Subject: Need to review how safe glyphosate is, for Canada
Honourable Mr. Casey,
I am a Canadian citizen that has been trying to get the Government to disclose hitherto hidden safety test documents that are supposed to prove that some glyphosate in food is safe for humans. Health Ministry saw such safety test data before approving the use of Glyphosate in Canadian agriculture back in the 1970s, but has been hiding it from the people for two generations now. This technically makes approval of glyphosate illegal, the way I read the law.
I have a multi-year Access to Information appeal (Access request Health Canada – A-2015-00743) ongoing where I demanded that Health Canada discloses all the safety test data and report it received in the 1970s based on which it first approved the use of Glyphosate. The Government acknowledges that I have the right to the documents. And yet, it has been dragging its feet and the documents remain hidden till now.
I had met my MP, honourable Carla Qualtrough, and handed over almost 25,000 signatures of people demanding that the Government releases hitherto hidden safety test documents on glyphosate, and have had a meeting with her. She took the data to Ottawa and has since gone silent, and refuses to revert why she no more wants to correspond about disclosing those hidden safety test reports.
A further e-petition raised by me on the House of Commons platform also have resulted in obfuscation and obstruction, and the public is still denied the chance to scrutinize the test results that are supposed to prove that glyphosate in safe for animals.
MP Bill Casey
The province of New Brunswick has a nasty history of poisoning the land and the people with continued use of glyphosate that has been decimating its wildlife and making the area the cancer capital of Canada.
You know California has passed a law to have all glyphosate based herbicide sold in the state to carry a warning that glyphosate is known to cause cancer.
I write this letter to you to not only initiate a government review on glyphosate, but also to:
Demand full public disclosure of all safety test reports and data, involving comparison of health parameters of lab animals subjected to glyphosate exposure with another group of identical animals eating glyphosate free food. These tests results and reports have been conducted by Monsanto in USA and elsewhere.
Initiate independent government funded tests on safety of glyphosate
Review the basis for Health Canada’s Maximum Residue Limit (MRL) levels set for glyphosate in various kinds of food, and a historical trend of increasing the safe limit continuously, when presumably actual levels in food keeps reaching the previously set safe limits. The Government is yet to show proof that glyphosate at any level is safe to be in foods such as grains or pulses, till date.
This is a public interest letter. I am a food security activist that have dedicated large parts of my time to pushing for transparency on this extremely dangerous molecule, glyphosate. This letter may be published on my blog (tonu.org) or be otherwise made public on social media. I shall be glad to also make public any positive step from your office.
MP and honourable minister Carla Qualtrough. She took over 20,000 signatures and met me about asking Health Canada to disclose hidden safety documents on glyphosate. But then she went totally silent. Later she voted against bill C-291 which would have made it mandatory to label all GMO items in food. She ensured that such a bill is defeated so the people cannot tell if they are or are not eating GMO. She did not ask her constituents, which includes me, if they want this bill defeated. She took a unilateral decision to deny the people a right to know. This I believe explains where Minister Qualtrough stands, on issues of food safety and food security.
I am copying this letter to MP Carla Qualtrough since she is mentioned here. I may also separately write to MP Karen Ludwig of New Brunswick, who I understand is also interested to push for glyphosate review.
I am currently visiting India, my birth country, but can be reached by email or phone.
Thanking you
Tony Mitra
Home address: 10891 Cherry Lane, Delta, BC, Canada Currently in India using local phone +91-98317 13068
The million dollar question is, what are we prepared to do about it?
André Comeau got fired as an ag-scientist in Canada because of his stand and effort to find a way to grow wheat without using glyphosate or other herbicides. Canadian government fired him. He sacrificed his career but did not change his opinion that toxic chemicals in food system is unhealthy and should not be supported.
Not everyone needs to be fired. But it is my opinion that this problem is political, i.e. our politicians are extremely corrupt, across all party lines, that we do not have an effective democratic system, that the people are ultimately at fault for this sorry state of affairs, and that the ultimate solution, if Canada and the world is to be saved, will have to come from ordinary citizens.
Citizen activists will need to stand up to fight the this toxic avalanche enabled by our government, and shift focus away from Monsanto, Bayer and other corporations. People will have to change focus and recognize their own politicians as parties responsible for the poisoning of Canada.
The people will have to find a way to put the fear of God into future aspiring politicians, so that a new generation of them can be in government, whose primary job would be what the constitution says, i.e. follow the wish of the people and work for the greater good of the people, and not work for the profit of corporations.
It is not upto NGOs, talking heads, anti-GMO gurus, various group leaders, authors of books, internet clean food promoters, product pedlars or anybody else’s responsibility to save our nation and our planet. It is our job.
The buck stops are our feet – at your feet if you are reading this.
My perpetual question to the people are – what are you prepared to do ?
I am invited to address a crowd of educated Bengali intelligentsia tonight in Kolkata, India – and my ultimate question to them too will be the same.
It is not alright to just be aware of glyphosate.
It is not alright to just avoid glyphosate and eat organic.
It is not alright to just hate Monsanto.
My crying question to every listener remains : what are you prepared to do about it other than saving your own family by eating organic? What are you prepared to do to save your nation and your planet?
You need to do whatever you can within your means, individually & personally. If you do not do it, no one else might.
