Category Archives: Activism

Bernie Sanders, the teflon candidate

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I used to be, four, five years ago, a Bernie fan. I stopped after being offended by his capitulation to Hillary. Then I began to see tell tale signs of his character, and eventually came to my own conclusion, that Bernie is a teflon candidate, who will attempt to wriggle out of every challenge by greasing his comments and behaviour. He is not genuine.

I am fully aware that most of the so called liberal, progressive and left of centre folks support the Democratic Party and also Bernie Sanders. Even Donald Trump himself seems to lament how the establishment Democrats are working to kill Bernie’s nomination unfairly.

So, writing a critic of Bernie was not going to be popular. Nonetheless, I post what is my analysis – and not post what is popular. For the same reason, me blaming todays false liberals (pseudo-liberal is a good adjective) has not been a popular move. I have lost some fair weather friends through a process of polarisation. That too is part of life, I understand.

But I am a thinking person and not a rubber stamp. I am not here to get popular, since I do not aim to live off other people’s hard work, like most politicians do including Bernie Sanders.

Like Jim Hightower wrote – swim against the current. Even dead fish can go with the flow. And I am not a dead fish, with all due respect to the fish family. They are successful animals, cold blooded, and can be of various skeletal types – jawless, cartilaginous or bony fishes, most of whom sleep with eyes open as most lack eyelids.

But, back to Hightower, I am not a dead fish, and I do post my views and support them with the logic that bolsters my views, which are always flexible and will change if better information or introspection turns me to another direction.

The term “teflon politician” is not my invention. It has been around, and is lately being attached to Bernie. I find the term usable here, so am borrowing it.

A friend who was a Bernie supporter has recently said on social media, that the reason Bernie ended up supporting Hillary Clinton in 2016 election was that going against Hillary and in favour of Trump would have been political suicide.

Well, well – that comment started a chain of thoughts in my mind. I contemplated it over the next several hours, went to sleep on it, and while preparing some free range Cornish hen carcass along with some root vegetables for my wife to cook into a stew, I thought about it some more, and decided I should come out with a post about Bernie being a teflon politician that would not be good for USA. He would be popular among the lefties, just like Obama was. But he would be just as disastrous for USA and the world.

Political suicide ?

Bernie is supposed to have avoided this political suicide, by not going against Hillary and for Trump. If this is true, then, in my thinking – Bernie would even support the very devil, just to keep his political future alive. USA can go to hell.

But hang on. Bernie did not need to support Trump. He could stand as an independent candidate and worked to splinter the Democratic Party as well as Hillary by taking voters away from them. Even if that resulted in Trump winning, it would have likely forced the Democrats to clean up their act and stop rigging the convention.

Most importantly, Bernie stabbed his own support base and voters, by supporting Hillary Clinton. This to me proves, voters are a mere temporary necessity for Bernie. He is essentially here for himself, and not for the voters and nor for the nation.

Consider in contrast – the case of Tulsi Gabbard. She resigned her high ranking chair in the Democratic Party early on, in order to support Bernie Sanders and go against the nomination of Hillary Clinton. She committed the same “political suicide” that my friend was talking about. Contrary to Bernie, Tulsi was willing to face potential political suicide, in order to support what she felt was the best for the nation.

See the contrast? Well, I do not suppose people would see the contrast, because many folks have hard wired views and would ignore evidence that do not tally with those views.

His rubbish comments about Russia is an exasperating example of how he has been, or became, a teflon politician. His duplicity with regard to Russia meddling in US elections is beyond dishonest. USA has a million times more funds and arsenals to interfere in other nations elections. USA has a million fold more solid examples of not only interfering, but actually toppling legitimate elected governments in endless list of countries. Post Soviet Russia has done none of that, and Bernie Sanders, the two faced liar – gives in to the propaganda, and blasts Russia – just to steal your vote.

If he had an ounce of honesty, he should have pledged that, as a president, he would stop once and for all, any and all US meddling in other nations elections, governments and policies. I am flabbergasted that Bernie Sanders fans fall for this kind of dishonest double talk.

Bernie Sanders voted in the senate, to uphold the impeachment because he though Trump abused his power but Joe Biden and his son did not. Without going into the details, that logic itself absolutely stinks. I have sufficient reason to believe that Bernie Sanders voted against Trump in the impeachment travesty, only because he wanted to enhance his own political future, and disregarded all other consequences including the fact that this act is not going to be forgotten nor forgiven, by the right of centre, Republican leaning voter base, and the fact that the impeachment was a sham act. There are dozens of real cases for which Trump could be impeached, but then in all those cases, many more Democrats too would fall prey.

