Category Archives: Grassroots movement

GLOBAL SOUTH REWRITING THE BOOK

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We are living in an unbelievable time of change. It may be impossible to grasp all of it by anybody living on earth currently, because so much of it is happening in so many different levels in so many places simultaneously. The collective outcome is likely to change the way we live, think and exist, in so many profound way. And all this is happening so fast that it can make your head spin.

We all know, unless one is brain dead, that the Ukraine conflict is an extremely small tip of an extremely large iceberg, and that too much of the details are underwater and invisible.

A love letter from Zuckerberg

Take Facebook for example. It has only recently helped me understand the extent to which globalist’s control of social media can help manufacturing or shape public opinion. Facebook is an example par excellence. Most people do not even know that half the worlds population are Facebook members. If you account for the fact that the other half could be children, too old to care, or folks that aer poor do not have internet, then you can guess that nearly 100% of the connected mankind of the entire planet are Facebook members. Now, consider that Facebook unilaterally and illegally applies extra-ordinary levels of control and censorship on your use of certain opinions relating to certain globalist programs, such as on Covid19 pandemic or vaccine, for example. This control, on 100% of the internet connected humanity of the world, helps controlling how the world perceives as public opinion, which has been illegally manipulated to favour whichever God Zuckerberg prays to. You have been suckered. This may help you to begin to understand, if you are capable of analysing anything independently, how you are being suckered, not as a prank, but on issues that can make or break the current state of humanity.

This is one reason I am constantly moving away from Fake-book and am determined to eventually leave behind all my thousands and thousands of friends, followers and other contacts here. Even half the population of the planet is not good enough for me to stay in a cage where I cannot speak what I consider to be of a life-and-death importance for mankind. I am not a messiah, but I was born free and wish to die free.

Zuckerberg

Anyway, enough of Zukerberg and his hold on Facebook, and Instagram as well as WhatsApp through Meta.

I write this particular piece as a blog to get back into the habit of promoting my blog. But the world is changing so fast, that writing a blog is for the freaks. Everybody talks into a phone camera and shares it on tiktok or instagram for their half a second of passing fame. That is what is trending. Writing anything in a blog is prehistoric.

The thing is, I am going to be 73 years old in a few months. I myself will be compared to the dinosaurs by the new generation, which might be generation X,Y,Z or perhaps new style non-latin scripts such as µ, ß,å, ≈, ≥ etc. But, I am still for writing, though even a saurid like myself have transitioned from writing by hand into a diary, to typing on a typewriter, to punching keys on a computer. I made a stop there and have not transitioned to two finger tying on a smart phone. Even a saurid can dra a line.

And that is not all. I am opinionated and do not shy away from saying what I feel, even in english, complete with my Indian accent, which I refuse to let go. I was born with it and grew up in it. I have made near 1000 videos, half of them on YouTube before I started boycotting it for the same reason I am slowply boycotting Facebook – they too censor public opinion and freedom of speech that I do not agree with, and pretty much for the same reason – blocking all dessenting voice on Covid19 and its vaccines. WHO is the God. Bill Gates is the prophet. And anybody that disagrees will be banished from YouTube. Hence, my polite address to Youtube would be – F*CK YOU.

And so, I have never ever been as busy as I am these days, trying to catch up with the fast changing world while staying away from all main stream and most of the privately controlled social media. Searchign for honest news has gotten harder than finding God. Yes, we are living in an incredibly unexplainable phase on the planetary history in the age of Anthropocene. If you never heard of the age of Anthropocene, I suggest you research it. It will be a very relevant education on the current geological time.

Pepe Escobar

Pepe Escobar

It is time people like myself begin to forget people like Zuckerberg and focus more on people like Pepe Escobar. Who is this man? Well, yes, he is a man. You gotta be careful about gender in this newfound western discovery of the cancel culture. First, there was Copernicus who found that the earth is far from being the centre of the universe. And then came the neocons, the neolibs and the neo-whatever to invent the cancel culture. Whatever you thought of anything, is wrong. A man is not a man, a woman not a woman, and we all need to hate ourselves for being born whichever way we were born.

Back to Pepe. He is a man, period. From his name, you might guess that he was nor born in any Anglo-Saxon family and perhaps belongs to the Hispanic diaspora. Actually, Spanish is not his mother tongue, I suspect. But Portuguese might be, since he was born in Brasil.

Pepe Escobar is a reporter and columnist. He has been an editor-at-large at Asia Times and an independent geopolitical analyst focused on Eurasia. For over 40 years, he has lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in various places across the planet such as London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore and Bangkok. Perhaps the only continents he has not lived in for work are Latin America, Africa, and Antarctica.

He is the author of countless books; his latest one is Raging Twenties, with subtitles stating – “Great Power Politics Meets Techno-Feudalism”. You get the picture?

Well, Pepe recently wrote an article in the Cradle. If you have no idea who or what is “Cradle” – it  describes itself as “The Cradle is a journalist-driven media platform that provides in depth coverage and analysis of West Asian geopolitics from within the region.”

Comprende ? Pepe seems to be gravitating towards the non-west, or dare I say – Global South?

Anyhow, the article that Pepe wrote recently, in the heat of the Ukraine battle, is titled: Global South: Gold-backed currencies to replace the US dollar.

The article starts with:

Let’s start with three interconnected multipolar-driven facts.

First: One of the key take aways from the World Economic Forum annual shindig in Davos, Switzerland is when Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan, on a panel on “Saudi Arabia’s Transformation,” made it clear that Riyadh “will consider trading in currencies other than the US dollar.”

Second: The Central Banks of Iran and Russia are studying the adoption of a “stable coin” for foreign trade settlements, replacing the US dollar, with the ruble and the rial. The crypto crowd is already up in arms, mulling the pros and cons of a gold-backed central bank digital currency (CBDC) for trade that will be in fact impervious to the weaponized US dollar.

Third: South Africa holds this year’s rotating BRICS presidency. And this year will mark the start of BRICS+ expansion, with candidates ranging from Algeria, Iran and Argentina to Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Author – Tony Mitra

This is huge and may be difficult to comprehend properly by the current generation of people. The Petrodollar dependence in global trade is fifty years old. Very few people even remember how the world was when currencies used to be linked to gold or other commodities. Fiat currency, printed out of thin air, or created out of the click of a mouse is the norm today. Even that mouse has disappeared, replace by a button or a touch pad. The very meaning of money, or wealth, or savings, have become incredibly complex to properly understand. But here and now, the global South is beginning to do something about it.

Try to understand, and comprehend the enormity of the decision, if you can.

The very of financial system behind the global economy and commerce, are going to change, significantly. Its  heart is being taken out and replaced. And the donor is not from the west. There is almost zero western input into this work. The western economic henchmen are little more than curious onlookers that are not invited to join the party. If you do not believe this is big, then you and I have different interpretation of “big”.

Try to grasp the enormity of it, and see if you can connect any dots with the current Ukraine conflict? One of the two adversaries, Russia is with the Global South, while the other, NATO is not. Also, the core that triggered all this, and whose work started long before the Russian soldiers walked into Ukraine, is BRICS, and the person that made BRICS happen, is Putin, or Russia. It started with RIC – Russia India China. Then Brasil and South Africa joined up and made it BRICS. Then many more want to enter, so it is now called BRICS+. But it was Putin & Russia, that made it happen. And the same Russia, is one of the warring parties in the current proxy war.

Connect the dots?

India: here is another country that is mostly out of spotlight, but I believe, is playing a major and ground breaking role. More on this later, perhaps. Now is not the time to talk about India. Meanwhile consider just the following paragraph also penned by Pepe in that article:

India’s purchases of Russian crude have increased year-by-year by a whopping factor of 33. India is the world’s third largest importer of oil; in December, it received 1.2 million barrels from Russia, which for several months now is positioned ahead of Iraq and Saudi Arabia as Delhi’s top supplier.

