Category Archives: General

Glyphosate warning on black bean and chickpea flour

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Black Bean Flour – a note of caution

Some of these charts will end up in the book, though values might change a bit as more of the records are transcribed.

The large volume of tests on foods of “unknown” origin is becoming vexing. I suspect these are mostly local food, both for the sheer number of samples and also similarity of items and readings with Canada.

So, here I clubbed them together under the name Canada+.

The earlier pie chart was about flour made from black beans. It was made with only US samples in it, since there were very few samples from other countries while a lot were from USA alone. It showed only 9% of all black bean flour from USA was glyphosate free, and 91% had some of it.

And now we have here another chart, a column chart, and covers two countries – USA and Canada+, about the same black beans, but sold as is and not as flour. Total sample number was large, around a hundred between the two nations. Canada+ had about twice as many as US samples which sounded right, for samples being collected in Canada.

The data to be converted into visual charts were not the actual readings per se, but the percentage occurrence of event counts, when glyphosate tests satisfied one of the conditions. The conditions were 1) when a measurable amount of glyphosate was detected, 2) when presence of glyphosate was detected but amount could not be measured and 3) when no presence of glyphosate could be detected. These percentage values of the event counts were tabulated for two regions : USA and Canada+. The chart was then made of the figures, to show how much percentage of black beans from each regions was clean and without glyphosate, and how much was dirty.

In the chart, the bottom section was for the measurable percent, label starting with “>0”. This section represents the high value section, where glyphosate content is too high. This chart assumes no glyphosate is good glyphosate and that there is no safe limit.

The next section was called +ve where result proved positive, or glyphosate was detected, but could not be measured. The last, top most category was -ve or negative, representing percentage of sample that had no detectable glyphosate.

As the chart shows – American readings are better for unprocessed black beans. But even here, more than half of the samples had some glyphosate.

For Canada+ the figures were much worse. Seven out of eight samples would contain glyphosate. In my view Canada becomes a highly toxic source, probably the worst one in the world, with regard to glyphosate contamination in black beans, and USA is next in line. I would not buy black beans from either country unless it is organic, and if I cannot find organic or cannot afford it, I shall not eat black beans. As to other nations, I have not seen much test records from them yet, so cannot comment.

The green tick mark and the red cross marks were added for visual guide and clarity, and to drive the point home.

As Anthony Samsel tells me – a picture is worth a thousand words, and I have already type over 500 words to explain it !!

Chickpea story
I prepared another chart about chickpea flour, and was aiming to pen a small and sad story on this looming tragedy.

This is a major primary food source for people of India, primarily many of the of low wage day labourers of India. They take a fistful of chickpea flour, add a spoonful of water, knead it into a thickish paste, add perhaps a sliver of onion, a touch of salt and a few specs of crushed dried red chilli, and roll it in their palms to turn it into a ball, about the size of a tennis ball – and that is their morning brunch with a glass of water – before going to work. As a child, and also as an adult in more recent years, I have often watched them preparing this meal, sitting on a mat on the ground.
Since the word(s) chick pea, chickpea and garbanzo are often intermixed in the records and both chickpea and garbanzo mentioned in the same product description at times, I combined the chickpea with the garbanzo, for this story. Also, a huge number of samples are marked as of “unknown” origin, which I suspect are all local (Canadian), so I joined them with Canada’s own chickpea flour and called it Canada+.
Dropping a few countries with only one or two samples, I had India with 10, Canada+ with 64 and USA with 9. And I made this chart, based on percentages of >0 (high presence), +ve (positive glyphosate presence) and -ve (negative or no detectable presence).
It turns out, percentages of clean chickpea flour (with no detectable glyphosate) are:
India : 40%
Canada+ : 17%
USA : zero

So, flours made from black bean and chickpea/garbanzo, originating from three countries with reasonable sample numbers are suspect, of which North American samples are arguably much worse than the Indian one, but India too is catching up, with less than half its flour remaining uncontaminated. Also, since the CFIA data does not give brand name or more pinpointed source of their samples, there is no realistic way for a consumer to separate the clean chickpea flour made in Canada or imported from India, from the dirty lot. So buying chickpea flour from these countries become a slow motion game of Russian roulette.

This is a developing tragedy of global implication. And no matter what the government or the industry claims, there are no safe levels of glyphosate. Add to that the fact that hiding safety test documents on glyphosate while allowing its  use, may be legally indefensible.

Tony Mitra.

Glyphosate in corn

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Corn has been conspicuous in the CFIA not by its absence, but by absence of glyphosate from it. We understand most of the corn grown on industrial scale in north America as well as elsewhere may be RoundUp ready and laced with glyphosate. And yet, it shows up with relatively low concentration in comparison with some other crops such as say wheat or chick pea.

