but of multiple past governments going back to Rajiv Gandhi times onward.

When you sell your economic soul to the US, you have to act as the economic slave of the same. US never claimed to be an angel. Nobody is an angels. Angels are mythical – they do not exist.

I believe the current Indian government is beginning to wake up to this problem, which has very serious implications for India going forward, and the remedy is not going to be painless. Part fo India’s “make in India” movement is geared to redress this problem, though I suspect India is being too influenced by its private sector and less careful in preserving its public sector – just my view.

So, the right reaction to the goings on might be less to do with getting angry with president Trump, and instead getting angry with ourselves, who thought being pally with the US, economically and socially, was the road to Nirvana.

Cheers.

My follow up comment (2):
Your long post misses the point completely, and I can understand why.

My post had nothing at all to do with whether Putin was a great guy or not so great a guy. It had everything to do with his assessments on geopolitical situations around the world in general, and the problems with liberalism in particular. You did not address those issues at all, but instead went into an instinctive rant against Putin’s personal character (a thug) and that he supports Syria who killed children by gassing them – something that has never been proved and can very well be propaganda.

You might like to read of independent Canadian journalist Eva Bartless about false and fake news being generated from the Middle East by main stream media, to support the Us-Israel-Saudi version of the conflict, essentially subverting truth.

I believe people of Ukraine might have a historical animosity for Russians or Soviets and you are taking that hatred on to Putin, which is greatly clouding your judgment.

But, forget Putin and Assad, and let us talk about the Canadian government and US Government’s treatment of local people.

Canadian Government, for generations, have forcefully snatched children away from their mothers among the First Nation Canadians, who were the original inhabitants of Canada, and forced the kids to be brought up in foster homes, without any contact with their original parents. Canada did not do this to a select few families, but to EACH AND EVERY child among the First Nation, for a long long time.

As a result, the passing of First Nation language, mythology and culture, from generations down to next generation, was forcefully and abruptly halted. The kids, separated from their natural parents, by force, lost their language, lost their traditions, lost their mythology and culture. IN exchange, they did not “convert” to western thinking or culture.

Today they are called the “lost generations” and the First Nation people of Canada are never ever going to be what they were before the white man landed here. Today, the surviving First Nation are a maladjusted group you do not see on the streets of Canada.

Everybody else that comes here as an immigrant, can be seen on the street – BUT NOT THE LOCAL, INDIGENOUS, First Nation PEOPLE.

They became outcast, ill-suited to mix with the society, a people without any roots.

Canadian Government in essence exterminated an entire population, covering a land that is a hundred fold larger than Ukraine.

IN comparison, if Russia had done to Ukrainians, what Canadians have done to locals people – you would probably not have been born at all, and your people would have been more or less exterminated with a handful of people surviving as drug addicts and psychological misfits.

Perhaps you grew up thinking that only white people are to be considered human and all non-whites, such as First Nation Canadians, are not really human. Therefore any injustice done to them can be ignored. Perhaps you grew up thinking only Christians deserve to live, and people that pray to mountains or clouds and trees, are subhuman and do not need a fair shot at life.

Whatever the reason, injustice performed by Canada on a large swatch of people remain invisible to you, while Putin becomes the prime thug of the world.

As to killed children or innocent people of Syria, the US false flag war mongering in the Middle East along has killed millions, but main stream propaganda hides those topics and you are oblivious to them.

Syria is a villain not because Assad is a bad guy (all politicians everywhere are unsavoury guys, without exception), but cause Syria is not willing to play ball and hand over its natural assets to western corporations, nor allowing gas pipelines promoted by western nations to go through its territory. It is more interested to use natural resources in a manner than benefits its own people more that western interests. To complicate matters Syria refuses to follow hardline Sunni practices of keeping women veiled and away from high education and pubic life etc. This and Syria following a more liberal lifestyle and view of religious practices makes them ideological enemy of the Soudi kingdom, which generates the funds for western military industrial complex to use the Syria conflict as a bread earner.

That is what is unacceptable to the west, and that is why Islamic terrorists are allowed to sneak into Syria, cause all sorts of mayhem while fake news is generated about how bad Assad is.

