Author Archives: Lila

Monsanto’s Toxic Path in South America

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Agribusiness titan Monsanto is the goliath every activist would like to slay:

Its patented Round Up brand of herbicide is ubiquitous in farmland world over, but new research suggests the product poses a danger to human health. [Note: an earlier version of this post dropped the word herbicide by accident so it read as though soy contained the chemical. I corrected it but the google cache still shows the old version in the header. Apologies. I often think I’ve corrected something and saved it and find that the save didn’t actually take place…]

From Marie Trigona at America’s Program

“A study released by an Argentine scientist earlier this year reports that glyphosate, patented by Monsanto under the name “Round Up,” causes birth defects when applied in doses much lower than what is commonly used in soy fields.

The study was directed by a leading embryologist, Dr. Andres Carrasco, a professor and researcher at the University of Buenos Aires. In his office in the nation’s top medical school, Dr. Carrasco shows me the results of the study, pulling out photos of birth defects in the embryos of frog amphibians exposed to glyphosate. The frog embryos grown in petri dishes in the photos looked like something from a futuristic horror film, creatures with visible defects—one eye the size of the head, spinal cord deformations, and kidneys that are not fully developed.

“We injected the amphibian embryo cells with glyphosate diluted to a concentration 1,500 times than what is used commercially and we allowed the amphibians to grow in strictly controlled conditions.” Dr. Carrasco reports that the embryos survived from a fertilized egg state until the tadpole stage, but developed obvious defects which would compromise their ability to live in their normal habitats.

Pointing to the color photos spread on his desk, Dr. Carrasco says, “On the side where the contaminated cell was injected you can see defects in the eye and defects in the cartilage.”

For the past 15 months, Dr. Carrasco’s research team documented embryos’ reactions to glyphosate. Embryological study is based on the premise that all vertebrate animals share a common design during the development stages. This accepted scientific premise means that the study indicates human embryonic cells exposed to glyphosate, even in low doses, would also suffer from defects.

“When a field is fumigated by an airplane, it’s difficult to measure how much glysophate remains in the body,” says Dr. Carrasco. “When you inject the embryonic cell with glysophate, you know exactly how much glysophate you are putting into the cell and you have a strict control.”

Glyphosate is the top selling herbicide in the world and is widely used on soy crops in Argentina.

Monoculture soy is grown on more than 42 million acres of fields across Argentina and sprayed with more than 44 million gallons of glyphosate annually. It is part of a technological package sold by Monsanto that includes Round Up Ready seeds GM to tolerate the herbicide glyphosate. This allows growers to fumigate directly onto the GM soy seed, killing nearby weeds without killing the crop. In the winter, crops are sprayed to kill off weeds and seeds are then planted without having to plow the soil, a process commonly referred to as “no-till farming.” Nearly, 95% of the 47 million tons of soy grown in Argentina in 2007 was genetically modified, adopting the Round Up ready technology marketed by Monsanto.

The study on the top-selling agrochemical has alarmed policymakers, so much so that Dr. Carrasco has received anonymous threats and industry leaders demanded access to his laboratory immediately following the study’s release. Industry leader Monsanto wouldn’t talk to the Americas Program for this story, but in a press release on its website, the company says that “glyphosate is safe.”

My Comment:

There – the cat’s out of the bag. Now you know why I’m down here. South America has the last remaining land masses suitable for agriculture, the greatest biodiversity, the richest vegetation, the richest fauna….

No wonder one of the most predatory and rapacious corporations in the world is also here…


Codex Alimantarius Disinformation?

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A few months ago I blogged a youtube video by one Rima Laibow on globalist control of food.

But recently I came across this article by Robert Singer at Dissident Voice, which argues persuasively that Laibow is part of a disinformation campaign aimed at discrediting food security advocates by peddling exaggerated accusations against Monsanto, the main agri-culprit of the New World Order.

Here’s the money part from the Singer piece:

“The Natural Solutions Foundation (NSF) originated the Linn Cole articles.
The Organic Consumers Association and other legitimate heath advocates have been questioning the NSF for several years, and the criticism is universally the same: Why does the NSF keep turning out factually inaccurate, hysterically grim articles such as Linn Cole’s?