Corn story, on around 6,000 CFIA test records

While the reason for this deserves to be investigated separately, the CFIA readings as they stand, can also throw light on country specific data as well as data on which kinds of corn based food shows up with how much glyphosate. The table here is based on country profile from some 250 odd tests done on corn based foods out of about 6,000 total tests from CFIA.

The largest block among countries is, again, unknown. I suspect most of these to be of Canadian origin. Anyhow, the general average glyphosate and AMPA count per sample of corn based food tested by CFIA that originated from Canada or “Unknown” are 3. The country at the top of the list is USA, followed by Italy and Mexico.

USA
For USA, glyphosate starts showing up in some corn starch, and a lot of corn based pre-cooked meal, also often described as called cornmeal in one word.

Italy
In the case of Italy, there are many samples of corn based food with no glyphosate. However, their average seems to have been spoiled by a few cases of food items identified as San Zenone Organic Corn pasta, which show over a hundred ppb. So, in the case of this particular food description, even organic is contaminated. Many other kinds of corn based organic and conventional pasta, such as Penne Rigate, gluten free organic corn pasta – are without glyphosate. However, some but not all of the same Penne Rigate, but without the “organic” in it, has glyphosate.

Mexico
Mexico had a near perfect reading of zero glyphosate in foods originating from there. But it has been spoiled by some corn based foods such as taco shells, tortilla and corn chips.

Canada + Unknown
Among corn based foods from “unknown” and Canada,  tortilla, chips, corn flakes and corn bran are among the culprits, having detectable amounts of glyphosate.

Thailand, Philippines & China
Although the sample base is smaller, corn based foods from these countries as tested by CFIA appear to contain no measurable glyphosate or AMPA at all. Out of these, China’s story could be controversial since it is a heavy producer and consumer of glyphosate laced food. We are told that China also grows smaller quantities of organic food and is very careful in ensuring that only organic stuff is exported so that their market and reputation is not spoilt.

Glyphosate Screen Positive
Apart from all above, a large number of glyphosate screen test shows positive (as against negative) for many food types and that includes corn. Most of the positive results come from samples originating from the US, with much lesser numbers from other nations.

You can check a short pdf list of Glyphosate Screen positive items on a related issue – flours made from beans, by clicking here. It also shows the high prevalence of such samples originating from the United States.

Thats it for now.

Some CFIA results need more scrutiny

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Data transcribed from the original CFIA records often shed light on items of great concern, either by their presence or their absence

Food items that are getting more worrisome by their absence from the CFIA test records so far received, and that includes over 7,800 records, are bread, sugar, and cooking oils including Canola.

And then there are food items that are included in the CFIA records, but show test results that are surprising, and points to the need for further investigation.

Above table refers.

Wheat
First item is wheat. As it happens, wheat did not show up in the first couple of thousand test records which are sort of listed chronologically, with the first records being the first batch of samples tested, back in 2015, and the last batches were the most recent tests, going to the end of 2016.

Considering the fact that wheat was mostly being desiccated by glyphosate prior harvest, and therefore is one grain that is expected to have high concentration of the molecule, I was highly surprised by not finding wheat as I began transcribing the data.

However, a few thousand records down the line, wheat started appearing, and in really large number. As expected, glyphosate was present and in much higher concentration than in many other food grains, and especially in comparison with rice.

However, not all foods are clearly marked with the cereal or grain that it is made of. Examples are cookies, biscuits, cake, pasta, pizza and the like. So it became necessary to create additional fields or columns, to describe some of the ingredients the food was made of, in order to properly indicate the probable source of the contamination, if there was glyphosate found in it. Also, the same food was described differently in different samples, including using native non-english names, which had to be translated in these additional columns for clarity and proper grouping.

And so, while glyphosate readings were high based on average, there was now a further need to look through the pile and separate out some primary groups to see which one was too high while another might be low, so that readers and consumers might be able to figure out, even within the Wheat group, which kinds are having more glyphosate than others.

And with the huge test numbers, going over a thousand, there is room for a lot of scrutiny here.

Chick pea and garbanzo beans.
These have been a major surprise as some of their glyphosate readings are through the roof. The table above does not include all the chickpea and most of the garbanzo beans, which are similar to chick pea and at times their names have been interchanged in the product description. In other samples both the terms have been used on the same item.

I came to know from different sources in USA and Canada about the practice of desiccating chickpea and garbanzo crops in USA as well as in Canada is the likely cause of the test results.

This item is linked with a wider group of legumes that fall under the category of lentils. India is a heavy consumer and a large producer of lentils. But its domestic demand is reportedly outstripping its production and India is looking to import more lentils. This may be part of the the reason for industrial scale production of the crops in North America, where the crop is desiccated by glyphosate. According to some scientists, if glyphosate is applied for desiccation, the only real active sink for this systemic chemical to go would be to the seed! Some of the scientists are consulted by farming groups in USA and I am told they would like to pass it on these CFIA findings to the growers for their attention.