The buck, at the end of the day, stops are our feet.
I am pretty passionate, so readers may forgive my strong tone. I am not looking for followers. I am not forming an NGO for others to join me. I do not pretend to be a leader of a group. My posts are not to increase my visibility or to promote any product. I shall not ask anybody to give me any money or donation. Been there done that.
My sole aim for being on Facebook, far as glyphosate goes, is to show how ordinary citizens, without people support, without money, without legal help, without political power, cans till confront their nonplussed or crooked politicians, still confront their non-functioning governments, and still hope to achieve some result, no matter how small that might be, towards fighting this chemical attack on the planet.
I give personal examples of whatever I do, so that a few others might take example and try to do similar things within their own capacity, in their own regions, in their own unique ways.
As Marganet Meade said : Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
So, if you do not believe me, thats OK. Believe Margaret Meade and show what you are prepared to do.
Today’s rant is only partially about the inconvenient truth regarding glyphosate. Mainly, it focuses on my departure from the common activities expected out of an environmentally conscious, anti-GMO activists.
Umm.. what do I mean ?
Well, to start with, I wish to declare that I, after years of going with the flow, screaming against Monsanto in North America, signing petitions and going on talking tours across the length and breadth of Canada, and being a part of many organizations, I have quit them all.
No, I have not given up on activism, but I decided I was wasting my time, and my time was too precious to be wasted. I became thoroughly disenchanted by anti-GMO talking heads like Jeffrey Smith of the US, Vanadana Shiva of India, author Steve Druker of the US etc, not so much because of what they did, but rather, because what they did to do, or tap danced around, and failed to alert the people about.
I also decided that almost all NGOs and resistance groups I had been involved in, were worse than a waste of time for me. They were definitely counter productive in the sense that they were using my time, my efforts and my money, to useless pursuits that were designed, in my mind, to fail to tackle the root of the problem. They continued to misguide the people.
In some ways, these groups and talking heads appeared to be flips sides of the same coin, and were both milking the system from opposite ends. Neither wanted the problem to be eradicated.
That was the impression I got after years of wasting my personal time and money, and I decided to cut my links to them all – hook, line, and sinker, and venture out all by myself. I was not going to ask for money from anybody. I was not going to try and speak with people as a means to try and solve the problems of poison in our food and environment. I had decided the most people that listen are essentially groupies that clap hands and hang out with notables but otherwise do nothing meaningful, and that the talking heads ensure that the population stays thus mesmerized and engaged in uselessness.
So then, what was I going to do? Well, I did not know clearly, but decided to focus on what appeared to me to be part of the root evil – our political system that allows unproven and potentially dangerous products to be allowed in through corruption in high places.
I had no money – no political clout, no people support – nothing. But, I had me. And I decided to go after the Canadian Government single handed within my capacity and try to address at least one or two of the root issues. Succeed or fail, I would at least have the satisfaction of trying and giving my best shot at what I considered to be a root problem.
All considered, I have had a measure of success, and have become a kind of an example, that going it all alone, without any support, for a single average citizen, is perhaps better than all other options out there. Perhaps some folks, just a handful, will take queue and chalk their own path in their own region, to tackle root issues, singlehanded if need be. Perhaps citizen activism at the grassroots level, without talking heads and professional leaders, was our only shot left to safe this planet, if it at all can be saved at this late stage.
Going it alone and without support has great advantages. I cannot be purchased, influenced, corrupted or sidetracked by money or bullshit. And money or bullshit can come from both sides of the coin, as I have found out.
And now, back to India. Glyphosate is likely mass poisoning India already. A nation of over a billion people, this is already the diabetes capital of the world. It is, in my casual observation and without statistics, is at the cusp of a major epidemic of auto immune disease. Glyphosate has penetrated India in unprecedented level and in unexpected areas. It is my suspicion that glyphosate plays a significant, if not the primary role in slow poisoning India. The so called resistance movement appears to be fixed and fixated on GMO alone, and allowed glyphosate to permeate the land from coast to the mountains. This fixation is one more reason how the poison peddling industry wins out, by keeping the public focussed away from the greatest danger, glyphosate, already affecting the whole of the nation.
Since I cut my links and burned my bridges, I do not need to be politically correct and be afraid of offending anybody. I do not believe the resistance movement is going to save India. If India is to be saved, the job will have to be done by the common man, performing the most important role in a functioning democracy – being a responsible citizen and wrenching the control of a failing democratic system away from the clutches of either big money or useless organizations that make a career out of talking against Monsanto. Monsanto has almost nothing to do with it. It is the politician that is betraying your interest, and that is happening because you have been sleeping, or listening to the wrong guys.
So, While I do not look to be speaking to the people, at times I do accept an invitation. Thus I may be speaking at a small study circle discussion soon by invitation in South Kolkata by a group of scientists and mathematicians. Details will be furnished here if and when official invitation is received.
The topic of my talk will be:
Glyphosate, the molecule that is mass poisoning India, and the world
how it remains invisible and under media radar,
how expecting solutions from Governments, political parties, and resistance groups are a waste of time,
and finally, how it is for the citizens to address this global and national crisis, directly, individually, each within his or her capacity.
Whats in the Anglo-Saxon drinking water? And how might it concern India?
Is it just a coincidence that the three Anglo Saxon nations that stole continents from local inhabitants and acquired vast stretches of land for pillage, are the very ones that have the highest acceptable limits for glyphosate in drinking water – namely USA, Canada and Australia?
And now that I am visiting India, and some folks are asking about it, could there be a link between glyphosate in the Anglo-Saxon world and mass poisoning in India through imported lentils and chickpea?
Well, let’s start with this Anglo-Saxon drinking water first. The difference in the maximum allowable limit between these countries and Europe is not marginal, but an order of dimension higher.
Anyhow, how did I come across this data, and why do I consider this to be relevant from my point of view, now that I am visiting India ?
Well, the data was apparently compiled by the Government of Bermuda. I got it from the US scientist Dr. Don Huber, who passed me his powerpoint presentation with a few slides, to do with glyphosate. He did it in case I wish to use any of it in my talks in India.
Well, India is not in the above chart. However, I suspect that a billion and more folks here are getting mass poisoned in slow motion, through imported pulses grown in two of the countries in this chart – namely Canada and Australia. I have been involved in getting the Canadian government to test large samples of food, locally grown and imported, for glyphosate, and then to give me copies of the results. Canada became the first, and so far the only country on earth to have conducted such wide ranging tests of thousands and thousands of food samples from over sixty countries, for presence of glyphosate, and I had much to do with getting the Canadian Govt to start testing these food samples. Subsequently I became the only person, outside of the Canadian government, to have legal access to all these test results. That is how I came to know that Canada and USA produce the most toxic of all foods when it comes to glyphosate contamination, and in seed based foods. And that is how the reference book – POISON FOODS OF NORTH AMERICA, got to be written, and used by scientists and research scholars that suspected but did not have the proof, that North Americans were getting mass poisoned from glyphosate through local foods. But what is the relevance for India, apart from a dangerous hankering to copy and emulate the American lifestyle, including eating industry processed junk food that are so laced with glyphosate?
The link, I suspect, has to do with pulses – specifically lentils and chickpea that India is unable to produce enough to meet internal demand, and consequently importing huge quantities, from countries that specialize in producing toxic foods, such as those in the above table.
North America and Australia does not have lentils in their diet and no past history of growing them. But now, these countries, with access to seemingly endless stretches of agricultural land, have gotten to plant huge fields for growing these crops, for the specific purpose of exporting to India. The impression given to the importers, I suppose, is that these crops are grown in more scientific and modern ways than what India herself grows in house, and therefore should be considered as superior to Indian counterparts. I would not be surprised if educated Indians, especially those that are culturally addicted by the western mirage, to take this as gospel. If it comes from the west, it must be superior.
If it is processed food from North America, if it contains industrially grown seed based foods, especially lentils and chickpea or mainstream cereals, expect to have glyphosate in it. This is from the test results by Canadian Food Inspection Agency, where Tony Mitra was involved in getting the Canadian Govt. to test these foods, and then to give him the all the results of multiple thousands of tests..
But back to glyphosate in drinking water, for USA, Canada and Australia. Whats the story here? Why are the limits so high compared to Europe?
I believe the maximum allowable limit of glyphosate in drinking water is so high in these countries because the existing levels have already gone high. Therefore, the governments I believe have continued to raise the bar, making these higher levels “acceptable”. This is what happens. When levels of toxic substances go up, these governments do not declare the food, or the water, to be unsafe. Instead, they raise the bar so from that point, higher levels of toxins are still considered safe.
Drinking water is not the only item where MRL (maximum residue limit) has been raised and raised again for glyphosate over the years, without providing any proof whatsoever, that these heightened levels, or even the original lower levels of glyphosate contamination, was safe for humans or animals.
My biggest gripe is that the government never provides direct proof with raw data, that such high levels of glyphosate are absolutely safe for animals eating or drinking them on a regular basis. And this makes approval of glyphosate illegal, in all countries. It is a fundamental right of the people to be able to verify safety of toxins and biocides (e.g. weed killers that are approved by the government). And yet, the governments of the entire world has kept this data hidden, while allowing glyphosate to become far and away the most used herbicide on earth. Talk about failure of democracy.
The relevance and link between toxicity in drinking water, and crops grown comes indirectly. What is happening to their drinking water, is not by accident, nor by act of God. High levels of glyphosate is being used in agriculture. That is how lentils and chickpea get so much glyphosate in them. Then, what does not get into the crops, gets into the agricultural runoff, into streams, lakes, and ground water. Eventually it gets into the drinking water.
Another country that is not in the above chart, but plays an increasing role in sending possibly toxic pulses to India, is Myanmar. I have not seen any test result on glyphosate in pulses grown there, which are imported by India. However I am told that the method used to grow the pulses are industrial models borrowed from the west, and that Myanmar has started buying a lot of glyphosate, for the purpose of growing pulses for India. I am told that the Indian government may be encouraging Indian agro-industries to buy land in Myanmar, to grow pulses for India. People need to have these pulses tested for glyphosate too, and compare the readings with those of USA/Canada and Australia. Indians are likely getting poisoned through their lentils and chickpea and they deserve to know the details.
India, the largest consumer and producer of pulses, sadly cannot meet local demand any more. India’s agricultural lands are getting less productive as years go by, thanks to wrong agriculture polilcies.
This is the business end of the decades old and faulty decisions taken towards a much hyped “green revolution” where hybrid seeds and heavy chemical use in agriculture was introduced in the name of progress, based on fraudulent science. This started the steady and relentless degradation of the soil, loss of indigenous varieties and knowledge, and disappearing water table. There used to be a popular saying about computer systems and software – garbage in, garbage out. I believe this also applies in India’s blind adoption of western industrial scale agriculture models that are designed to sell more chemicals, instead of fine tuning locally developed, sustainable and time proven organic methods.
Although I have not seen the statistics, I have seen evidence of a rising tide of auto-immune diseases coupled with problems with the digestive system in India, from people eating these foods as well as those growing them. I suspect the mass poisoning has started, and would love to see detailed testing and data on this.
People of India absolutely needs to force their governments at all levels to start testign their seed based foods, especially those that are imported from Canada and Australia, and let the people know. They should also demand that the proof of safety of glyphosate in these foods be made available to the citizens and people be allowed to scrutinize them as well as conduct independent verification.
Below two tables show comparative contamination in lentils grown in Canada and in India, as tested by the Canadian food inspection agency and analyzed by me. Let us take just one item, red lentil, or masoor daal. Both Indian and Canadian samples indicate 100 percent of samples to be contaminated with glyphosate. This raises various questions such as are all masoor dal grown in India toxic, or is only the toxic variety being exported back to Canada where Indian restaurants might be importing desi masoor dal ?
Either way, the average contamination level is 160 ppb for Indian red lentils. For the Canadian counterpart, also 100 percent are contaminated. This is understandable, since Canada does not know how to grow organic lentils except for a handful of small farmers that do not produce much and did not get sampled and tested by CFIA. But the average level of contamination of the industrially grown masoor daal, which is the type that is exported to India in large quantity, has almost a thousand ppb of glyphosate, or six times as toxic as the Indian variety.
And India is buying this stuff in millions of tons, for the local population, without any disclosure or testing, and keeping the consumers in the dark.
Whose fault is it?
POISON FOODS OF NORTH AMERICA – Tony Mitra
POISON FOODS OF NORTH AMERICA – Tony Mitra
Without disclosure of any proof of safety, approving this substance and feeding thus contaminated foods to the people may amount to eco-terrorism. The fault however lies at the feet of the people. In a functioning democracy, we cannot blame the government and its politicians. People deserve the government it gets. The buck stops at our feet. Want to know whose fault it is? Look no further than the nearest mirror.
Talking about glyphosate poisoning of the planet, political corruption that makes it possible, and how the buck stops are your feet – all in 17 minutes.
Well – we are facing an existential crisis, and the buck stops are our feet.Question is, what are we, as individual citizens, prepared to do?
Here is my take, on Glyphosae, political and scientific corruption, and the need for citizen activism.
Glyphosate, being a mineral chelator, was denying our body from picking up essential nutrients from food by chelating (stealing) the minerals.
About a third of all our proteins (say around 40,000 kinds, give or take) function with a metallic ion placed in them. When our body creates a new protein of this kind, say to replace damaged one, it needs a metallic ion such as Manganese, or Iron, etc. to be attached to them in order for the proteins to function properly. This mineral is to be picked up from our food. However, glyphosate, if present in the same food, is able to steal that mineral. So, newly formed proteins would be denied its essential mineral, and remain non-functional as a result. Non-functional proteins lead to a pathway of diseases.
We humans and all animals have evolved in symbiosis with the bacterial kingdom, and a mass of bacteria use our body as host and in return perform essential services such as helping digest our food and assist our immune system.
Glyphosate kills bacteria, and thus it indirectly harms all of us, if we consume glyphosate along with our food. The claim that glyphosate is safe is patently false and to make it stick, industry has acquired a stranglehold on scientific research, destroying its neutrality and objectivity. More on this later.
Our immune system has not learned to identify glyphosate as a harmful substance because it is a synthetic molecule that did not exist in nature in the 4 billion year evolutionary history of life on earth. Our evolutionary process did not have to deal with it. That is why we have no defence against Glyphosate. This molecule was invented by man, only two generations ago, and as such is of extraterrestrial nature. It aught to be made extraterrestrial again – sending it out of planet earth. Let them make it and store it on Jupiter.
As if all this was not enough, glyphosate is a biological mimic of glycine, a canonical amino acid that is among the most common of the 22 amino acids that form the basic building block of all life. By molecular mimicry, it slips past all our defences and gets mis-incorporated into our proteins. This invasion of glyphosate into our proteins turns them into rogue proteins, which can lead to a cascading series of diseases including synthetic diseases that did not exist before.
For scientific confirmation – one may read peer reviewed papers of Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff, linked in my blog tonu.org.
For me, glyphosate is unacceptable for a simpler and more ominous reason. A product may not be approved by a government for general release without disclosure of its safety documents and providing the proof that it is safe. However, test data and documents that prove glyphosate is safe for consumers, have not been disclosed by any nations anywhere, despite it being approved for use since the 1970s. To me, this itself makes approval of glyphosate illegal.