The answers start with the NSF founders, husband-wife team Albert Stubblebine and Rima Laibow. Now, when I accuse these people of being disinformation professionals, let me explain. I’m not saying they’re doing sloppy research, and I’m not saying they’re being overzealous. What I am saying is that they are working, for pay, to spread false information and to make their organization look like a legitimate activist group.

My conclusion is Stubblebine and Laibow are using the Natural Solutions Foundation—and Linn Cole—to undermine the health freedom community by spreading disinformation about HR 875.

Stubblebine is a retired U.S. Army major general who designed AEGIS, “a major Homeland Security private initiative.” Given this background and his ties to the U.S. intelligence community, eyebrows were raised in the health freedom community in early 2005 when, along with Laibow, Stubblebine launched the NSF website and began to promote his wife as an expert on Codex Alimentarius, the commission working to adopt strict new guidelines for vitamin and mineral supplements.

Dr. Rath, founder of the 4.dr-rath-foundation, a legitimate health advocacy group, and the author of A Modern Major General Exposed? writes: “It quickly became apparent to experienced health freedom observers that Stubblebine either hadn’t done his homework properly, or that he and Laibow were intentionally spreading inaccurate and misleading material about Codex and other related dietary supplement issues via their website and press releases.

Moreover, despite repeated concerns being expressed by more experienced health freedom observers, Stubblebine and Laibow continued to disseminate this material, and pointedly ignored requests to remove it from their website.”

In my “Scared to CodeX Death” article, I refer to Dr. Rima Laibow when I write: “And although the effects of Codex are devastating and will result in humans dying from starvation and preventable diseases from under-nutrition, any claims that WHO or FAO have released epidemiological projections are untrue.”

Dr. Rima Laibow, to the consternation of those fighting Codex, is the source of the untrue claims about the “epidemiological projections” in her YouTube video “Codex Alimentarious & Nutricide.”

The NSF pair want to discredit HR 875, because when the cleverly worded HR 875 finally goes to committee, Monsanto will unleash a massive PR campaign aimed at, guess who? Linn Cohen-Cole and the other lefties who, according to Monsanto, are spreading false and misleading information about an innocent food safety bill.

Later, the headlines such as “HR 875 doesn’t criminalize small agriculture” will warn the population about health freedom activists who, by spreading misinformation, are threatening our food safety and free speech. Then, HR 875 and the real threat, HR 859, are passed without fanfare.
….

My Comment:

I know Stubblebine from my research into the CIA and mind control. He’s a leading figure in Jon Ronson’s “The Men Who Stare at Goats” – a book I cited in The Language of Empire. Unfortunately, I came across the book rather late in writing LOE, and was able to use it only tangentially. It’s written in an apolitical narrative style – which both gives it its power and also defuses its political content. (It’s no surprise to me that Ronson ended up with a gig in entertainment TV in Britain. The powers that be would no doubt prefer that any one who connects those sorts of dots ends up talking about aliens and shape-shifting lizards).

And why do CIA men stare at goats? Because yogic texts tell us that if enough psychic energy is brought to bear on a living creature, it can be killed. And the CIA apparently thought goats were the place to start practicing so useful a skill.

All this is not bizarre to anyone who has a long standing interest in parapsychology, as I do. In my teens, I spent a lot of time experimenting with lucid dreaming, color-sensing, psychokinesis, and all sorts of other “mind-control” phenomena. At one point, I taught extension classes in what is sometimes called transpersonal psychology. Some of my best reading was drawn from books about the CIA’s research in that area. And the CIA was itself playing catch up with the KGB in that area.


Sacrifice and Environmental Ethics

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Many libertarians seem to think that environmental concern is “liberal” or “leftist” and that “having dominion” over the world implies that human beings can deal with the natural world indifferently….or even rapaciously.

They forget the notion of “stewardship” which is pervasive in the teachings of Jesus.  Libertarians must balance the language of “ownership” (which they rightly defend) with this equally valuable language of “stewardship.”

Individual responsibility includes the dimension of “responsibility for...”

Reading the late Jaroslav Pelikan, one of the great historians of Christianity, I came across the Patriarch of Constantinople’s address on environmental ethics in 2002:

“We are all painfully aware of the fundamental obstacle that confronts us in our work for the environment. It is precisely this: how are we to move from theory to action, from words to deeds? We do not lack technical scientific information about the nature of the present ecological crisis. We know, not simply what needs to be done, but also how to do it. Yet, despite all this information, unfortunately little is actually done. It is a long journey from the head to the heart, and an even longer journey from the heart to the hands.