Other beans with higher readings
Some of the other beans that will be subjected to greater scrutiny are kidney beans, Mung and white beans. Some have high sampling and test numbers with relatively higher ppb readings, while others have smaller sampling and even higher readings. The main thrust would be to see if one can distinguish these crops from one country to another, and if produce from one place is better than those from another, with regard to glyphosate poisoning. As of now, it looks like certified organic is the only sure way of avoiding much of the glyphosate in this group.

Soy Bean and Corn
This two groups are going to be put to some more scrutiny mainly because their readings are so low. We know of RoundUp ready soy being grown in massive scale in North America, Argentina, Brazil etc. We know of it being used in all kinds of human and animal food, from soy milk to tofu to cattle feed. And yet, the soy based items tested by CFIA is perplexingly devoid of glyphosate. This needs to be investigated. Was the sampling done  selectively, or could the method used for detection be faulty and give rise to false negatives and reduced indication of its presence so that it appears to be safe?

We have learned that once glyphosate gets mis-incorporated into animal proteins, it does not show up in spectrograms in its usual place and this can lead to false negatives and erroneous results. We are also learning that the traditional method of using acidulated methanol as a pre-test preparatory procedure is not useful for preparing a sample for testing glyphosate, because while methanol opens up the proteins and releases its glyphosate, that glyphosate reacts with methanol to form compounds that again evade detection, no matter what kind of detection method is applied, i.e. chromatography or ELISA.

I learned that if better methods are used to release glyphosate from these protein compounds, such as proteolysis, then there has been cases of 60 to 120 fold increase in detection of glyphosate.

If that argument is true for animal proteins, could they also be true for plant proteins, especially with regard to soy and corn ? These are areas that I would like to be further educated by scientists.

Also, some of my future correspondence with the Canadian Government might including finding out what methods the labs used for detection of glyphosate in proteins.

Just like Soy Beans, we also know about RoundUp ready Corn and corn being the base ingredient in a very wide range of foods. CFIA has several hundred tests done on hundreds of corn based foods and yet, the average reading is very low.

This is puzzling and needs more scrutiny.

These are preliminary indication of work to do, as far as information can be gathered, on these issues.

Comments welcome.

Wheat bran the most toxic of all American foods?

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A shocking revelation

I found the glyphosate in wheat bran, as tested by CFIA, is a shocking story that deserves a section of its own. By “American” in the title, I meant north American which includes Canada. Mexico is out of this comment because Mexico makes so clean foods, as CFIA records show, that it does not belong in the Canada-USA grouping of America.

For the first 3,000 or so records from the CFIA, there was no wheat or wheat byproducts such as flour or bread. This was causing me both frustration and alarm, since most of us were very aware that conventional wheat was being  desiccated by glyphosate (RoundUp herbicide) just before harvest.

Bran, according to Wikipedia, is also known as miller’s bran, is the hard outer layers of cereal grain. It consists of the combined aleurone and pericarp. Therefore, wheat bran is essentially the outer hard layer of wheat kernel.

When wheat is processed to produce flour, this layer becomes a byproduct, and is called bran. In the case of processing wheat to make wheat flour, one gets miller’s or wheat bran. It is supposed to be packed with nutrition, and may offer many dietary benefits.

Wheat bran is commonly found in certain cereals, like Raisin Bran or Bran Flakes, as well as bran muffins, which rose to popularity in the 1980s. Wheat bran is beneficial toward providing digestive regularity and ending constipation because it is very high in dietary fiber. Some also claim that foods containing bran provide a feeling of fullness. This claim may be true, since it tends to absorb water and expand in the digestive system.

Wikipedia

The nutritional benefits of wheat bran are perhaps undisputed. For a time, it was even being touted that it might fight cancer. However, a cup (58 g) of wheat bran does offer significant nutritional pluses. One cup of this product in milk was supposed to contain 99% of the US recommended daily allowance (RDA) of fibre, nine grams of protein, and 34% of the RDA for iron. It was also known to be somewhat high in protein, various minerals and vitamin B6, also low in fat, with little cholesterol, or sugar. A magic food.

Wheat Bran is not a safe food! Not any more.

What happened in North America in the recent years, may have a very far reaching and devastating effect on tis product, by way of massive glyphosate contamination.This has likely not yet fully filtered down to the population, nor its implication sufficiently understood.

Why wheat product was not being tested in the first year of CFIA’s drive to test a wide spectrum of foods available to Canadians is a question only CFIA and the Government of Canada can answer. However, I am happy to find wheat beginning to appear in small samples tested in the second year of CFIA’s efforts, from around the summer of 2016. And the results appear to be shocking.

The table above refers. It has only a few of the most recent wheat bran items transcribed and not the entire lot. But all of them show bad readings and I shall be reporting on them all when I am done transcribing all the data. But these few figures are a good example of what the matter is with wheat in general and wheat bran in particular.

