Nathan Batalion, Global Health Activist, Healingtalks Editor
(Healthing Talks) As discussed in other blog posts, our “healthcare” system is more a disease-care or management system for profit, using not natural approaches but chemical one with “side-effects” that are toxic.
What chemical medical waste represents
When instead of testing a drug in isolation, as FDA mandated, and only on precision-isolated symptoms without considering multiple-drug interactions – suppose we do something entirely opposite, more holistic. What if we take a large and random mix of chemicals and, without any precision or artificial isolation, throw them into a compost heap to test the overall logic of the whole underlying order of chemistry (and whether to develop a system of medicine that puts chemical drugs into our body to begin with). What we then find is that these chemicals will destroys ALL of life in the heap. A heap is where all plants decay to form to the building materials for all other plants in a near universal circle of unity. This is symbolic of the true order of oneness of nature. But throw in the large random mix of synthetic or unnatural chemicals, and this forms a dangerous supertoxic waste site.
Deep issues involved
Also discussed in other blog posts is that at the core of life is consciousness, and that this consciousness forms a primordial universal relationship of connection in nature – the principle of connection itself. What is the underlying order of chemistry? It is the 17th century ideology that all of nature should be math-organized from which came the whole science of chemistry. Mathematics abstracts how to separate all elements of consciousness, which is why it becomes illogical for that system of understanding to succeed in practice – especially in the healing and environmental arts. Why?
This is because “to heal” is to connect and reconnect ourselves to wholeness.
Thus Big Pharma tries to convince us to imbibe modern synthetic chemicals, representing an order that has proven to fail. How are we convinced? By our education system, media ads and with the help of allopathic doctors trained to be drug-prescribing physicians. Naturopaths, by contrast, advocate the opposite or living an organic lifestyle that avoids this unnatural approach. But allopathic doctors are the dominant healthcare practitioners of our time. They have a casual attitude toward chemicals in the processed foods we eat and surrounding environment. Thus cancer is not treated via detoxification but ingesting yet more chemicals. We are told we should take these deep into our bodies, orally or intravenously and as deep as possible within – as the prescriptive of “good science.” But actually, if we follow the compost heap test’s implications, chemical drugs and the restructuring of our interiors chemically, represents an affront. This why modern medicine has not stop the rising epidemics of chronic illnesses worldwide – cancer, diabetes, arthritis, asthma, and the life. This is why patients in nursing homes given multiple drugs walk the halls like unconscious zombies.
This same harm created to our interiors will extend logically to our exteriors – to all of our surrounding environment globally.
Amount and nature of hazardous medical waste
In the US alone there are millions of tons of medical waste produced each year. It is jeopardizing the health of staff, patients, plus disposal workers and almost anyone coming into contact with hazardous materials discarded by health-care sites, a United Nations human rights expert said today.
Calin Georgescu, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and toxic waste, issued a report in which he warned that the world is not paying sufficient attention to medical waste problems.
“Some 20 to 25 per cent of the total waste generated by health-care establishments is regarded as hazardous and may create a variety of health and environmental risks if not managed and disposed of in an appropriate manner,” he said.
Medical waste can include a wide range of hazardous materials, such as infectious waste, anatomical and pathological waste, obsolete or expired chemical products and drugs, radioactive materials and lastly “sharps” – medical instruments or devices that are discarded.
Rising medical waste problem
The problem is rising quickly in developing countries, where medical waste being is accumulating rapidly as health-care services are expanded, and the oversight to ensure the waste is well-managed may not exist.
“In health-care establishments where hazardous medical waste is incinerated, open burning and widespread deficiencies in the operation and management of small-scale medical waste incinerators result in incomplete waste destruction, inappropriate ash disposal and dioxins emissions, which can be even 40,000 times higher than emission limits set forth in international conventions,” Mr. Georgescu said.
Contaminated sharps attract attention
The Special Rapporteur stated that contaminated sharps attract the most attention. Needle-stick injuries exposed people to blood-borne pathogens such as the hepatitis B and C viruses and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
“However, each type of hazardous medical waste presents hazards that jeopardize the enjoyment of human rights.”
Solutions to medical waste problems
Mr. Georgescu made recommendations to reduce the threat posed by medical waste, including the following:
An international regulatory structure to oversee those who manage and dispose of such waste
Replacing incineration as a primary disposal method with more environmentally-friendly approaches
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Chemicals to avoid in beauty products, organic shampoo, what chemicals are in cosmetics, ingredients in cosmetics, safe cosmetics, beauty product cosmetics, ingredients in makeup, ingredients in perfume, chemicals in cosmetics, cosmetics toxic, harmful cosmetics, toxic beauty products
By Nathan Batalion, Global Health Activist, Editor Healingtalks
(Healingtalks) Processed breakfast cereal companies have long carried out a deceptive campaign of labeling their products as supposedly “natural.” Consumers are thus misled by this term, believing it is free of chemicals and/or genetically engineered ingredients.
Cornucopia Investigation of Processed Breakfast Cereals
Cornucopia Institute (www.Cornucopia.org) conducted a study that revealed how the term “natural” was being misused and abused. This same group exposed the use of hexane solvents in soy protein. Their new study may send shock waves throughout the “natural” products industry by revealing that so-called “natural” foods contain high levels GMOs and toxic chemical pesticides.
Facts about GMOs
Before you view the Cornucopia’s test results below, three important facts are vital to know:
Widespread GMO contamination in Cereals
Even “non-GMO” foods contain trace levels (between .01% and 0.5%) of contamination. Some “natural” items tested by the Cornucopia Institute showed between 28% and 100 % contamination – meaning the primary source ingredients are GMOs.
Various GMO Levels
Foods that test for GMOs today may contain higher or lower levels at another time due to “you name it” – supply line errors, changes, contaminations, etc. Some manufacturers test for GMOs in every batch, but others take a “don’t ask don’t tell” approach.
“Enrolled” vs. “Verified”
Foods “enrolled” in the Non-Gmo Project are on their way to becoming GMO free but still contain some traces. Purer Gmo-free products are called “verified.”
One thing is certain. Most “natural” breakfast cereals contain surprisingly high levels of genetically engineered ingredients. This is why it’s so important to shop for certified organic breakfast cereals. A list of reliable companies is at the bottom of this article.
All these concerns about GMOs don’t cover toxic pesticides traces in the grains used to produce “natural” breakfast cereals. The Cornucopia report cites extensive USDA testing of “natural” grain ingredients contaminated with chemical pesticides. Synthetic pesticides are banned in organic production so organic is again the way to go if you wish to avoid pesticide residues.
Test results
The Cornucopia Institute’s “Cereal Scorecard” (http://www.cornucopia.org/2011/10/n…) reveals some truly astonishing facts about what’s in our breakfast cereal:
• Kashi brand cereals (Kellogg’s) contains “high levels” of GMOs. A high level means the key ingredients are genetically engineered. 100% of the soy used in tested boxes of Kashi was genetically engineered soy. Non-organic grainsused in Kashi cereals typically contain residues of all the following pesticides: phosmet, carbaryl, azinphos methyl, malathion, chlorpyrifos methyl, chlorpyrifos. (Note: This does not mean these Kashi cereals were tested for each of these chemicam but rather that they are typically in non-organic grains used in Kashi cereals).
• Mother’s brand cereals (PepsiCo) contains “high levels” of GMOs. Test results revealed 28% of the corn to be genetically engineered.
• Whole Foods’ 365 brand Corn Flakes contains “high levels” of GMOs (more than 50% GE corn). Barbara’s Bakery Puffins cereal was also shown to contain more than 50% genetically engineered corn. These two are “enrolled” in the Non-GMO Project.
• Nature’s Path has are all certified organic cereals, contained no significant GMO contamination and are made with entirely non-GMO ingredients.
• Kashi GoLean, Mother’s Bumpers, Nutritious Living Hi-Lo, and General Mills Kix -“Natural” products contaminated with levels of GE ingredients, sometimes are at a 100%:.
• Quaker Oats (a unit of PepsiCo) states that it is an “all-natural” product. But Quaker Oats manages a plant that emits roughly 19,000 pounds of sulfuryl fluoride yearly. Sulfuryl fluoride is a toxic greenhouse gas used to treat crops like oats in storage.
• “Natural” Peace Cereal Wild Berry Crisp is produced from conventional commodity ingredients containing the neurotoxin phosmet and the carcinogen captan in 11% and 55% of samples, respectively.
• Mom’s Best Naturals Raisin Bran cereal contains “natural” (non-GMO) ingr9edients that are commonly contaminated with malathion and phosmet chemicals, both of which are neurotoxins.
• Several Bear Naked and Kashi products contain conventional soy protein. Soy protein in this country is nearly all hexane-extracted. The “hexane bath” that the soybeans are immersed in consists of more than 50% n-hexane, which is a known neurotoxin.
By Nathan Batalion, Global Health Activist, Healingtalks editor
(Healingtalks) Over the past 27 years a recent data compilation shows no…that is zero or nada deaths from vitamins and over 3 million deaths related to prescription drugs! The latter is almost 100,000 deaths per year or 274 per day. That is the equivalent of a jet crashing accidentally every single day for the past 27 years. If that were to happen, would you continue to fly on jets without fear or concern? How would you feel, on top of that, if there was a news blackout of the jets crashing everyday and in all the major, corporate-owned media because airline companies are significant advertisers in those media!
Now just substitute pharmaceutical companies for airline companies and you get the picture, or sense of what is really happening with the false promises of “better living through chemistry.”
Shocking News: Drug Deaths Also Outnumber Deaths from Car Accidents
In fact, going back 54 years there have only been 11 claims of vitamin-related death, all with little or no substantial evidence to link vitamins to the cause of death. The news comes after a recent statistically analysis that pharmaceutical drug deaths now outnumber traffic fatalities in the US.
In 2009, prescription drug deaths exceeded traffic-related deaths, killing at least 37,485 people nationwide.
The findings go against the claims of mainstream medical ‘experts’ and mainstream media outlets who often push the idea that multivitamins are detrimental to your health, and that prescription drugs are the only science-backed option to improving your health. While essential nutrients like vitamin D are continually being shown to slash your risk of disease such as diabetes and cancer, prescription pharmaceuticals are continually being linked to such conditions. In fact, the top-selling therapeutic class pharmaceutical drug has been tied to the development of diabetes and even suicide, and whistleblowers are just now starting to speak out despite studies as far back as the 80s highlighting the risks.
Mainstream medical health officials were recently forced to speak out over the danger of antipsychotic drugs, which millions of children have been prescribed since 2009. U.S. pediatric health advisers blew the whistle over the fact that these pharmaceuticals can lead to diabetes and even suicide, the very thing they aim to prevent. What is even more troubling is that half of all Americans will be diagnosed with a mental condition during their lifetime thanks to lack of diagnosis guidelines currently set by the medical establishment, of which many cases will lead to the prescription of antipsychotics and other similar medications.
Covering up prescription drug side effects
In order to protect sales, the link between suicide and antipsychotic drugs was completely covered up by Eli Lilly & Co, the makers of Prozac. Despite research stretching as far back as the 1980s finding that Prozac actually leads to suicide, the company managed to hide the evidence until a Harvard psychiatrist leaked the information into the press. The psychiatrist, Martin Teicher, stated that the American people were being treated like guinea pigs in a massive pharmaceutical experiment.
Greedy and oftentimes prescription-happy doctors are handing out antipsychotic medication like candy to adults and young children alike. In 2008, antipsychotics became the top-selling therapeutic class prescription drug in the United States and grossing over $14 billion in sales.
Antipsychotic drugs are not the only dangerous pharmaceuticals. The average drug label contains 70 side effects, though many popular pharmaceuticals have been found to contain 100 to 125. Some drugs, prescribed by doctors to supposedly improve your health, come with over 525 negative reactions.