Also, no government was engaged in broad based testing of food to detect levels of concentration of glyphosate, the most used herbicide on the planet. This is not just irresponsible and unacceptable. It should be criminal.
Personally I could not get any organization, anti-GMO groups and various talking heads to join me in asking the government in Canada to disclose hitherto hidden safety document on glyphosate. Neither could I find anyone to join me asking the Canadian government to start testing our foods for glyphosate. That is how I decided to go alone.
In 2013 Canada did not even have a lab that could test glyphosate in food, mainly because neither our government nor the medical establishment had so far been interested in testing foods for glyphosate. As a result, labs did not gear themselves up for a non-existent market.
I subsequently started a single handed two pronged effort to get the Canadian government, as the time under Stephen Harper and the conservatives, to get off its backside and first disclose all safety documents and data based on glyphosate was approved for the first time, back in the 1970s. Then, on a separate appeal, I asked the ministry of health to get some labs ready to test foods for glyphosate and to answer why Canadians could not test presence of the most used herbicide in our food.
The first effort is still dragging on. The government does agree I have a right to see the safety documents. And yet, it drags it feet forever. I also learned that I was the first person in Canada to officially as for this information, although the molecule has been approved back in the 1970s.
The second effort was more successful. In fact, it moved mountains, primarily due to a dedicated member of parliament, Mr. Alex Atamanenko, who took up my cause and demanded that the then minister of health answers me why Canadians cannot test food for glyphosate. This resulted in the ministry of health finally responding to me in a letter and also arranging to have its food inspection agency to start broad based testing of all foods available in Canada, produced locally and imported, for presence of glyphosate.
As soon as I learned that the wheels of the Government was finally beginning to turn in favour of testing our food for glyphosate, I asked the Canadian government discloses all test results to me – not just for the emerging records on glyphosate but for all biocides in food that the government had already tested for. And thus December 2016 I got almost 8,000 just concluded test results of glyphosate in foods and later another almost 100,000 records of results of other biocides in foods.
Analysis of the glyphosate records proved to be a shocker.
First, seed based foods and food products produced in the US and Canada were an order of dimension more toxic with glyphosate than same foods produced anywhere else on the planet. North America produces the most poisonous foods on the planet. I call glyphosate to be poisonous on the grounds that its safety data has been kept hidden. By that omission, I consider approval of glyphosate as illegal and the product as unsafe and downright a slow and deadly poison. Also, That it in fact is a deadly slow poison, has been explained by scientists such as Samsel and Seneff in their peer reviewed papers.
Not only that, I found out that conventional non-GMO crops such as wheat, rye, oats, barley, chickpea etc have an order of dimension more glyphosate than GM crops like soy and corn. Thus conventional non-GMO foods were, in my view, very much more poisonous than GM crops.
In my view, going after Monsanto is a useless exercise, because Monsanto does not necessarily break the law. What is does is corrupt our governments and gets our politicians to change the law to suit its business model. I believe its claim of safety of glyphosate to be fraudulent. I believe that is why it influences governments to hide this safety record from the people and prevents independent scrutiny of these data. Our governments is thus knowingly or unknowingly helping slow poisoning of the people, by allowing widespread use of glyphosate in agriculture.
Therefore, if one has to identify the rogues that are responsible for poisoning our food, our health, and our future, one needs to focus on our ineffective and possibly corrupt political process and perhaps corrupt or illiterate politicians that could not distinguish glyphosate from their elbow, who are unfortunately in charge of the regulatory mechanism and end up changing the laws of the nation to allow glyphosate to be used in agriculture.
Other scientists have found problems not just with glyphosate, but also with other chemicals packaged around it to make the branded product such as RoundUp. While this may be correct, it is glyphosate and glyphosate alone, that goes to regulatory mechanism and passes approval that ends up as RoundUp herbicide. In my view the cumulative damage that glyphosate does, not just at the toxicological level but in destroying our biology by molecular mimicry, sets this molecule apart from other adjuvants that goes into the packaging of RoundUp and even other herbicides.
And while we have other herbicides, pesticides, insecticides that are all possibly harming the ecosystem, glyphosate again stands out by the sheer volume of it that is produced and used, compared to all other biocides.
GMO are also based on fraudulent logic, exploitative ethics, twisted science as well as designed to undermine food security and freedom of a nation. However, there are hundreds and hundreds of them, each following different sets of scientific detail. If I have to fight a single battle and not a thousand battles, then I would choose glyphosate to be in my primary target. Glyphosate is the 900 pound gorilla in our food web and environment. Killing it would effectively also kill the GMO project. We shall be on the way to have all foods grown everywhere to be naturally organic as well as belonging to the people and the region that grows these foods, and not property of western corporations and banks .
Agri-corporations and their enablers in our government is quick to show the weighty evidence of science papers that claim glyphosate is safe. Promoters of this model of agriculture peddling increased sale of toxic chemicals, support a viewpoint that there is a baseless conspiracy theory and paranoia created in the minds of people by some miscreants and hapless scientists, which is resisting progress and modernism in agriculture and fighting glyphosate. There is a misconception that a little bit of toxicity in food in way of glyphosate is both acceptable and necessary, in view of the increased population of the world. All these claims by the promoters of toxic agriculture are fraudulent and not supported by honest facts and honest science. But my response to this chemical onslaught is simple. I say – disclose the safety documents, or shut up.
As to the weight of scientific evidence and the so called science based assessment – this is what I have to say.
Scientific research on safety of technologies such as glyphosate and GMO needs to be public funded and public owned. Instead, it is funded by the industry. Our politicians have allowed this travesty to come about. The public has bought into this on the false idea that this makes science free for the people and reduced our tax burden. This is false. There is no free lunch. You pay junk money for science, and you get junk science.
The industry is not interested in funding scientists that wish to check if products such as glyphosate has a problem. As a result, research on possible negative effects of glyphosate does not get any funding. Science has thus become one sided. It has lost its neutrality and objectivity. This, to me, is not science. This is voodoo, and so called “scientists” promoting it are not true scientists. They are pedlars.
Lastly, all this talk sidesteps a few important points – and these are to do with my perception of what constitutes democracy, the role of citizenry and what should be my personal duty to uphold our democratic process where the people are the masters of the government, and not some poison peddling corporation.
The most important stake holder in democracy is the citizen. It is my view that we, each of us, incur a debt to society and to democracy, as we grow up. The society does a lot to groom us. And we are to pay this debt back through the course of our lives by doing something in return for our society, our neighbourhood and our nation. We take a lot from the the society. We are supposed to put back more than we take, so that we leave the kitty is a bit richer and not sucked dry in our lifetime.
And there is the crux. We as individuals, within our individual capacity, are to engage in citizen activism to uphold and improve the wheels of the nation. This is our job, and not the job of the politicians. The politicians job is to represent us, take our views, and execute our wishes as our temporary servants. Our job is to be ever vigilant to ensure that these temporary servants are not robbing us and selling us off.
If we are caught napping, and stop controlling the politicians, then our politics will start being controlled by someone else or something else – which does not have our best interest at heart. Democracy then begins to fail, or morphs into forms of dictatorship, or fascism or other forms of rogue governments.
As they say – if you have a nation of sheep, you get a government of wolves. So, I appeal to you, the people, to get busy paying your debt to the nation, and start holding the feet of your politician to the fire.
We are facing an existential crisis. The very well beings of your children and grand children depends on you doing your duty in your own lifetime. Nothing else will do. The buck stops at your feet.
I have been jotting down ideas in a loosely arranged new book, called “Lonely Road” or “My Lonely Road of Glyphosate activism.
Why do I write it ? It is my personal feeling that, for an activist concerned with glyphosate, or destruction of biodiversity and ecology, or a planet facing mass extinction and perhaps human civilization facing a systemic collapse – writing a book is an useless pursuit.
This of course is my personal opinion. Book writing is for book writers, for them to earn a living and for people to have something to read.
Don’t get me wrong. There is a need for books, for a thousand different reasons.
But, in my view, in my personal experience of an anti-Glyphosate activist, writing a book about it is an useless pursuit, if the goal of the writer is to trigger a chain of events that might help put a stop to the reckless use of glyphosate on planet earth.
But then why am I writing this book. contradicting my own beliefs?
Well, one of the reason is a selfish one – a human’s desire to leave something behind when he/she kicks the bucket. Another reason may be that some humans are instinctively record keepers and like to leave behind a footnote to future generations, a statement that someone else had walked this path before. Also, it can be just that some folks believe they ave a flair of writing, or that they have a story worth telling.
Some of those reasons may apply to me – but there is also another. It is a constructive way to pass idle time.
I do not watch TV, and have started avoiding mainstream newspapers and magazines, mainly because I am not only fed up with them, but suspect I might become brain damaged if I spent too much time watching or reading them. While internet provides a sort of alternative pathway to news, it is also heavily controlled and also as full of rubbish as any other platform designed for public consumption.
I don’t go to watch much movies. I don’t do drugs, and don’t drink. I do not frequent pubs and bars. I find idle yapping with folks to be boring to the point of being intolerable.
I like conversation and exchange of ideas with folks that share similar interests or are able to talk on global issues with some depth and not superficially. Unfortunately, such people are very hard to find. As a result, I am often speaking with such folks over the phone, across great physical distances.
I am rather opinionated and do not suffer fools well.
All these are my psychological baggage and that results in me having certain amount of quiet time for introspection.
And right now, I am in India. Have been here for a number of months and likely to be here for a bit more, for personal reasons. And, I have less ways to use my time constructively. Yes, I am doing some bird-watching. Yes, I have visited interesting places and met interesting people.
But, not being in my own environment back in Canada, I have more idle time with myself.
As a result, I took up filling out some of the chapters of my book here.
Question – why do I have a chapter on Steve Wozniak in a book about Glyphosate activism ? Is Wozniak a known critic or supporter of Glyphosate ?
Frankly, I do not know. However, I do believe there is a link between recent comment made by Wozniak in Delhi, India, which has been twisted around some by the media, and the reason why Glyphosate, and toxic technologies from the west, manages to get strongholds in countries such as India.
And I intend to write a chapter on this.
I read a few articles on what Wozniak said. Apparently he mentioned that Indians, the upwardly mobile Indians that migrate to the US, are usually academic types (book pushers) that get MBAs, get fat jobs and might drive a Mercedes. However, they lack creativity. The papers seem to say that Wozniak commented to the effect that this lack of creativity is the reason India does not get companies like Apple, Google or Facebook.
I am not sure if Wozniak meant exactly that, but feel pretty confident that he said what he did as a positive criticism of the Indian system, mostly education system, that encourages copybookism (a term I just coined) as against independent thinking, which is why the upper half Indians following this system end up being successful techno-coolies designed to be well paid cogs in the US style corporate machinery, like a new age incarnation of the century old character played by Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times. This is why Yuppy Indians are unlikely to be pathfinders of new horizons.
If Wozniak actually meant all this, then I disagree with him, again in a constructive way, and I think this has great relevance to why and how technologies such as chemical farming and glyphosate get a purchase in countries like India.
First – Indians are no more nor less creative than Americans. In fact there is no good way to even define an American, since most so called creative people in the US came from somewhere else, or their parents of grandparents did. But what essentially set the US apart from other countries, and especially apart from India, is that the system in the US encouraged creativity and brilliance, as well as encourage hard working coopybookists (another term I coined just now).
India, on the other hand, has a system where corporations grease their way through the Government which legislates and legitimizes business tycoons to get a stranglehold on certain sectors of business, often to the great detriment of the environment and the people, and shuts all doors to independent thinking, rational thinking, and creative thinking.
In short, it is not so much the people of India, but the system that Indians have rigged for themselves after independence, that promotes cronyism, corruption and hegemony and suppresses creativity, independent thinking, or rational thinking.
Of course, I am perhaps being a bit more harsh on India than I should be, but then, perhaps the readers will forgive me, since I come from years of frustrating glyphosate activism.
But hang on – things are not all that hunky dory for USA either, and this is another area that Wozniak is either unaware of, or is unwilling to touch. The vaunted US system is virtually bankrupt and on the point of collapse.
One could also argue if Facebook, Google and Apple are actually helping or harming the planet – but that would really drag this chapter into an endless road. I shall leave it for others to ponder.
US does not any more have a system that is just or which rewards rational thinking. It is a system that has given rise to the One World Order, a system that is busy devouring the planet. And its political establishment is corrupt to the core, borrowing a term from Shiv Chopra’s book.
But back to India. The upwardly mobile, english educated Indian population, both in India and outside, have largely become cultural slaves of the US system. They are hypnotized, like a deer caught in the headlights. They are unable to think straight or think outside of the American bubble.
And this cultural slavery is working in favour of glyphosate, in favour of Monsanto and in favour of industrial, chemical agriculture as much as many other items that only promote US hegemony and destruction of the biodiverse sustainable ecology of the planet, all in the name of phoney and fraudulent idea of “development” and “progress”.
And that is the link, in my mind, between whatever Wozniak might have said, and my take on why India appears to be almost blindly allowing their people to be poisoned in order to make profit for agro-corporations.
Anyhow, this is just part of one chapter of my book – in the making.
You can perhaps guess, this book is not designed to be popular either in India, or in the US.
We know some of the root causes behind the avalanche of toxic chemicals that has gotten into the food system and environment in the west in general and in North America in particular, is rooted in possible extreme penetration within and corruption of our political institutions, and through it into our media, healthcare system, judiciary, economic systems and scientific institutions, by the poison peddling agro-industries. The corruption is not unique to Canada, and originates from the US but has now permeated the global scenario, enveloping much of the known world.
In my view, the fault for this sorry state of affairs where every decision is one-sided and tilted to favour anti-people policies, lies at the feet of the citizenry. In a functioning democracy, if we still have it, the responsibility of ensuring that the political process remains balanced and policies are driven primarily by the will of the people and not by a handful of foreign corporations, lies at the feet of the citizenry, and citizenry alone.
But, in a fast paced world where the controlled media constantly bombards you with manufactured or tinted news, where you are being programmed to think it might be the right thing to do to use your tax dollars to bomb some third world country that has never attacked you, just because the leader of that country is unilaterally and without court trial projected as a bad guy, therefore justifying the military industrial complex to obliterate their towns and villages and turn their cities into rubble, all in the name of international peacekeeping.
In this scenario, a whole group of people get employed in scientific institutions whose pay check may be coming from sources that mandate them to speak in favour of pesticide dependent agriculture. They are trained to look at select science, deny existence of alternative views that cast doubt on chemical dependent agriculture, to the extent that they often are either in denial or totally ignorant of a world outside of controlled junk science of glyphosate or other biocides in food and nature.
People of this kind have infiltrated into major scientific institutions in most countries, but particularly in the west. They are programmed to believe that the west is the best, and are taught to challenge any opposing view by a few standard tactics. One of them is to stay away from the topic, and attack the messenger, trying to imply that the person having the opposing view is mentally challenged, is scientifically illiterate, or is a fear mongered, or is trying to make a buck or has some personal motive. Therefore, he or she is not worth paying attention to, and whatever they say, does not need to be answered.
If such anti-pesticide person remains in the sidelines, he or she may be ignored. But should he-she gain prominence somehow, then these pesticide peddling trolls begin to emerge out of the wood work.
My point here is – it may be worthwhile for the citizens to identify such junk scientists and demand that the institutions fire them. Perhaps these myopic poison pushers need to be encouraged to find an alternative profession – leave science and take up selling newspapers.
The long letter has lots of selective junk science I shall not go into right now. The main issues that prompted me to single this person out, considering him to qualify being included in a blog are:
His writing to me without identifying himself, as if he is as important as Lord Buddha and I should revere him immediately.
His extreme prejudice and racial/cultural hubris, implying that people from the Indian subcontinent might be mentally unfit to decide on glyphosate due to extreme proximity of human excreta.
If this person was just an ordinary man on the street, I’d have ignored him. But he apparently is part of the national academia and in the body of research scientists – the same group that we believe may have been penetrated and corrupted by the poison peddling corporations through political corruption in Canada.
And, he displays an extreme case of racial and cultural arrogance, prejudice and hubris, about people of the south-Asian subcontinent.
So I decided to record both the email received as well as this blog.
To me, this person is still too small a fish, and I have more important tasks at hand, such as trying to convince local governments to push back at the practice of using glyphosate in agriculture and environment.
But perhaps someone else might like to take this up with the authorities such as the University of Montreal, or the Research Council of Canada, and ask them if their policy allows employing people with people that display extreme racial and cultural bigotry.
I am likely to include a video later on, on this issue, that can be included here as well as in an update on the petition itself.
Someone from New Brunswick asked for my opinion of the CBC audio interview with Mr. Len Ritter. The interview was about the issue of the town of Moncton, NB objecting to the practice of spraying glyphosate around the Turtle Creek Reservoir that supplies water to over 100,000 people. The province of New Brunswick overrode the objection and claims that Glyphosate is safe.
I have a lot to say about it all, including:
My opinion of CBC’s neutrality and our responsibility in this regard
The value of science today and the qualification of Len Ritter
Non-disclosure of safety data on glyphosate & possible illegality about its continued use.
The need for glyphosate to be at all sprayed
My views are in the above 20 minute video.
To start with, I do not consider Len Ritter to be qualified to talk on the issue from neutral standpoint. He has made a career of allowing toxic chemicals in our environment – in my judgement.
I do not consider science to be neutral and objective any more, thanks to removal of public funding in science.
Questions directed to Mr. Ritter did not mention the fact that the government has hidden the safety data based on which it approved the use of glyphosate, which is, in my judgment, illegal. And my idea of safety data involves subjecting a group of test animals to the herbicide and their health parameters compared with another identical group subjected to clean food. This comparison, and analysis, constitutes actual safety test – and not someone else’s opinion on if glyphosate is safe or unsafe.
Canada should demand such tests be done specifically for registration of glyphosate in Canada and the promoter should be asked to pay for these tests, but the tests should be done by competent neutral institutions outside of control of either the industry or the government. The cost of this should be borne by whoever wants to register it in Canada.
This is just one area where we have junk approval of glyphosate. Without disclosure of their safety data, its use is illegal in my view.
Why spraying was at all necessary near Turtle Creek was not asked bY CBC.
We have junk science, junk scientists and junk media, covering this issue of life and death importance to the people of Moncton.
I am a Canadian citizen that lived in the US before moving to Canada. I am a food security activists that wrote the book ‘Poison Foods of North America‘ covering high toxicity in Canadian and US grown foods with glyphosate contamination.
I have studied issues with vaccines too and am aware of their possible link to a cascade of diseases for all sorts of reasons including presence of Glyphosate.
Since you are appointed by the US president to be part of a team to study vaccine safety, your involvement in this field has caught the attention of many, including people in Canada.
I have been advised by some folks that attended your recent visit to Ontario in some public event where you were there with Vandana Shiva and others. These attendees were concerned that your opposition to vaccines appeared to be very limited, only on the presence of mercury and not other things that are also considered as much if not more damaging to the people. In particular, about the presence of possible GMO and glyphosate and the extent of damage that these ingredients children that receive these vaccines.
In other words, there was a nagging suspicion in some of their minds that you gave the corporations such as Monsanto a pass, by failing to identify their products as potentially dangerous ingredients in vaccines.
I would like you to clarify your position in this regard.
My second concern is the difficulty in finding your email address, so this question could be asked to you directly, instead of through a public blog or an youtube. It is my view that people involved in serving the public should not hide their emails from the people. I wonder if you have anything to say on this.
I know you are a busy man, so I shall go straight to the point.
I write about Bill C-291 regarding mandatory labelling of GMOs, which was defeated at the parliament. My liberal MP and minister, Ms Carla Qualtrough, voted against it without checking with her constituents which includes me. IN my book, she violated her duty as an MP and therefore prompts me to fulfil my duty of alerting the people that she has corrupted Canadian democracy and deserves to become an unemployed politician come next election.
I have a picture of myself with her, as attached, which I have blown up, in order to turn it into a poster.
I aim to place it on my front lawn, but am also considering placing it in front of her constituency office on some working days, and try to attract public and media attention on how my MP has degraded our democracy.
I write to you to see if any local NDP politician or volunteer is willing to join and assist me. I believe we might have a common interest here, since NDP universally voted in favour or C-291.
I am not a member of NDP or of any other political party, but I take democracy and politics very seriously, and have had a positive view of the NDP.
If you are able to assists, please do.
If this email should be forwarded to someone else, please help.