Most of these samples showed up with high measurable amounts of glyphosate and its first metabolite AMPA which is equally nasty. These two figures have been added up in this table to show a combined concentration of glyphosate and AMPA for each sample of wheat bran. Usually the readings show very high levels of glyphosate accompanied by a very small number for AMPA.

We know wheat is heavily desiccated with glyphosate. Now, I wonder if most that that glyphosate, applied just before harvesting, actually accumulates into the wheat bran? Could it be that wheat bran is the primary depository for glyphosate and AMPA? If that is true for wheat, could it also be true for all other grains that are desiccated with glyphosate and what have an identifiable “bran” ?

Guess I shall be looking for these answers elsewhere, to keep me busy.

Meanwhile the table above answers many questions and raises just as many more puzzles and questions. For example, there are wheat bran samples with over 4,000 ppb GLY+AMPA count that are of “unknown” origin. This “unknown” category has been a major irritant for me. I suspect that most of these unmarked food grains are of local (Canadian) grown or from USA. Since both USA and Canada try to protect their own agricultural produce from undue free competition from others, usually transportation of wheat across the border is not permitted by either country, since each of them produce the crop and want to protect its market. That is one reason I suspect most of the “unknown” foods are Canadian, unless the type is something that cannot not grow or is not cultivated in Canada.

Next, most of these samples with high glyphosate content is without any kind of identification mark, such as brand name of the product, or where it was grown or which store or farmer it was collected from. Therefore, it gets nearly impossible for an average consumer to figure out what to buy and what to avoid. This absence of clear identification of a potentially poisonous food item makes the entire class – i.e. wheat bran, a poison pill for me and I am going to avoid it like the plague.

This also proves that there is perhaps a need for grassroots people’s movement to get their local municipalities to start testing a few food items grown locally and sold in local stores, for glyphosate content, every month and making all results public, including brand names and source of the sample. Folks should insist, for example, that the first few food items their municipality tests in the first month should be wheat products such as wheat grains, wheat bran, and bread, that are available in local food stores, and make all results public. Those interested might check a related petition and effort at a movement on this front.

Then there is the question of allowable minimum residue limit (MRL) for glyphosate in wheat bran. From the above table, and going back to the raw data, it gets quite obvious that 4,610 ppb of glyphosate or 28 ppb AMPA is not a violation, but 6630 ppb of glyphosate and 159 ppb of AMPA is a violation. Therefore, the existing MRL lies between 4610 and 6630 ppb for glyphosate in wheat bran, and between 28 and 159 ppb of AMPA in wheat bran.

This observation raises even more questions. First, why is the MRL so low in AMPA and so high in glyphosate? Does the Government have proof that somehow glyphosate is a lot less harmful to us than its first degrading compound, AMPA? From what I hear, there is no evidence that glyphosate is a lot safer in comparison with AMPA and there may not be any provable justification for glyphosate’s MRL to be so much higher than AMPA’s.

Or could it be that the allowable MRL is neither specific to glyphosate nor to AMPA, but the total of both, as is actually shown on the above table? I need to find these answers.

As it is, Health Canada has till date not disclosed the safety test data and documents based on which it is supposed to have approved the use of Glyphosate in Canadian agriculture. My understanding of the law is that it may be illegal to release a product, such as glyphosate, for use in Canada, without disclosing its safety test report and raw data.

I have multiple petitions and ongoing struggles with the Canadian government, spanning two administrations, Harper’s and Trudeau’s, for Health Canada to make public all safety test records and data based on which it approved glyphosate’s use. The government does not deny one’s right to see such document, and yet keep dragging its feet on it. It has been dragging feet for thirty years and counting.
Petition 1
Petition 2 : e-413

Meanwhile, multiple “Access To Information” appeals to various wings of the government for disclosure or records of our foods tested for glyphosate has finally resulted in some success, in me getting over 7,000 records of foods tested by CFIA since 2015. I have so far transcribed only about half of it, and am still checking for errors and typo etc. I intend to publish an e-book of my findings and concerns regarding glyphosate in our food, for which the initial work has started.

Going back to the table above, what happens when the result is found to be in violation? Common sense tells me the product should be taken off the shelves and banned. Also, the public should be notified about it so they can avoid buying it, or return what they already have bought, and claim a refund. Also, folks that have already consumed some of it, should be advised what they need to look out for medically and how to detoxify themselves.

Anybody remembers such as incidence and a warning on wheat bran’s glyphosate content being too high?

There is another issue here. I can see that the allowable MRL is not fixed for all foods. It is argued that the MRL for foods were a lot lower a decade or two ago, and are being constantly raised. Based on what evidence? Has the public been shown this evidence?

The suspicion is, the MRLs are being raised simply because existing limits have already been crossed, so the safe limits are being raised above whatever the current levels turn out to be, so that all foods are still declared safe – never mind the proof and never mind showing such proof to the people.