3300% jump in oil import from Russia in a single year, concurrent with the West’s imposition of total sanction agaisnt Russia. Now remember, India is among the most populous nation on earth, at par with China, having 1.4 billion people, and are on a fast rising economic path, among the fastest in the world, often ahead of the Chinese growth rate. India started a generation late into the sprint to the top, and is significantly behind the Chinese GDP as of now but threatening to catch up with both USA and China is a decade or two, leaving the rest of the world very far behind. Thsi is assuming that USA retains its economic might – which I now suspect might be impossible, and USA is eventually following Europe, into economic irrelevance. We shall see, though I myself will not be around, unless I can live past a hundred.

Anyhow, the current growth in India and also China means – a huge swath of human population are going to be as individually rich as the rest of the west. And when you multiply this with the population to measure the national wealth, these nations may have three, four, or ten times the economic clout of the combined west. China and India by themselves are about half the world population. Therefore, if people of these two nations become, man for man, as rich as Americans, this means these two countries together will have several times more economic clout than the rest of the world put together. And then you start adding all the other emerging economies of the non-west. Try to draw the picture of the world a generation from now.

This rest of the non-west is already an economic power block that is not with the west regardig Ukraine. This block, with their own rise in economies and vast resource base, along with Russia the riches resource base on earth, plus China and India are forming this new BRICS+ arrangement wanting to get away from Petrodollar dominance. So – where is the world heading?

Sit down, have a coffee and think about it. This is not a hypothetical mid-summer night’s dream. This is real, this is happening right now and at a breakneck speed.

Now let us go back to Pepe. How did the term R5+ come up instead of BRICS+. Well, we are here talking about currencies and not nations. The “R” comes from an intriguing side note. The currencies of the current BRICS nations all start with R – Real, Ruble, Rupee, Remnimbi, Rand. Thus – R5. And R5+ simply means other currencies of the member state too.

As it happens in the emerging market nations, these currencies, especially Remnembi, Rupee and Ruble are the most liquid.

Then comes two names that you might consider following up, who add value to the depolarisation effort of the Global South – Zoltan Pozsar and Sergey Glazyev. The first is an American and the second is a Russian.

Zoltan Pozsar is the American born Global Head of Short- Term Interest Rate Strategy department of Credit Suisse. And Credit Suisse Group AG is a global investment bank and financial services firm founded and based in Switzerland. Also, he formerly was in the IMF, US Department of Treasury, and New York Federal Reserve.

Zoltar wrote two recent articles that have become highly controversial and disliked by the western world – “War and Commodity Encumbrance”, and “War and Currency Statecraft” where he writes about how the war in Ukraine is creating new financial channels.

Zoltan Pozsar

He is also a committed supporter of Bretton Woods III – an idea that has been getting enormous traction among the Fed-skeptical crowd. If you do not know what Bretton Woods is, it may be time that you brush up a bit. The Bretton Woods is a system of monetary management that established the rules for commercial and financial relations among the United States, Canada, Western European countries, Australia, and Japan after the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement. Bretton Woods III is just a name given to a recent reincarnation of it, proposed by, yes, Zoltar Pozsar, based on a commodity based currency – something that the Global South is proposing and working on, in order to get away from the US dominated Petrodollar and the US hegemony promoting banking systems. What the inner goals of Bretton Woods III is, and if it supports a backdoor takeover by the west,like a trojan horse, or a genuine wish to join the new club as an equal member,  I do not know, since I am just a retired marine engineer and not an pretend economic expert.

Sergey Glazyev

Meanwhile the Russian counter part, Sergey Glazyev is the Minister of the Eurasia Economic Commission (EAEU). Yes, there is an Eurasian Economic Commission and yes, there is a Minister, and that person is Russian at the moment.

But who is Sergey Glazyev? Well, for a start – he was born in 1961, (11 years younger than me), but in a very interesting place – Zaporozhye. Yes, the same place where Russia is right now battling Ukraine in the region known as DPR, or Donetsk People’s Republic, in Donbas, in eastern Ukraine. That’s right.

But that is not all.

In 1983, he graduated from Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov, majoring in Economic Cybernetics. This man is also a Russian politician and economist, member of the National Financial Council of the Bank of Russia, and, since 2008, a full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Glazyev was minister of Foreign Economic Relations in Boris Yeltsin’s cabinet from 1992 to 1993, a member of the State Duma from 1993 to 2007, one of the leaders of the electoral block Rodina from 2003 to 2004, a candidate for the Presidency of the Russian Federation in 2004, and advisor to the president of the Russian Federation on regional economic integration from 2012 to 2019. As of 2021, he is the Commissioner for Integration and Macroeconomics within the Eurasian Economic Commission, the executive body of the Eurasian Economic Union. That is who he is.

Collapse of the dollar – BRICS in focus?

But it is difficult to write about connecting the dots on the fast moving geopolitical chess board without mentioining a bit more of the dedollarisation phenomenon. An impending collapse of the US dollar as the world reserve currency and the currency that all developped and developing nation must accumulate in ever larger quantity, in order to trade and purchase ever increasing demand for oil – is a near certainty, and a serious contributory reason for the US beginning to lose sleep over it.

Understanding it is equally challenging since it requires the reader to reject long held notions about many things economical, such as fiat currency, the root of the American wealth, and continuous global wars mostly instigated by the US, al because of the never emptying well of dollars and more dollats printed out of this air for benefit of the US but picked up by everybody else. But that gravy train is about to derail itself as an immovable object is noted on its track – BRICS.

An ever growing block of nations, cmprising of more than perhaps 3/4th of mankind, does not like the US hegemonic hold on the globe based on its dollarised economy. These people want freedom from US and dollar dependence. And BRICS appears to be the best vehicle to date, that can bring this freedom. If you like, listen to this 53 minute video. It may prove eye eopening for the uninitiated, about how a natural calamity – collapse of the dollar because it is too top heavy, can be used to pin another blame on Russia – in the form of Cyber hacking terrorism that causes all banks to fail. This is most likely in the plans. Is this an excuse to initiate a nuclear exchange to punish and dismember Russia? Are there many layers of Agent Provocateurs

These two persons, diametrically opposite in the geopolitical global matrix, are strangely, talking in similar lines and even mentioning each other. Some of Zoltar’s highly controversial articles are as recent as the last week of December 2022 – three weeks ago from my writing.

Pepe Escobar thinks, with good reason, that Zoltar and Sergei – from opposing poles, are converging. I believe this convergence might actually be a western Trojan horse, or an indication that the Geopolitical shift in balance of power is real, and that the west is getting scared out of its wits and scrambling to adapt, while different corners are breaking away and splintering from the main unified body.

Click on the picture to read the full text

According to Pepe, what Glazyev proposes now is for Russia to boost gold mining to as much as 3 percent of GDP: the basis for fast growth of the entire commodity sector (30 percent of Russian GDP). With the country becoming a world leader in gold production, it gets “a strong ruble, a strong budget and a strong economy.”

You can guess, that Sergei is not an idiot, and that Putin is beginning to get a good team of colonels to fight the rest of the west off.

This, the financial shift in the centre of gravity of the planet, has many very astute players. Pepe’s article on the new commodity based currency system being worked out of the Global South, with BRICS+ or R5+ members are a very big thing, the biggest thing to happen to this planet since the second world war, and that it is literally turning the old hegemonic west-controlled system and the global balance of power on its head.

And most people that still clings to the western idea that West is the only representative of honesty, rule of law, fairness in trade and economics, and also the only super power – are all to be proven wrong.

Click on the picture to read the second paper from Zoltan Pozsar

My view is – this economic stuff is just one angle of a very large puzzle. Ukraine is just one, very small and visible tip of a super gigantic iceberg that we shall likely need a long time to understand, or accept in our minds. But the iceberg is here, and the change in balance of power is real and present, and the BOOK is to be re-written, is right now being re-written, by people and countries that took absolutely no part in compposing the previous edition. The writers of the current edition are not linked with NATO or the west, or even Japan, the pseudo-west.

But, what do I know? I am just an uneducated marine engineer who does not understand either geopolitics, or finance.

If you have an opinion or a comment, I encourage you to use the below comment box and write something that helps stimulate human communication and exchange of ideas.

Thank you.

Inviting BC MLAs to join Sunday march protesting the govt placing the entire province on house arrest

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To: MLA, [full name], [party affiliation], [email],
Date: Friday, April 24, 2020

From: Tony Mitra, 10891 Cherry Lane, Delta, BC, V4E3L7

Subject:  Join Protest in Vancouver on 26th April against forcing British Canadians into house arrest

Honourable MLA [full name],

The 38 day continued violation of our Constitutional rights is not acceptable. The covid-19 data doesn’t support the drastic actions taken.  The measures may have initially been implemented because your government was ignorant and needed to exercise the Precautionary Principle in anticipation that the British Columbian medical resources would be overwhelmed.  The forced closure of economy was to only reduce an anticipated rapid rate or rise of infection and to extend the span of the presumed pandemic, but at a slower pace over an extended period, so hospital staff could cope. The data now emerging does not support any extension/suspension of our Constitutional Rights and liberty.

Due to close proximity and contact with people of the US, we believe this novel coronavirus started infecting people of British Columbia in November of 2019 instead of march 2020. There are enough reports and records of it in the US which is emerging now.  By now the infection should have gone well past the necessary percentage of population to ensure herd immunity. We don’t need the cumbersome measures you imposed, as I believe adequate antibody testing will show,  if conducted right now on a few thousand random samples of people of the province.

 

In fact, there is now evidence that the whole pandemic as declared by WHO and Bill Gates has been engineered on fraudulent science, specifically to trigger fear and panic among the masses through doctored misinformation pretending to be scientific fact, thereby allowing governments to subvert democracy and act against the interest of the very people these governments were sworn to protect.

There is talks by PM Trudeau, essentially parroting Bill Gates, that normalcy may not return in Canada until there is a vaccine available.

Covid-19 is a flu variant. In the last 40 years, science has never succeeded in making a single flu vaccine that works, else people would have needed just one vaccine for lifelong immunity. Instead, there is a plethora of complaints that vaccines, for flu or other disease, brings on signs of autism and other illnesses in recipients, especially children that are subjected to most of these vaccines today. These reports of adverse reaction to vaccines are viciously suppressed by government health departments that have gotten beholden to Big Pharma, allowing it legal indemnity from prosecution for harm caused through vaccines. There are large number of British Columbian children that are now medically compromised after being vaccinated, and their parents are forced to run from pillar to post seeking justice.

This flu, just like most past infections, are mostly attacking people that have low immunity from either old age or from toxicity in their food and environment. One of the most relevant view, and the most suppressed, has been that infections in the past decades including HIV, Ebola, SARS,  H1N1 and now Corona flare up in regions where glyphosate, active ingredient in Roundup and other herbicides, has been used extensively, causing a steady decline in natural immunity in people.  Wuhan had the largest factory producing glyphosate for the world, and its waste was getting into the river systems converging on the province. Meanwhile Canada holds the dubious record of producing seed crops with the highest concentration of glyphosate in the entire planet – refer to CFIA data and my own published book “POISON FOODS OF NORTH AMERICA”.

Instead of eradicating the root issues that compromise immunity of the people, the Government is being complicit with Industrial Agriculture and Big Pharma to issue incorrect and ineffective guidelines to help profiteering by corporations and ensuring people remain sick, so more drugs and vaccines can be rained down on them.

The corporate and government controlled media has become a mouthpiece of propaganda instead of delivering unbiased view representing all sides of an issue. Free press has gone the way of the Dodo and the BC Government has done nothing to prevent the degradation of this important pillar of any functioning democracy.

Medical establishment is being coaxed to falsely declare deaths to be by covid-19 instead of with covid-19, where a vast majority of people dying are very old or with one or more serious pre-existing life threatening illnesses. The degree of deception here is mind boggling.

It is hard to believe you are unaware of these issues.

The economic price we are forced to pay, without our consent is worse than perhaps the great depression or the second world war – and all based on a fraudulent fear mongering of an invisible virus that science has not even conclusively proved that it exists, or that it is responsible for covid-19 or responsible for great number of deaths far in excess of average flu death ranges of past years.

Quote
When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.
Thomas Jefferson

An unjust law is itself a species of violence.
Mahatma Gandhi

One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.
Martin Luther King Jr.

Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience.
Howard Zinn
Unquote

SO, we the people of British Columbia are protesting this forced imprisonment of people by a lawful protest come Sunday, the 26th of April 2020 at English Bay, Vancouver, at 2 PM.

This letter will be shared in public to spread awareness of this potential anti-national role being played by the Government.

I invite you, as responsible and conscientious citizens of Canada, residents of British Columbia and sworn public servant, to join the event and lend us your support in protesting this act of violence by the Government in subversion of democracy and constitutional rights of the people.

Date: 26th April, 2020 – Sunday.
Place, outside Cactus Club, English Bay, Vancouver.
Time: 2 PM

Thanking you
Tony Mitra, 10891 Cherry Lane, Delta, BC, V4E 3L7, Canada, tonu@mac.com

A few flyers by me:

 

A note on Julian

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It has been six long years that Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

I try to keep up with relevant world news and have for long been frustrated with the decay of free press in the English Language media across the world. This is not to say that non-non-English media is any better, judging from the Hindi and Bengali media from India. But, back to the topic, the destruction of free press in the west has been nothing short of breathtaking.

Free and independent press was touted as one of the principal pillars of democracy. It was supposed to help the citizenry informed and provide a restraint from Governments taking law into their own hands. Freedom meant a right to information, and a right to freedom of speech and expression. It was also seen as one of the fundamental inventions of western sociocultural transformation beyond the monarchy and feudalism of the medieval times.

Early post second world war decade was perhaps the best period for this utopian dream. It has since been just that – a distant dream.

The destruction of the main pillars of freedom and democracy started almost immediately after the war, although I personally was not born neither grown up enough to contemplate these issues till much later. After I had a chance to see and visit many parts of the world, and learn to look at things beyond the superficial, I began to suspect of a fundamental difference between my idea of freedom and democracy in the west, and the ground reality. This included the impending collapse of the global ecology – something that I was conscious of even back in my twenties, though I could not put my finger on it properly at the time.

It took me a while to understand that every single aspect of humanity, from its development to economic and social maturity and mankind’s march to modernism, were each responsible for driving a nail into the coffin of the planets living existence. Man, by merely being around – was killing this planet. It took me a while to understand that I along with my species represent the most toxic of all evolutionary misadventures that has occurred in the four billion year history of life on planet earth. It also made me convinced that there was no God. Had there been one, he would have made sure humans never happened.

But back to Julian Assange.

I am 99% certain that Julian was being hounded because the western world does need whistleblowers any more. It stopped nurturing freedom of speech, and stopped promoting a functioning democracy, though it continues to wear a mask to fool the unwary.

The Medusa responsible for the death of freedom was USA itself which dragged all its lackeys such as the UK, Canada, Australia, India and all other countries where English was one of the primary working languages. Along with them came the non-english progressive western nations such as Germany, France etc. These nations lead by the US strangled democracy and freedom.