Ritalin Side-Effects
Ritalin, for example, has been linked to conditions including:
* Increased blood pressure
* Increased heart rate
* Increased body temperature
* Increased alertness
* Suppressed appetite
Cold and Allergy Medication Side Effects
Perhaps the hundreds of negative side effects is part of the reason why the FDA announced last year that it is pulling more than 500 cold and allergy off the market due to health concerns. Prescription drugs kill more people than traffic accidents, and come with up to 525 negative side effects. Avoiding these drugs and utilizing high quality organic alternatives like whole food-based multivitamins and green superfoods will lead to a total health transformation without harsh side effects and an exponentially increased death risk.
Harmful Side Effects Are Really Main and Essential Effects of Pharmceuticals
It is part of corporate brainwashing and psychological manipulation to call the almost universal presence of many harmful effects from taking almost any drugs as being a so-called side-effects – as something negligible and not really important to consider. What an ultimate corporate deception.
Think again as this contrived illusion and propaganda of modern medicine often kills.
Sources:
Most recent year: Bronstein AC, Spyker DA, Cantilena LR Jr, Green JL, Rumack BH, Giffin SL. 2009 Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers’ National Poison Data System (NPDS): 27th Annual Report. Clinical Toxicology (2010). 48, 979-1178. The full text article is available for free download at http://www.aapcc.org/dnn/Portals/0/2009%20AR.pdf
Please take part in Vaccine Information Week by sharing this article, as well as the many other KEY ARTICLES demonstrating the dangers of vaccines. Please also visit Natural Society for more great health news and vaccine information.
Keywords: overdose deaths, drug awareness, medical errors, death at hospital, death in hospital, drug related deaths
Based on an article by Anthony Gucciardi Activist Post
Keywords: Death from overdose, legal substances, death from drug abuse, overdose vitamin
Nathan Batalion, Global Health Activist, Healingtalks Editor
(Healingtalks) After years of denial, the FDA finally admitted chicken sold in the USA contained arsenic, a highly cancer-causing chemical whose effects may be fatal. Why? Arsenic was added to chicken feed!
FDA research further showed this ends up in the meat we eat. So for decades since the 1940′s those who ate non-organic chicken have really been feasting on arsenic, a cancer-causing chemical. (http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/loc…)
Until this new study, the FDA denied arsenic ended up in poultry meat, claiming it was excreted in chicken feces. But the FDA’s excretion claim never was scientifically grounded.
Arsenic Chicken Feed Pulled
But now the evidence is so undeniable that the manufacturer of the chicken feed product known as Roxarsone has decided to pull the product (http://www.grist.org/food-safety/20…). Who is the manufacturer? A subsidiary of Pfizer. The company is pulling it off the shelves here but not necessarily abroad – unless forced to since it will lose those sacred $ profits. Pfizer is attempting to influence regulatory authorities in about a dozen other countries to still sell its product (http://www.usatoday.com/money/indus…)
Arsenic? What’s the Big Deal? Eat more!
The FDA still continues to say the arsenic in chickens was at such a low level that the meat was safe to eat. At the same time it admitted arsenic was a major carcinogen. The National Chicken Council agreed with the FDA, of course. Billions are at stake.
But Remember, Don’t Eat Healthy Food Instead
At the same time that the FDA tells consumers it’s safe to eat cancer-causing arsenic, it’s apparently unsafe to drink elderberry juice and raw milk! The FDA recently conducted an armed raid in an elderberry juice manufacturer, charging the “crime” of selling “unapproved drugs.” Elderberry juice becomes a “drug” if you tell people how it can help support good health.
The FDA is also waging a war on raw milk consumption as dangerous.
So in our George Orwellian times, repeat after me:
Eat more poison, consume less healthy foods.
Eat more poison, consume less healthy foods.
Eat more poison, consume less healthy foods.
By the way, can you also believe that chicken litter containing arsenic was given to cows in beef operations. So the arsenic from chicken litter ends up in beef hamburgers. These burgers are eaten by clueless masses who are not told (being not on the menu) that they are really eating second-hand chicken sh*t. (http://www.naturalnews.com/027414_c…)
Keywords: Chicken McArsenic, poultry farms, poultry foods, feeding of chicken, roxarsone, arsenic in chicken, poultry safety, poultry diet, poultry meal.
Based on an article by Ethan A. Huff, staff writer for Natural News
(Healing Talks) California officials manipulated safety data on methyl iodide, a most deadly pesticide, in order to make it legal to use on strawberries. Thus those juicy strawberries found in your local produce section likely will harbor a deadly coating.
In 2010, regulators in California (where over 90 percent of conventional strawberries are grown) quietly approved the use of toxic methyl iodide as a fruit pesticide after the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved it nationally. But new evidence has surfaced that government officials twisted thestudy data to make this chemical falsely appear to be safe — and individuals everywhere are now increasingly demanding that methyl iodide be banned.
A recent report from Mother Jones explains that the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) cherry-picked data from varying studies on methyl iodide in order to paint the chemical in an artificially positive light. The agency then used this deceptive data to justify allowing smaller buffer zones between farms that use methyl iodide and farms that do not use methyl iodide. DPR also used the flawed data to increase the permitted spray concentration maximum for the chemical.
Early on, DPR’s own scientists decried the agency’s intended actions, having noted in an internal memo that numbers cited in the agency’s report endorsing methyl iodide had been extracted from “different risk assessment methodologies that are not interchangeable.” They added that such data was “not scientifically credible,” and that any data of that type is only accurate when compiled from the same source.
But DPR refused to listen to these scientists, and instead approved methyl iodide in spite of the evidence against it. Not long after, environmental protection groups, farmers, and ordinary citizens together sparked a burgeoning battle to force the state to ban methyl iodide, including a recent rally that took place on the steps of the California State Capital.
Methyl iodide causes miscarriages, thyroid dysfunction, cancer
Arysta LifeScience, the chemical company that produces methyl iodide, claims that it is largely safe, and that the neurotoxic damage it can cause is “transient.” But according to data cited by leading scientists, this is simply not the case, and permanent brain damage can ensue from exposure to methyl iodide.
Back in 2007 before methyl iodide’s approval, a group of more than 35 esteemed scientists wrote a letter to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) urging it to deny approval for the chemical on the grounds that it is “highly toxic,” and has a “significant adverse impact on public health.”
After methyl iodide was approved anyway, the same group sent another letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson once again urging the agency to withdraw approval for the chemical (http://www.panna.org/sites/default/…).
“Due to the potent toxicity of methyl iodide, its transport and ultimate fate in the environment, adequate control of human exposure would be difficult, if not impossible,” wrote scientists from California’s Scientific Review Committee (SRC) concerning methyl iodide. “We have concluded there is little doubt that the compound possesses significant toxicity.”
SRC’s thorough report also notes that, despite claims made by Arysta about methyl iodide’s supposedly transient neurotoxicity, “no robust studies of neurotoxicity (were) actually conducted.” If they had been, it would have been revealed, of course, that methyl iodide is a highly neurotoxic substance that is known and recognized by the state of California to cause cancer (http://www.oehha.ca.gov/prop65/prop…).
Methyl iodide, of course, is the same chemical that scientists have used to deliberately create cancer cells in laboratories for research purposes that is how powerfully dangerous it is!
The Pesticide Action Network – North America (PANNA) also notes that methyl iodide is responsible for causing late-term miscarriages as well, especially at the 100 pounds (lbs) per acre spread rate to which it has been approved for California strawberries (http://www.panna.org/cancer-free-st…).
Methyl iodide has no legitimate place in American agriculture
On December 30, 2010, Earthjustice and California Rural Legal Assistance, Inc. filed a lawsuit against DPR for approving of methyl iodide, which ignored all available evidence against the chemical, as well as the more than 53,000 comments submitted by Californians against the chemical’s use. The use of methyl iodide violates the California Environmental Quality Act, the California Birth Defects Prevention Act, and the Pesticide Contamination Prevention Act, according to the suit.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of PANNA and numerous other groups representing farmers and consumers, many of whom stand to be affected most by the pumping of soils with toxic methyl iodide gas. Many of the farm fields that spray methyl iodide are located directly near homes and schools, where high-risk individuals like pregnant mothers and young children face routine exposure.
In truth, there really is no need to use methyl iodide on strawberries, peppers, or any of the other varieties of produce for which it has been approved. Several large strawberry growers, including Swanton Berry, Driscoll’s, and Martinez Farms, have been able to develop thriving organic strawberry operations that require no pesticides — surely the rest can make modifications to avoid pumping toxic poisons into the soils of one of America’s major produce production regions.
(Healingtalks) Glyphosate is probably the single most Earth-harming and lethal chemical on our planet at this time.
Roundup, Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicide, is causing Sudden Death Syndrome (SDS), a serious plant disease, in countless fields. Study after study shows that glyphosate is contributing not only to the huge increase in SDS, but also to the outbreak of numerous other plant, animal and human diseases. As a weed killer, it is simply a more widespread life-killer.
Why Glyphsate Is So Dangerous
Glyphosate is the world’s bestselling weed killer or herbicide.
It was patented by Monsanto for use in their Roundup brand, which became more popular when they introduced “Roundup Ready” crops — genetically modified (GM) plants that can withstand applications of normally deadly Roundup.
But the herbicide doesn’t destroy plants directly; instead, it creates a unique perfect storm of conditions that activates disease-causing organisms in the soil, while at the same time wiping out plant defenses against those diseases. The Institute for Responsible Technology reports:
“By weakening plants and promoting disease, glyphosate opens the door for lots of problems in the field. According to Don [Huber, a plant pathologist], ‘There are more than 40 diseases of crop plants that are reported to increase with the use of glyphosate …’ Some of the fungi promoted by glyphosate produce dangerous toxins that can end up in food and feed … They’ve ‘been linked to the plague epidemics’ of medieval Europe, ‘large-scale human toxicosis in Eastern Europe,’ esophageal cancer in southern Africa and parts of China, joint diseases in Asia and southern Africa, and a blood disorder in Russia.”
Roundup Ready GMOS in our Food Supply
75 percent of soybeans
65 percent of cotton
10 percent of corn grown in the United States
… contain the genetically modified (GM) Roundup Ready gene, which allows farmers to spray Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide directly onto their fields, killing weeds without harming the crops … theoretically. However, this convenience comes at a steep price, as evidence shows that Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, is actually devastating crops and human and animal health around the world, even when the exposure is restricted to residues leftover in the soil.
“The Perfect Storm” for Plant Devastation
Glyphosate is the world’s bestselling weed killer, and it’s found in more than 30 percent of all herbicides. While Roundup Ready crops can withstand the toxin because of GM genetic material from viruses and bacteria, the weed killer is thought to be contributing to Sudden Death Syndrome (SDS), a deadly plant disease that causes plants to turn yellow and die. As reported by GM expert Jeffrey Smith, numerous studies have linked glyphosate to increases in SDS, including in crops that have never been sprayed with the herbicide but were planted in a field that received an application the previous season. As Smith points out: “The herbicide doesn’t destroy plants directly. It rather cooks up a unique perfect storm of conditions that revs up disease-causing organisms in the soil, and at the same time wipes out plant defenses against those diseases. The mechanisms are well-documented but rarely cited.”In fact, Roundup herbicide weakens plants and promotes disease in a number of ways, including:
Acting as a chelator of vital nutrients, depriving plants of the nutrients necessary for healthy plant function
Interfering with photosynthesis, reducing water use efficiency, shortening root systems and causing plants to release sugars, which changes soil pH
Stunting and weakening plant growth
Promoting disease-causing organisms in soil, which then overtake the weakened crops
So the glyphosate in Roundup is not only weakening plants, it’s changing the makeup of soil and boosting the number of disease-causing organisms, a deadly recipe for crops around the globe. As Don Huber, a plant pathologist at Purdue University, stated: “There are more than 40 diseases of crop plants that are reported to increase with the use of glyphosate, and that number keeps growing as people recognize the association between glyphosate and disease.”As the use of Roundup has increased, so too has the prevalence of potentially devastating plant diseases, which could threaten future food crops and the food chain that depends on them.