Western propaganda has been very effective to keep the truth away from the public. Part of the reason is the main stream media in the west stopped being neutral and truthful a long time ago. There is no free press left in North America, part of the reason why our food is the most poisonous and folks don’t even know it ( my own involvement speaks for it).

This is why Canadian independent journalist Eva Bartlett is not known to Canadians (no major news and tv outlet would cover her stories). This is why they hate US presidential aspirant Tulsi Gabbard and refuse her adequate news coverage, because she visited Syria, spent time there to check facts on the ground, and met Assad to hear his own side of the story.

You are an excellent example that the western propaganda works.

But, of course, you have a very positive view of Canada and a very negative view of Russia. That is because you carry a historical burden. I understand this, and therefore do not consider your views to be balanced. I understand why you missed the point of my post completely, and went on a personal rant against Putin and Assad.

I made this long post not so much for you, but because it needed to be said. A cleaned up version may end up in some formal writing of mine.

BY the way, I have personally been to Ukraine, more than once. I love the people and feel sorry for what has happened. I have my own version on the root causes behind its current sociopolitical developments, but will keep my views to myself.

Take care, no offence.

Article heading: Muslim takeover of West Bengal.

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Article heading: Muslim takeover of West Bengal.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The subject is well known to anybody with half a brain living in or near West Bengal, India.

There is a near silence on any public dialog on this topic, for multiple reasons – heavy censoring by the local Government and media, to collective myopia of the false liberal non-Muslim “bhadralok” clan that prefers to use secularism as an excuse to sidestep an existential demographic crisis in the making.

The topic is well known, and the servant class non-bhadralok clan appears to be getting increasingly agitated and determined to bring in BJP to deal with it. No matter what other faults BJP might have, the general perception is that it is the only party in India that is willing to look the problem in the eye and grab the bull by the horn.

As to BJP being right wing, or fascist, or various other adjectives of being a political thug, the whole thing reminds me of why Joseph Stalin three generations after his death, has suddenly become the most popular political icon in today’s non-soviet capitalist Russia.

The outside world shows incredulity at the strange development where such a cruel megalomaniac as Stalin, that killed millions of its own people, could ever be considered a hero by descendants of the people under a modern, non-authoritarian, democratic government. But it has happened, and according to me, the reason is a perception of a looming external existential threat that Russians feel today, thanks to western war mongering.

This is no more an issue of communism versus capitalism, or freedom versus lack of it. This is a realization among Russians that the west in general, and USA in particular, just would not leave Russia alone, no matter what Russia does.

And Russians have an enormous love for their motherland. Unlike the US, Russia is not a nation of immigrants. Their sense of belonging to their motherland go deep, and they are usually willing to face unbelievable levels of hardship to safeguard their nation.

But, desperate times need desperate solutions. Stalin, with all his faults, had qualities that saved Russia from Hitler.

Communism was considered an ideological enemy of the free world. The free world, lead by the US, did everything possible to curtail its spread. Here of course a few terminologies have been mixed up. Communism did not theoretically means lack of “freedom” or un-free. And capitalism did not actually mean “freedom”. Communism and capitalism were two different economic and social systems, not necessarily linked with either freedom or lack of it.

However, a peculiar and perhaps regrettable development in Russia linked communism with totalitarianism, or lack of freedom, with heavy persecution of dissent, mainly under Stalin. Therefore, Stalinism became a synonym for communism.

Anyhow, the other side of the story is – Russia became communist under seriously trying conditions, thanks to two devastating world wars. In both wars, Russia wanted no part in it, but nonetheless got invaded both times by the so called capitalist “free world”. It nearly ruined and permanently maimed the nation.

It took someone of the mettle of Stalin, with all his cruelty, to hold the nation together, resist disintegration, refusing to surrender to incomparably a greater military power of Germany at the start of the second world war.

Stalin eventually beat the undefeatable Hitler almost single handedly, while the rest of the “free world” was more or less sucking its thumb and waiting for Hitlet to be bled to near death by Stalin, before deciding to get involved and open a second front, and then claim to have saved the world.

Fast forward to today. although communism is gone, Putin is here. And the US wants what Russia has – its vast resources. Putin does not wish to hand it over. Therefore, Russia, even without communism, has become the new enemy of the west, simply because it refuses to be dictated and ruled by western corporate interests.