Once my work in transcribing all the data is done, and I have listed out my range of unanswered questions, I shall be taking these up with the Canadian Government agin. it is a never ending process and highly frustrating since the Government attempts to hide rather than be transparent, o food safety issues, in my experience.

This blog is a kind of space holder for some of the emerging information. I am now convinced, that I myself shall avoid any food that has wheat bran mentioned, like the plague, unless it is certified organic and unless I find CFIA test results of Canadian or US produced wheat bran that is certified organic.

Comments welcome.

Tale of two lentils – Canadian and Indian

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Hello folks.

Today I bring to you another fifteen minutes of rant – me talking to myself in a video, about glyphosate poisoning of food, as in north America, specifically from a Canadian’s perspective.

We are supposed to have monthly brainstorming meetings, to appraise each other of what is going on, and to get folk’s opinion on what to do about it all. Each brings his or her own perspective and view point, and we search for a path out of this topic jungle.

The first of these meetings has not yet happened, as Richard Miller is organizing it. Meanwhile, I could not wait and had to come out with his blog and a fifteen minute video – about lentil, as produced in two countries – Canada and India.

This blog and update is prepared after going through the first 3,000 records entered by CFIA, covering almost whole of year 2015. It also reflects my frustration and bafflement as well as the difficulty in dealing with different entries of similar foods using different names or spellings, which makes it harder for the software to analyze the data. There is a famous saying about computerization – garbage in, garbage out. So I had to consider creating an extra column to the side and re-entering some of the sample identifications using more descriptive and standardized terms, which the computer can then pick up and analyze or compare. But doing that for thousands of records is backbreaking, tiring and frustrating.

Frustration also from the fact that I have not found a single regular wheat item or its derivatives such as flour or bread, in the first 3,000 records. I am extremely puzzled and frustrated about it.

But, in absence of any wheat item in the first 3,000 records, the next major food groups turns out to be rice and lentils. Rice turns out to be reasonably clean of glyphosate, though even here, Canadian Rice fair poorly against most others.

But this blog and video is about lentils, which has reasonably high glyphosate content, especially if it is grown in Canada. Samples from United States has not been considered for this graph and video. Perhaps it will be included for comparative study later on. Also, a large group of food samples that contain lentils are marked “unknown”. I might analyze them as described, i.e. “unknown”, which may not be too helpful, but I cannot help that. I suspect most of the unknown samples are of Canadian origin, but cannot prove it.

Readers may have to reach a decision on them by themselves, for now.

Anyhow, the tale of two lentils is as follows:
Canadian lentils have almost 90% samples containing glyphosate, and average content is 282 ppb.
Indian lentils have 40% samples with glyphosate, and average level is 25 ppb.

Tale of two lentils

Demonetization – another set of views received from India.

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Prime Minister Modi

I asked three persons in India to give their view of what is going on.. and the response has been varied. One person is a mom and pop kind of businessman in a small town. The other is a media person. The third is a young educated entrepreneur engaged in organic type chemical free farming in rural are and also working with a some local farmers trying to wean them away from chemicals and patented seeds, in a small way.

One of them thought the ruling party did it to win a local election in a populous state, which is now due, among other things. Although a harassment, and likely to cause a sort of recession temporarily in the economy, he did not think this was going to greatly hurt India.. just another example of the rich and powerful politicians doing stupid things.

The newspaper guy thought this is pushed mostly by a foreign investor-banking cabal trying to get their hands on all the small wealth belonging to rural india, etc. In this, he was perhaps pushing the general view from news media, criticizing Modi for some hidden agenda.

But the third person had a different view, and appeared to be have enough details observed, to present a non-mainstream opinion about it all. This is the view that impressed me most, because of the details her had observed, or heard from folks.

Apparently, a large swath of the commercial media is against Modi’s demonetization. However, just like the mainstream media in the west misread ground sentiment about Trump, especially in rural USA, apparently the media is misreading ground sentiment in rural India and even in urban India, about the demonetization effort.

Yes, there are long lines of folks trying to change their money. However, there has not been a single riot in protest, in a country where riots happen at the drop of a hat, and are kept out of media as far as possible. Here, some of the media has been caught on cell phone camera urging folks to show their disappointment in more forceful manner, and asking why they are not angry and protesting it etc – and in almost all cases, the people in the line have shooed these media people away.

In other words, much of the media, not all, are carrying their own agenda. Therefore a similarity with the western neoliberal Hillary-Obama-Warmongering support while pretending to be pro-poor pro-immigrant etc – is interesting.

The main reason people are generally supporting it, is their hope/belief that this will take away that part of the black money in circulation, which promotes and supports the never-ending cycle of corruption through bribery in their daily life. Partially educated common men believe, and perhaps with justification, that this babugiri (bureaucratic corruption) and demand for bribe at every walk of life is the main reason India has not been able to shake off its shackle of poverty and misery in three generation of independence.

