Tag Archives: Wheat

Vanity Fair cover spotlights a gender trait Caitlyn Jenner didn’t nip or tuck: male privilege.

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Thank you Bruce now Caitlyn Jenner for stepping up to be an olympian standard-bearer to assail the stigma of gender dysphoria. Caitlyn’s reveal on the cover of Vanity Fair is a triumph, for transexuals and, one might hope, “women of a certain age”. But that it certainly is not. Caitlyn owes her magazine cover to her celebrity power of course, to sensationalism, and above all to her male privilege.

And there we have the distinction feminists have long drawn between their struggle and that of man-made women. It’s not about whose struggle is greater. But it’s not the same struggle.

As a woman, Jenner now faces every traditional gender disadvantage except obviously the wage gap. With another exception. If you doubt that Caityn Jenner has yet to shed her alter ego’s male privilege, ask yourself when was the last time Vanity Fair put a 65 year old woman on their cover, wearing a bunny suit? Not that female celebrities even twenty years younger would likely consent to being presented as corseted sexpots.

Jenner claimed in her interview that she is asexual, maybe to un-complicate the anticipated male gaze. Or maybe that’s one hurdle too far for our reality-phobic media which needs to repress sex to sell it.

So Vanity Fair couldn’t help but sexualize the cover, but it leaves viewers with nothing to glean but narcissism. Can we fail to feel in Jenner’s gaze, the arrogance of a conquerer? That’s not an attribute exclusive to masculinity, but Jenner’s comes of privilege.

The Wheaties box superhuman decathlete had her beefcake and now she intends to eat it. No one says a trans feminine must be a shrinking violet, but the public reaction has been to coddle Jenner for her courageous act, though it seems clearly an act. When Jenner came out in April, she predicted a “wild ride”. What the audience took for trepidation was really an artful teaser for the magazine cover and the reality TV specials already in the works. Jenner’s Caitlyn races dirt track thrillcraft. Earlier this year she rear-ended a fellow Malibu driver. Jenner’s SUV fatally bumped the woman into oncoming traffic on PCH.

Forty years ago Bruce Jenner defined the hyper-masculine, now Caitlyn claims the impossibly feminine. I see a craftily Botoxed siren and I’m not sure how our culture is served to efface age and gender, especially as human beings, more fragile than we know, yearn to catch on magazine covers authentic reflections of themselves.

Okay, best thing to come out of this? #MyVanityFairCover

Bear Creek Massacre, January 29, 1863

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The year 2014 will mark the 150th anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre, on November 29, two days after Thanksgiving. But on this day, January 29 of the year before, a Shoshone village suffered an identical fate. The Bear Creek Massacre was also once called the Battle of Bear Creek, but the only grounds which western military history buffs have to argue that such engagements were “battles” not massacres, is that was how the US cavalry waged its fights against the hostiles, its only victories were raids upon unsuspecting villages.

Here is the official contemporary report of Colonel Connor’s attack. First the cover letter which sets the scene. From the Official Records of the War of Rebellion (what the Civil War was called then), series 1, volume 50, part 1:

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE PACIFIC,
San Francisco, February 20, 1863.
Adjt. General L. THOMAS, U. S. Army,
Washington, D. C.:
SIR: I have the honor to inclose herewith the report of Colonel P. E. Connor, Third Infantry California Volunteers of the battle fought on the 29th of January, on Bear River, Utah, Ter., between U. S. troops and hostile Indians. Our victory was complete; 224 of the enemy left dead on the field. Colonel Connor’s loss was heavy. Out of 200 men engaged 14 were killed on the field and 4 officers and 49 men wounded; 1 officer and 5 of the men wounded have since died. Colonel Connor’s report of the suffering of his troops on the march and the gallant and heroic conduct of both officers and men in that terrible combat will commend the Column from California and its brave commander to the favorable notice of the General-in-Chief and War Department.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
G. WRIGHT,
Brigadier-General, U. S. Army, Commanding.

I’ll parse those totals for you. Cowboy casualties: 20 dead, 47 wounded. Indians: 224 dead, 0 wounded.

Here are the more relevant passages of Connor’s report. Notice he puts plenty of emphasis on the fight he encountered, even suggesting that the Shoshones initiated the attack. Connor sheds much less light on the aftermath. (I’ve bolded some parts of import:)

Report of Colonel P. Edward Connor, Third California Infantry, commanding District of Utah. (Excerpt)

As daylight was approaching I was apprehensive that the Indians would discover the strength of my force and make their escape. I therefore made a rapid march with the cavalry and reached the bank of the river shortly after daylight in full view of the Indian encampment and about one mile distant. I immediately ordered Major McGarry to advance with the cavalry and surround before attacking them, while I remained a few minutes in the rear to give orders to the infantry and artillery.