Further, after the transition to free economy, Russia’s military might took a nosedive and the nation took a long time to steady itself, cutting military budget substantially. So the US conveniently broke all its soviet-era promise of nuclear parity and started weaponizing everything with new zeal. The thinking is – Russia cannot afford to catch up or match up. So, by increasing military threat to Russia, Russia will be forced to either capitulate to US interests, or go bankrupt it trying to protect itself.

US started pulling Eastern Europe into a new look NATO, which created the myth of Russia, communist or not, to be a global threat. Therefore, entire Eastern Europe is to be weaponized, targeting the Russian heartland. This costs a lot of money that means a lot of profit for the US war machine.

Russia is facing a new existential crisis. And in such dire situations, Russians are rallying behind their nation. They remember that Stalin had saved Russia from unbelievable adversities. It may need someone like him, again, to save it from the current global attack. Like I said, desperate times need desperate solutions.

Back to West Bengal and the bhadralok clan, who are diametrically opposite of the Russian man and are not willing to take any hardship at all, to safeguard anything. They are not even ready to acknowledge that they run the serious threat of becoming a minority in their own land, and forced to leave or convert.

The new genera don’t even speak Bengali at home except slang Bengali. They stopped reading, writing or composing in Bengali and the only songs they know are Hindi Bollywood songs. At best, they are a poor caricature of whatever being a Bengali was supposed to mean. They are singularly averse to hard work and avoid looking uncomfortable truths in the eye. They’d prefer to call a spade a rosogolla.

Meanwhile, many of the non-bhadralok clan, or the people in the lower rung, the servant class, those that have to work hard for a living – are waking up and showing more signs of life. They display an ability to think things through and call a spade a spade. BJP, perhaps loosely comparable to storing man Putin or cruel dictator Stalin, is the only party that can save the land in this desperate times, by grabbing the bull by the horn.

The bull itself is related to incursion of illegal immigrants, a vast majority of whom are suspected to be Muslims from Bangladesh of the wrong kind – i.e. the non-secular kind, who wish to turn this region into another islamic nation following islamic way of life as the only tolerated way by which anyone is allowed to live. A lot of that drive comes from Islamic schools being funded by overseas sources in the Middle East. The whole thing is a rats nest.

The reason I post this is not so much to convince the Bengali bhadralok. There is no point in convincing someone who is paralyzed and incapable of action either way.

Neither do I want to ask anybody to read the attached article, which I got from a friend. The reason is to taunt the so called “bhadralok” Bengali intelligentsia, for whom I have developed a serious distaste. That distaste has been rising incrementally for the last forty years or so, ever since I became an adult and had to deal with adult Bengali bhadralok in my line of work or interactions. Its not because of their convoluted view of secularism, but their lack of humanity, aversion to hard work, propensity to argue the hell out of anything, extreme myopia, and false assumption of being cultured, and, the most vexing, is their unwillingness to deal with adversities. They display the mental strength of a vegetable.

Initially I thought only the Rabindrik ones, i.e. growing up in Santiniketan that claim to like Tagore literature and music, were the worst kind. But I have since changed my mind, being myself influenced by much of Tagore’s writings and beginning to understand why and how he became increasingly radical and disenchanted with his fellow Bengali bhadralok clan as he grew older. I realized what I see in Santiniketan is in fact a reflection of the average Bengali – the same big headedness, same lack of spine, same aversion to constructive hard work, same fear of speaking out against injustice.

Many of these traits are common to many others in India as well as outside, but being Bengali by birth myself, and having had close exchanges with so many of my kind for so long over the years, I have a hardened view of the people here, of which Tagore himself had written sarcastically often enough in his poetry, as well as seriously in his essays and letters. Describing the typical, work-averse Bengali in a sarcastic poem, he added the line – “ইহার চেয়ে হতেম যদি আরব বেদুয়িন ” – meaning “wish I was born an Arab Beduine, instead of a Bengali gentleman”.

Being a believer of humanism and promoter of hope, Tagore never gave up efforts to lead by example for the people and get them engaged in constructive socio-economic activity and progressive endeavours towards betterment of the nation, but perhaps he realized he was fighting a losing battle and got bitter and dejected in his later years.

Anyhow, I do not expect the bhadralok to respond here. It is not in their DNA to react. They’d rather be a tortoise.

I write because I am a human. I have views and opinions, and wish to keep thoughts that I find relevant to be recorded. I may not be around for long, but time will tell if I was right in my guess – this is the end phase of Bengaliana.

Most of the spineless bhadraloks of Bengal will tip toe or side step around this topic. At best they will locate arguments why my notion is wrong, why the population demography of Bengal is not changing and there is no real threat of Hindu’s becoming a minority in a province that was separated from its eastern half in order to keep the hindu majority portion hindu and the muslim majority section muslim.

Islamization of West Bengal and a near future when non-Muslims will be minority and unwanted in the province, possibly forced to leave or convert – is a reality and not a mirage.

Sidestepping these questions is what I expect the liberals bhadralok to do. This is what defines the Bengali intelligentsia, who I hold in low esteem due to spinelessness and myopia.

I actually find my maid servant, and other lower class people, including a section of the muslims in Kolkata in agreement with me – those secular minded muslims who are themselves shit scared of the religious diktat that comes down from their own community elders, and some of who, at least so they say, are thinking of secretly voting for BJP this time. Why? because, they claim in a low voice, they ran away from rural Bangladesh because they wished to get away from too much Islamism. They are afraid to raise voice, but they are willing to vote against parties that continue to support illegal immigration into this sliver of land. All these non-bhadralok people, both Hindu and Muslim show more humanism, ability to think and speak their mind nationally, and a willingness to deal with an emergency, than the spineless and hamstrung bhadralok clan.

Well — I got that out of my system. Now, back to pictures of birds from Bharatpur, and my write up to a few officials about pesticide poisoning of wildlife, as well as other related things.

Link: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/02/the_muslim_takeover_of_west_bengal.html?fbclid=IwAR0z9Tii7B0LWDXyhIdq5b3J4KGy6_yDpelgJLKEy_IL2sY0zWEUf_Yg7Zk#.XL6eTL3WjPY.facebook

Agro-toxins and birth defects in Indian Cattle

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I got a bunch of photographs from rural India, in the district of Bankura from a farmer I know – Bhairav Saini. A calf was born in his property from a cow he owns, that had an opening in the region where the umbilical chord is attached. As a result of the opening, part of the calfs stomach and intestine had spilled out and was resting on the grass.

Villagers got hold of a veterinarian who, with help of the onlookers, pushed the stomach back inside the stomach cavity and stitched up the opening in the skin. No idea if the diaphragm was damaged or still functional. Dirt and external bacteria likely also entered the calk from the opening since it is highly unlikely that the field operation could be done with proper disinfecting done on parts entering the calf. The calf is reportedly not doing well, and I suspect it will not survive lone and likely will succumb from infection induced as a result. However, perhaps nothing else was possible to be done under the circumstance.

Why did it happen?

The question to ask is – why did this birth defect happen and is it a rare occurrence or an increasingly more frequent birth defect in herbivores. From records on wildlife and domesticated cattle in North America, this kind of birth defect was virtually unknown prior to 1995. It was first noted only in 1995 and has been increasing in frequency ever since. It is perhaps not a coincidence that the practice of directly spraying genetically modified Roundup Ready crops with glyphosate started from the mid 1990s and has since reached astronomical proportions not only through roundup ready GM crops but also by the practice of desiccation where conventional seed crops are sprayed with glyphosate prior machine harvesting.

I contacted wildlife scientist Ms Judy Hoy, cellular biologist Anthony Samsel, plant pathologist Don Huber and others regarding this birth defect. The malady might be identified as herniated umbilicus, where the opening for the umbilical chord does not get closed, and the stomach spills out at birth. Don Huber said this defect also qualifies as Spina Bifida. Gastroschesis is the medical term when organs end up outside of their designated body cavity – as identified by Anthony Samsel. This defect was apparently unheard off prior to 1995. But since then, it has been seen with increasing frequency among gazing animals both wild and domesticated. It is suspected that whatever they are grazing, is allowing unwanted toxins to enter the body of the pregnant mother, which in turn is causing serious birth defects.

Why is 1995 significant?

Judy Hoy did not tell me why 1995 is significant, but I have explained already that direct spraying of glyphosate on food crops started at the time. Whatever was sprayed on the seed crops, would also remain in the stocks, which often became animal feed.

However, Bhairav Saini grows organic food. He does not use industrial pesticides on his field. Other than clean food, he only bought store bought wheat (cheapest wheat available) for the cow. I am still trying to find out if that cheap “ration” wheat is produced in Punjab and if they have started the practice of desiccating wheat with glyphosate prior to machine harvesting. Alternately, if the cheap wheat is imported, where does India import its wheat from ? I know they are importing toxic lentils from Australia and Canada.

Anthony Samsel has noted that presence of glyphosate already increases certain heavy metals such as lead (Pb) and Cadmium (Cd) in crops. If pregnant mothers are exposed, both of these heavy metals can by themselves be instrumental in triggering serious birth defects. If glyphosate is also present in the feed, then it could be indirectly involved as a catalyst. These issues need further study, and we wait for Anthony Samsel to complete his investigation. I do not know of anyone else anywhere on earth that is actually trying to study these issues at the level of cellular biology. Unfortunately neither the industry nor the government provides any funds for such research and scientists often have to scrounge around for pennies, or sell personal property, to raise funds to continue such research.

Indian agriculture policy is designed to make small farmers go extinct. Western policy on scientific research is designed to make independent research scholars like Antony Samsel to go extinct too, so independently verified information will not be available anywhere on earth regarding problems of using agro-toxins. Honest scientists in the west and honest farmers in the east, are both to go the way of the dodo.

I shall come back here to complete this issue as more information comes to light. Meanwhile, my thanks go to farmer Bhairav Saini for taking the pictures, research scholar Soumik Banerjee for contacting me about it, wildlife scientist Judy Hoy for her diagnosis of the birth defect and Anthony Samsel for his input on glyphosate and heavy metal link to such birth defects.

One thing is for certain – this malady, in domestic cattle, herbivorous wildlife and in humans, is going to appear in increasing frequency, in the coming decade.

Welcome to modern agriculture.

 

The story behind CFIA testing food for glyphosate

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There is more to a story than what goes around. I have seen enough part truths and veiled truths about how CFIA test results ended on my table, that resulted in writing of the book “Poison Foods of North America”.

The story going around is that the Canadian Government might have tested foods for glyphosate merely because WHO made a declaration that glyphosate was a probably human carcinogen. This is not true. Canada does not have the reputation of being that concerned about food safety. Had that not been the case, Canada would not be the producer of the most toxic foods of all, along with the US.

The story started long before WHO declared carcinogenicity of glyphosate. First, it started with me getting acquainted with scientists such as Anthony Samsel, Stephanie Seneff, Don Huber and Thierry Vrain, and being convinced that I should pay a lot more attention to the ravages of glyphosate and stop being fixated at GMO along. I needed to understand that Roundup Ready GM crops were first invented in order to sell more glyphosate, and that glyphosate was far and away the most sold biocide on earth and it was far more dangerous than DDT that was banned back in the 1960s. It was then that I got the first jolt. I had completed touring Canada with Thierry Vrain in 2014. It started with me getting fed up with the anti-GMO groups that refused to join hands with me to start asking questions to the government and to force them to a) disclose hitherto hidden safety documents and to b) start finding ways to test food for glyphosate.

MP Atamanenko

It took me a few hundred calls to the Canadian labs to eventually discover that Canada not only never tested food for glyphosate, which was being used in Canadian agriculture for more than 40 years, but that there was not a single registered lab in Canada that would test food for glyphosate. A very small number of labs tested glyphosate at the time, but only in samples of soil and water. Nothing else.

Sure, they could test food if needed. But they had to devise protocol for same, get accredited and spend a lot of money to set up new sections in their lab, where new instruments would be used, without contaminating sections where soil and water were tested for glyphosate. All this costs money. Since the Government and the medical system was not asking for testing of foods for glyphosate, there was no market for it. Tony Mitra asking for a handful of samples was not a reasonable market indication.

It was then that I started writing to the Government, starting with the Health Ministry under the then Harper Government, to do something so that labs start testing foods for glyphosate – the most used herbicide in Canada. My efforts caught the attention of MP Alex Atamanenko, who called me up from Ottawa and asked for a copy of my letter to the health minister Ms Rona Ambrose. He took that letter, added his own cover letter and demanded that Ms Ambrose responds to my letter and makes a statement on why Canada has no lab that would test glyphosate in food and why the government was not testing the most used herbicide in Canadian agriculture.