This is why a policeman, who pays several lakh or even crore rupee to get a job as a policeman, by borrowing it, a bribe that ended up in the big boss or even the local politician’s pocket, has to be utterly corrupt as a policeman to be able to pay back in his working life. This is just one example of how bribery is affecting every aspect of society. It is this reason why majority of folks facing harassment due cash crunch right now, are still supporting it.

Some small store-wallah are lamenting that their business this month will suffer at least a 20% slow down, and yet are supporting the idea for the hope that bribery will reduce if not be eradicated.

Most of these folks know that taking out some of the black money from the heartland is just one step – many many more need to be taken to eradicate this problem – and it remains to be seen if Modi is up to it, or is in bed with the mega industrialists and avoids going after them for theft of national assets, where proof is available, or where proof is being hidden due to the very corruption we are talking about.

Some of the folks most affected by this sudden demonetization, apart from the hassle the common man faces now to get their old currency deposited and / or converted are:

  • Politicians in general
  • Underground money transfer (hawala) dealers
  • Real estate mafia
  • Dealer of counterfeit currency
  • Terrorist organizations that use this fake money
  • Illegal betting on sports
  • Privatized schools/colleges that demand huge bribes to admit students
  • Fake charity funds and Ponzi schemes.
  • Rich agricultural land owners
  • Film Industry

Common man on the street largely believe, whether true or not, that Modi did not discuss this plan even within his own party of elected MPs, and that is how many of his own party folks are caught wrong footed. He is “believed” to have kept this close to his heart, with a handful of people.

Most of them believe that the media should stop witch hunting Modi on this issue and wait to see what happens, and do some more in depth investigation, especially trying to judge the feelings of the people in the heartland instead of using their own beliefs and passing them as news.

There is apparently a new kind of money laundering going on – the rich are giving 50,000 to each poor villager, to go to bank and deposit, which would escape taxation. Then, when things have settled down, they can keep 10,000 and return the remaining 40K to the rich guy. Officials are finding it nearly impossible to curtail this kind of laundering, but are keeping a tab, where possible.

Also, there are some corners of India which is near tax free due to be backward regions etc etc. North East India has some such pockets, where people can deposit large sumps of money at the bank and convert them in due course to smaller denominations or new currency notes without tax department wanting to apply tax on it. As a result, some charter planes from rich corners of India have been caught, carrying plane load of cash to these regions, for laundering. The travel records of these planes seem to reveal that there already have been dozens of such delivery flights already concluded.

So there is a lot going on that is not reported in the media.

Lastly, the long lines apparently are coming to an end.

This is what I so far learned, apart from what the general media comes out with.

Now, appreciate discussion on it. I would not like being hounded out and my own character being questioned by Facebook liberals for daring to present another view of this critical issue.

Modi may not be pure as driven snow – but there are some in India that are not comparing him with Hitler, but instead comparing him with Lee Kuan Yew’s thirty year battle to clean up corruption from Singapore society, even if his methods were heavy handed.

I’d wait for a bit to see how the chips fall, and if this is indeed an anti-people anti-poor policy to help big banks profit out of little guys earnings, or if it is an effort to restrict runaway corruption in daily life by unscrupulous middle men, or if this is a mixed bag.

How to build a grassroots movement against Glyphosate

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We have come a long way, in food security activism, and learning to focus on glyphosate more than on GMO, and on resisting its use anywhere and not just in agriculture and not just with GM crops. However, this raised awareness has not yet translated into success that can be measured on the ground – in amount of glyphosate used year upon year, in Canada, USA, or most any other country, exceptions aside.

And my own journey, in the last four years, have ebbed and flowed, and gradually separated into smaller paths and into new valleys and landscapes, and in some sense gotten progressively lonelier, as I learned to refocus specifically on Glyphosate in particular, and herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, insecticides, or biocides in general.

And same time, I have been enormously enriched by the good fortune or knowing some of the leading scientists that are involved in exposing the massive fraud in the scientific world about the so called “safety” of using glyphosate in agriculture, or in forestry. These scientists include but are not restricted to – Anthony Samsel, Stephanie Seneff, Don Huber, Judy Hoy, all from the US, and also Thierry Vrain, André Comeau and Shiv Chopra, from Canada.

I was also fortunate to have had the opportunity to go on a cross Canada talk tour with scientists such as Shiv Chopra and Thierry Vrain, telling folks about the dangers of GMO, Pesticides, Glyphosate and the hijacking of science by the industry. Being an activist and not a politically correct scientist, I pressed my views of what I thought about this bastardized science and its paddlers in the following 5 minute impromptu video.

Somewhere down the line I learned that resisting GMO alone was not enough – raising awareness alone was also not enough. I learned that I needed to be an activist. To me, the key element of activism is the word “act” or “action”. I needed to do something, and not just talk about it.