On my arrival on the field I found that Major Mcgarry had dismounted the cavalry and was engaged with the Indians who had sallied out of their hiding places on foot and horseback, and with fiendish malignity waved the scalps of white women and challenged the troops to battle, at the same time attacking them. Finding it impossible to surround them in consequence of the nature of the ground, he accepted their challenge.

The “scalps of white women” was a common motif used in justifying ensuing slaughters. Colonel Chivington cited the presence of same at the Sand Creek camp, although none were ever produced.

The position of the Indians was one of strong natural defenses, and almost inaccessible to the troops, being in a deep, dry ravine from six to twelve feet deep and from thirty to forty feet wide, banks and running across level table-land, along which they had constructed steps from which they could deliver their fire without being themselves exposed. Under the embankments they had constructed artificial covers of willows thickly woven together, from being which they could fire without being observed.

After being engaged about twenty minutes I found it was impossible to dislodge them without great sacrifice of life. I accordingly ordered Major McGarry with twenty men to turn their left flank, which was in the ravine where it entered the mountains. Shortly afterward Captain Hoyt reached the ford three-quarters of a mile distant, but found it impossible to cross footmen. Some of them tried it, however, rushing into the river, but, finding it deep and rapid, retired. I immediately ordered a detachment of cavalry with led horses to cross the infantry, which was done accordingly and upon their arrival upon the field I ordered them to the support of Major McGarry’s flanking party, who shortly afterward succeeded in turning the enemy’s flank.

Up to this time, in consequence of being exposed on a level and open plain while the Indians were under cover, they had every advantage of us, fighting with the ferocity of demons. My men fell fast and thick around me, but after flanking them we had the advantage and made good use of it. I ordered the flanking party to advance down the ravine on either side, which gave us the advantage of an enfilading fire and caused some of the Indians to give way and run toward the north of the ravine.

At this point I had a company stationed, who shot them as they ran out. I also ordered a detachment of cavalry across the ravine to cut off the retreat of any fugitives who might escape the company at the mouth of the ravine. But few tried to escape, however, but continued fighting with unyielding obstinacy, frequently engaging hand to hand with the troops until killed in their hiding places.

The most of those who did escape from the ravine were afterward shot in attempting to swim the river, or killed while desperately fighting under cover of the dense willow thicket which lined the river-banks.

Most were shot, but Connor skimps on the detail. The wounded Shoshones and those feigning injury were prodded with bayonettes then shot, violated sometimes before, sometimes after. Few escaped this fate. Like any population of civilians, the village was at least seventyfive percent women and children.

I have also to report to the general commanding that previous to my departure Chief Justice Kinney, of Great Salt Lake City, made a requisition for troops for the purpose of arresting the Indian chiefs Bear Hunter, San Pitch, and Sagwich. I informed the marshal that my arrangements for our expedition against the Indians were made, and that it was not my intention to take any prisoners, but that he could accompany me. Marshal Gibbs accordingly accompanied me and rendered efficient aid in caring for the wounded.

…

Of the good conduct and bravery of both officers and men California has reason to be proud. We found 224 bodies on the field, among which were those of the chiefs Bear Hunter, Sagwich, and Leight. How many more were killed than stated I am unable to say, as the condition of the wounded rendered their immediate removal a necessity. I was unable to examine the field. I captured 175 horses, some arms, destroyed over seventy lodges, a large quantity of wheat and other provisions, which had been furnished them by the Mormons; left a small quantity of wheat for the sustenance of 16 and children, whom I left on the field.

No dilemma, the human omnivore’s prerogative is unsustainable

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Radical slow food guru Joel Salatin is not popular with vegetarians. New Age wisdom has held that modern man had to transcend meat, the only sustainable future calling for us to cut out the middle beast and narrow our source of nutrition to the more efficient vegetable kingdom. Except it turns out that agriculture is no more sustainable than mining. Here’s the lesson I gleaned from Joel Salatin’s lecture last Saturday. Nature wants to grow grass not grain. The greatest environmental disaster to befall Earth was mankind’s development of wheat. Calling humans omnivores pretends we can eat anything, when in reality outside of meat we’re limited to the product of tillage, for the most part requiring irrigation and fertilizer. A sustainable biosphere calls for perennials cycled through their consumers, ruminant herbivores. As omni as we wanna be, we’re not herbivores.

Genocide

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When I was a young hoodlum, I plagiarized a bit of prose poetry with something like this at its core in order to make myself look cool. As an officially legal adult I’ve lost interest in how things look and have taken up a pursuit of how things Are. This is my take on the piece that my younger self recognized as valuable. That unknown poet, whose name is long lost to the mists of my long lost mind may well recognize a few of his or her words here. No harm intended, kind sir or ms. All the cells that may have stolen your work wholesale are long dead. I hope you like what my momentarily current self has done with the memory….

When I woke up this morning I pulled back the cover and in so doing scattered skin cells like chaff from wheat onto the floor.
I drank a bunch of hot-ass coffee and scalded my tongue–maybe the caffeine killed a few hundred thousand brain cells. Who knows?
I rode my bike to a demonstration, undoubtedly reaping a harvest of sorrow amongst the muscle cells in my anguished protesting protester’s legs.
When I arrived and put the rest of my body to protesting I met a friend and we hugged causing the deaths of multitudes of fleshly villagers in each of our respective bodies.
As the day progresses into evening I’ll meet others maybe loved ones maybe new acquaintances and we will joyfully kill one another’s cells ending their brief unnoticed lives ignominiously.
If it should fall out that we fuck–Genocide!
How is it that these most tender of acts expressing our humanity are so violent in their collatery? Does it matter? Are those cells not reborn in a new generation a new regeneration? Hark! I am born again yes born again.
I am born and born and born requiring the Universe to bear me. It’s the points on a line–I am born again at each indivisible moment. Infinite. There are no two points between which there are not infinite dimensionless points. I’ve been born again more times than there are numbers for as I wrote this.
You’ve committed murder in your own head while you read it. Surely this bit has killed some of your brains off too.
The beauty of it all is Infinite. Eternal. Undying.

(Reprinted from Hipgnosis)

Coppelia and the Viennese Hesitation

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If you are hardwired with a cultural affliction like mine, if you find yourself with a compulsive affinity for the waltz, I’ll wager you will also be a sucker for what’s called the Viennese Hesitation. It was just such a hook that led me to a Slav melody that immersed me into a ballet called Coppélia, two days ago, and I still haven’t surfaced.
 
Any fan of ballet, or parent whose child has studied dance, will know about this beguiling comic classic. To the rest of us unwashed, Coppélia or The Girl with Enamel Eyes, draws a blank, likewise even of its composer, Leo Delibes. Most of us outside the world of dance think ballet is all nutcrackers and swans, or the usual literary themes transposed to choreography. What are ballets but silent films to opera’s talkies? In today’s terms, ballet scores were the first soundtracks, and if you find new film scores overwrought, you might be delighted to alight on Delibes and his clever heroine, yes, Swanilda.

The title character Coppélia is actually a doll, the creation of aging Dr. Coppelius in his efforts to fashion his idealized bride. Seated in a window above the square, the mechanical beauty entrances the village boys, in particular Swanilda’s suitor Franz, so it falls to the assertive girl to break the spell. Hilarity ensues. Or, beyond the traditional lighthearted reading…

You may not recognize the name Delibes, but you know his Mazurka. And I’ll bet you can hum his Pizzicato (a divertissement from Silvia) in its entirety. Tchaikovsky said if he’d fully appreciated Delibes’ mastery of composing for the ballet, he would not have dared write Swan Lake.

If you’d like to share my Coppélia experience, I’d love to curate it for you. Start with the Royal Ballet production available on Youtube, mostly because the entire performance is there, and its intertitles explain the plot. There are more lauded productions, but Youtube has enough of their highlights to satiate without testing your patience with Netflix. That said, you’ll want to put the 1994 Lyon Ballet adaptation to the top of your queue now, because we want to save that for last.

The 2000 Royal Ballet production provides an ideal example of a classic interpretation of COPPÉLIA on a Disney budget. The comedy is writ large enough for opera glasses in the nosebleed seats. The choreography is traditional with a Sorcerers Apprentice perfection to it. The costumes are precisely Galician, where this adaptation of a Hoffman tale is set, an agrarian village in a region now part of the Ukraine, but in 1870 belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The red boots go to the Hungarian wine makers who dance the Csardas, and the black boots to the Mazurka dancers returning from the wheat harvest.

Unfortunately the Royal Ballet appeared satisfied to play to the popular misconception that the story of Coppélia is a trifle. I’ll suggest as a rebuttal the 2001 production staged by the National Ballet School of Paris, where the students were clearly able to imbue the lovers with emotion and spirit. This Swanilda is danced by a 16-year-old ballerina, by coincidence the same age as the Italian-Parisian who originated the part before she succumbed to disease after the 18th performance, during the Prussian siege of Paris.

The student production dispenses with Act III, which was all divertissements as you’ll have noted, beautiful musical scenes, but extraneous to the plot, although the love story looses the enchanting La Paix (Peace) variation and the Dance de Fete pas de deux. But they manage to sneak in Act III’s La Fileuse into a dance.

By the way, in my opinion this production makes the very best of the aforementioned hesitation, basically a hanging pause. There’s a suspended hesitation inherent in every waltz, Viennese or otherwise, but Delibes renders this one monumental. In the Theme Slav in question, the fickle Franz punctuates each break with an entreaty, and each time Swanilda resumes her dance. Other choreographies of the Them Slav don’t even slow for those moments, some notably expunge the hesitations from the score altogether.

(Note: If you are curious about the solo for Franz interposed into this variation, it’s a short Scena taken from Act II of Delibes’ 1866 ballet The Source.)

You can compare and contrast or not, but I will suggest checking on other Swanildas to flesh out the flirtations, coy games and lovers quarrels of Act I. For example, ?do not miss Lucia Lacarra of the Munich production, in particular this less coy prelude to the Ballade de L’epi.

For a heartier rendition of the first folk dance, check out the 1993 Kirov Ballet Mazurka.

You will want to see Lisa Parvane of the 1990 Melborne Ballet, in the denouement of Act II, made to dance for Coppelius’ amusement, the Boléro Spanish dancer, and Gigue referred to as the Scottish reel, (actually “Gigue” pronounced in French is Jig), but mostly for the cathartic finale, where the mad Coppelius does not merely mourn the broken mechanical doll, as Delibes’ score makes clear, his heart breaks.

Where the students of Paris may have glossed over the old man’s loss, they did grasp the sociological theme of this tale, natural versus unnatural love, nature versus industrial modernity. The violin Ballade de L’Epi, where a spear of wheat is shaken to reveal if you’ve found true love. We know it as plucking the daisy. But where we’ve come to leave the outcome to chance, in a farming community the answer is sought from nature. Green grains will remain silent until they’re ripe and ready for harvest. This concept is faithfully conveyed by the students, as was the sequence which preceded it, where the tinkerer’s labors to animate his lone world are derided while the villagers anticipate the next day’s social festivities.

If you’re still looking for what makes COPPÉLIA more than a silly tale, you’re ready for the absolutely mesmerizing modernized interpretation filmed by the Opera Ballet de Lyon.

Lyon is not coincidentally France’s industrial center, and here the Coppelius malaise is contemporary. Ballet purists appeared to be aghast, and isn’t that the surest sign of a heretical message? Extracts one and two are online and make obvious this production pulls COPPÉLIA right back from the purgatory of children’s repertory. And here it helps I think to know the tale they’re supposed to be telling, to see what they really have to say. The peasants of Lyon are today much the wiser to the false reality foisted upon them by industrial culture. Their Mazurka is a silent glare. Swanilda’s waltz is a childish mocking of the inanimate Deneuve clone.

While some have describe the Lyon staging as a new twist on the tale, I’d say it’s a brilliant reexamination that gets to the core of why Coppélia became an immediate classic in the first place.

An aside about the Theme Slav. Like Offenbach and other contemporaries composing for the ballet, Delibes borrowed from folk melodies to inform his dances. His partner Saint-Leon returned from travels in Eastern Europe praising this popular melody he had overheard. The Slavic theme turned out not to have folk origins at all, but was a piece by composer Stanislaw Moniuszko, actually Poland’s national composer, author of numerous ballets and operas. Delibes gave credit where it was due, and the Slav melody stands out from among the indigenous varieties. At seven minutes it is Coppélia’s longest sequence. But it was Delibes who lent it the memorable hesitation motif which permeates the score.

In the Lyon production the musical hesitation comes in an early variation, a dramatic leap that already feels like it will haunt me forever.

COPPÉLIA celebrates the strength and wisdom of women, and nature, to overcome a young man’s hesitation, where that of the old man may be doomed, and his technology damned.

Simple American breakfast no longer

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pancake syrop corn syrup hfcs maple KaroMy ideal breakfast is served at a diner: coffee, eggs, hash browns and toast. But can you feel healthy about it –as your conscience (n) –> vegan? You could pack in sugar in the raw, sea salt, and organic peppercorns in the requisite grinders; likewise from a cooler you could pull jars of rBGH-free half and half, real butter, and organic ketchup if you’re inclined. But what about what’s served on the plate?

A disclaimer: let’s define eating to mean the consumption of nutrition and avoidance of toxin. That precludes genetically modified organisms, irradiated produce, chemical pesticides, trans-fats, corn-syrup, HFCS, etc. The expression “natural” has been co-opted by Big Agra, but no longer can detractors say that “organic” doesn’t mean anything.

I’m omitting the optional meats: ham, bacon and sausage links for the obvious reasons; free-range, grass-fed, single-animal slaughtered efforts notwithstanding. Enough said.

Empty calories like juice are out as well, unless it’s freshly squeezed for your glass.

And let’s presume too, we’ll be asking the cook to stir some onions and peppers into the hash browns, for at least a little green.

Before we leave the subject of condiments, there a three non-perishable items it might be worth bringing with you to the diner. restaurant jelly single serving corn syrup hfcs For your toast: corn-less fruit preserves, unheated honey, and if you’re planning to add pancakes, grade-B maple syrup. The diner variety syrup, and any portion-size pre-packaged confection are apt to be entirely corn syrup and HFCS.

If the price of your breakfast starts at $3.80, it’s unlikely your local diner can afford the healthy food supplies you are able to ferret from your grocer. It’s become enough of a feat to stock them at home. Let’s see: eggs from vegetarian-fed cage-less chickens, organic potatoes, whole-grain bread. All these hyphens concatenate into a value meal priced more like a dinner entree. And there’s probably no chance a typical diner can spring for fair-trade organic coffee beans.

Economists point to America’s relatively level cost of living. Progressive analysts address the subsidies which keep commodity prices artificially low. Others decry the need for society to address the real costs which cripple our unhealthy system. From the consumer’s point of view, the cost of real nutrition has suffered a hyperinflation to put it beyond our reach, eating out or in.

NOTES:
1. Here’s that recipe for organic catsup:

3 cups canned organic tomato paste
¼ cup whey (liquid from plain yogurt)
1 Tbls sea salt
½ cup maple syrup
¼ tsp cayenne pepper
3 cloves peeled & mashed garlic
½ cup fish sauce fish sauce

Mix together in a wide-mouth glass jar, leave at least an inch below the top and leave it at room temperature for 2-3 days before putting into the refrigerator. Recipe makes a whole quart.

2. An optimum juice concoction:

1. Beetroot
2. Celery
3. Carrot
4. Apple
5. Ginger

3. Three lists:

Foods to buy organic:
Meat, Milk, Coffee, Peaches, Apples, Sweet Bell Peppers, Celery, Nectarines, Strawberries, Cherries, Kale, Leafy Greens, Grapes, Carrots, Potatoes, Tomatoes

Foods that don’t need to be organic:
Onions, Avocado, Sweet Corn, Pineapple, Mango, Asparagus, Sweet Peas, Kiwi Fruit, Cabbage, Eggplant, Papaya, Watermelon, Broccoli, Sweet Potatoes

GMO crops:
Soybeans, Corn starch, Canola oil, Sugar beet, Rice. Watch list:
Wheat, Potatoes.

Colorado Springs power plants not among world’s 200 dirtiest by much

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CARMA map as simplified by FORBESGood news, Colorado Spring’s main power plant is not among the world’s 200 biggest carbon offender power plants. But our neighbors are. One quarter of the world’s dirtiest power plants (53) are in the US. All in red states, because the uneducted are the new black. Actually in the West many of these coal plants are foisted on the Indians, the enduring black.

Colorado Springs is surrounded by:

LARAMIE RIVER, Wheatland, Wyoming at 15 million tons of carbon
INTERMOUNTAIN, Delta, Utah at 16 million
CRAIG, Colorado at 12 million
NAVAJO, Page, Arizon at 20 million
SAN JUAN, New Mexico at 12 million
MONTICELLO, Mount Pleasant, Texas at 18 million
WELSH, Pittsburg, Texas at 12 million
LA CYGNE, Kansas at 11 million

(For the record, the worst offender is the TAICHUNG plant in Taiwan, which emits 40 million tons of carbon every year. Clean plants emit 0.)

Falling short of ranking in the 200 worst, surrounding Colorado Springs, are:

CHEROKEE, Denver, Colorado at 5 million
COMANCHE, Pueblo, Colorado at 5 million
HAYDEN, Colorado at 4 million
PAWNE, Brush, Colorado at 4 million

Carbon emissions ratings are based on a plant’s efficiency relative to its intensity. On an interactive map offered by Carbon Monitoring For Action (CARMA), the dirty plants are in red, the clean in green. CARMA map of Colorado Springs area power plants The mainstream media is working off of maps offered by Forbes magazine, not CARMA’s. Notice the Forbes article sponsor is Shell Oil, who’s leading the effort to extract oil shale, an ugly alternative to coal. But don’t be fooled by Forbes’ interesting omissions. Colorado Springs is red.

The three plants operated by Colorado Springs Utility fall into the dirty category:

DRAKE, Colorado Springs, 80903 at 2.3 million
RD NIXON, Fountain, at 1.8
BIRDSALL Colorado Springs, 80907 at 0.1

That’s right, the “cloud maker” located at Colorado Springs’ center, is squarely in the red, pollution wise. A model of Clean Coal.

Considered relatively cleaner are:

FRONT RANGE POWER, Fountain, Colorado at 1.2 million
FOUNTAIN VALLEY, at 0.2 million
WN CLARK, Canon City, Colorado at 0.4 million
LIMON, at 0.1 million

Clean:

COLORADO SPRINGS WICKS at 0
TESLA, Manitou Springs, Colorado at 0
NORAD, at 0.03 million

Organic corn soon unavailable to you

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organic-corn-flakesI was shopping the other day for organic corn flakes, thinking that of all the cereals, Dr. Kellogg’s first processed food breakfast would similarly be predominant among the organic breakfast cereal offerings. I found exactly none; neither at the supermarket, nor the health food store. I found plenty of organic bran, wheat, oat and Kashi –whatever that is, but nothing made of corn. Would you say that’s something to find curious, or alarming?

I became acutely reminded of a detail from a documentary I’d just seen, The Real Dirt on Farmer John. There’s a fleeting scene where farmer John Peterson is telling his Angelic Organics CSA customers (Community Supported Agriculture) about that year’s successful crop of corn. He’s enthusiastic, he explains, because a harvest of organic corn has become a very difficult accomplishment.

Does that give you pause, when you consider the prevalence of corn in the American diet? Before genetically modified corn, before High Fructose Corn, before Yellow Dent No. 2 which is so inedible it can be stored in piles outside (farmers used to build silos to store corn), and before corn became ethonol, corn was sweetcorn was corn.

From King Corn viewers learned about Monsanto and Cargill’s present stranglehold on the corn seed market, all of it GMO. And sporadically American farmers make the news for discovering that a neighbor’s GMO crops have overtaken theirs.

cornfield cargill nebraskaI had occasion this summer to drive through several corn-producing states. On the side of so many fields were logos designating which commercial seeds had been used. I scarcely remember a single field that did not have a sign. Some bore lot numbers, representing test samples.

Is it possible that organic corn production has begun coming up short?

Have organic corn crops become too expensive to supply the breakfast cereal makers? Organic corn flakes are still available online, manufactured by Barbara’s or Nature’s Path, but they are priced far above the average box of breakfast cereal.

Eventually all cream rises to the top. The best Bordeaux are only accessible to the super-rich, not simply because of price, but because the upscale marketers corner the supply. The same can be said of many food delicacies and nature products. Some woods for example, available for centuries to ordinary luthiers, have been purchased lock, stock and by the full forest growth, monopolized to supply only specialists. What we think of as ordinary corn may soon be available only to the affluent customer, who wouldn’t be caught dead feeding their children genetically modified foods.

Coming at this development from a completely diametric angle, Kellogg’s has decided it needs to protect its brand of conventional genetically modified corn flakes by laser-etching their logo across each one. Instead of suffering the stigma of accusations that its corn product is tainted, Kellogg’s wants its dupes to feel they’re getting value added with their balanced breakfast.

In fact, the laser process will toast the already toasted product just a little bit more, robbing it of further nutrition and resistance to carcinogens.

But the patented technology could be a welcome development. When FDA regulators decide to advocate for consumer health, as perhaps a universal health care system might mandate it, if the national diabetes or allergy epidemics don’t force the issue, the FDA can decide to make the food giants mark all their GMO products with a laser brand. Wouldn’t that restore the original meaning to the concept we know as “branding?”

UPDATE:
I had the usual Organic Corn Chips on my shopping list, but that product is gone too, both white and yellow corn varieties.

HFCS is first ingredient in Nutri-Grain Bar -also second, fourth, fifth and ninth

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kelloggs-nutri-grain.jpg
Passing a prominent end cap in the Supermarket today and I noticed: the first ingredient of Kellogg’s NUTRI-GRAIN Breakfast Bar is HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP. (Colorado has a law criminalizing disparaging remarks about food, so I have to say no more.) Except to add, HFCS is also ingredient two and four of the Nutri; and five and nine of the Grain.

Yum! Is corn the first thing that comes to mind when you think fruit and wheat? Or the 2nd, 4th, 5th and 9th? The big-agra commercials would have us ask, what’s wrong with that, it’s corn. Well, an inedible corn, also used as a gasoline additive. Corn is to HFCS what babies are to baby oil.

It’s not what Kelloggs would have you believe, in fact there is no nutritional information offered at nutrigrain.com. But other websites concerned with nutrition make note that Nutri-grain bars are neither.