What we now have is a belligerent fascism masquerading as a just and free conglomeration of societies.

I became aware that watching TV was a waste of time if one wanted to get real news. I stopped watching TV almost 15 years ago. I slowly stopped reading mainstream media such as the New York Times, Washington Post, or CBC, and started looking for fringe news sources on the internet. I temporarily dallied with Amy Goodman and other sources. I read up people like Noam Chomsky or Chris Hedges. I started checking on Aljazeera and RT.

I first started suspecting that google search engine was being tampered to skew the results in favour of state supported political propaganda and against free speech. I started testing google and eventually not only confirmed it, but got outraged by its one sided depiction of reality.

I found my friends, particularly the westernized, anglicized, upwardly mobile people from India that had either already migrated to the west and held good jobs, or were dreaming about doing so, were far more subverted to a false facade of western propaganda and the assumption that the west represented real freedom and that the US was among the best nations because of blah blah blah, than many thoughtful Americans themselves. The new immigrant pals of mine had become more American than Americans. Many of them cannot read nor write their mother tongue any more, and have an extremely shallow and narrow outlook to existence, despite being highly educated in the conventional sense. This also makes me question the definition, value, and purpose of education.

Mentally, I started drifting away from them. Today most of them appear like specs on the horizon, without shape, colour, or form. This increasing loneliness is part of the background of my somewhat singular journey into activism against agro-toxins in general and glyphosate in particular – which lead to me attempting to write a book titled – Lonely Road.

I acquired many new friends that have no blood link with India. Many are also like flotsam and jetsam – passing by in the current. But there are, I am happy not note, real deep thinkers too, who refuse to be indoctrinated by propaganda – western or otherwise, and have the depth of perception and the courage, to call a spade a spade.

Julian Assange just happens to be an icon for many such individuals, a floating log in floodwaters that is washing away our notion of a just world.

I decided to write a chapter on Julian Assange because he represented, in a modern day version of the epic of paradise lost – where we lose our conviction about man’s greatness. I am aware that the term man is used both to represent a male human and also the species homo-sapiens-sapiens – something that the feminist movement has reason not to be happy about. In my own mother tongue, Bengali, the name for a human is used to describe human civilization, while the term for ‘man’ is exclusively used only to represent a male and not the species.

Anyhow, this chapter about Julian Assange, was, for me, about more than just Julian. It was about my realization and coming to terms with the loss of our psychological paradise brought about by ourselves being ourselves, and how our own genes might be the worst enemy of the planet. Man, by his genetically programmed drive to use technology to better his life, is the ultimate doomsday weapon unleashed on earth.

And amidst all that, we learned, unlearned and then again re-discovered, the art of killing our messengers, feathering and tarnishing our torch bearers, and crucifying our prophets.

I have no idea how Julian Assange will be remembered by history. I do not much care about public perception at this stage. But Julian has been a good pointer, a symptom, by which to contemplate the deep cancer within our society that has been brought about by the very institutions that were to be the pillars of our modern civilization. He is the messenger that the world today wishes to be silenced. His messages, usually second hand and originating from someplace else, which makes him a messenger to start with, represents truth that is no longer cherished by the ex-pillars of modern democracy.

This new age fascism pretending to be an incarnation of capitalism controls all media. Its propaganda machine puts the Stalinist era Soviet propaganda machine to shame. Doctored news turns night into day. People are put away in prison by the tens of thousands without trial, and keys being thrown away. USA tries to prove it is the leader of the free world, by placing an unbelievable number of its own citizens behind bars without trial. People across the planet, killed by faceless drones operated by secret US establishments without any pretence for justification or judicial oversight is commonplace and near daily occurrence across the globe.

Honest scientists are being fired, and prevented from speaking out the truth without political clearance. Honest whistleblowers that expose the Governments illegal spying on its own people and extrajudicial killings of foreigners are either arrested and put away for years in jail, or have to run in fear of life and take refuge in countries like Russia, to save themselves from persecution for speaking the truth about their own Government’s wrongdoings. And the citizens of such “freedom loving” nations remain silent while the few brave torchbearers of the same freedom are silence or have to run away. The worst things we feared about communism has come true under this new age capitalism.

In Hindu mythology, there is mention of four eras that repeat themselves cyclically. The first era was Satya Yuga or the era when four out of four spoke the truth. Stay stands fro truth and Yuga stands for era. There were no liars. This is as close to heaven as one can get while on earth.

Then starts the downward slide. In the second phase, three out of four are truthful and one is a liar. This is the Treta Yuga. “Treta” means three. Hell lurks in the corner and threatens to disrupt normalcy and tranquility in this phase.

Then comes the next phase where two truth speakers are pitted against two liars.  This is the “Dwapar Yuga”. “Dwapar” means two. World begins to lose its balance. It gets near impossible to figure out what is right and what is wrong. Confusion reigns supreme. Only the most contemplative and wary can navigate through this world on a just path.

The last phase is the beginning of hell – “Kali Yuga”. This is the current age, with one quarter virtue and three quarter sin. In Sanskrit Kali may represent a number of unpleasant items – conflict, discord, turmoil. It also represents the Goddess of “time” which in turn invites the end of time, and hence the beginning of a new cycle and a new calendar. In this current era, crooks rule the world. Doomsday is here. Living hell is ongoing right now. An all consuming catastrophe, stylized by the arrival of an angry Lord Shiva to burn everything, thus cleansing the planet with fire, and set the stage for the new cycle, starting with another golden age of peace, happiness and tranquility. 

Thus continues the never ending cycle of time and events.

Intriguing as this tale is, we already know that a repeat cycle on planet earth is unlikely. Should life disappear from the planet, or should all higher animals go extinct, which is very possible since we are already in the midst of a man-made sixth mass extinction phase, a side effect of the “Kali Yuga” lead turmoil, then there may not be enough time left on the life span of planet earth, which in turn is dependent on the lifespan of our sun, for new life forms to start from near scratch and then evolve enough to come to higher intelligence animals like ourselves. The planet is likely going to be uninhabitable in the next phase, as our sun consumes most of its hydrogen, and begins to expand and die. The sun is not large enough to generate the kind of gravitational pressure and temperature at its core, to fuse heavier elements than hydrogen. As a result, the sun itself is not going to have any “phase two” existence like other larger stars. Solar system dies when the sun dies. Bet even before than happens, the expanding and exploding sun would consume all near planets, including planet earth.

So, Hindu mythology or not, man had only one chance on earth. And man blew it. That, far as I can tell, is the long and short of it.

Meanwhile Julian reportedly resigned from his post as the editor of Wikileaks.

If this is true, it hardly appeared in any news outlet. There are speculations that the Russians might have hatched an aborted plan to ferret Julian out of the Ecuadorian embassy and into freedom in Russia. There are other news clippings that indicate possibility that New Zealand might offer asylum to Assange. There are more news clippings suggesting Ecuador might have given Julian citizenship and turn him into an Ecuadorian diplomat (with diplomatic immunity ?), and assign him on a political post in Ecuadorian Embassy in Moscow. There are more news, almost all fo them from no-name outlets. One claims there are efforts to have him extradited into USA only to offer information on Hillary Clinton’s wrongdoings, before letting him go and that president Trump of his son-in-law might be behind it. Another one claims that the US might offer assurance that they don’t want Assange extradited, in which case the UK government might just let him go after he pays a fine and spends a symbolic few days in jail for jumping bail.

All of these might be speculation.

But most of my close friends and relatives – especially those ultra-modern americanized converts – that have successfully been reprogrammed to think Putin to be the biggest rogue these days and that the US is basically pure as driven snow – are at a psychological plain of falsehood that I find increasingly painful to visit. The specks in the horizon keeps getting smaller, merge into each other and begin to disappear in the mist.

Was a time when I thought the US to be one place where rule of law worked, and one was presumed innocent unless proven guilty. However, the US government has long been engaged in assassination of people without trial, including assassination of heads of state, many democratically elected, without ever acknowledging their role nor apologizing or explaining to their own people, why they conduct such extra-judicial killings or dethronement of other nations heads and topple their Governments. What kind of law allows that?

I do not bother asking these questions to my “Americanized” ethnic brothers and sisters. I realize these questions by now are outside of their field of perception. They are incapable of comprehending them. In any case, it is pointless for me to try to have a meaningful conversation with any of them.

Essentially, I was destined to be on my lonely road. Freedom of thought and freedom of thinking comes with a price tag – it ensures you are likely to be lonely. It is not a bad thing. Much better than living in a din where you cannot even hear yourself, are hemmed in by state sponsored propaganda and reprogrammed humanoids  that should have been free thinking humans. Before you realize, you have surrendered the one thing that is supposed to set a human apart – ability conduct independent analysis of what is happening around.

And thus, I decided I would add a chapter on Julian Assange. This overlaps with my notion on activism and the fact that the road essentially has to be lonely. There is no other way.

This is the primer of the chapter. The rest should be in the book.

Derecognition of good scientists

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Dark ages of Glyphosate resistance

While on the subject of the planet being poisoned by glyphosate, other toxins, micro plastics, Chemtrail and a myriad of other things, all in the name of development, there is something else that gets missing in the noise.

There is a need for us to step back a bit, and look at it from afar, and reflect with a wider viewpoint an look for root causes that go deeper than scratching at the surface.

And that is how I end up writing chapters like this one for my book in the making – Lonely Road, footprints of a food security activist.

West took a leading role in many issues of global significance. This involved development of a functional democratic system represented by one-man-one-vote in a modern sense. This also meant developing a culture that separated the church from the state, and encourage secularism and rule of law, where everybody was equal in the eyes of the law, where universal education was a birthright, along with basic healthcare and social security.

It was the west that lead the world in scientific research in many fields and proved to be catalytic in development of a wide swatch of modern scientific research.

It created the League of Nations and later the United Nations, so that a single powerful nation cannot wage war on another on personal opinion, but where there was need for international mediation and effort to use peaceful means to conflict resolution first, a system where might did not equate right. 

There is perhaps no need for me to elaborate on this. West produced people like Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Karl Marx and Adam Smith. The west had the most advanced nations on earth, with the highest standard of living. People from the rest of the world aspired to migrate to the west in order to have a better life.

All this is fact and undisputed.

However, like the great eastern philosopher Confucius of the past had stated – change is the only unchanging fact of life. Everything must and will change.

So, too, is the case with what the famed “west” represented. So, to go back to issues – while the west still dominates in scientific research, it is more often than not conducted by people working for western institutions but themselves originating from outside. Theory of Charles Darwin is most challenged today in the western school system, rather than in any other place. United Nation has been castrated and rendered into a hapless eunuch by none other than the United States. United States makes unilateral decision to wage war on whoever it likes, whenever it likes and wherever it likes. Standard of living in the rest of the world is catching up fast with the west. China arguably already has more millionaires than the US does. On GDP based on purchasing power parity, there are more non-western nations in the top ten than western nations. Everything people feared about communism, is coming true under capitalism.

Democracy has been hijacked in almost all the western nations, replaced with a form of fascist crony capitalism where out of state shadow commercial actors decide how the state will function, while the public only decide who the symbolic but otherwise useless face of the Government will be such as a prime minister or president. Biotech science has never been more biased, tilted, controlled and abused, without neutrality, objectivity and honesty in the west, than ever before. It can hardly be called science. West does not have free press any more. In fact, the whole world is fast losing all free press. Human rights is an illusion, everywhere, but especially noticeable in the west.  Corporations have more rights than citizens with votes. Medical system is geared to keep unhealthy people sick, and to make healthy people unhealthy.

The legal system does not provide justice. Instead it provides revenue through catering to whoever can pay more. Education system is degenerating to the dark ages. School children in the west comparatively get the stupidest scores on an international scale. The western education system is busy dumbing down everybody.

And in the midst of it all, we have an ocean of toxicity into our food system, in residential lots, public parks, meadows, marshes, forests, rivers lakes and oceans – all in the name of progress.

I could go on and on ..

But, when it comes to the specific ravages of Glyphosate, let it be said that this planet destroying technology not only originated in the west, but gets most of its driving force from the west.

Citizens of the west have lost the art of resisting evil. They have long capitulated.

I do not see leadership emerging out of the west on this area at all – no matter how long and how hard I peer into the topic.

This is not to say that leadership is emerging out of the east or south or some other direction. But the rest of the world does not appear to have totally capitulated like the west has. There is a raging battle in big and small nations outside fo the west. This is my view and I am increasingly comfortable with this view.

The west has capitulated. No leadership may be expected out of the west to lead us out through this toxic wilderness. The west is going to take the planet and flush it down the toilet.

Along with this abject capitulation, comes a large swatch of disgruntled people from the west that are increasingly aware of the destruction of their belief and value system but unable find a way out. Like mindless groupies they flock around an increasing number of instant “guru” that are mushrooming out of this toxic landscape like maggots on a carcass.

And in the middle of this depressing scenario, there is a concerted effort to assassinate character of a handful of honest scientists that are still trying to shine a light. These good guys are now the target not only of the corporate controlled system but also of the army of mindless zombies that came out of the disgruntled and disenfranchised citizenry looking for something to do.

Victimisation of the good guys is an established policy

I need to say it clearly here. There is a concerted effort to downgrade and trivialise scientists that speak an unpleasant truth. This effort to trivialise select scientists, and deny them access to reputed journals and mainstream coverage, is a well established tactic used by the biotech and big Pharma industry and the political and media system that are often in cahoots with them.

It is the west that, in modern times, hounded and destroyed people like Árpád Pusztai, Andrés Carrasco, Andrew Wakefield, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange. And the so called civil society of the west, went along and did nothing to stop it.

This so called civil society also includes lots of media savvy gurus that appear to be among the “good guys”. To me, they are a new breed of phoney, hypocritical people masquerading as good guys in order to milk a system.

This new breed of instant guru class will be taking donations from folks in order to fight the Monsanto dragon. But, behind the scene they appear to be in cahoots with the industry doctrine of denying recognition of scientists that did pioneering work to expose, for example, glyphosate. They will not be averse to take whatever information they can gather from these scientists, and then pass them off as their own information, or keep the source muddied. Either way, the victimisation of the handful of scientists still left to do work in exposing glyphosate will be kept under the carpet and out of sight by these media savvy false gurus and talking heads.

They victimise the last of the remaining honest, hard working, fearless scientists that are still somehow able to scrounge around for funds and are able to do some research on the bad effects of glyphosate, and often come out with ground braking information to this end.

Non-recognition of Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff

Scientists that are victims of such selective tarnishing by the “phoney” good guys are, for example, Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff.

Dr. Stephanie Seneff

I have a very strong distaste for such false gurus, and need to make my view public.

Unlike these phoney characters making a career out of milking this toxic problem of glyphosate and GMO, I do not collect donations from people. I do not run an NGO and do not wait for public support me. I do not need anybody’s help. I do have a book, but it is a reference book and I do not ask folks to even buy it. Most folks are incapable of handling a 400 page book of reference data on glyphosate. In short, I do not need anybody. Consequently, I do not need to sacrifice my freedom of thought, expression and speech on this issue. And damned if I am going to sacrifice it just to be popular.

I dislike proverbial good guys like Jeffrey Smith, Michel Antoniou, Vandana Shiva, Robin Mesnage, Carey Gillam and the rest because of what I consider their dishonesty in projecting only half truths and either selectively denying recognition of people like Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff or working overtime to convince me why I should not take Samsel/Seneff seriously. I am done considering such blabbermouths as anything other than thugs pretending to be something else.

Many of them make a career out of milking the system rather than trying to solve it. They appear to be in cahoots with the same industry they badmouth and follow their doctrine of denying acknowledgement of select scientists and their contribution, because what these scientists say is uncomfortable. But it is alright to steal their words and make hay with knowledge and information gained from them.

These are the kind of scum that we find masquerading as the spearhead of a dysfunctional resistance system in a region that is speeding towards a toxic doomsday, California court case of Johnson versus Monsanto notwithstanding.

The picture at left is of Anthony Samsel, in San Francisco with Michael Baum last year when Samsel testified before the CA EPA and gave them the Lymphoma cancer data and the malignant Hemagioendothelioma cancer data he extracted from Monsanto’s raw data files.  Monsanto hid the data from the report summary to the EPA.  He gave the extra data he found to Michael Baum  which their consultant Chris Porter had missed – information received from Anthony Samsel.

I don’t need a fan club

I have said it before and I shall say it here again – I know that many of these hypocritical false guru characters have a large fan club. I know some of this fan club members are also my  friends or follow me on social media. I know I am likely to annoy many of them by criticising these undesirables that they idolize. And I know I might alienate such people.

Well, thats OK with me. Unlike Smith, Shiva and the rest of the gang, I do not need public support. Whatever I do, I do by myself, and within my means. So, I for one do not mind at all if ardent admirers of Vandana Shiva, or Jeffrey Smith etc leave my circle of acquaintance. It was nice knowing you, and good bye.

Injustice to Samsel and Seneff is a symptom of a degenerative west

But I shall be damned if I do not speak truth as I see it, with regard to the injustice done to scientists like Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff by what I judge as phoney and hypocritical group leaders that feed on human misery while pretending to be against glyphosate.

Damned if I am going to support lies and liars just to be popular. I am through with that crap.

This article will, after adding to it and polishing it off, go into a chapter or a section of my next book – Lonely Road.

Glyphosate & India – Part I

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A lot of updates are due, that perhaps deserve to be recorded, all to do with glyphosate.

Debal Deb at his Odisha farm

Most of it started thanks to Debal Deb inviting me to spend a week with him in iin his rice conservation farm in Odisha. I accepted the invitation and saw quite a few things, and not just his efforts in conserving some thousand five hundred kinds of folk rice. I saw the variety of crops that were grown to sustain soil health. I saw the wonderful home garden with papaya and other trees bearing unbelievable numbers of ripe fruits and the flock of wild birds that frequented the area. I saw how the nearby villagers were influenced. I also saw the near zero carbon footprint housing erected with sun baked bricks. And, I got to yap with Debal.

This followed up with me yapping and arguing with Debal and Martin Brown in the evenings, where I perhaps ended up describing some of the dangers involved in glyphosate getting itself mis-incorporated into humans and other proteins by mimicking glycine, one of the canonical amino acids and part of the 20 basic building blocks of life.

It was Debal that first convinced me to speak about glyphosate, covering what I had learned from Scientists like Anthony Samsel on one end, and what I ended up doing in Canada on the other. And that first talk has turned into a keystone event in India. It started a chain reaction that is even now triggering more events here and there, in urban as well as rural enclaves.

The group at my first talk arranged by Debal Deb at Kalipur on the 24th of February, 2018.

Although Bengal media is refusing to cover the glyphosate story till now, it has one way or another broken into mainstream media in India. First salvo was fired by reputed Delhi journalist Bharat Dogra on two papers covering Hindi and English. The first came out in Deshbandhu, followed by an English article on The Statesman.

My talk at the Gandhi Peace Foundation, arranged by Angshuman & Bhoomi Ka

But before that happened, Angshuman Das of Bhoomi Ka, Kolkata heard me talk at Debal’s study circle and invited me to speak again at their venue in Kolkata. And then he followed up with a trip to Delhi for me to make a presentation at the Gandhi Peace Foundation in the month of may, organised by Bhumi Ka Delhi. That opened a lot more doors, including a number of articles in mainstream media.

Hindi article by Bharat Dogra on Deshbandhu

The Statesman article, titled “Health hazards of imported pulses” is here.

Then came the cover page news on the bimonthly eco-magazine “Down to Earth” by Vibha Varshney, who had attended my presentation at Gandhi Peace Foundation in Delhi in the month of May. But she followed it up with further research on her part, especially do with the issue that imported lentils from Canada might be very toxic. She tried to get comments from relevant Government departments, where the people refused to comment. I guess the Government got to know, one way or another, that the cat has been belled.

Then there were more talks in Kolkata, influenced by Samar Bagchi, such as one at the Ashutosh Mukherji science foundation. The partial group picture below shows some of the attendants.

Then came my twin talk at Bhoomi College and Ragi Cana at Bangaluru as invited by Vishala Padmanabhan and assisted by Bhoomi College & Ananya Mehta.

The Bangaluru visit was, in more ways than one, a watershed event for me.

This was also the first time when I had a class of youngsters in the front rows of the audience.

I learned, directly and indirectly, of many of the issues involving conserving biodiversity, interactions with the government on legislations that involve or affect organic farmers, on petty ego and undercurrents of human emotions getting in the way of finding a common ground and reaching resolutions.

I found in Vishala a fresh face of emerging Indian eco-consciousness, that I found both impressive and very endearing. I found in her friend Ananya an equally committed worker bee. Then there was Seetha, the founder of Bhoomi College that invited me to stay in her compound for two days and arranged for eating unique organic vegetarian diets at their excellent facility.

This followed up by two wonderful articles on two issues of Deccan Chronicle by journalist S.N.V. Sudhir.

One was for the Telengana issue while the other was for Andhra Pradesh.

I was asked by Sabuj Mancha (সবুজ মঞ্চ) and Disha (দিশা) to deliver a talk on glyphosate on the 25th of July at 5 PM at 186A Kalikapur Road, Kolkata.

July 25 – Kalikapur Kolkata

This is the same place where I had earlier delivered my first talk in India on glyphosate, as requested by Debal Deb back in February 2018.

I put up the pdf file of that presentation on the web. It is not password protected. Some of the slides had action items where multiple images get on top of each other. Single pdf image of those slides can get confusing. However, the news articles are listed in this blog post, for all to see.

Around this time, I was also getting a lot of additional information relating to glyphosate, from my scientist friends back in the US and Canada. One such helpful person was wildlife scientist  Judy Hoy of Montana. She actually sent me the photograph that showed visibly noticeable birth defect in the jaws of an endangered species in India – the wild cattle called “gaur”. The picture was of a calf sitting on the ground next to a metal pan, and is presumed to be under care of humans, possibly an orphan, that had likely suffered a birth defect while still a foetus in its mothers womb, through glyphosate exposure.

This blog might appear to the reader as indication that the level of awareness on the dangers of glyphosate has been raised just a little bit since Debal first identified the need for speaking on this issue and its relevance.

Interestingly, the big honcho’s of India’s anti-GMO groups and their alliances are, not unlike in the west, mostly pre-occupied with themselves and their bubble of anti-GMO echo chamber, and give all the impression of themselves being genetically engineered to ignore all dangers of glyphosate, which is saturating the landscape, while keeping their vision fixed and fixated on GMO only, like deer caught in the headlights, or a rabbit caught in the gaze of a hypnotic snake. I am told that some of the megalomaniacs that form the core group of these associations have asked “what is the relevance (of glyphosate) for India?”.

Its like someone spending twenty years studying seven volumes of Ramayana and then asking if Sita might be Lord Rama’s father-in-law.

This however, is not typical an Indian evolution. It took me some years back in North America, to fully. understand this phenomenon. The first group of people that were self-occupied and fixated with GMO and refused to acknowledge the need to resist glyphosate, were the very anti-GMO and clean food activists I used to hang out with. They were the fist line of defence of the biotech industry. They were the flip side of the same coin. The whole shebang, from agro-chemical corporations, their shareholders, politicians as well as all these anti-GMO groups and talking heads, were all on the same side of the issue, all ensuring conservation and propagation of toxic food industry, but each carefully creating their own image and avatar and pretending to represent this or that group.

I have since been told that this is the very definition of “controlled opposition”.

However, my extended trip to India has also opened my eyes on encouraging issues and signs that I was not aware of before and would never have known if Debal did not ask me to speak up on glyphosate at Kalikapur, and if that did not somehow spread the news under the radar and out of sight, far into the rural heartland where the real India resides.

It has opened new doors and I have been fortunate to glimpse at remarkable groups of people that are, individually and in small groups, already come to the concluding that chemical free farming of heirloom crops, and staying as far away from glyphosate as possible, is not only the way to go, but was the main alternative to an ecocide that was already busy writing the epitaph for the living planet.

Having Udupi & dosa with Vishala and Ananya at Bangaluru on a Sunday morning.

In many ways, Vishala and Ananya of Bangaluru represent part of this grassroots movement that bypasses the mainstream everything, and represent a new face of India that I find hopeful.

Anupam Paul at his Agriculture Training Centre in Fulia, Dist of Nadia

There is also the story of Anshuman Das, Anupam Paul, Tathagata Das, Rabin Bannerjee, Devpriya Mukherjee, Sujit Mitra, Shamik Bannerjee, Abhra Chakraborti and many others that are all coming to parallel and similar conclusions about the future of food, environment and humanity, and are taking steps, within their individual means, to address this issue from multiple angles. I have been enriched by contact with them, and wish to highlight their own trials and efforts to push back at this massive global endeavour to destroy what needs to be preserved, by human development, or what Debal might like to call – Developmentality.

Then there are entrepreneurs like Pravin Singhania and Abhishek Singhania (not related). they represent another angle – both having reached similar conclusion independently, to be directly involved in organic farming, one in order to feed clean food for his family, while continuing in his main profession which is not related to agriculture, while the other made a lifestyle change to make organic agriculture his profession. There are many others like them, that are buying or leasing farmlands and beginning to get involved in producing food. Its the beginning of a new level of realisation – that moving away from the soil, and expecting good food to automatically appear in stores, and leaving the issue in the hands of the Government, agro-corporations, or even the NGO talking heads, may have been an unmitigated disaster, for the world, and for India.

Then there are topics under discussion involving North American scientists Anthony Samsel, Stephanie Seneff, Don Huber, Judy Hoy, André Comeau, Theirry Vrain and myself (myself being the only non-scientist in the group), through mostly email. They cover a plethora of issues that are worth mentioning, all to do with glyphosate.
Here is a piece of information I have not harped upon too much while in India, but I should. The problem is too much to talk about and too little time. Anyhow, the thing is, India and most of Asia have heavy tea drinkers. India is also a major tea producer and exporter, much like Sri Lanka next door.

In Sri Lanka, there is also some indication that tea garden workers that use glyphosate to clear weeds around tea plants have apparently been suffering from throat cancer at a rate substantially higher than the national average, and glyphosate is suspected to be the root cause. The nation had implemented an island wide ban on import or use of glyphosate. But lately they have been pressurised to relax the ban and allow selective use, including in tea gardens. One of the pressure points, I heard, came from Japan, a major importer of Sri Lanka tea. Apparently Japan did not like the fact that Sri Lanka was trying to find alternatives to glyphosate for tea gardens. According to the Japanese, these alternatives are not proven safe, but, according to the Japanese, Glyphosate is deemed safe. As a result Japan threatened to cut off all import of Lankan tea , which would result in heavy loss to earning and jobs for Sri Lanka.

It is perhaps equally interesting that one fo the major producers of glyphosate in India has been recently bought over reportedly by a Japanese firm. And India is one supply source of glyphosate for Sri Lanka. I wonder if conflict of interest and share holder earnings for Japanese investors is clouding the whole issue of public safety in tea.

Meanwhile, an American firm has tested a lot of tea brands and found much glyphosate in most brands. Another group found prevalence of glyphosate in urine of tea drinkers.

What is happening in India – does anybody know ? I am aware that glyphosate has been used in tea gardens in the North East of India from the 1980s. These are issues that need to be highlighted, and I should do it, somehow within the time frame. I would like Indians to start checking the following:

  • How much glyphosate is in various brands of tea in India.
  • If there is noticeable health hazards among tea garden workers that use glyphosate
  • If there is noticeable health hazards among tea drinkers in India from glyphosate contamination
  • Testing effect of glyphosate in beverage on laboratory test animals

And last but not least, I have had my share of interaction with elected politicians in provincial ministry here in West Bengal, and perhaps more are in line.I have been trying to convince them to not allow glyphosate to be used indiscriminately, and blindly, without any proof of its safety. I have been asking them to demand that the safety documents on glyphosate be released by Delhi, failing which to ban the molecule. I have been asking them to consider initiating independent safety test on glyphosate and same time engage in broad based testing of local foods for presence of glyphosate. All these are critical issues. They too deserve a mention.

Those will go into part II of this write up.

You hate Monsanto ? Big deal !

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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.

Thank you.

Talking glyphosate, corruption, & citizen duty – in 17 minutes

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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.

Thank you.

My disappointment with GMOs Revealed set of videos

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I am disappointed. Not because GMOs are good – they are not good at all. Not because Glyphosate is good. Quite the opposite – glyphosate is killing the planet more than GMOs are in my honest opinion. So, between two bad things, I would fight glyphosate first, and with it, vast majority of GMOs too would die because they were created specifically for use with glyphosate.

But, I am thoroughly disappointed with the 9 episodes not because what the folks say in them, but because what they do not say, or hide.

I do not consider myself expert on the issue and do not any more bother in “raising awareness”. I believe this “raising awareness” and “badmouthing GMO and Monsanto” has in itself become a lucrative profession for a host of people that milk the system and feed on human misery. They do not seem to want to actually solve the problem and rid the world of this toxic soup. Instead, they keep tap-dancing around the root causes and keep doling out fringe solutions, so that the root problem remains and continues to devastate the planet, and these so called anti-GMO hordes can continue to milk the system.

I do not know the people who created this series of videos or what their actual goal is, but I find it outrageous that they are only half educating the people about GMO and in particular glyphosate, and wanting to charge the people for this stunted view of the problem without offering any real solution to eradicate this menace from the root.

They don’t offer real solutions because they cannot even identify real problems.

There are many very important factors relating to the Glyphosate poisoning of the planet issue and none of them were mentioned or analyzed properly in this series. This is why I am disappointed. I made this 14 minute video to rant about just two of those missing root causes. I do not have the time to elaborate the rest. I am not in the business any more on educating the masses about glyphosate. It has been with us for forty goddam years already and causing wholesale ecocide across the planet. How many more years do folks need to continue to “raise awareness”? Another 500 years ?

I am outta here.

Agriculture Minister – ban glyphosate in BC

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The province of British Columbia, Canada, now has a new government, a coalition between the New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Green Party. This is a first in Canada where the environmentally conscious Green Party holds the balance of power.