Some of my first batch of action was to open official dialog with our Canadian Federal as well as British Columbian provincial government, on Access To Information (ATI) or Freedom Of Information (FOI) platforms, asking our governments to divulge, or give me, hitherto unknown or hidden information relating to Glyphosate. These have so far been largely unsuccessful or partially successful. A citizen has a right to know information on hidden safety test documents on glyphosate, or the results of analysis done on glyphosate concentration in local food, or information on how much of glyphosate has been used over forests year upon year etc. Our Governments do not deny that right, and yet places so many obstacles in our path that most lose heart and interest.

Then started my effort in many petitions involving glyphosate. Two of them are active on change.org. These are:

1. For the Canadian Government to disclose all hitherto hidden documents on safety tests done on glyphosate, based on which Health Canada approved its use in agriculture.

2. A grassroots level petition, asking people across Canada and USA, as well as wider fiend, to ask their local municipalities, state and provincial governments, to start testing locally grown and locally sold food, every month, for glyphosate content and to make all results public.

3. A Government of Canada, House of Commons platform e-petition, asking Canadian Members of Parliament to make the Government disclose to the people, hitherto out of bounds safety test documents on glyphosate, based on which Health Canada has approved its use in agriculture. This petition can only be signed by legal residents and citizens of Canada. The closing date on this petition is November 22. So if you have not already signed it, please consider doing so.

Apart from petitions, I have lately been thinking about and been involved in creation of a low level grassroots movement, across Canada and USA to start with, with the above item 2, as a starting point – where increasing number of people begin to get involved in directly pushing the lowest level of their government, in start pushing back at Glyphosate. The effort I thought was a suitable one for a number of reasons, but mainly, it avoids asking folks to pay for the tests themselves, it recognizes that unlike in the US< Canadians did not have suitable labs to test Glyphosate, but labs are now available. It bypasses the muddy path of engaging in endless scientific debate on if glyphosate is safe or not. It directly addresses people concern and suspicion about Glyphosate, and allows them to have a tool by which they could start filtering out their food, should they so like, based on test results. This also blocks the local government’s penchant to sit on the fence and pass the buck to the Federal Government.

But popularizing this has not been easy. But things are slowly moving along. The petition itself has over 800 signatures in two weeks. I am confident it would grow, and pressure will begin to mount on various local governments in Canada and USA.

A few brainstorming sessions have been completed or contemplated. One of them is covered in a short video with Robin Wesman of the East Kooetnays, below.

And then there has been more of this brainstorming with Richard Miller of Aldergrove, BC. This six minute video below has gone around since US scientist Stephanie Seneff popularized it on Facebook yesterday as a good idea.

That brings me to the next items – a meeting in Seattle, WA, planned tomorrow, Saturday the 19th of November 2016. Friends from Seattle-Tacoma area are coming to air out the idea. Venue:
Tony’s Coffee House. No, I do not own it.
Address: 1101 Harris Ave, Bellingham, WA 98225, USA.
Time: Noon
Anybody interested to join – contact me at tony.mitra@gmail.com or 1(604)6497535

 

Poisoning of the Acadian Peninsula

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Introducing Amedee Boucher – resisting wholesale poisoning of the beautiful Acadian Peninsula in New Brunswick, east coast of Canada.

A lone warrior from Acadian Peninsula in New Brunswick, Canada, trying to resist the effort of industries to clear cut all the forests out, and spraying the heck out of the land with all kinds of pesticides and herbicides, destroying the land, and the living flora and fauna, presumably to turn the place into huge blueberry or similar farm, to grow toxic fruits to export of China or someplace.

French speaking native born or the Acadian peninsula, he has started a one-man effort to fight this destruction of north eastern New Brunswick by clear cutting and a pesticide avalanche. He has gone door to door, collecting signatures and has gotten a huge support, given the low population density of the area.

He is scheduled to speak to the media tomorrow, and hand over all those signatures to a local MLA from the Green Party. The ruling Liberal party members declined to attend his talk to the media today.

In his mid-sixties and retired, this effort to resist wholesale poisoning and deforestation of the land has been his full time 24-7 job for quite a while – a true lone warrior with a lion’s heart.

Amedee had earlier once spoken with me over the phone alone with another friend, and today he contacted me again, an updated me on the sorry tale of the Acadian peninsula. The region is already most affected with pesticides and has a higher rate of cancer and other diseases.

Amedee will contact me again in a few days after his talk with the media and handing over the material to the Green Party MLA, with a proper short statement in audio and in writing, in French and in English, for the Canadian people to learn first hand how that beautiful corner of Canada is being poisoned, and how folks might contact him and join hands in protesting this unfortunate anti-nature agenda.

Amedee does not have an on-line petition nor a web presence as of now. He may still be contacted by email.