Have a look at the ingredients label. I’ve highlighted the HFCS where they didn’t

INGREDIENTS:
Filling (high fructose corn syrup, strawberry preserves [high fructose corn syrup, strawberry puree], glycerin, blueberry preserves [high fructose corn syrup, blueberry puree concentrate, water], fructose, water, maltodextrin, modified corn starch, natural and artificial blueberry and strawberry flavors, citric acid, sodium alginate, calcium phosphate, xanthan gum, soy lecithin, malic acid, red #40 lake, blue #1),
enriched wheat flour, sugar, partially hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonseed oil, whole oats, high fructose corn syrup, honey, corn cereal (milled corn, liquid sugar, high fructose corn syrup, salt, malt flavoring, calcium pantothenate), calcium carbonate, dextrose, nonfat dry milk, salt, cellulose gum, leavening (potassium bicarbonate), natural and artificial vanilla flavor, soy lecithin, wheat gluten, potassium carrageenan, modified wheat starch, guar gum, molasses, niacinamide, zinc oxide, reduced iron, pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin B6), riboflavin (vitamin B2), vitamin A palmitate, thiamin hydrochloride (vitamin B1), annatto color and folic acid.

Hysterical Revisionism Parte Veint..

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Ok, so one of the first posts I made was on the subject of what I call amongst other things Jingoistic Bullshit.
Like Ward Churchill getting fired and the suggestion being made by local Right Wing Freaks that he be prosecuted and even EXECUTED for teaching that the U.S. Army committed deliberate Extermination campaigns against Americans and used Biological Warfare in doing so.

The reason I bring it back up is because our Latest IDF Apologist/Propagandist keeps using the same notion the Others did, that we’re somehow “ignorant” of Middle East History merely because we don’t cite the History Textbooks they use in the Tel Aviv Public Schools.

To bring it on down, lest I be accused of being “unhinged”, if I were to enter into a discussion on Recent European History and, let’s say, just for giggles, pointed out that the British Public School textbooks say that the IRA are a bunch of terrorists (U.S. textbooks say the same stupid shit) and the insinuation that the Potato Famine was caused not by the British Overlords shipping out ALL the grain produced in Ireland, (even though it’s documented in shipping records, number (daily)of hundreds of tons of wheat shipped to England on one page and number of Irish Children dead in a sidebar on the same page)

But if I were to cite EXCLUSIVELY British History Texts as approved by Her Majesty Bess2 as an accurate portrayal of Irish History I would not be Taken Seriously.
Especially if I were to Arrogantly demand that the English version be the ONLY version accepted as valid for the discussion.

At that point not only would I be a Jingoistic Nutter I would also be an “Arse”.

To make a further point, there’s a Texas History Society who did a special that gets repeated on the Hysteric Channel and National Geographic Channel about the Alamo.

Which is what I wrote thereof c. 2 years ago.

Seems that even though the only written accounts of what happened to David Crockett and the other “defenders” after the walls were breached, Were Written By Mexican Soldiers…

And that even though the one most in question with the Freaks is one that asserted that General Antonio Jose y Maria Lopez (de Santa Ana) ordered a War Crime to be committed… Declaring the Texians to be “Unlawful combatants” (sound familiar, Trolls? Right Wingers? anybody? … Bueller? … anybody?) and Killing the Prisoners.

Including but not limited to one Colonel David Crockett.

In spite of this being evidence of War Crimes committed by the person who wrote it, it’s called into question Because We Are Supposed To Believe The John Wayne Version Wherein Davy Crockett Died In Battle…

And if we don’t, we’re, And I can not possibly make shit like this up, it takes a truly demented soul to think of it “undermining the Global War On Terror” because Our Troops are engaged in a war with the Brown-skinned Hordes and if they were taught to question the History as Told By The U.S. Government, why, they might question the “Historical Fact” that Iraq was Invaded, Conquered and Occupied Errrrr… I mean “Liberated” yeah, that’s the ticket, Liberated because Saddam Hussein refused to give up his Weapons of Mass Destruction.

A story told by the same IDF and Likud people who tell us that they were and are perfectly justified in Invading, occupying and murdering the citizens of Gaza.

Now, Seventh Grade Tel Aviv Public School History, you know, you only are obligated to mark on the Examinations that the dates and names and locations you just learned to recite (like a whole class full of 13 year old humanoid Parrots) said this, that or the other thing about The Glorious History of The State of Israel.

Bringing it into serious discussions with Grown-Ups and demanding that it be the only source of information that YOU will allow into the discussion comes off as being very Arrogant and Pigheaded.

Especially if the discussion is based on a website that doesn’t actually belong to you.

The Ward Churchill Haters and the New Defenders of The Legend Of The Alamo, they’re fairly easy to spot as being Arrogant Ignorant Rednecks who, in the words of a pastor I once knew “Need Less beer and more Bible”

IDF Trolls, apparently paid Trolls, making similar assertions come off as being, well, of the Same Caste.