New Ag-Minister BC – Lana Popham

The new agriculture minister, Ms Lana Popham, of NDP, had been a promoter of clean organic food and supporter of pushing back at GMO and herbicides in agriculture. I have met and known her from the time when she was an MLA in the opposition bench under the liberal government for two terms.

A new petition is hereby being created, asking her to consider ways by which the province of British Columbia can push back and ultimately ban the use of Glyphosate in British Columbian agriculture, and perhaps even impose restrictions on import of foods with considerable glyphosate content, and thus get the ball rolling and lead by example for the rest of Canada.

This petition is not aimed solely at residents of British Columbia. Since this beautiful western province is a major tourist destination for people within Canada as well as from the United States and the wider world, we are asking everybody everywhere, to chip in, sign the petition, and also write individually to the agriculture minister (AGR.Minister@gov.bc.ca) that you wish to have clean, glyphosate-free food when you next visit this beautiful land.

I read out the letter to the new Agriculture Minister in the video that goes with the petition.

===============================================================
I started asking my elected representatives (politicians from my riding in Ottawa, Canada, in Victoria, BC and in Municipality of Delta, BC), asking them to support this petition. The body of the message is also given here as an example for other citizens that might like to write similar letters to their own representatives, to support the petition, to write to the Agriculture Minister and to create a broad based support for her to lead the way for the other provinces to follow.

To: Carla Qualtrough, MP, Delta, BC, Minister of Sports
Ravi Kahlon, MLA, Delta, BC
Lois Jackson, Mayor, Delta, BC
Dated: Friday, September 1, 2017
Subject: Petition on Banning Glyphosate in British Columbian Agriculture.
Ms Carla Qualtrough, MP
Mr. Ravi Kahlon, MLA
Ms Lois Jackson, Mayor
I write to you about my petition on banning glyphosate from this province.
It is the active ingredient in the popular weedkiller brand ‘Roundup’. It is the most used herbicide in Canadian agriculture. Ottawa has never disclosed safety data and documents based on which it considered glyphosate to be safe for agriculture. In my judgment it is illegal to allow the use of a product while withholding its safety data. Our federal government is therefore breaking its own law in allowing glyphosate to be used in Canada for the last 35 years.
Ms Qualtrough knows something about it when I personally handed her over 23,000 signatures demanding that Health Canada releases all hitherto hidden safety documents on glyphosate. She should have first hand experience on how Ottawa continues to drag its feet on this issue.
Mr. Kahlon met me personally at my home for an hour prior to the last provincial election, and had promised to do something about getting Ottawa to release the hidden documents should he get elected. Now that he is elected, I remind him of his promise, and shall wait to see what he is prepared to do.
Mayor Jackson has not had any communication from me about glyphosate per se, although I have written to her in the past about pushing back at GMO from Delta agriculture lands. Anyhow I expect she knows about glyphosate. I am also requesting the mayor to share this letter with the rest of the Delta Municipal Councillors.

For reference you may consider reading my 400 page book, ‘Poison Foods of North America’ as an analysis on near 8,000 food samples tested by CFIA, that shows Canadian and US grown seed based foods to be the most toxic in the entire world with glyphosate contamination. I had a role to play in getting our federal government to set up labs that could test food for glyphosate and then for it to order massive tests of all foods available in Canada, locally grown and imported, and finally demanding that I be given a copy of all the test results. This body of data is the largest and most comprehensive in the entire world, and paints a very grim picture of Canadian and US agriculture. 

And out of this toxic mix, foods collected in Western Canada, which includes the mega farms of the prairies west of Ontario, proved to be more toxic than foods found anywhere else. We are at the epicentre of poisonous foods in the entire planet. We are also the sickest in the entire industrial world, in spite of spending the most on healthcare.
I write this letter to you three for the following reasons:
1) I request you to sign the petition asking the newly appointed agriculture minister of British Columbia, Ms Lana Popham, to find ways to push back at the use of glyphosate in British Columbian agriculture, despite the fact that its use has been, illegally in my opinion, approved by Ottawa.
I further request you to write individually to Minister Popham about above and also encourage her to find ways to restrict or impose tax on any imported food that contain measurable amounts of glyphosate.
I have met Ms Popham on a number of occasions when she was an MLA in the opposition bench, and know her to be a promoter of organic food and against the use of GM crops and glyphosate. Now that she is the Agriculture Minister, I expect she might be facing commercial pressure to compromise on her original views, and as a counter, she perhaps needs broad based public support. Your letters would therefore help.
2) I understand that in a functioning democracy, people aught to be the masters and the elected officials their public servants. However, the roles often get diffused and the public as well as politicians sometimes forget who is the master and who is the servant.
This letter therefore serves the second purpose where I, a citizen voter, am telling you, my representatives in Government, what my wishes are, with regard to demanding clean, glyphosate-free food in my province.
3) I also use these letters as an example for other citizens of Canada to let their own politicians to know of their wish.  this is the essence of building large body of public support for Minister Popham on banning glyphosate.
Therefore, these letters are designed to also be circulated through blogs and social media and forwarded email, to lead by example and encourage other voters to join up and work to take back the controls of democracy in this country, a control that appears to be slipping out of hands of its citizens.
In closing, I shall be delighted to receive a positive response from you or an invitation to speak face to face on this. I am willing to lead a delegation to see any of you should you wish. But even a negative response, or a non-response from you, will be used to encourage ordinary people to get involved.
I would however caution you not to use select science, or quote Health Canada or any other government institution, in telling me that glyphosate is safe. You do not have the right to make that decision. People have that right. The only thing Ottawa needs to do about glyphosate, is to stop parroting about its safety, and place all hidden safety documents in public domain.
Thanking you,
Tony Mitra

10891 Cherry Lane, Delta, BC, V4E 3L7, Canada
605-649 7535

Tony with Lana – 2013 April

Back in 2013 when I first met her, she was an MLA and a promoter of clean organic foods.

Today, she is the Agriculture Minister of BC.

I do not know if my knowing her earns me any currency today, but if it does, I intend to spend every last cent of it in trying to convince and help her in finding new ways to push back at Ottawa and cleanse our province from this toxic soup of glyphosate.

Anthony Samsel on seed freedom

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There is a petition on AVAAZ.ORG from Europe, on the issue of seed freedom. Apparently there is a list prepared, of so called “Approved seeds” which mostly contains seeds patented and owned/controlled by a few agro-corporations. Idea is to pass a law that makes it illegal for anybody to grow any food from any seed that is not in this list.

This is geared to kill the heirloom seed industry, take away farmers seed freedom and oblige them only to buy corporate controlled seeds, and ensure people lose their food sovereignty, not to mention the resultant avalanche of ill health and tsunami of chemicals in food production.

This petition has 120,000 supports. I was sent the link by Wendy Bales. It is suspected that these kind of rules are also in the offing for Canada and USA down the line. Nobody on this planet will be allowed to grow or eat any food unless it is from within the “Approved list”.

I decided to write a letter to Lana Popham, the agriculture minister of British Columbia, asking if she knew about it, and what if anything did she have to say about it. I was going to copy that to the premier of BC as well as write similar letters separately to the federal minister of agriculture and copy that to my MP.

But I decided to also check views of Anthony Samsel, and create a blog, which I could refer to, to the BC Ag-Minister, and let the blog be available for anybody else.

The talk with US scientist Anthony Samsel was short – covering 2 minutes. We spoke about other issues that are not related to this petition, which will be covered in separate video and blogs.

Thats it for now.
Thanks for visiting. You are welcome to leave a comment.
What I’d really like is for people to write to their politicians and not only make them aware, in case they did not know, but also to start ensuring that this does not happen in Canada or in USA, ever.