You can listen to our 14 minute talk of today by clicking the play button below.
This is a wake up call, for Canada.

 Tony.Mitra

Are US warmongering and illegal immigration joined at the hip?

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Many articles of the mainstream are covering Donal Trump’s to-do list.

I have read through quite a few of them, and decided to write this blog covering something that I wished the mainstream would address. There are mainly two items of importance here – one is what all these “Trump Special” articles avoids mentioning, and another, the the most visible and incessantly discussed one – illegal immigrantion.

1) What the mainstream media seems to consciously and deliberately sidesteps and keeps out of public view – is US Warmongering. There is in my view no other topic, other than climate change and the sixth mass extinction now ongoing, that is more important and relevant, not just to the American society, its politics, culture, and its economics, but to the whole planet. Trump has mentioned, whether he means it or not – a wish to de-escalae and step back from constant militarism and doctrine of a perpetual war. I find it mind-boggling, that Washington Post or other mainstream media do not even mention it.

The issue of climate change, the age of anthropocene and the impending catastrophe to the living planet is not part of this blog, but shall cover it in just three sentences. a) Trump says he does not believe in climate change. b) The democrats, the liberal media and the rest of the “aware” population makes a show of being aware of it (they are not), but are as much in denial of truth as Trump, and are prepared to do absolutely nothing about it except provide lip service, tokenism and hypocrisy. The planet is going to cook itself whether the deniers of the pretenders have sway.

2) The second, and often the most visible one, is about deporting illegal immigrants that have a criminal record. There has been a hysteria raised against Trump as a racist, xenophobic and what not, because he said he would erect a wall to stop further illegal immigration, and would deport all that are undocumented and same time committed certain crimes in the US.

Just think of it – almost every nation that I know, has some sort of a system that promotes restricted legal immigration (some do not even allow that), and prevents within its means any illegal immigration. I am yet to see any major country that promotes a fully open border for outsiders to come and take jobs from locals, and also free to commit crime without threat of deportation.

Many many countries erect walls to keep unwanted people from coming in. The most classic case of inhuman activity might be in occupied Palestine, where Israel erected walls so locals themselves cannot freely move in their own country, so that the stolen land can be freely used by Israeli citizens without the bother of having to see disgruntled Palestinians.

India has erected walls and tall fences and guard posts along border with Pakistan and Bangladesh, to keep illegal immigrants and potential terrorists from entering. Many countries do that.

But this article essentially tries to claim that the US economy depends on illegal immigration. This is really startling.

This may be a tacit acceptance of the corporate culture that prefers to employ undocumented workers who will accept lower wages and demand less support than local citizens would. Therefore, products and services can be cheaper with illegal immigrants even if that results in unemployment for the locals.

Not just that. If the nation stopped this practice, and the jobs went back to locals, the cost is likely to rise and perhaps make things even more difficult to run.

There is one related issue here that is kept hidden. This illegal employment and suppression of wages should not be necessary for the “richest” country on the planet. So where is the money going, if locals cannot even be hired with respectable wages?

The money is going to feed this perpetual war machine, taking half of all US tax money.

That is why the war mongering cannot be mentioned, and that is why the US economy has gotten used to hiring illegal immigrants at dirt poor wages at the expense of local and legal citizens.

I may not be a Nobel prize winning economist – but in absence of any mainstream covering these issues – I do what best I can, thinking this trough and trying to make sense.

And Trump had hinted at these, though not with bullet points. I do not fault Trump for it, because nobody else – not even Bernie Sanders seem to have the necessary number of family jewels to spell this out.

Tony Mitra
tony.mitra@gmail.com

Should EPA be shut down by Trump?

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The article above wonders if Trump could be dismantling the EPA, based on talks of him employing a Reagan era official, Anne Grouch Buford, who reportedly wanted to shut down the EPA.

The question is raised withe background of fossil fuel industry against green energy. The EPA, it is supposed here, were considered to be an obstacle to expansion of the oil and coal industry.

I however, have a wholly different take on the EPA. That comes from my concern relating to herbicides approved by the EPA for use in agriculture in general, and approval of glyphosate in particuler. EPA is the institution that has approved all the harmful pesticides and herbicides in agriculture while still hiding their safety test documents from the people.

It is the institution that exerts its influence on other nations to follow suit. I for one am sick of hearing our own ministry of health bragging about ‘working closely’ with US-EPA.

I have made a podcast with recently retired EPA scientist Vallianatos who describes EPA to be so corrupt that it cannot be cleaned up and should be completely shut down and something else rebuilt in its place. He wrote a book on this – Poison Spring.

I do not know what it does with regard to the environment, but one thing I do know, is that the Environment Protection Agency does everything BUT protect the environment.

And EPA is polluting not just USA, but by extension the rest of the world as well.

Readers might consider getting hold of this book and read it. I have.

You can hear Dr. Vallianatos here: