March against Monsanto, Denver, May 23, 2015: Once again the main stream media failed to show up when one of their corporate paymasters tells them to go sit in the corner and be quiet. All mainstream media were noticeably absent. However they could be found at the Colorado Convention Center where the fourth annual COMIC CON event was held. The message we can all take away from this; when it comes to the health of human beings, watching your local news or reading the Denver Post is akin to reading the funny papers or watching cartoons. KGNU sent the only newsperson to the Monsanto Protest
Tag: Monsanto
Huge Denver protest of corporate food supply is ignored by corporate media. PHOTOS
DENVER, COLORADO- The 2015 March Against Monsanto may have been Denver's largest public demonstration to draw absolutely no coverage from local media. To the surprise of no one.
Adieu, Grenouilles, Adieu – The Great Buzz-Kill
Following the bees in a steep nose dive to oblivion, frogs and other amphibians. This one appears to be death by fungus, much like our own beloved "athletes' foot". Except amphibians have yet another use for their skin. They have both gills and lungs, but neither suffice for breathing. A toad stores water, a frog cannot. A chemical called bufotenin highly prized by connoisseurs of quality recreational psycho-pharmaceuticals (Toke a toad, go to Jail) is the chemical part of a toad which makes that possible. Toads can survive dry conditions, but a dry frog is, to use and esoteric medical term, dead. Enter The Fungus. (They breathe through their skins) Irish "lumper" potatoes and European grapevines suffered a similar plague, the lumper fed an entire nation, until suddenly it didn't, (The bees come into play shortly, have patience, gentle reader) and the Franco-Italian wine industry was saved, according to The Only Approved Texas History Curriculum, by Texas "Mustang" grapes, the roots of which are resistant to the Fungal Plague. Grapevines are very easy to graft, you can get several varieties growing on one root. This technique is mentioned in The Bible at least once as a metaphor for Gentiles becoming Christian and, by extension Jewish. More on that soon. So what unleashes, historically, such plagues? Lack of fallow, which is wild lands, separating one field from the other. The Bible, which many Christians consult when they want an excuse to Kill other Children of the Living God. ("God Hates Fags", etc...) calls for "Crop Rotation", plant X number of fields with a different crop, never the same crop 2 years in a row, each field to "have its Sabbath" and lie fallow every seventh year. The books of Kings and Chronicles, 1st and 2nd of each (in Christian Bibles, the Jewish scriptures keep them on meghillahs or scrolls) and the Prophets will say one or more Kings "did evil before the LORD, and did not give the land her Sabbaths", usually just before a plague, drought or famine. THE BEES Weeds, or "fallow" have been described as "the flowers God plants in His won Garden", and while you don't want them growing in your spinach, wheat, grazing land, etc..., feed the butterflies, bees, other insects, birds, bats, frogs... but don't feed way too many of any single life form. Some anthrax keeps the fields fertile, overgrazing puts the anthrax at a level where large mammals like sheep, goats, cattle, humans... get it in their bodies. Milkweed, poisonous to just about everything else, feeds the larvae of the Monarch butterfly, but not grasshoppers. Mosquitoes feed the birds, bats and frogs which also feed on flies, grasshoppers, (locusts) and other insects which become dangerous when they are the dominant life form. Shoot off all the Bison, plow up the prairie "weeds" and plant eleventy-eight bazillian acres of corn or wheat and you get The Dust Bowl. DDT
What percentage of a partially eaten donut would YOU bet…
That the chemical spill which has currently gotten Monument evacuated... is going to be neatly and safely taken care of and that you're not going to be in any danger from it? Because the Chemical Industry, especially those divisions most closely tied to the Military, are betting a hundred percent of Your Ass that if they have a Chernobyl or Fukushima or Bhopal or Texas City happen say, in Downtown Colorado Springs, they'll be able to cover it up as neatly as they have their other little boo-boos. What's that? Texas City? Oh, yeah. Not only were they experiencing a chemical spill, and arresting people for taking pictures, draining the equivalent of the weeks worth of water used in Texas City, Galveston Co Texas in sheer liquid volume of volatile petrochemicals. Volatile means they react with other chemicals very quickly, sometimes explosively. The volatility of some, like Raid and Black Flag insectides, is such that they even kill (most of) the roaches in any given area. Oh, that volatile. This was done by BP at the same time their little boo-boo Earth Day present from last year was going full blast. Still is, but reporting on the damage is being covered up like cat droppings in the litter box. On the scene police brutality to keep nosy citizens from seeing first hand what's killing them, to a neat little YouTube channel where soothing music and deep mellow voices assure us that all is well, no need to worry, the Smart People are working on it, nothing to see here, citizen, all is Hell... But that's not the boo-boo I'm talking about. Some people still think about that and are still trying to get answers and get those answers to US. No, children, The Boo-Boo in question was a long time ago. End of World War 2 long time. A cargo ship being loaded at Texas City (Oh, did I mention also that that volatile chemical leak went directly to the Gulf too? No? Bad Me, very Naughty) But there was a huge stack of fertilizer on the pier. The fertilizer is Ammonia Nitrate. One of the most nitrogen rich naturally occuring chemicals. Nitrogen increases volatility as well. Plants need nitrogen in the soil to metabolize other chemicals like Oxygen, Water, carbon dioxide, sugars, starches, fiber and proteins. One way to increase nitrogen is to use legume crops on a rotation basis, beans, peas, peanuts, clover... Another is to add Anhydrous Ammonia. Much like Ammonia Nitrate it has a higher percentage of its mass in Nitrogen. Difference being Ammonia Nitrate has one extra nitrogen atom in the molecule and Anhydrous has one less hydrogen atom than the ammonia you're accustomed to using to clean your glass. And then there's Nitric Acid. Used in, among other things, production of fertilizer, refining metals, making Explosives ooooo... Bet some of the smarter readers were wondering when I was going to bring it back to all that Ammonia Nitrate, just a' sittin' on the dock of the bay, in the very Hot Texas Sunshine, high
Recent rally against Monsanto and a little not-so-very-recent
At a recent rally in Downtown Colorado Springs... Mark made some good points about Monsanto. Here's some more. You remember, as do I, how exactly Monsanto got busted back in the late 70s with the Paraquat Pot? Paraquat is one of their signature lines of "weed" killers, herbicides, such as Agent Orange and Roundup. The company li(n)e is and was that there was no evidence that soldiers exposed directly to Agent Orange had (significantly) higher incidence of cancer than soldiers not exposed to it. Denial because they were being sued. Well, other herbicides they make, RoundUp and Paraquat, contain the same type of chemical, not the active ingredient, but a side-product of the chemical reactions to manufacture the "goodies". A class of chemicals called Dioxins. Their harmful nature ranges from damn that's freakin' scary to OhMyGod we've kicked open the doors of Hell and those are esoteric chemical-talk terms. If you don't recognise them then you're not a chemist. At the high end of the spectrum is where the product was burned. As in, soldiers usually on punishment detail raking up the dead plants and burning them. Monsanto didn't out themselves, nor did the Army. The DEA did instead, by publishing a warning that they had been spraying Paraquat JUST LIKE AGENT ORANGE and J.L.A.O, if you inhaled the burning product it could cause you to die and cited an Army Agent Orange study. The one the Army and Monsanto and Dow and Dupont were denying ever existed. So, the Army stopped using Agent Orange. Big deal, they still use the other chemicals that have that same nasty little add-on, the part they can't get rid of without destroying the goodies, the Dioxins. Now how much would you pay? Monsanto and the U.S. (taxpayers) government paid a settlement in 1983 that equalled about a weeks worth of hospitalization for each veteran who was diagnosed before then. NONE for anybody diagnosed afterward and certainly none for the South VietNamese, Filipino, Thai or other allies who were also sprayed with the shit. They sprayed it around U.S. bases so the native vegetation wouldn't be so overgrown that people could walk right up to the fence. They Still Do. Then there's the Monsanto and Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds connection, tobacco bred to be resistant to A.O. or more specifically, RoundUp. Yep, there was a video article on the NOVA television program in 1990 describing Genetically Modified Organisms and of course, Monsanto was the star of the show. One of their projects was with Big Tobacco growing successively more resistant plants. See, with the herbicides, they only work when the plant is above ground, sprouted. After the cash crop, in this case tobacco, WHICH IS TYPICALLY USED BY LIGHTING IT ON FIRE and inhaling the toxic smoke, has sprouted, no more Agent Ora RoundUp. So they have to kill the weeds before the cash crop sprouts. Doesn't, however, kill the seeds of the weeds like the farmer needs. But at the end of the show, there were tobacco plants being sprayed
the food revolution starts here. only the healthy will survive.
There is a spate of recent films spilling the beans about the corporate takeover of the global food economy. Many are available online or through Amazon and Netflix. Please watch some of these. Show your kids. Host a screening in your community. Donate a copy or two to the local library or public school system. Encourage teachers to show the films. Spread the word! Subvert the dominant food paradigm! Refuse to play along anymore! Food, Inc., the first enviro-food movie to be screened in major theaters across the country, has brought food consciousness in the United States to a new level. Fresh: The Movie is the perfect follow-up screening to Food, Inc. because it shows the flip side—positive change being created by farmers, students, thinkers, and business people in the U.S. today. French Fries to Go documents Telluride, Colorado's quest to run city buses on recycled fryer oil. Garden Cycles: Faces From the New Farm is the story of three women on a three-month bicycle-powered tour of urban gardens throughout the Northeast. Polycultures: Food Where We Live looks at communities in Northeast Ohio that are coming together to grow a more sustainable, just, and local food system. The Greening of Southie is about Boston's first LEED-certified residential green building and the way it affected a community. Eating Alaska is a documentary by a vegetarian filmmaker who moves to Alaska and marries a hunter. The film looks at the ethics behind food choices and how politics, society, religion, and taste all play a role. Sustainable Table: What's on Your Plate? traces West Coast food production from field to table. To Market to Market to Buy a Fat Pig tours outstanding farmers' markets from Baltimore to Hawaii. The Real Dirt of Farmer John looks at one man and his family farm. Farmer John and his story will have you reconsidering stereotypes about farmers. The Garden examines the largest community garden in the U.S., 14 acres of green in South Central Los Angeles, and the fight to keep it there. The World According to Monsanto looks at this behemoth of a multinational agricultural biotech corporation and their dominance of patents on genetically engineered seeds and pesticides. Seeds of Deception focuses on how genetically engineered food is making its way into our daily diets. Bad Seed: The Truth About Our Food looks at who is controlling the world's food supply and the consequences of genetically modified food on health. The Future of Food examines the complex web of market and political forces that affect what we eat and what we will eat in the future. Food Matters takes a look at the often overlooked connection between food and our nation's current state of health. With the health-care debate raging, watching this film feels extra-timely and important. King Corn investigates the staggering scale of the corn related food economy in the U.S. in an entertaining way. While you're at it check out Carey's two part quest to go corn free. Two Angry Moms shows two angry (and awesome) moms striving to improve school lunch with simple changes, like having fresh fruits