More I think about all this, more I get convinced that I was wrong four years ago to think Bernie Sanders was the best candidate to lead USA. He is just a slippery guy with some charm, not unlike Barak Obama and in many ways, not unlike Hillary Clinton either. All in all, he is one more candidate that promises to be worse than previous presidents on a continual downward slide.

Bernie voted for all the wrong things, despite talking to the public in a way you would think otherwise.

His refusal to come clean on pardoning Julian Assange is, in my view, the deal breaker here, the last straw on the overloaded camel.

And then there is this shameful stand of supporting forced vaccination on people, to toe the line for big pharma and ensuring the citizens get sicker and sicker !!

He is an example of a teflon Candidate. And I am not surprised that the pseudo-liberals cannot see through all this. That is why they are pseudo-liberals.

In my second book, which is in the making, I am contemplating including these long posts as sub-chapters, explaining why the world gets to be as shitty as it is. Bernie is not at fault here. Neither are Trump, Obama or Hillary.

At fault are the citizens of the world. They suck. Its all related to that dead-fish thing.

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)

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 …

Glyphosate, the endocrine killer

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This is my second attempt at flyer or hand bill making, covering another aspect of glyphosate – as an endocrine disruptor. This one is not easy to explain in vernacular language. There are no local words for some of the terminology. Also the mechanism of endocrine system is a bit complex. But I have done the best I could.

To my engineer’s logic, endocrine system is a sort of remote control mechanism, not too unlike the TV remote we use to flip channels. Whereas the TV remote often works wirelessly with infra-red light, or some other band of the electromagnetic spectrum, the endocrine system inside our body works wirelessly through chemical signalling. One can think of it as a chemical messaging system, whereby certain glands in our body manages to control distant organs, without the use of “wires” or our nerves.

The glands that are often associated with releasing such chemical signals are pituitary, pineal, thyroid, adrenal, pancreas, ovary (females) and testes (males).

The liquid chemicals that carry such signals are often called hormones. These hormones can be proteins, but not always. There are generally four derivatives, from amino acids, proteins, fatty acids and cholesterol.

Apart from these, there are other glands/organs that too produce chemical substances, sometimes called peptides, which also perform functions in remote parts. In fact, the placenta for pregnant women, which nurture a fetus through gestation is also considered to be a kind of a gland which does release specific chemicals to induce specific growth related steps in the fetus. Unlike the rest, a placenta is for one time use and is discarded after childbirth. When and if the woman gets pregnant again, a new placenta is formed within which the new fetus is nurtured.

The problem with glyphosate is – it throws a spanner into the endocrine works. As a result, one can have hormones released at the wrong time, or in wrong quantity or in defective condition or of inferior quality so they do not perform as intended.

Unfortunately, the medical establishment as well as the state is often tight lipped about it, due to the power and influence of the Pharma and agro industry.

The job of resisting this menace therefore, rests largely on the citizens. Good news is – many provinces in India are now, one by one, legislating restrictions on use of glyphosate. Bad news is, it is not yet happening in West Bengal. Without rising public pressure, it is not going to happen soon. This is where the citizens need to get involved.

The story of glyphosate does not end here. This is to be gradually released.
Thank you.

Glyphosate for rural Bengal

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As my days in India is slowly drawing to a close, I have become hard pressed to complete various writings, mainly focussed on glyphosate as an unwanted element in our food web, but also including problems relating to Government policy on agriculture from scientific standpoint as well as socio-economic issues where small holder farmers are perhaps to be forced out of farming by design, so agriculture can be captured by corporations and share holders, for profit, while food sovereignty, food safety as well as welfare of hundreds of millions of farmers and health concerns of over a billion citizens are up for grabs.

The issues here are complex. Most Indians I meet, know less than zero about almost any of it. Very very few people ever heard the name Codex Alimentarius, or glyphosate, or amino acid. Very few understand how our body actually processes food.

To write about these, for the average folks, and that too in vernacular language where many of the English technical terms do not have a suitable local word due to non-use, is not easy for someone like me.

Nonetheless, I understand that such literature is required, in English as well as in local languages. I also understand that, for various reasons, I might be among the best suited to compose such material.

Consequently, I wrote this one page flyer, or hand bill, which can not only be shared on social media which, at the end of the day, may not be the best way in my view in achieving direct measurable positive result on the ground, but also be printed and posted in rural areas where village folks could read the local language. If the text is simplified to the degree where it is comprehensible to the layman – all the better.

This is my first attempt, on the property of chelation by glyphosate and how that affects us. Since they say a picture is worth a thousand words, I included a picture of hemoglobin protein, which is mentioned in the text. I borrowed the image from the internet, since I did not have the time to draw it from scratch. I added a few Bengali words on it.

I shall perhaps repeat that in English too. While I can speak and read Hindi, unfortunately I am not good at writing it any more, although I could do that as a child. So I cannot do it in Hindi at this point of time.

Skyrocketing MRL by Codex

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To : Dr. D. Kanungo, dkanungo@nic.in

Date : Friday, March 8, 2019

Subject : Codex Alimentarius – 38th Session of the Codex Committee on Pesticides, Fortaleza, Brazil, April 2006 – setting of safe MRL for glyphosate in food and feed.

Dr. Kanungo,

You were mentioned at the top of the Indian delegation that attended the above Codex meeting in Brazil in April 2006, when MRL levels of glyphosate in many food and feed items were agreed upon, as reproduced here. I have a few questions to you in this regard. 

Glyphosate MRL set for banana is 50 ppb (parts per billion) or 0.05 mg/kg, while the same for Maize is 5,000 ppb and that for unprocessed wheat bran is 20,000. Do you have actual proof that only 50 is safe for banana while much higher values for Maize and even higher for wheat bran are also safe? If you have seen these proofs I request you to make it available to me or to the people of India.

However, selected reports from scientists claiming they have checked and found glyphosate to be safe at this or that level – is not proof. Rather, these are third party opinions, which can always be selectively filtered to promote a false idea of safety. Actual proof of safety consists of raw data and supporting report of actual tests conducted, involving test animals, say rats. A group of such animals are subjected to a measured dose of glyphosate in their food, while an identical group of animal are also observed, living an identical lifestyle and eating identical food, but without any glyphosate. Health parameters of these two groups are recorded for their entire life span, say two years, and then onto the next generation’s lifetime, totalling perhaps three or four years. This comparison is usually the basis by which the testing team prepares their report on if that level of concentration of glyphosate in that kind of food does or does not increase health risks to the target animals. For example, if the clean eating rats show up a natural rate cancer or another specific disease in 5 percent of the population, and if the rate for the same disease in glyphosate exposed population turns out to be 10 percent, then the test team might conclude that glyphosate, at that specific dose in that kind of food, doubles the cancer risk to the test animal.

I suspect India does not conduct such tests, and has been getting documents under control of the very industry that benefits from sale of the biocide such as glyphosate, presenting a conflict of interest. I am also aware that even such suspected compromised proof of safety has been kept hidden by the Government of India.

This letter is to see if your group actually knew anything about the safety of glyphosate and might be wiling to share it with the public, or if the Indian delegation might have been pressured by the government or the industry or the lobby, to support the industry by perhaps overlooking public safety. I have noted from the Codex documentation, that the Indian group did not object to the MRL limits.

I have reason to suspect India is being mass poisoned by imported pulses and grains that contain extremely high levels of glyphosate, under the argument that such levels of glyphosate contamination is deemed safe by the Codex, one that your group accepted back in 2006. I suspect this mass poisoning is one of the root causes behind the runaway rise of multiple groups of diseases in the country, as well as forcing more Indian pule farmers into insolvency. Hence I write this letter in an effort to get to the truth of why India agreed to setting such arbitrary and unproven levels of MRL for glyphosate in food.

This letter is for the benefit of the people of India, and may be shared with  the public, along with any response received, or not received.

Hoping for a response,

Santanu Mitra

49/65 Prince Gulam Mohd Shah Road, Golf Gardens, Kolkata 700033

9831713068

Copied to:

1) Ram Vilas Paswan, Minister of Food – ramvilas.p@sansad.nic.in
2) Tapan Kanti Rudra IAS – FSSAI West Bengal – cfswb10@gmail.com
3) Ms. Ministhy S., FSSAI Uttar Pradesh – commissionerfda.up@gmail.com,
fdaupgov@gmail.com
4) Smt A Shanthi Kumar, FSSAI Telengana – prlsecy_hmfw@telangana.gov.in
telanganacfs@gmail.com
5) Sh. Vishal Chauhan, FSSAI Sikkim – healthsecyskm@yahoo.com
6) Sh. K.S. Pannu, FSSAI Punjab – md_phsc@yahoo.in
7) Dr. V. Candavelou, FSSAI Puducherry – secywel.pon@nic.in
8) Ms. Archana Patnaik, FSSAI Odisha – foodsafetyodisha@gmail.com
9) Dr Pallavi Darade, FSSAI Maharashtra – comm.fda-mah@nic.in
10) Dr. Rathan U Kelkar, FSSAI Kerala – foodsafetykerala@gmail.com
11) Smt. Poonam Markundaya, FSSAI Andhra Pradesh – peshichfw@gmail.com,
cfwhyd@yahoo.com