That, more than WHO declaring glyphosate as a probable carcinogen, got the government to start testing glyphosate in all foods. Had the Government really been concerned about cancer risk, then it would have done an honest job of analyzing the results and discovering that Canada produces the most toxic foods on the planet along with the US, and would have done something to arrest the toxic avalanche. But Canada did not take any of the corrective measure. Instead, to hide the fact that Canadian foods were more toxic than other countries, it mixed all results, took an average, which was much lower than Canadian figures and make a blank and dishonest declaration in April 2016, that CFIA has done the tests and found foods to be quite alright.

Anyhow, here is my 22 minute rant on the issue.

 

Glyphosate references

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There is a very powerful global effort to censure and restrict all efforts to expose problems with glyphosate. The effort comes from the industry and influences governments, media, and academia. The level fo witch hunt would put the days of Copernicus and Joan of Arc to shame.

Science has thus been degraded so much that it has lost its neutrality, its objectivity, its honesty and its relevance in determining safety of agrochemicals – pushing us back to worse times than the Russian block faced during the dark Soviet era of state controlled propaganda and suppression of dissent. Consequently, many citizens like me have developed extreme suspicion about anything that comes out of the government or the industry, and consider most of them are packs of lies.

When it comes to glyphosate, it is therefore the view of public that are aware, is that honest debate on glyphosate is an oxymoron. First, industry’s stronghold on science has to be removed, then independent research without influence of industry or politicians or government officials have to be encouraged. Documents and research papers have to be allowed to accumulate and add to the body of science without censure for twenty years. Let the chips fall where they may. After that, honest debate on the science of glyphosate may be possible. Right now, I am more interested to encourage the citizens to stand up against a government that is showing signs of extreme corruption and blindness an through out politicians that act as lap dogs of the industry rather than protector fo the people.

And yet, I do get called time to time from institutions including agricultural colleges, in India, to speak my mind. India has not yet gone completely over to the dark side like the western institutions. But India is on the way. Anyhow, they still have enough people including educated young, to not only understand and believe that the industry has spoiled science, has spoiled agriculture, food, healthcare and environment, and resistance is necessary.

Thus, I have this blog to list some references for people interested, to see what was said by the slim number of scientists that tried to alert us about glyphosate and about the GM technology.

Some universities requested that my presentation should provided reference material too, with regard to science behind glyphosate’s toxicity. The request might look justified, but it poses problems because what we have today in the name of science is a very far cry from what the western society promotes. Remember the days of the Soviet Union. We were told that they use propaganda for science and severely suppress dissent. Most of that is true. However, the wheel has not turned. There is no Soviet Union. But the west has taken up the tactic, and its corporate industry uses all its combined might to control governments, media and science. Nothing can be researched by scientific institutions without their permission. Nothing can be approved or disapproved by any Government without their say so. Nothing can be published anywhere without their consent.

Therefore, finding honest research that discovered toxicity of glyphosate in normal academic literature might be similar to the famed Bengali saying – সোনার পাথরবাটি – which means stone utensils made of gold – an oxymoron. If it is made of stone, it cannot be made of gold and vice versa. If science on glyphosate has been captured by the industry then there is not going to be research on adverse effects of glyphosate. Duh !

Nonetheless, it is not a homogenous world, and even the industry with all its financial clout, slips up. So there are increasing amounts of documents here and there, and the witch hunt that goes on to attack scientists that dare speak against glyphosate.

1) Anthony Samsel – Stephanie Seneff’s research work
I have already created a blog with all peer reviewed papers of Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff. These can be found here.