How shall we bridge this tragic gap between theory and practice, between ideas and actuality? There is only one way: through the missing dimension of sacrifice. We are thinking here of a sacrifice that is not cheap but costly: “I will not offer to the Lord my God that which costs me nothing” (2 Samuel 24:24). There will be an effective, transforming change in the environment if, and only if, we are prepared to make sacrifices that are radical, painful, and genuinely unselfish. If we sacrifice nothing, we shall achieve nothing. Needless to say, as regards both nations and individuals, so much more is demanded from the rich than from the poor. Nevertheless, all are asked to sacrifice something for the sake of their fellow humans.

Sacrifice is primarily a spiritual issue and less an economic one. In speaking about sacrifice, we are talking about an issue that is not technological but ethical. Indeed, environmental ethics is specifically a central theme of this present symposium. We often refer to an environmental crisis; but the real crisis lies not in the environment but in the human heart. The fundamental problem is to be found not outside but inside ourselves, not in the ecosystem but in the way we think.

The root cause of all our difficulties consists in human selfishness and human sin. What is asked of us is not greater technological skill but deeper repentance, metanoia, in the literal sense of the Greek word, which signifies “change of mind.” The root cause of our environmental sin lies in our self-centeredness and in the mistaken order of values, which we inherit and accept without any critical evaluation. We need a new way of thinking about our own selves, about our relationship with the world and with God. Without this revolutionary “change of mind,” all our conservation projects, however well-intentioned, will remain ultimately ineffective. For, we shall be dealing only with the symptoms, not with their cause. Lectures and international conferences may help to awaken our conscience, but what is truly required is a baptism of tears…..

…An essential element of any sacrifice is that it should be willing and voluntary. That which is extracted from us by force and violence, against our will, is not a sacrifice. Only what we offer in freedom and in love is truly a sacrifice. There is no sacrifice without love. When we surrender something unwillingly, we suffer loss; but when we offer something voluntarily, out of love, we only gain……

Chutzpah Watch: Goldman Complains About Indian Corporate Governance

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“Goldman Sachs has raised concerns about the standards of corporate governance in India by accusing the Government of siphoning off $20 billion (£14.1 billion) from India’s largest oil company without consulting other shareholders.

Goldman said that the funds had been diverted by the state-controlled Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) via “ad-hoc cash withdrawals” over five years to subsidise loss-making government-owned refiners.

“Despite repeated objections raised by investors and more recently by independent directors on ONGC’s board, there has not been headway on this issue,” Goldman analysts said.

“The market appears to have got used to this practice by ONGC promoters [controlling shareholder], while similar issues in privately run companies would likely cause serious concern.”

Times Online, March 9, 2009

My Comment:

Now that I’ve finished choking myself laughing at this piece of unmitigated gall, let me say it’s high time the rest of the world gives the finger to the moral sermons dished out by Goldman Sachs and and its backer, US Government Inc. (aka “the international community”).

India has plenty of corruption, no doubt about it. But it’s out there in the open, where it’s easy enough to spot.

And, the Indian government doesn’t routinely get to draw up lists of who’s corrupt and who isn’t.

The  US government, on the other hand, poses as God’s viceroy on earth.

About time it was treated as just as another banana republic….a little more bananas than most of them.

Its citizens and scribes ought to get off their high horse too.

They’ve nothing to be proud of recently.

And that’s the mildest thing I can say.


More Dollar Decline Imminent?

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I’m not any place where I can blog easily but I had to post this paragraph from Jim Willie’s newsletter on a possible dollar debacle in the coming week/weeks…

I’m hearing that US embassies are being instructed to buy the local currency (?) –

Is this really in the works, is it scare-mongering, gossip, disinformation…?

Who knows, but it’s worth posting.

Be alert.

I note that gold, after looking like it would correct, now seems to have gone back up and the dollar is teetering again…as it’s done many a time.

I’m ready to move if I have to.

Down here in the pampas, swine flu is rampant. People go in and out of Buenos Aires with masks. The portenos don’t have the best reputation on the continent, and this is making it worse. Everyone is holding their breath anyway – with or without masks.

The winds are beginning to blow in from the delta, as they always do at this time of year. It feels like brisk spring weather in the US. Prices in the city are high but everyone is waiting for something to happen. Don’t buy now, says an expat blogger who watches real estate. Everything’s about to come down. People are pushing up the prices to squeeze out the last penny before things crash.

Don’t have anything to do with them, says a Brazilian businessman. “Them” means Argentines – who are said to be arrogant…touchy….corrupt…drama queens…

One the other hand, everyone likes the Brazilians. They’re the Italians of South America.

In Argentina, they have farms and food…and they cry, goes a Brazilian saying. In Brazil, they don’t have food. And they dance.

It’s true.

I had lunch at a restaurant on the banks of the Rio dela Plata with an American  – a just-retired attorney from Virginia – who is down here looking for property. He was talking about vaccinations. Some of his theories were definitely paranoid – but it’s the kind of paranoia that’s plausible these days. He wanted to drop his American citizenship, but was afraid it would raise a red flag. He talked about the exit tax and how it prevented the wealthy from leaving. It was the first time in my life I was grateful for not being a financial success.

I suggested that the purloined letter strategy might be the best. Hide right out in the open, in the most obvious place. We discussed what that would be. It was a toss up between getting a job at Goldman Sachs, working for the Pentagon, or emigrating to some member of the Axis of Evil.

He had fish. I had a salad – an odd choice in this meat-saturated culture. But I’m on a budget. Wandering the globe on your own steam would be ruinous without one. For me, a night at a restaurant means a couple of days of rice and beans to make up for it. I haven’t couch-surfed yet, but it may yet be in the cards, if this trip gets prolonged.

Jim Willie:

“The globe is losing patience with leadership and management of the USGovt ship at sea. They simply refuse to offer a credible solution to the primary keynote crack in the hull, falling housing prices and cratered mortgages, each of which work their destructive magic to wreck the banks. The home loan modifications are a farce, a travesty not designed to modify but rather to frame a series of loan forbearances. The motive for not fixing the mortgage mess is mysterious to the masses, but not here. Jackass claims have been consistent, that effective loan modifications would alter the underlying mortgage bonds drastically. The Powerz wanted enough time delay to rejigger as many mortgage bonds as possible into new securities, thus rendering impossible any legal challenges to the original mortgage package process that was loaded with fraud to the hilt. Any drastic alteration of mortgage bonds would reveal vast fraud of two types. Many mortgage bonds did not have clearly certificate property titles with careful registrations. And then the coyote ugly part, that many mortgage bonds were simply counterfeits sold into a frenzy filled credit market designed to process the most vile vermin on paper. The USDollar is vulnerable here and now, as a new wave of bank losses is imminent from numerous types of mortgages along with some basic types. Let’s see if the grapevine is correct, that the USDollar will begin to see a trashing initiative starting this weekend, out of Asia. They must be impatient beyond description. This autumn is expected to see some rather tumultuous events unfold, as the US financial structures are breaking across most of its ramparts even as loyalty to it is fading like a mist. There will be no return to the US of yesteryear, only a tragic march.”



Tips to Survive Hyperinflation..

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Greg at Holy  Cause has actually lived through the infamous Zimbabwean Zaire’s hyperinflationary crisis in the 1990s, so his words carry their weight in…er..gold (dollar-holders, I know that stings).

“Most Americans have not lived in hyper-inflationary environments.  I have, and assure you that your primary protection is to not hold cash. Treat it like a hot potato, let it rot in somebody else’s hands. This is repeated as Rule #1 below, but it bears saying several times.  Never forget it, when you get cash, flee to something else as quickly as possible…..

zaire9f

Just don’t hold an inflating currency – pass it on to the next guy like a hot potato, let it rot in his hands rather than yours.

Rule #2 – Have some type of business, even a “black market” one. Businesses which survived the inflationary hurricane in Zaire included those which were involved in the supply chain of basic consumer goods….money changing was also a profitable business…..

Rule #3 – Own a house and enough land to farm to feed your family. Houses (a primary residence), well bought and paid in full, served as a good hard asset, and provided a roof over one’s head as well. Having a little land to garden or for raising small animals helped keep a family from starving….

Read the rest of this great post at Holy Cause.

Gurdjieff on Machine Man

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“For a man of Western culture, it is of course difficult to believe and the accept the idea that an ignorant fakir, a naive monk, or a yogi who has retired from life may be on the way to evolution, while an educated European, armed with “exact knowledge” and all the latest methods of investigation, has no chance whatever and is moving in a circle from there is no escape…..

What do you expect? People are machines. Machines have to be blind and unconscious, they cannot be otherwise, and all their actions have to correspond to their nature. Everything happens. No one does anything.

“Progress” and “civilization” in the real meaning of those words, can appear only as the result of conscious efforts. They cannot appear as the result of unconscious efforts. And what conscious efforts can there be in machines? And if one machine is unconscious, then a hundred machines are unconscious, and so are a thousand machines, or a hundred thousand, or a million. And the unconscious activity of a million machines must necessarily result in destruction and extermination. You do not yet understand and cannot imagine all the results of this evil. But the time will come when you will understand.”

—  G. Gurdjieff, quoted in “In Search of the Miraculous,” P. D. Ouspensky

My Comment

I’ve been fascinated with the influence of Gurdjieff on western artists in the early part of the twentieth century – pianists, painters, and writers (Katherine Mansfield and Aldous Huxley among them), including a large number belonging to the Harlem Renaissance.

Scholars generally dismiss Gurdjieff as a charlatan, or at best, obscurantist. Quotes like the one above don’t help.  What can Western science (which wasn’t solely Western, of course, but that’s another story) possibly have to learn from “fakirs, monks, and yogis” ?

More later.

England Unrepentant for Role in Torture

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Lynndie England is unrepentant for what she did, says this piece:

“We move on to another hideous image, in which the same group of prisoners – one of whom Graner had punched full in the face – were lined up and ordered to masturbate.

How long had this sick charade continued? ‘You are going to find this ridiculous,’ says England, half suppressing a snigger. ‘One guy did 45 minutes! Freddie [Graner’s fellow prison guard, Ivan Frederick] just wanted to see if they would do it – and all seven of them lined up doing this.

‘Well, six stopped after a few minutes, but the seventh carried on.’

Hearing this account for the first time, even Roy T. Hardy, her lawyer, who had thought himself beyond shock after representing England for five years, is clearly taken aback…..

‘Sorry? For what I did?’ she interjects, incredulous. ‘All I did was stand in the pictures. Saying sorry is admitting I was guilty and I’m not. I was just doing my duty’

……it is impossible to empathise with her, for she is such an unsympathetic character……”

More of the same at Drudge on England’s interview with the German news magazine, Stern.

My Comment

I read this report with interest for two reasons.

1. It substantiates, as many other reports have done since then, my early (July 2004) insight that there were pictures of women being abused that were being deliberately held back and that the key to understanding Abu Ghraib was that it was a deliberate policy.

2. It also vindicates the argument of an essay I contributed to “One of the Guys” (Seal, 2006), a piece called “The Military Made Me Do It,” that England got the benefit of double-standards that treated the women torturers as somehow victims themselves.

I was sympathetic to England, as far as she – and others low down in the pecking order – were made scapegoats for the military and government elites who actually developed the policy. I was also sympathetic about the class bias shown toward them (shown in  phrases like “trailer trash” that are used in this report as well).

But I thought England could still have behaved better than she did. I compared her to Joseph Darby, the whistle-blower, who did his duty despite all the dangers of being seen as a “snitch” by his colleagues. Both were about the same age. I thought England benefited from a double-standard exonerating the young women torturers.

I suggested in the essay that England’s sex was really as much an advantage as it was a disadvantage in the prison where she was a guard (female-deprived).

Another point of vindication: many journalists treat the story of Abu Ghraib as primarily a story about America. I find this somewhat narcissistic. The story is about the victims. To my mind, putting England and her colleagues at the center of Abu Ghraib adds a second injury to the victims.  And, as this report illustrates, the perps are rarely worthy of it, even as psychological case studies. Most evil is done by depressingly ordinary people.

A final point. I recall that some journalists made the culturally obtuse decision to interview the raped women, completely forgetting the consequences to the victims of such media exposure. Sure enough, some of the interviewed women ended up dead.

I have to wonder at journalists with so little imagination and compunction for the subjects of their stories…

‘Subjects’ are also subjects in the other sense – they have their own voices.

All this adds to my belief that the mediacrats can be as big a problem as the kleptocrats.