Glyphosate Dangers for People and Animals Too
It’s not only plant life that’s threatened by the use of Roundup — human and animal toxins are created too. As Smith reported, glyphosate promotes the formation of certain types of fungi that are dangerous to people and contaminate food and animal feed. One such fungi, the Fusarium fungus, has been linked to plague epidemics, cancer, infertility and animal diseases. Residues of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide found in GM food and feed have also been linked to cell damage and even death, even at very low levels. Researchers have also found it causes membrane and DNA damage, and inhibits cell respiration. It’s also possible that glyphosate is significantly altering the nutrient content of our food, through its chelating mechanism, leading to widespread mineral deficiencies in animals and humans. Smith writes: “The same nutrients that glyphosate chelates and deprives plants are also vital for human and animal health. These include iron, zinc, copper, manganese, magnesium, calcium, boron, and others. Deficiencies of these elements in our diets, alone or in combination, are known to interfere with vital enzyme systems and cause a long list of disorders and diseases …Glyphosate-induced mineral deficiencies can easily go unidentified and untreated. Even when laboratory tests are done, they can sometimes detect adequate mineral levels, but miss the fact that glyphosate has already rendered them unusable.Glyphosate can tie up minerals for years and years, essentially removing them from the pool of nutrients available for plants, animals, and humans. If we combine the more than 135 million pounds of glyphosate-based herbicides applied in the US in 2010 with total applications over the past 30 years, we may have already eliminated millions of pounds of nutrients from our food supply.”
Roundup in the Environment
Monsanto long used the slogans, “It’s Safer than Mowing,” “Biodegradable,” and “Environmentally Friendly” to describe Roundup — until the real effects of this toxic herbicide were revealed and they were forced to discontinue their deceptive advertising. The truth is Monsanto’s own tests showed that only 2 percent of the herbicide broke down after 28 days, which means it readily persists in the environment. Glyphosate is actually the most commonly reported cause of pesticide illness among landscape maintenance workers in California. Additionally:
The surfactant ingredient in Roundup is more acutely toxic than glyphosate itself, and the combination of the two is even more toxic.
Glyphosate is suspected of causing genetic damage.
Glyphosate is acutely toxic to fish and birds and can kill beneficial insects and soil organisms that maintain ecological balance.
Laboratory studies have identified adverse effects of glyphosate-containing products in all standard categories of toxicological testing.
In one animal study, rats given 1,000 mg/kg of glyphosate resulted in a 50 percent mortality rate, and skeletal alterations were observed in over 57 percent of fetuses! And just so you understand, GM crops that are resistant to Roundup are the most widely sold GM varieties. So if you eat GM foods, there is a very good chance those foods contain Roundup residues — and possibly hefty amounts of them. According to Smith, by 2004 farmers used an estimated 86 percent more herbicide on GM soy fields compared to non-GM. Higher levels of herbicide residue in this GM soy might cause health problems, and many symptoms identified in one UK soy allergy study are also related to glyphosate exposure. The allergy study identified irritable bowel syndrome, digestion problems, chronic fatigue, headaches, lethargy, and skin complaints including acne and eczema, all related to soy consumption. Symptoms of glyphosate exposure include nausea, headaches, lethargy, skin rashes, and burning or itchy skin. It is also possible that glyphosate’s breakdown product AMPA, which accumulates in GM soybeans after each spray, might contribute to allergies. Again, the use of Roundup herbicide has increased dramatically since the GM Roundup Ready crops were introduced. In the first 13 years, American farmers sprayed an additional 383 million pounds of herbicide due to these herbicide-tolerant crops. And now the repeated exposures have given Mother Nature all she needs to stage her comeback in the form of devastating superweeds.
How Can You Avoid Roundup and Roundup Ready Crops?
Did you know that genetically modified foods are so prevalent in the United States that if you randomly pick an item off your grocery store’s shelves, you have a 75 percent chance of picking a food with GM ingredients? It’s true. At least seven out of every 10 processed food items have been genetically modified, and there’s more to come. The potential health ramifications of these world-wide experiments with our food supply are frightening to say the least. If you care about the health and future of your family, I strongly urge you to refuse to participate in this destructive trend. How? It’s actually simpler than you might think… By buying only non-GM foods. The True Food Shopping Guideis a great tool for helping you determine which brands and products contain GM ingredients. It lists 20 different food categories that include everything from baby food to chocolate. Additionally, here are four simple steps to decrease your consumption of GM foods as much as possible:
Reduce or eliminate processed foods in your diet. The fact that 75 percent of processed foods contain GM ingredients is only one of the many reasons to stick to a whole foods diet.
Read produce and food labels. Conventionally raised soybeans and corn make up the largest portion of genetically modified crops. Ingredients made from these foods include high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), corn flour and meal, dextrin, starch, soy sauce, margarine, and tofu.
Buy organic produce. By definition, food that is certified organic must be free from all GM organisms, produced without artificial pesticides and fertilizers and from an animal reared without the routine use of antibiotics, growth promoters or other drugs. Additionally, grass-fed beef will not have been fed GM corn feed.
You can also get involved in helping to defeat GM crops at the regulatory level. Right now the USDA is considering the approval of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready alfalfa, which would lead to the application of millions more pounds of Roundup herbicide each year. You can urge U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to NOT approve Roundup Ready alfalfa, which would lead to the addition of more Roundup on U.S. fields and in our food, by using this action form from the Institute for Responsible Technology
Keyword Tags – threaten the future of food, dangers of gmos and glyphosate, roundup ready unsafe, roundup threatens environment, Monsanto control of food supply seeds, glyphosate dangerous, stop Gmos, say not to GMOS, roundup in our environment, harms of glythosate
(Healingtalks) The first report was recently issued on ambient levels of glyphosate and its major degradation product, aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA), in air and rain.
Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the U.S.
Weekly air particle and rain samples were collected during two growing seasons in agricultural areas in Mississippi and Iowa. Rain was also collected in Indiana. The frequency of glyphosate detection ranged from 60 to 100 percent in both air and rain.
According to the report, as linked on the website Green Med Info: “The frequency of detection and median and maximum concentrations of glyphosate in air were similar or greater to those of the other high-use herbicides observed in the Mississippi River basin, whereas its concentration in rain was greater than the other herbicides.”
Chemical exposure in our environment is a pervasive threat, and the report of the herbicide glyphosate being detected in 60 to100 percent of air and rain samples is a perfect illustration of this sad truth.
Evidence now clearly shows that glyphosate is devastating crops, animal and human health around the world, even when the exposure is restricted to residues leftover in the soil. Clearly, its presence in air and rain water can only add to its destructive force.
Glyphosate—The World’s Most Popular Herbicide…
Genetically engineered crops have vastly increased the use of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s nonselective broad-spectrum herbicide Roundup, and this product alone is now wreaking unimaginable havoc in our environment. According to Jeffrey Smith with the Institute for Responsible Technology, by 2004 farmers used an estimated 86 percent more herbicides on GM soy fields compared to non-GM fields.
So-called “Roundup Ready” soybean, cotton and corn crops became exceedingly popular because it allows farmers to spray Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide directly onto their fields without harming the crops. Ordinarily, if you were to spray Roundup, or any other glyphosate-based herbicide, onto a plant, it would rapidly die.
Since the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) stopped updating its pesticide use database in 2008, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to estimate how much glyphosate is actually used in the US, but the following 2006-2007 market usage estimates were reported by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) earlier this year:
Agricultural market used 180 to 185 million pounds of glyphosate
Home and garden market: 5 to 8 million pounds
Industry, commerce and government: 13 to 15 million pounds
Ambient Levels of Glyphosate in Air and Rain
The results of the first report on the ambient levels of glyphosate and AMPA in air and rain water were published in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry in March. The samples were collected during two growing seasons in Mississippi and Iowa. Glyphosate was detected in 60 to 100 percent of all air and rain samples. The following concentration ranges of glyphosate were found:
Air: 0.01 to 9.1 ng/m
Rain: 0.1 to 2.5 µg/L
According to the authors: “It is not known what percentage of the applied glyphosate is introduced into the air, but it was estimated that up to 0.7 percent of application is removed from the air in rainfall. Glyphosate is efficiently removed from the air; it is estimated that an average of 97 percent of the glyphosate in the air is removed by a weekly rainfall ≥ 30 mm.”
The Environmental and Health Dangers of Glyphosate
A couple of years ago, a French court found Monsanto guilty of falsely advertising its herbicide as “biodegradable,” “environmentally friendly” and claiming it “left the soil clean.” The truth is that Roundup is anything BUT environmentally friendly. Monsanto’s own tests showed that only two percent of the herbicide broke down after 28 days, which means it readily persists in the environment!
Glyphosate is the most commonly reported cause of pesticide illness among landscape maintenance workers in California, and researchers have now linked it to Sudden Death Syndrome (SDS), a serious plant disease, in many fields around the world. Numerous studies have also shown that glyphosate is contributing not only to the huge increase in SDS, but also to the outbreak of some 40 different plant and crop diseases! It weakens plants and promotes disease in a number of ways, including:
Acting as a chelator of vital nutrients, depriving plants of the nutrients necessary for healthy plant function
Interfering with photosynthesis, reducing water use efficiency, shortening root systems and causing plants to release sugars, which changes soil pH
Stunting and weakening plant growth
The herbicide doesn’t destroy plants directly; instead, it creates a unique “perfect storm” of conditions that activates disease-causing organisms in the soil, while at the same time wiping out plant defenses against those diseases. So the glyphosate not only weakens plants, it actually changes the makeup of the soil and boosts the number of disease-causing organisms, which is becoming a deadly recipe for crops around the globe… A report from 1998 by the Environmental Monitoring & Pest Management Department of Pesticide Regulation on the environmental fate of glyphosate states that: “Aerial drift of the herbicide will cause injury to nontarget plants… Minute quantities of mist, drip, drift or splash of glyphosate onto nontarget vegetation can cause severe damage or destruction to the plants or other areas on which treatment was not intended.”
So, what exactly is being done to vegetation everywhere, now that both air and rain is clearly contaminated with glyphosate?
Further Health Hazards of Glyphosate
Usually, whatever toxins lurk in the environment has a tendency to find its way into animals’ bellies and onto your dinner plate, and this holds true for glyphosate as well. Some of the fungi promoted by glyphosate produce dangerous toxins that can end up in the food supply. Some of these have been linked to human toxicosis in Eastern Europe, esophageal cancer in southern Africa and parts of China, joint diseases in Asia and southern Africa, and a blood disorder in Russia.
It is also acutely toxic to fish and birds and can kill beneficial insects and soil organisms that maintain ecological balance.
Laboratory studies have identified adverse effects of glyphosate-containing products in all standard categories of toxicological testing. In one animal study, rats given 1,000 mg/kg of glyphosate resulted in a 50 percent mortality rate, and skeletal alterations were observed in over 57 percent of fetuses!
The surfactant ingredient in Roundup is more acutely toxic than glyphosate itself, and the combination of the two is even more toxic.
Industry (including Monsanto) has known since the 1980s that glyphosate causes malformations in experimental animals at high doses
Industry has known since 1993 that these effects could also occur at lower and mid doses
The German government has known since at least 1998 that glyphosate causes malformations
The EU Commission’s expert scientific review panel knew in 1999 — and the EU Commission has known since 2002 – that glyphosate causes malformations
What Do We Know about AMPA?
Aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA) is a byproduct of the degradation of glyphosate, and no one seems to know what the full environmental- and health impacts might be from this synthetic metabolite. However, according to a 2008 study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, AMPA is phytotoxic to plant species, although it’s less active than glyphosate. And the British Pesticide Properties DataBase (PPDB) lists it as being moderately toxic to fish, aquatic invertebrates and algae, and cites “probable liver and kidney toxicant” as a known human health issue.
Aside from those few nuggets, toxicology and safety data is glaringly absent.
This could spell trouble, depending on what the truth is about the health impact of this metabolite, as a previous report by the US Geological Survey, issued in 2007, found that AMPA was detected more frequently than glyphosate, and occurred at similar or higher concentrations than the parent compound.
Genetically Modified Crops May Contain Toxic Roundup Residues
It’s widely known that genetically modified (GM) Roundup Ready crops contain Roundup residues, and a 2009 study demonstrated just how toxic these residues may be to your health… Even when researchers tested formulations of Roundup that were highly diluted (up to 100,000 times or more) on human cells, the cells died within 24 hours!
They also found damage to cell membranes and DNA, along with an inhibition of cell respiration. Further, the researchers discovered that the mixture of components used as Roundup adjuvants actually amplified the action of the glyphosate. The researchers wrote: “This work clearly confirms that the adjuvants in Roundup formulations are not inert. Moreover, the proprietary mixtures available on the market could cause cell damage and even death around residual levels to be expected, especially in food and feed derived from Roundup formulation-treated crops.”
Although Roundup isn’t used exclusively on genetically modified (GM) crops, these crops are some of the most prevalent in the US diet. So to drastically reduce your exposure, avoiding GM foods would be an obvious starting point.
How Do You Know if You’re Eating GM Foods?
According to the latest US Department of Agriculture (USDA) statistics, about 88 percent of all corn, 90 percent of all canola, and 94 percent all soy grown in the United States is genetically modified in one way or another (not all are the Roundup Ready variety), which means that virtually every processed food you encounter at your local supermarket that does not bear the “USDA Organic” label will contain one or more GM components.
Therefore, if you want to avoid GM foods (which have a variety of inherent health dangers over and above the hazards of Roundup residues), you’ll want to, first and foremost, avoid most processed foods, unless it’s labeled USDA 100% Organic. You can also avoid GM foods that are not found in processed foods, if you know what to look for. There are currently eight genetically modified food crops on the market:
Soy
Sugar from sugar beets
Corn
Hawaiian papaya
Cottonseed (used in vegetable cooking oils)
Some varieties of zucchini
Canola (canola oil)
Crookneck squash
More Tips on How to Decrease Your Exposure to Glyphosate
The potential health ramifications of these world-wide experiments with our food supply, using genetic engineering and vast amounts of toxic chemicals, are frightening to say the least. If you care about the health and future of your family, I strongly urge you to refuse to participate in this destructive trend.
In your own home, you can:
Avoid using glyphosate-containing weed killers on your lawn and garden, and
Buy organic foods to avoid both genetically modified crops and agricultural chemicals like glyphosate
The True Food Shopping Guide is a great tool for helping you determine which food brands and products contain GM ingredients. It lists 20 different food categories that include everything from baby food to chocolate.
The simplest way to avoid GM foods however, is to buy whole, certified organic foods. By definition, foods that are certified organic must be free from all GM organisms, produced without artificial pesticides and fertilizers and from an animal reared without the routine use of antibiotics, growth promoters or other drugs. Additionally, grass-fed beef will not have been fed GM corn feed.
Keyword tags: glyphosate kills, roundup ready harm, health hazards of glyphosate harm of GMOs, stop GMOs, say not to GMOs, environmental hazards of glyphosate roundup, animal studies glyphosate, Glyphosate in Air and Rain
Everyone knows we’re created a non-sustainable condition for our environment.
Our planet is a global mess and something has to give or turn things around.
Key species, like honey bees, are dying.
The riches of natural ecologies like rain forests and coral reefs are being devastated or are dying.
Pollution is everywhere on the planet and within us. Human beings are certainly not immune from what is happening, and thus we are increasingly suffering from systemic and chronic health challenges.
But to do something, and effectively, requires knowing the root cause. Is that possible?
IS THE CAUSE WITHIN?
Here is my take on this very critical issue.
First I believe we must assume personal responsibility for this ecological mess on the premise that the cause is not “out there.”
Secondly, that means we need to look within at what is directing us to cause such damage to our environment and ourselves. Somehow if the outside world is a huge mess, our inner world must be comparably out of sorts or very poorly organized. If that is so, how exactly did this first come about?
BEGINNNG WIH THE GREEKS
I believe this has to do with certain deep cultural roots, beginning in ancient Greek times – and screwing up a best integration of our whole inner consciousness.
Remember we have main sides to our brain, one is skilled at conceptual languages and the other at seeing things in a raw and naked without the use of words. One tends to experience any consciousness of our world “connectively” and holistically, and the other oppositely. It is better at taking things apart or seeing things with separate and detailed precision.
Now let me propose it is not ata ll wise to make the latter side (takes-things-apart-with-precision side) dominant. That that indeed screws the whole of our consciousness up. Why? Because then we tend to take apart what most whole, ending up again with a huge mess. On the other hand if the other side is dominant, we can oppositely and with greatest skill reconnect to wholeness or heal what is most apart, asunder, ill, a mess or in shambles.
Which side then is dominant in our times and for the overall integration of consciousness?
I will argue it is the former thus making a mess or creating a non-sustainable environment. This is happening as we have gone actually to the greatest extreme of such left-brain dominance.
HOW WE BECOME EXTREMELY LEFT-BRAIN DOMINANT Words form ideologies and philosophies and so they can structure the whole of our consciousness and thereby direct our lives. The role of language here is critically important. If we now go back to Greek times we see that the Greeks did something very, very important to their language – influencing how we integrate our inner world in the west. It doesn’t seem like they did something dramatic at first sight, but indeed it was monumental from an inner point of view.
The Greeks simply added vowels to their language!
Why did that matter at all? What does this have to do with anything? How does it relate to our modern ecological crises?
My explanation is as follows.
Before they added vowels, the Greek language was read from right to left like the Hebrew was. Eye movements for reading from right-to-left is thought to be right-brain dominant – the connective over the separative.
Within about a hundred years of making this language shift, or after the adding of vowels which allowed each word to have a specific, isolated, and therefore disconnected/separative meaning,eye movements for reading changed! The inner consciousness was rewired. The Greeks suddenly read in a “boustrophedron” style or like an ox plows a field. Once vowels were added, the average reader didn’t have to necessarily look at the whole context of a dialogue or written work to decipher what any given word meant!
Looking at the whole triggers the right brain’s functioning, not needing to do so triggers the left brain’s functioning coming to the foreground. Reading thus went back and forth (or right-to-left and from left-to-right alternatively) as if balancing out the too or consciousness appeared confused. It couldn’t make up its mind which way to dominantly go.
Then after about a hundred fifty years it finally settled on reading from left-to-right.
The use of language, as evidenced by the way it was read, became more left-brain dominant. The latter gained the controlling “upper hand.”
Lab testing has shown that individuals who are disabled by car accidents and the like to become right-brain damaged, and thereby severely left-brain dominant, will largely go insane or suffer from dementia. Patients with the opposite malady, or being more left-brain damaged but right-brain ok, will remain completely sane or oriented, but will have great trouble verbalizing things or explaining what they experience in precise detail. They also will have trouble drawing straight linear lines because their consciousness can’t sharply separate elements spatially! They are not likely to wear suits and work on Wall Street because their consciousness, as we used to say in the 1960′s, is “not straight.”
The significant Greek cultural/language shift came to a pinnacle expression during the Golden Age of Greece. This brought us the taproot foundations of western civilization’s whole worldview.
This is a continuation of Part I which explains how we relate to all of nature through our culturally-chosen language!
HISTORY OF ANCIENT WESTERN LANGUAGES
“Two scripts are well attested from before the end of the fourth millennium BCE: Mesopotamian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Both were well known in the part of the Middle East that produced the first widely used alphabet, the Phoenician.” Actually, a very recent discovery of cave writings thought to have been done by the ancient Israelites during their 40-year’s exodus from Egypt predate Phoenician writings. It is now thought that the Israelites developed their alphabet from the Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the Phoenicians copied it. The Greeks are credited with adding vowels (since neither the Hebrew nor Phoenician alphabets had vowels), and the English alphabet was based on the Greek (and later Latin), not the Phoenician. “Most alphabets in the world today either descend directly from this development, for example the Greek and Latin alphabets.” SOURCE: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090112110219AAJkD6o
ROMANS FOLLOWED THE GREEKS
The Romans also added vowels, just a bit later. This was to give each word in the Bible a more exact, precise meaning. This afforded the Roman Empire more spiritual control over the inner life of the Empire, supporting in their brutal push for dominion via the Crusades. From the Romans’ Latin came the modern Romance languages of Europe.
A FURTHER SHIFT TO LEFT-BRAIN DOMINANCE
A further shift to left-brain dominance came about in the 17th century. This happened because of the introduction by Sir Isaac Newton and others of the uniquely math-bound vision of nature – the vision of physics, chemistry and biotechnology. Mathematics represents the highest left-brain integrating symbols - and together construct a penultimate left-brain cosmic view. Why? This is because math symbols abstracts how to separate all elements of consciousness. The right brain, which should be dominant, see in the opposite way. I learned this in my youth when after being a math prodigy I had a high fever and my left brain shut down. This afforded me the opportunity to personally see the universe in an opposite way!
The industrial, chemical, and biotech revolutions followed the lead of the 17th century, and in a close marriage with commerce’s likewise quantitative focus. This refers to when we try to make money, no matter what the ultimate consequences are from a holistic view and thus also no matter what the impact on the sustainability of life on earth.
ILLUSIONS Illusions can be called illnesses of consciousness because they involve a breakdown of the integrity of the inner world – and akin to the way our physical body breakdowns in a diseased state. Cosmic illusions are thus the biggest, most powerful inner ills of all. They further manifest, when applied, in the wholesale breakdown within, and in turn making a mess of the outer world!
HEALING THE COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS
Are we suffering from a grand inner illness that needs healing. I believe so. Imagine that what this word “consciousness” refers to is really the principle of connection itself in nature, the glue that holds things together. This is not what we learn in physics. The latter elicits out of nature, the mechanical – guided by math symbols designing machines made of separate parts.
Consciousness, life and healing are all about undoing separation to reconnect what is cut apart – as in the seamless reconnection of a physical cut (such as when our skin heals after being slit).
If we organize thus our whole cosmic view using abstractions of separation, guaranteeing left-brain dominance, I believe we will end up with an ill or schizophrenic civilization as a whole.
That civilization then starts to create, and progressively, a polluting global mess or a non-sustainable environment.
What is the most polluted region of our planet? There are a number of possible answers. It could be the underground oceanic terrain now being vastly polluted with BP oil. Or it might be the thousand-mile long stretch of the Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch. We could also list a number of major supertoxic waste sites. On a different front, Antarctica’s atmosphere has hugely concentrated chemicals that migrate globally to colder regions (as brought out by the groundbreaking book, Silent Snow). Then there is the area just north of the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. This has uniquely experienced three nuclear disasters. The list of other major candidates goes on.
DIRTY THIRTY Actually Blacksmith Institute publishes an annual Dirty Thirty list of the most polluted spots on the Earth. They state on their website the following:
“Pollution likely affects over a billion people around the world, with millions poisoned and killed each year. The World Heath Organization estimates that 25 percent of all deaths in the developing world are directly attributable to environmental factorsSome researchers estimate that exposure to pollution causes 40 percent of deaths annually.”
WHAT’S MISSING One “region” of our planet, however, is glaringly missing from Blacksmith’s list. I deeply believe it is the single most polluted arena of them all……Ready for this?….. It is the inner state of our minds or what our minds do to structure of our collective consciousness and way of relating to nature! In that inner world of ours, imagine that pollution first manifests subtly before it takes physical form – and as a set of “illusions.” Illusion can be defined as a breakdown in the integrity of consciousness. For example, if a surface illusion (a mask or makeup or a dressing up of reality makes us think that something similar is deeply true… but it isn’t… there is a breakdown in the integrity of consciousness. Outer pollution breaks down the integrity of whole organisms. Are inner breakdowns related to outer breakdowns of the physical integrity of life, to pollutions? Are we creating the pollution that is now engulfing us externally because our minds have so far out of tune, or have been engulfed themselves by vast, deep and global illusions? What are these illusions? This is absolutely critical to know.
ILLUSIONARY CENTRAL PARADIGMS Nothing is more powerful and influential in influencing our world than our culturally-chosen core worldview. Each worldview is a way of integrating, bringing together or “making one” a perception of the world – and this is done using a chosen central paradigm. The oriental worldview is sometimes organized using the concepts of yin and yang. The western worldview is usually organized using the concepts of matter and energy defined mathematically. Is there something wrong with the latter perspective? Does it harbor any illusions? Are those illusions possibly the root cause for the rapidly growing pollution of our planet? My answer to these three questions is a resounding yes.
In our times, and since the 17th century, we have seen the dominance of a math-based vision of nature – as catapulted to prominence by Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia Naturalis Mathematica - The Laws of Nature as Mathematical. This is the foundation for all of chemistry, physics, and biotechnology. This spins the quintessence of the modern vision of nature.
THE POWER OF WORLDVIEWS I can throw a rock at a sheetrocked wall, and it will simply smash a hole, the size of the rock, in the wall. However, if I alter an ingredient which makes up the entire wall, all of the wall is naturally impacted to its depths. Worldviews have such a universal impact, and obviously, because they are created out of the most universal ideas that then can seep into, and deeper and farther than anything else into the fabric of nature. This is a fact we forget, partly because we believe our worldview is not a worldview, but the worldview. It is supposedly not our culturally subjective creation but something that objectively and scientifically belongs to all of nature – and which we discover and uncover. Newton, after all, discovered not “laws of nature viewed or seen as mathematical” but the mathematical laws of nature. Newton was thereby heralded as a near-god. One contemporary wrote of Newton that he knew more about the cosmos than all of humanity combined. Was this really true?
AT THE ROOT OF THE CURRENT POLLUTION OF OUR PLANET When Galileo began teaching that the earth was not at the center of the universe, many of others thought he was raving mad. He had challenged a conventional and very deeply-held paradigms, such as that only the Bible was the final authority on the cosmic structure of the universe. In Genesis it was written that the “stars were made to shine upon the Earth,” implying an earth-centered view. How dare Galileo, the upstart and fool, think otherwise – and because of some squiggles on a drawing board we call math symbols correlated to his new toy, a telescope! What an arrogant sacrilege. Besides, doesn’t the earth seem to stand dead still? Obviously no one felt the earth moving at vast speeds, getting us dizzy. Who would be so foolish and idiotic to think so. Nor was anyone falling off the edges of our planet – not a one!
What I am proposing is something similarly unimaginable and revolutionary and on a vast cultural level impacting ourselves and our planet. It is even more deeply illusion-breaking, in my opinion. I am proposing that the foundations of chemistry, physics and bioengineering, grounded in the mathematical worldview, do not collectively give us a depth-integral or objective vision of nature’s nature and that the illusion of that powerful view is what is most deeply and vastly polluting our world – and with ever increasing intensity and scope since the middle of the 20th century.
WHEN I WAS YOUNGER AND FOOLISH When I was a teenager attending high school, I managed to get the highest college-entrance-exam score in physics in my school. I think it was 772 out of a possible 800. I also thought the reason why I got less than a perfect 800 (as I had done twice in math college entrance exams), was because I failed to understand the clearer nuances of basics physics concepts. Later I learned those basic concepts were actually corrupt. They created a highly quicksand-like understanding. It would take many pages to explain why. Here let me share the core gist of this revolutionary view.
DISORGANIZING, CORRUPTING, POLLUTING CONSCIOUSNESS All symbols in our minds have a unique identity, and thus limitations in guiding our vision. This is because symbols are simply pointing tools – and nothing more when stripped naked. They are not inner gods magically revealing laws. To “point” consciousness is to isolate or separate something in our awareness. This creates awareness bias. Thus worldviews generally are not objective. What do math symbols point to and bias us towards – past all the foolish and arrogant cultural mythologizing of the 17th century? Math symbols uniquely point us to how we can or may best separate elements of consciousness. The number “one” in the field of counting plus the ”point” in geometry are building block concepts. They represent universally separate wholes, the latter spatially and the former more universally. Is this the most appropriate symbolism for forming a coherent, sensible, rational, and non-illusionary worldview? In my mind, it is categorically not. One actually cannot connect a vision of nature with much integrity using the highest abstractions for how to separate all elements of consciousness. The end result will be vastly illusionary (and as intimated, physically polluting). And it not the use of these symbols as such which is being questioned. We need saws to cut pieces of wood. We need symbols of separation to cut apart our perceptions. The more important question is, are they appropriate symbols, used as central paradigm builders. The answer, in my mind, is most definitively not – and the impacts on our environment and the healing arts are where this is felt the most. Why?
IMAGINE Imagine that at the core nature is the principle of life, not the mathematical laws of machines. Imagine that at the core of life, is consciousness. Lastly imagine that consciousness forms a universal relationship of connection in nature. What then would the adoption of the mathematical view accomplish or symbols that point systematically to the separation of all elements of consciousness? They would foster an undermining or corruption of the essence of consciousness. Again this manifests in what touches life.
SIGNS OF INNER FAILINGS Thus I am not surprised that modern medical science is baffled by the lack of any cure for consciousness illnesses (like Alzheimer’s or diabetes evidencing neuropathy) using chemical drugs; or that the great Sir Isaac Newton ended his life schizophrenic; or that Nobel Prize-winning physicists have likewise ended their lives with Alzheimer’s disease. Math symbols do not, by their very nature, direct us to the connective depths of nature. They do help us build atomic weapons. They also help us to make things mechanical ( in separate parts) and unconscious. How they foster pollution is a little more complicated but it is part of the same mix. Ultimately one cannot integrally connect consciousness using separative symbols. It is like trying to glue things together with a chainsaw or atomic bomb. The loss of integrity of vision leads us to vast illusions and these illusions externally and potently manifest as life-threatening pollution.
ANTITHESIS Here we are pointing with math symbols to what can be seen as an anti-thesis to what more truly binds nature connectively together. An antithesis relative to a thesis forms a reversal illusion. Reversal illusions are the most powerful of all illusions (as with the reversal illusion of helio and geocentricity). Thus there arises the ability to powerfully dissolve and undermine the integrity of ecologies all over our planet – and in a very close marriage with commercialism that fosters a similar consciousness. Making a massive shift away from the whole math-bound view is culturally revolutionary. It constitutes a Copernican-like revolution. This time it involves a re-revolving around a different inner rather than outer understanding. Ultimately we will never stop polluting nature and own bodies if we keep holding onto the very vision that is most responsible and causative. We will treat cancer that is caused by chemicals with yet more chemicals as in chemotherapy.h We will create green college campuses (with lawns not pesticide/herbicide sprayed or with more energy saving devises) but will continue to teach courses in physics, chemistry and biotechnology as the dominant, core, and most objective understandings of nature. This illustrates how the changes we currently make, while valuable, can still be relatively superficial and thus not nearly enough to change our fundamental course from deep within. Therefore despite the existence of a growing alternative medical community as well as a potent environmental movement since the 1960′s, the destruction of species and the pollution of our bodies and planet have still sped forward – and in a way largely unimpeded but gaining steam. We have far more pesticides sprayed today on acres than at the time Rachel Carson first wrote Silent Spring.
As we heal our innermost vision we deeply heal ourselves and our surroundings. The greatest of healing begins thus from very deeply within and ultimately from the very core of our vision.
LEFT BRAIN DOMINANCE We live in a culture that is most extremely left-brain dominant, the most in humanity’s history. It is something spectacular that has evolved since ancient Greek times. In my opinion, it is a greatest of all cultural diseases, one that is ultimately fatal. I see it as occurring deep within, why we keep failing to heal our modern conditions using superficial and quick-fix solutions. We may blame material conditions or certain key persons (like George Bush, Stalin, Hitler, Mao), various politicians or corporate heads, when actually, I believe, our whole planetary culture is suffering from an inner consciousness disease.
CONSCIOUSNESS DEMENTIA When an individual person damages the right hemisphere of their brain (losing what tunes into depth connective/holistic/healing consciousness) - they can see the world through the eyes of that left-brain awareness only (which tunes into an oppositely surface/illusionary/breaking apart awareness). Then and as a result,they suffer from dementia and schizophrenia. In short such an individual can’t put their world back together. They are lost and “a gonner,” like an Alzheimer’s patient who cannot connect to memories or connect vision to recognize a whole face – just its separate details. This is because again their connective consciousness is burnt out, harmed or superceded by the separative. The process becomes life destructive. This is because life is the concentrated presence of consciousness and consciousness forms the principle of connection itself in nature, which the right brain wisely tunes into in the raw. See our philosophy of raw-wisdom. Below are the most powerful drivers of that left-brain dominance. MATH-BASED VISION OF NATURE TOPS THE LIST Mathsymbols abstract how best and most powerfully to separate all elements of consciousness. We make each distinct, with beginning and end points. We favor physical separation and disintegrative energies – why fuel creates energy but love does not in physics. The core contradiction of that with this metaphysics one cannot integrally connect a vision of nature using the highest abstractions of separation. We cannot connect by tearing consciousness apart. It is a reversal illusion of the highest of high orders. Math symbols rather the highest paradigm symbols or what universally and best organize a left-brain dominant view of reality. We cannot glue two things together using the most powerful dynamite available within. The opposite proceeds naturally and predictably. It bears black sterile fruit over time. Thus the math-base vision, when increasingly globalized (especially since the middle of the 20th century) thus leads inevitably to what deeply threatens the sustainability of life on earth. It eventually manifests atomic energy/atomic weapons and a widespread pollution of our bodies and planet. The adaptation of that vision as the most dominant view of nature is really the culmination of nearly 2,000 years of left-brain dominant trends since ancient Greek times and heightened in the Golden Age of Greece. Even the atomic view and the mathematical that it reflects was present then in metaphysical forms.
A COMMERCIAL, CORPORATION-DOMINATED SOCIETY A commercial society links people together via monetary relationships as employer/employee, buyer/seller, landlord/tenant, lendor/lendee, and so on. It gauges growth and “progress” thereby. It applies but the math-based, left-brain dominant ideologies to all social relationships – to mirror the root nature of our cosmos. The first economist William Petty was a friend of Isaac Newton who first published Principia Naturalis Mathematica – the laws of nature as mathematical. This left-brain dominant model puts people into positions of separative conflicts called competition in lieu of cooperation. It creates ultimately progressive instability. The day a 100 year-old company can’t make its payroll or pay its debtors, the doors close and the individuals disband. The entity disintegrates because it was built on quicksand foundations. Separative relationships are by their nature superficial, non-deep and disintegrative. I have always predicted that what happened in 1929 did but suppressed the symptoms of a poor way of relating, furthering rebuilding the same with an eye on a future greater crash. Also money corrupts consciousness the foundations of our collective progress are as illusionary as our vision of nature. Illusion is the breakdown (the separation of elements) in the integrity of consciousness. This makes the math-bound view the most surface-viewing, the most illusionary, and a commercial society as well.
ALLOPATHIC MEDICINE Allopathic or contemporary modern medicine makes a marriage with mechanical, math-based understanding of nature (chemistry/drugs, physics/radiation, and genetics) and a commercial society to attempt to heal. This is an impossibility. As a result major chronic diseases are pandemic (dozens of physical and psychiatric diseases) and the percentage of sufferers are ever rising, especially among children. Chronic illness in children has at least quadrupled. Consciousness-illnesses like Alzheimer’s are especially on the rise. Healing is the process of connection to wholeness. Yet surgery cuts the body apart, as if it was a machine made of replaceable parts and thus it cannot truly heal. Chemistry is based entirely on math-bound principles that are not in harmony with life. Thus when you put a large random number of chemicals into a compost heap – to test not one or another chemical separatively in a controlled experiments using billions of dollars (something completely left-brain dominant) but the entire or whole understanding – what happens? Remember that a compost heap is where all plants disintegrate or breakdown to form the building up ingredients for all new plants in a circle of universal unity of life . Everything then in the compost heap dies in the presence of a large random mix of chemicals. We form a miniature super-toxic waste site. We do the same in our oceans on a more grand scale and in our atmosphere as well – and to the point of threatening now, via climate change, the future the survival of our entire planet. We pollute our bodies in parallel, and to form cancer and birth defects and so on. We also treat ourselves with the same or more chemicals that cause cancer, and with more radiation that causes cancer, and with surgery that cuts the body’s wholeness apart. The negative effects are supposedly minimal or “side-effects” and our failures to cure are supposedly the fault of the diseases being incurable. Our medical care system, centered around the most sterile hospital environments (that also serve junk and bioengineered food) is in such a shambles that it is financially ruining our society and many individuals under medical care end up filing for bankruptcy. At the same time, governments, lobbied by corporations, try to impinge the promotion of any natural remedies to self-heal or what might not create financial dependence upon doctors and drugs (ig. Codex, et. al.).
SIDE-NOTES A right-brain damaged person literally suffers from the inability to connect reality but can expertly describe countless minute details and in a tick-tock, separate stepped, and even logical way. Because life is the concentrated presence of consciousness, and consciousness forms the principle of connection itself in nature, a consciousness-centered worldview is the opposite of a math-bound. It can manifest most strongly in the healing/life-connective arts and life supportive realms – such as organic agriculture. It elicits the opposite of a machine-designing, industrial and commercial society. The math-based view, by separating elements of consciousness has subordinate, rescuing value. It can be applied well in emergency medicine. It has some double negative roles, as in cutting out/killing (a negative) directed toward a toxic tumor (a second negative) which creates a double-negative-positive that is only superficially positive or symptom relieving. This creates the illusion of real healing – mistaking surface appearance for something depth or integrally true. Or it does not really nurture healing forces. However and on the flip side, when that vision is systematically applied and too deeply/globally, it vastly displaces the life and living, healing principles with the mechanical/death-ridden ones. Then it promotes the wholesale destruction of human life, of surrounding ecologies, of the planet as a whole or what is most whole and interconnected in nature, again organic life itself via innate consciousness. It undermines that innate consciousness. It lures people from open organic fields working under the sun in mechanical factories and city living. Marx and Engels only critiqued the economic exploitation, while supporting the same underling vision. Liberal and conservative, socialist and capitalist thus sometimes produce the same end results if something deeper is not changed. For all the while, species around the planet are dying en mass. We too are so impacted if we do not counteract all these trends at a more taproot or deepest level
NON-ORGANIC, NON-SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE This extends left-brain consciousness view to further disconnect us immensely from organic nature and whatever nurtures and heals our bodies. Pesticide-laden fields are life stripped. To a lesser extent, so are mono-cropped fields. They are left-brain dominant and linear. Bioengineering especially creates “terminator” seeds, plants and trees that are sterile and exhude death-laden chemicals throughout. Withthe destruction by bioengineering firms of heirloom seeds in massive quantities, and the crowding out of organic farming, it has resulted in the what Time magazine once called The Death of Birth.
OUR EDUCATION We learn first the three Rs – reading, writing, and arithmetic- causing the left brain to dominate at a most earliest of age. We prepare individuals for our commercial society. Our language, with ancient Greek roots, contains vowels. This causes each word to have a specific rather than whole-context meaning. The latter triggers left-brain dominance. When the Greeks introduced vowels into their language, it caused a brain polarity shift. Reading changed from right to left (right-brain dominant) to left to right (which is left-brain dominant). An alternative to this kind of education is provided in the Rudolf Steiner Schools – first developing right brain skills to be dominant and latter the left.
OUR MEDIA Our media and primary means of getting information are commercial enterprises. As a result, a “health” magazine that is significantly funded by pharmaceutical ads, will not give you the whole or true picture of what is happening on the health scene. Our major media are corrupted and it is often difficult to sift through distorted news. Our minds are programmed to remain on the same cultural grid. The main impact of monetary exchanges, because they apply a math-bound view in social contexts, tends to be to focus, direct and thus control the direction of consciousness – to control life – in a dominantly disintegrative way.
OUR SOCIAL STRUCTURE In a commercial society like ours, the single person living separately alone is the single largest growing social statistic. Large, living together extended families, found in the 19th century on sustainable organic farms, have all but become extinct. Other signs of social disintegration are rampant, as brought out in detail by Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone.
TRANSPORTATION Corporate interests lobbied hard to destroy the early rise in public transportation using railroads. This was replaced by the use of each person separately using metallic cars to ride on concrete highways. These are either asphalted and cement laden, traveling on paths that still more disconnect us from the living earth, and in order to accommodate the movement of mechanical wonders, cars and trucks, in accordance with Newton’s mechanical, dead forms of motion.
ENERGY Governments and corporations have tried for nearly a century to kill alternative energy production that make sense and that do not pollute the planet. But it is precisely such energy sources that keep us financially bound. So the addictive game goes on. Nothing is more economically wasteful and dangerous to life than nuclear plants, but they are still promoted to as safe. Coal production, which profoundly pollutes our planet, is promoted as clean. This is the same as promoting synthetic drugs as healing.
CONCLUSION Lock-stock-and-barrel we are but a deranged left-brain dominant society and culture, why much of what goes on really borders on a form of deep insanity and is so obviously taking us down a road that is harmful to life and ultimately non-sustainable.
The herbicide used in Roundup has been definitively linked to brain, intestinal and heart defects in fetuses according to a new scientific study, the results of which were released this week in Argentina.
ONTOGENY RECAPITULATES PHYLOGENY
One of the most memorable things I learned in the fascinating study of biology was that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” This is a phrase I have never, ever forgotten. It means that the stages of a fetus repeat the stages in which all of life has developed on the planet. Thus the human fetuses goes through fish, amphibian and monkey-like stages, for example. This connects to my philosophy of raw-wisdom. There seems to be a conscious, not a mechanical evolution within each of us and this indicates the very deep interconnectedness of all of life on Earth!
USE OF AMPHIBIANS
I bring this up because the study “used amphibian embryos” and the results “are completely comparable to what would happen in the development of a human embryo,” according to embryology professor Andreas Carrasco, one of the study’s authors. What he doesn’t mention is that amphibians are among the most threatened species on the planet, subject to extinctions as they are chemically sensitive.
FIRST STUDY OF ITS KIND This was the first study ever of embryos where glyphosate exposure was tracked.
THE SCARY PART The frightening part of this study is that the levels of herbicide used “were much lower than the levels used in the fumigations...so the situation is much more serious…[as] glyphosate does not degrade,” added Carrasco. The vast global spraying of Roundup adds to the problem. Birth defects in the US and around the world have skyrocketed. For example, autism used to be rare a generation ago. I only affected 1 out of 5,000 newborns in the US. Now it is epidemic, affecting closer to 1 out of 90!
AN EXAMPLE
Carrasco also gave the example of what occurred in Ituzaingo, Argentina, a district where 5,000 people over the past 8 years were exposed to fumigations, and 300 cases of cancer developed as a result. “In communities like Ituzaingo its already too late, but we have to have a preventive system.” He added that there has to be a serious study of the effects of glyphosate, which political forces have hindered due to lobbying by Monsanto.
TIME TO DO SOMETHING
It is time to take the bull by the horn and stop the unconscionable selling, marketing and distributing this single most lethal of all contaminants on our entire planet – what can only boomerangs to deeply harm ourselves, our children and future generations
Today is the deadline for contacting the Department of Justice and the USDA. They are collecting public comments on monopoly practices in the Agri-Food industries. There have been many mergers allowing just a handful of companies to control the production of staples like corn and soy in the US. The worst of these is Monsanto. They have used their vast power to cheat farmers of fair prices, to raise production costs at will and to manipulate prices on the consumer end.
MONSANTO
Monsanto now controls 93 % of soybeans and 80% of corn grown in the US.
MONOPOLY CONTROL
-Tyson, Cargill, Swift and National Beef Packing Company control 83% of the beef packing industry.
-Smithfield, Tyson, Swift and Cargill control 66% of the pork packing industry.
FOOD SAFETY
The DOJ also wants to hear comments on the health and environmental impacts. This involves issues such the growing presence of pesticides and herbicide residues in our foods, confined animal feeding in disease-ridden conditions. It is as if someone in the US government has seen the film Food Inc. and so they want to know what the public thinks. Let them know today. You can sign a petition today at www.fooddemocracynow.org.
Its high time to send a message to Congress that this is not the best interest of farmers or consumers.
For more information on the harmful effects of our food monopolies and a little history of how this developed, see my article at http://www.raw-wisdom.com/50harmful..
If we are serious about reversing some of the main ills of our world, such as environmental pollution and the vast growth in chronic health pandemics, we need to go within for root causes or what needs to be healed
CORECONSCIOUSNESS To detox and heal our core inner consciousness, however, we obviously need to know more about what that “consciousness” is. Trans-personally, I’ve defined “consciousness” several times in this blog as the potentially universal relationship of connection in all of nature. More profoundly it produces what we experience as “life “and it also it holds that life together. We are through the presence of inner consciousness kept whole, alive, and healed. When there is a wound, consciousness travels there in order to heal, to mend it. However, when we violate this connecting consciousness, as in surgically cutting apart our bodies, life is impinged. If we cut a living organism apart systematically it dies.
GOING PAST THE MODERN WORLD VIEW Our modern vision of nature is centrally math-dominated and defined. Chemistry represents one major branch of this dominance. The philosophy of chemistry also began to be globally applied to nature via the introduction of endless modern industrial, health, cosmetic, cleaning and agricultural products. This trend first accelerated in the middle of the 20th and this was thus the time when our environmental problems began to surface. What, pray tell, does one thing have to do with the other – a math-dominated vision of nature with our environmental problems?Mathematics represents the very highest or most universal set of symbols ever used to help separate all elements of consciousness, and with precision to infinite smallness. Since consciousness, however, is defined here as the “potentially universal relationship of connection in nature” – and which also brings out, maintains and returns us to life, a universally separative view is then, by definition, anathema and in opposition to life. In other words, it really involve the polar opposite or the penultimate representative of a death-centered vision of nature. Since visions are working models and not just ideas, they are used to organize our way of living in this world. It then becomes predictable that we increasingly surround ourselves with enveloping toxicity or pollution, denatured environments and wholesale extinctions of life. A universally separative view is hugely wise. It will eventually undermine consciousness with or without being fatal, as when someone takes multiple chemical drugs to make that person almost dead – or walk the halls of a nursing home like a zombie COMPOST HEAP POLLUTION Also when a very large and entirely random mix of chemicals is thrown into a compost heap that supports plant life, this can test the essence of math-designed products in our soils, and by implication, perhaps the underlying worldview. Intentionally we do not test the effects of one or another chemical in laboratory isolation but rather in a medium where life interconnects. There we look at the whole impact. What happens? Plant life that seeks nourishment from the heap now dies. It happens every time in super toxic waste sites. This kind of pollution applies also to water, air, and virtually all other surroundings. The significance is denied. The focus instead is on isolates for profit or separative, lower consciousness. It is not easy to go past some of our very deepest cultural paradigm illusions. When we do, we transform our inner mind and consciousness.
Gladys Williford
Resolution Expeditor – Store Support Center
Customers FIRST!
The HomeDepot | 2455 Paces Ferry Road | Atlanta, GA 30339
Phone: (800) 654-0688 EXT 76501 | Fax: (678) 556-7614
Schedule Monday thru Friday 08:30am to 05:30pm
Please contact Ryan Bray ext.76306 in my absence
Gladys:
I appreciate your having forwarded all my correspondence. However, at least a month has now passed and I have not gotten a followup response. So please again forward this email.
TWO REASONS I AM PERSISTENT
1) I’m a loyal contractor and customer of Home Depot’s. It is my favorite store for contracting materials. Just two weeks ago I spent a sizable amount to money for the materials to build an addition.
2) HomeDepot has otherwise quite high environmental standards and selling Roundup on the shelves contradicts this and makes no sense to me.
ROUNDUP This herbicide is indubitably one of the most lethal ever made. It directly kills everything plant-like but Roundup-resistant genetically-engineered plants. It annihilates the surrounding ecology of anything alive with chlorophyll.
INCREASED HERBICIDE USE Combined with genetic modification of plants to be resistant, the bottom line is that there has been a meteoric increase in toxic herbicide use the US and where Monsanto’s products are sold. between 1996 and 2007, and as the largest selling herbicide in the US, glyphosate sales increased more than 5x! Financially that sounds good but not for the environment. This rise in use is directly related to the introduction of GMO technology engineered to create dependency on using far more glyphosate with GMO-resistant plants.. Within 11 years the use by farmers wentfrom 25 million pounds to more than 135 million annually (not counting lawns and other consumer uses).
I cannot think of a single chemical compound anywhere that has so undermined the vision of Rachel Carson.
OUR RESPONSIBLITY I do not believe this should be on Home Depot’s shelves. It does not easily biodegrade, by Monsanto’s own tests despite denials, it leaves a huge trail of death behind it. It’s been documented to harm farm workers and those who eat foods laced increasingly with Roundup-herbicides. The Bush administration turned a blind eye. This puts the responsibility with Corporate America and the consumer to stop this full-charge affront to our environment – and to our health as well. Already 1 of 2 men in the US can expect to have cancer in their lifetime and 1 of 3 women. Cancer rates used to be closer to just 1 percent of the population a century ago….that is when farms were still all organic.
This linkage is crystal clear.
TAKING CARE OF A FRAGILE PLANET As world leaders grapple with the dire issue of global warming, I believe we have a profound moral responsibility of conscience, especially as we approach Christmas, for remembering we are the final caretakers of this fragile planet – for ourselves and for future generations. HomeDepot is a caretaker and supplier for thousands of family homes situated on this precious planet Earth
Its financial partnership with Scotts cannot ever take precedence over its environmental and deeper customer responsibilities. I have offered to provide experts to substantiate my claims – as the above statements are all based on fact.
Please forward this sincere note to the best person to address this with me – and as I am a long-time and devoted customer of Home Depot’s.
With thanks and best wishes for the holidays
Nathan Batalion
HOW DANGEROUS ARE PESTICIDES? How dangerous are pesticides? Research is indicating they are more dangerous than previously thought. This includes links to the development of Parkinson’s disease and a doubling of the rate of brain cancer for children who live in homes where pesticides are sprayed. Now a new study shows another link – all the more reasons to go organic as to our food and home environment plus engage in as many potent detox therapies as possible – likefar infrared saunas, fasts, colonics, and juice feasting.
PRECURSOR OF MULTIPE MYELOMA A new National Cancer Institute study published in Blood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology indicates conclusively that applying pesticides doubles the rate of a blood abnormality called MGUS disease or monoconal gammopathy of undetermined significance. The disorder is evidenced by an abnormal level of blood proteins. It requires life-long monitoring because it can lead to a most painful cancer of the bone marrow cells called multiple myeloma. The research involved a five year study of 678 individuals culled from over 50,000 farmers who had worked on fields that were pesticide sprayed.
This fellow with a Bush-like smile is pretty scary to me!
MAKING ORGANIC GARDENING A MENACE? Remember when First Lady Michelle Obama was recently attacked for championing a wonderful little organic garden at the White House? The organizer of that protest is now unbelievably being nominated as America’s chief agricultural negotiator for our international trade agreements.
SIDDIQUI’S CAREER Isi Siddiqui career has been fighting bans on various environmentally hazardous pesticides. He worked to minimize or eliminate restrictions on pesticides in NAFTA, advocated for pesticides as a treatment for bee colony collapse disorder though pesticides appear to be a leading cause. As a lobbyist he succeeded in exempting US farmers from a worldwide ban on anti-fungal methyl bromide, a rather powerful contributor to ozone depletion in our atmosphere.
Siddiqui’s defenders point to his having implemented the original organic label at USDA. However, under Siddiqui, the USDA actually attempted to weaken — some say kill — the original organic standards by using overriding guidelines that Siddiqui had proposed. The USDA organic label as given to us by Siddiqui’s office would have allowed sewage sludge, irradiation, GMOs, and some synthetic pesticides! It would have mad the label meaningless. DROP THE NOMINATION We need to stop Siddiqui again. Ask President Obama to drop the Siddiqui nomination.
Among the converging crises of our times are the simultaneous pollution of our air, waters, land and internally of our own bodies. A right-brain approach is to first look at the overall or whole impact, including on the entirety of our planet. Global warming is especially an indication that pollution is now affecting the full global ecology of the Earth. The major converging threads include the following:
AIR POLLUTION
Smog was so bad at the Olympics in Peking China that factories had to be temporarily closed. In the US, roughly 10% of the population suffers from lung ailments, chiefly asthma.
WATER POLLUTION
This affects our seas, rivers, streams, groundwater and ultimately the drinking waters we intimately take into our bodies’ cells which are mostly made up of water. In the Pacific Ocean, for example, there is a patch of pollution that stretches nearly a thousand miles and is filled with plastics. A recent EPA study showed that 100% of fish tested in hundreds of rivers were polluted with mercury and other heavy metals. Medical surveys have repeatedly shown traces of dozens of toxic chemicals in blood serums, mother’s milk and the placenta fluids that so vitally affect the growth of newborns.
LAND POLLUTION
There are thousands of super-toxic waste sites on our planet and their contents continually seep into the surrounding grounds. The use of herbicides and pesticides may help grow selected or isolated crops. However, this renders billions of acres otherwise life-less. A local organic farmer told me of the time he visited a “conventional” (chemically polluted) farm and noted that it was virtually sterilized or absent of life compared to his organic farm.
WE ARE IMPACTED
Because life on earth is deeply interconnected, we are not immune from the above global environmental impacts. It is little wonder that now 1 out of 3 women and 1 out of 2 men can expect cancer in their lifetimes. This is why it is so vital that we all evolve regimes for regularlydetoxing our bodies.
NOVEMBER 11, 2009 “I have always respected Home Depot for its environmental policies and therefore appreciate your taking the time and attention to view my correspondence seriously. I am a local contractor who believes in shopping responsibly. I also appreciate the letter from Ed Billmaier, director of Scotts Consumer Service.
I am aware that Scotts Company LLC, with billion in lawncare product sales, has been the exclusive distributor of Roundup, apparently since 1998, and has been also working with Monsanto on a Roundup Ready turf grass since a little before then. I have heard that Roundup is presumably a biodegradable herbicide that binds to the soil and that the EPA has labeled it with but a “caution” classification. However, this brings up the following issues of much greater concern to me.
BIASED VIEW
First since Scotts obviously has a sizeable financial stake in this issue, I think Home Depot would be wiser to get a broader spectrum of opinions. This could engender further and solid objectivity on this very important issue. May I recommend reviewing the material I will be faxing you and I will also see if I can get you in touch with Caroline Cox, editor of the Journal for Pesticide Reform who is one of the leading experts on this subject. I can inquire about other experts to give more opinions for your making a sound business decision on Round Up.
TOXICITY
Secondly, my concern is not primarily with biodegradability but rather with toxic levels and the overall heath and reverberating environmental impacts. Roundup’s main ingredient has been linked to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in a study published by the American Cancer Society. Some have suggested it is the number one herbicide now implicated in farm-worker illnesses.
MONSANTO SUED
In my home state of New York, Monsanto was sued by the Attorney General for recklessly claiming their product was “safe and environmentally friendly.” In France it was sued for similarly claiming the product is biodegradable and leaves the soil “clean”, which scientific studies do not bear out. They lost both the French and New York State cases and appeals. Since much the same has happened in NY, this is not something concerning far away overseas affairs where different laws may apply.
EPA LABELING NO COMFORT Thirdly, as to seeking comfort and refuge via the EPA labeling, I think that was reasonable to say a couple of decades ago. I have friends in Washington DC and things have changed there dramatically, These friends have kept me abreast on how the Bush Administration has unprecedentedly downsized the EPA’s and ham-stringed regulatory effectiveness, as it did with the financial industry (resulting in near-catastrophic results for our American economy).
SECRET DEALS
The Bush Administration originally had private meetings with Monsanto executives to forcefully push their sales agenda without adequate safety testing these products to protect the public, as the literature I am faxing reiterates. The Bush Administration also pushed the closely related notion that genetically modified foods (Roundup Ready) are essentially equivalent to regular foods, requiring no safety testing or labeling at all – even though the EPA’s own scientists substantially disagreed. In short such labeling decisions were political, not science-based and offer little comfort.
POLLUTION My fourth concern is the most paramount. By creating Roundup-Ready genetically modified crops, they can tolerate a vastly increased (several times more) herbicide load that is one of the most growingly polluting factors in our groundwaters and rivers. Alarm signals were put out by the World Health Organization in regard to this specific impact of increasing Roundup use.
MONOPOLIZATION Related to this is also thrust of the major players in the biotech seed industry have been monopolizing staple food seeds (including via buying out competitive companies and destroying their heirloom seed stocks) – the foundation of life in earth – and creating only Roudup-ready genetically modified seeds and the like. Farmers cannot (by contract) have these seeds independently tested for safety, nor can they be saved or replanted except as directed by Monsanto. This ownership of the foundation pillars of life by such means represents a gravest ever political, human health and environmental threat faced by our planet and civilization.
SINGLE MOST POSITIVE MOVE
I cannot think of a single greater positive environmental step, dwarfing any energy-saving sales of HD, than taking Roundup fully off of Home Depot’s shelves. It would attract an avalanching explosion of positive consumer response that would dwarf the comparative size of any profit lost from Roundup toxic product sales. It would also, in my opinion, be the truly responsible approach sending a positive message of the high-minded, moral, consumer-oriented stance of the executive leaders of Home Depot, a firm I have always deeply respected. It would tell the herbicide industry that business cannot be conducted as usual at the huge expense of our health, our children’s health, the health of the consumer, and of farm workers and our environment.
Thank you again for taking this issue not only to heart but with the utmost of seriousness.”
Activism Being mostly a “global mind changer” – changing our world from within – I am not so much a consumer activist except when things highly offensive are right in my face. Such is indeed the case with Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide facing me on the shelves of HomeDepot.
Contacting HomeDepot This prompted me to call and email them information on the Roundup court decision from France that pointed out this herbicide is acutely dangerous to the environment. They wrote back that they are offering an alternative for next year, but they are not pulling this product off the shelf because it is one of their biggest sellers. Thereafter I persisted and they sent me a letter from The Scotts Company, LLC Consumer Director trying to convince me its ok. I am following up with about 50 pages for a fax that outline the dangers of Roundup, and derivatively genetic modified foods. I hope OCA (Organic Consumers Association and others will join me in this effort.
A CAMPAIGN
As part of my overall “GRO Campaign” (GRO stands for gently relating to organisms – opposed to the violence involved with GMOs) I have been lobbying HomeDepot to remove Roundup from its shelves. This toxic herbicide produced by Monsanto and distributed by Scotts remains on their shelves as if it was just another consumer product. It is something “special.”
WHAT IS ROUNDUP? It is the most widely used herbicide or plant killing chemical agent in the world. The explosion in sales for this one herbicide was spearheaded by Monsanto’s creation of Roundup-Ready (resistant) genetically modified seeds. These seeds can withstand much larger quantities of this, otherwise killing herbicide – thus worsening the poisonous state of modern agriculture. These seeds are also the basis for the majority of corn and soy products grown in the US. Without going into all the details, there is no company on the planet that is more directly engaged in undermining the vision of Rachel Carson to save our planet from such poisons and make modern agriculture chemically-dependent rather than sustainable. No product is more centrally involved in this than Roundup.
INITIAL CORRESPONDENCE
After my first request was an email asking to remove that product. It was addressed to Gladyss Williford, “Resolution Expeditor” at Store Support Center (and with the motto Customers FIRST). She was pleasantly and quickly responsive. Gladys wrote back by forwarding the following correspondence from Jayme Lyles with cc’s to Michael Mahler and Sarrah S Steiner.
NOV 2, 2009 HOMEDEPOTRESPONSE We will be carrying a product next year that is Ecosmart that is safe
for pets and the environment. Please let the customer know that there
will be safer product alternatives to choose from on next years product
line in the stores. SKU 961 – 047 ECOSMART WEED GRASS KILLER 64OZ
Let me know if you have any other questions or concerns. Thank you-
Jayme Lyles Assistant to Mike Mahler Merchant-D.28O Atlanta SSC-B7.
NOV 4, 2009 REPLY
Does that mean you are going to continue to sell Roundup while offering an alternative or are you discontinuing the sale of roundup which would make me feel much better on this subject.
NOV 4th HOMEDEPOTRESPONSE We are not pulling Roundup as this is one of our number one sellers. We will however be giving customers (such as himself) other options. Also, not sure if the same product that is carried overseas is the as same as ours (different regulations as such). Jayme Lyles Assistant to Mike Mahler
On the on-going campaign to remove RoundUp from Home Depot’s shelves:
NOVEMBER 6 RESPONSE TO HOMEDEPOT
“The product is the same internationally. I personally think offering an alternative on the shelves is not enough. It is simply not right to make a profit on a highly, highly dangerous substance any more than selling heroin and cocaine. The fact that Roundup is not banned and illegal in the US is only because the documented backroom deals between Monsanto lobbyists and Bush administration insiders. I think whoever made the decision within HomeDepot to continue to carry Roundup is looking at more the short-term profits picture (on a latest quarterly income statements perhaps with product breakdowns) but which is short-sided overall.
Harms Environment
This Roundup product very definitively harms our environment. There is no ifs, ands or buts about it. It also leaves some huge traces in our foods (especially the staples of soy and corn), and thus harms each of us, and our children and for generations to come. It also harms the surrounding life forms that tread upon the earth’s soil. There really is no logical or moral justification for carrying this product anywhere. I feel absolutely certain that HomeDepot, when it comes to the same conclusion, would gain immeasurably more financially and would make far more profits and significantly more sales by wisely posturing itself as a superior caring and concerned service provider on this critical issue. Taking this off the shelves would send a positive, strong, and powerful leadership message to the entire herbicide industry. The public and media would take note. It would be a breakthrough event for the benefit of our whole planet.
Positive PR For HomeDepot With Removal of Roundup HomeDepot does this kind of positive posturing with its energy saving products – and for which it should be greatly applauded. Environmental toxins are an equally serious and pressing issue for all as compared to the issue of global warming. I thus would ask that management more carefully reconsider its position. That would mean getting more data first on this issue.If more information on the dangers of this product is requested, please let me know and I would be more than happy to take the initiative to confer with experts in the field and collect that kind of documented information. Thanks again for your followup on this matter.”
NOVEMBER 10, 2009 HOME DEPOT’S RESPONSE:
The letter was thus forwarded to Dan Sexton Business Development Director The Scotts Company Office. He, in turn, wrote a letter to Michael B. Mahler apparently in charge of customer concerns or product procurements (?) with copies to seven other individuals ( Hackbart, Todd; Steiner, Sarrah S; Lyles, Jayme G; Williford, Gladys; Shaw, Geordie; Billmaier, Ed; McNamara, Tim (Corporate). The letter had an adobe response from Scott’s which we will post in the next blog. He is the forwarding letter:The above letter was taken very seriously(as they do not want the HomeDepot account to be in jeapordy, millions are at stake).
Mike,
Attached is a response for your records regarding the recent concern raised by a consumer over the active ingredient Glyphosate. The Scotts Company, and Monsanto, take these matters seriously and appreciate you surfacing any concerns over our products directly with our companies. The letter will provide you with more details and a contact if you feel you need more information.
Regards, Dan Sexton Business Development Director The Scotts Company
Here is a copy of the ScottsCompany LLC letter. Scotts has had the exclusive right to sell Monsanto’s Roundup in the US and much of Europe since 1998. The company also has over a billion in total dollar sales annually. Previously they worked with Monsanto on developing a Roundup-ready genetically-modified turf grass.
Scotts Company LLC Letter
November 11, 2009 Addressed to Mike Mahler, D28 Merchant
Thank you for making us aware of the recent information you received regarding Roundup branded herbicides. I sincerely appreciate your letting me know about your concern. This level of communication is a strong testament to the partnership that exists between our two companies.
Does Roundup Biodegrade?
I am very sorry for the confusion this issue has caused. We take great pride in trying to make certain using our products are as simple as possible and it is clear that this ruling confused what is a very straight forward issue, “Does glyphosate biodegrade in the soil?”
The simple answer to this question is resoundingly yes. It is a scientific fact that has been independently verified that glyphosate binds with the soil shortly after it comes in contact with it and that soil microorganisms over time break glyphosate down into carbon dioxide and other naturally occurring products.
EPA Roundup Comfort Label
To give you some perspective, the US EPA has determined that this product only needs to carry the “caution” classification on its label. This is the most favorable “signal word” that a product can have. Based on the decades of research that has been conducted, we have complete confidence that when used as directed Roundup branded products poses no undue risk to the environment.
French Roundup Court Case
The case in France was about the use and possible interpretation of language in a specific advertisement and in no way questions the safety of Roundup brand herbicides or the benefits to our customers. The issue was on how the government defined “biodegradable” and the amount of time it took to biodegrade. In this case, France used a different criteria than what is used by other governments. As a result, the French courts have required our company to remove this reference from any materials used in their country. The good news is that this was done many years ago and there is no impact on any recent inventory.
Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. I hope I addressed your concerns sufficiently . If you have any questions please call me personally at 937-644-7059. We take the issue of the environment very seriously and are very open to addressing any lingering concerns you may have.
Sincerely
Ed Billmaier
Director Scotts Consumer Service
The product is the same internationally. I personally think offering an alternative on the shelves is not enough. It is simply not right to make a profit on a highly, highly dangerous substance any more than selling heroin and cocaine. The fact that Roundup is not banned and illegal in the US is only because the documented backroom deals between Monsanto lobbyists and Bush administration insiders. I think whoever made the decision within Home Depot to continue to carry Roundup is looking at more the short-term profits picture (on a latest fest quarterly income statements perhaps with product breakdowns) but which is short-sided overall.
This Roundup product very definitively harms our environment. There is no ifs, ands or buts about it. It also leaves some huge traces in our foods (especially the staples of soy and corn), and thus harms each of us, and our children and for generations to come. It also hams the surrounding life forms that tread upon the earth’s soil. There really is no logical or moral justification for carrying this product anywhere. I feel absolutely certain that Home Depot, when it comes to the same conclusion, would gain immeasurably more financially and would make far more profits and significantly more sales by wisely posturing itself as a superior caring and concerned service provider on this critical issue. Taking this off the shelves would send a positive, strong, and powerful leadership message to the entire herbicide industry. The public and media would take note. It would be a breakthrough event for the benefit of our whole planet.
Home Depot does this kind of positive posturing with its energy saving products – and for which it should be greatly applauded. Environmental toxins are an equally serious and pressing issue for all as compared to the issue of global warming.
I thus would ask that management more carefully reconsider its position. That would mean getting more data first on this issue.If more information on the dangers of this product is requested, please let me know and I would be more than happy to take the initiative to confer with experts in the field and collect that kind of documented information. Thanks again for your followup on this matter
Very truly yours Nathan Batalion, ND, CPA and contractor
Oneonta, NY Frequent and faithful customer of Home Depot
Nathan Batalion, Global Health Activist, Healingtalks Editor
(Healingtalks) As part of my overall “GRO Campaign” of Americans for Safe Food (GRO stands for gently relating to organisms as opposed to the violence involved with GMOs) I have been lobbying HomeDepot to remove RoundUp. This toxic herbicide produced by Monsanta and distributed by Scotts remains on their shelves as if it was just another consumer product. It is something “special.”
WHAT IS ROUNDUP?
It is the most widely used herbicide in the world. The explosion in sales for this one herbicide was spearheaded by Monsanto’s creation of RoundUp-Ready (resistant) genetically engineered seeds. These seeds can withstand much larger quantities of this, otherwise killing herbicide – thus worsening the poisonous state of modern agriculture. The seeds are also the basis for the majority of corn and soy products grown in the US. Without going into all the details, there is no company on the planet that is more directly engaged in undermining the vision of Rachel Carson to save our planet from such poisons and make modern agriculture truly sustainable. No product is more centrally involved in this than Roundup.
After my initial request to remove that product, Gladyss Williford, “Resolution Expeditor” at Store Support Center (and with the motto Customers FIRST) was pleasantly responsive. She wrote back by forwarding the following correspondence from Jayme Lyles with cc’s to Michael Mahler and Sarrah S Steiner.
INITIAL EMAILS FROM/TO HOME DEPOT
Gladys-
We will be carrying a product next year that is Ecosmart. It is safe for pets and the environment. Please let the customer know that there will be safer product alternatives to choose from on next years product line in the stores. SKU 961 – 047 ECOSMART WEED GRASS KILLER 64OZ Let me know if you have any other questions or concerns. Thank you-
Jayme Lyles Assistant to Mike Mahler Merchant-D.28O Atlanta SSC-B7.
I wrote back:
“Does that mean you are going to continue to sell Roundup while offering an alternative or are you discontinuing the sale of roundup which would make me feel much better on this subject” Gladys wrote back:
I will ask that. I have not received a response back yet on another inquiry to legal and consumer relations yet either which may answer this question. I will see if there is a response to this yet also. Thanks,
Then the response came:
We will not be pulling round-up as this is one of our number one sellers. We will however
be giving customers (such as himself) other options. Also, not sure if the same product that
is carried overseas is the same as ours (different regulations and such). Thanks
Jayme Lyles Assistant to Mike Mahler Merchant-D.28O Atlanta SSC-B7
Keywords:
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Being a “global mind change activist,” I am not as much a consumer activist except when things are so highly offensive and they are right in my face. Such is the case with Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide facing me on the shelves of Home Depot.
This prompted me to call and email them information on a court decision from France that pointed out this herbicide is acutely dangerous to the environment. They wrote back that they are offering an alternative for next year, but they are not pulling this product off the shelf because it is one of their biggest sellers. Thereafter I persisted and they sent me a letter from The Scotts Company, LLC Consumer Director trying to convince me its ok.
I am following up with about 50 pages for a fax that outline the dangers of Roundup, and derivatively genetic modified foods. I hope OCA (Organic Consumers Association and others will join me in this effort. More on this as this progresses.
This fellow with a Bush-like smile is pretty scary to me!