in my view, no other group of scientists have done as much research and unearthed as much detail on how many ways glyphosate hurts all living biology including humans. It is therefore not surprising that Samsel and Seneff faced attack as well as censure. Even publications such as GM watch would cover Seralini but not Samsel-Seneff. Monsanto and some governments tried to get the publisher of the Journal ENTROPY to pull their first paper on glyphosate interfering with cyp-450.  The publisher sent them a letter that it was going to be pulled, but the US editor of the Journal ENTROPY came to their defense and argued with the publisher. The publisher resolved the controversy and then posted a journal position that they would not be adversely  influenced by the opinions and demands of both GOVERNMENTS or corporations.  Thus the paper still stands.  The set of 6 glyphosate papers by Samsel and Seneff have had more than 60,000 reads and hundreds of Journal citations at Research Gate by academics in over 100 countries. When their first paper was published WIKIPEDIA added the Samsel and Seneff knowledge to the Glyphosate page.  Within a few days an argument ensued by reviewers and WIKIPEDIA took all of the information down.  I watched the arguments online at WKI.  We have never been referenced by WIKIPEDIA since.  It is suspected that Monsanto was responsible for removing Samsel and Seneff from the Wikipedia page on Glyphosate. One can assume with some justification that the industry is comfortable defending some of the others, but are alarmed at Samsel and Seneff, enough to get them be de-listed from Wikipedia.

2) Glyphosate disturbing honey bee microbiome

Glyphosate perturbs the gut microbiota of honey bees. The abstract says:

Glyphosate, the primary herbicide used globally for weed control, targets the 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS) enzyme in the shikimate pathway found in plants and some microorganisms. Thus, glyphosate may affect bacterial symbionts of animals living near agricultural sites, including pollinators such as bees. The honey bee gut microbiota is dominated by eight bacterial species that promote weight gain and reduce pathogen susceptibility. The gene encoding EPSPS is present in almost all sequenced genomes of bee gut bacteria, indicating that they are potentially susceptible to glyphosate. We demonstrated that the relative and absolute abundances of dominant gut microbiota species are decreased in bees exposed to glyphosate at concen- trations documented in the environment. Glyphosate exposure of young workers increased mortality of bees subsequently exposed to the opportunistic pathogen Serratia marcescens. Members of the bee gut microbiota varied in susceptibility to glyphosate, largely corresponding to whether they possessed an EPSPS of class I (sensitive to glyphosate) or class II (insensitive to glyphosate). This basis for differences in sensitivity was confirmed using in vitro experiments in which the EPSPS gene from bee gut bacte- ria was cloned into Escherichia coli. All strains of the core bee gut species, Snodgrassella alvi, encode a sensitive class I EPSPS, and reduction in S. alvi levels was a consistent experimental result. However, some S. alvi strains appear to possess an alternative mechanism of glyphosate resistance. Thus, exposure of bees to glyphosate can perturb their beneficial gut microbiota, potentially affecting bee health and their effectiveness as pollinators.

My point is – if it can hurt bee microbiome, it can hurt human microbiome too. But instead of arguing about it, I’d like folks to start testing on lab mammals.

3) Three papers from Channa Jayasumana (Sri Lanka)

a) Glyphosate, Hard Water and Nephrotoxic Metals: Are They the Culprits Behind the Epidemic of Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Etiology in Sri Lanka?
b) Simultaneous exposure to multiple heavy metals and glyphosate may contribute to Sri Lankan agricultural nephropathy.
c) Drinking well water and occupational exposure to Herbicides is associated with chronic kidney disease, in Padavi-Sripura, Sri Lanka.

4) Andres Carrasco
The story of the Pampas. This vast stretch of plains in Argentina used to be teaming with wildlife.
Glyphosate-Based Herbicides Produce Teratogenic Effects on Vertebrates by Impairing Retinoic Acid Signaling.

5) Gilles-Eric Séralini
Republished study: long-term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerantgenetically modified maize.

6) Árpád Pusztai
Pusztai’s case is a classic example of censuring of scientific research that questions products that harm the people but enhances corporate profit. He was commissioned by the British Government to check safety of genetically engineered potato. He found them to be potentially harmful. He got sacked. His findings published in journals on this topic, got retracted. Later, the medical journal “The Lancet” published it not as an article but as a letter. Pusztai, 36 years working in the UK, saw his career in UK ended because of objecting to GM crop of Monsanto. The most famous toxicologist in Europe got sacked for disagreeing that GM crops where safe.
Effect of diets containing genetically modified potatoes expressingGalanthus nivalis lectin on rat small intestine.

7) Emails between wildlife scientist Judy Hoy & Justin Gude of MDFWP.
Link file.

8) Dr. Mercola on Obama signing the “Monsanto Protection Act.

Continued …