Clean Coal is a fossil fuels Free Lunch

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Clean Coal is a free lunchThere’s no such thing as Clean Coal. The concept is an ingenious public relations gambit like Clean-Skies, an No-Child-Left-Behind. Colorado’s supposedly progressive Governor Bill Ritter is an dirty backer. The attempted makeover of the dark fossil fuel has prompted an equal and opposite public reaction.

Laudably, the industry is trying to raise public awareness to “what lies behind the plug.” They ask energy consumers to face the reality that lights –their television even– have to be powered somehow. The image they use is a piece of coal being tapped by an extension cord. It certainly looks magically detached from any complication. Leaving alone that you have to burn the coal (imagine depicting steaks cooking on a stone cold barbecue grill), I’d defy anyone to handle the piece of coal without getting the orange plug completely smudged.

Of course, clean or not, coal is a fossil fuel, the consumption of which is one of the primary causes of Global Warming, aka Climate Change. “Clean Coal” is just a way for the oldest energy industry to get in on the alternative energy gravy train.

Clean coal is odorless shitThe Coen Brothers have directed a hilarious television ad which parodies the Coal Companies pitching their product as an air freshener, even as the aerosol spews pure smoke.

It’s absolutely dispiriting to see Barack Obama championing “Clean Coal” in a TV spot. Who would not like to think that American ingenuity can figure out a way to burn coal cleanly? If we can reverse osmosis, halt aging and make 0% fat fat, why disbelieve we can’t strip carbon of its essence?

At the America’s Power website, the coal industry promises to use Clean Coal to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and of course, to provide jobs. A US map reveals several Clean Coal research sites in Colorado. They are Boulder, Denver, Englewood, Littleton, Wheat Ridge, Nucla and La Vita.

colorado clean coal

Even if the lipstick on pig research is just a boondoggle to snag Federal funded jobs, aren’t there real alternative energy sources to pursue?

Hunger, shortages and Wall Street

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What can we expect of a capitalist system gorging itself on the misery of others? The energized “food speculators” have found another way now to skim money off of commodities (and off those producing them) by racing out of their burnt down, failing criminal derivatives scams – that are and will continue to cause job loss, retirement and savings loss, home equity loss – and into food.

This should be stopped immediately by Congress in the interests of the nation and the poorest countries that are now experiencing riots and unrest over high prices and shortages. But you can bet the millionaires in Congress are profiting from this hideous behavior and won’t do a god damn thing about it other than throw money, our money, at it. Worthless solutions from bankrupt minds.The liars in the mainstream media blame everything else but the real cause …the Wall Street vipers. This is our American culture …profit at all and any costs.

Ethanol is turning out to be a speculative tool as well, besides taking land away from corn grown for cattle feed and humans. Sugar cane, other forms of bio-fuel will become speculator targets as well. Even water! All of this investing in commodities is driven by the falling dollar created by the Fed who crashed the dollar!! Lowering interest rates and opening cheap credit windows to Wall Street floods the economy with more worthless paper. This is driving the commodities bubble as well. Investors are trying to hedge against losses from the subprime/derivatives scams. It’s all related… not as the mainstream news claims that weather or high oil prices are driving this. Bullpucky.

“According to Grünewald, “Raw materials are the mega-trend of the decade,” and his company intends to intensify its involvement in both water and agricultural stocks. MIC investment in wheat alone has already yielded profit levels of 93 percent for the 2,500 members of the club.” – WSWS

Read these two articles and see if Wall Street is mentioned: NY Sun: food rationing or Yahoo: food crisis.

Separating the wheat from the molasses

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Peace LimeThe argument has been put strongly and with sufficient documentation that my friend Tony is divisive. And I’ll be the first to agree.
I would also add that even an organization whose tenets are cohesion, consensus and agreement, needs stimulus.

You need divisiveness when you want expansive discussions of controversial matters. How else do you spark innovative thinking but by asking the unorthodox questions? In a meeting meant to galvanize resolve, I prefer truth to soft-pedaling, although like anyone, I’m more comfortable with the latter.

If you think Tony is a contrarian, naysayer, or malcontent, I’d say you are likely on the wrong side of the fence. Even as you might protest you are sitting evenly on the fence, that’s wrong side enough, for you are sitting. Argument can be tedious, agreed, and seems unnecessary when a group is otherwise of one mind. But if that mind is complacent, or befuddled, or misguided, what better thing is there to do but mix it up?

Somebody’s got to be divisive when it comes to sorting wheat from chaff. It may seem horribly un-idealistic to separate when we aspire to unite, but is there room for everyone at the table if the table is a political agenda that requires effort and temerity? I’ll assert there is not. If the average disposition is inclined away from audacity or resolve, why lead it to water?

Everyone follows their own drummer, but if the march is on, those who hear a slower drummer have to be spun unto a side street to let the movement past.

A kernel of un-truth

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food industry fascists
If you’ve met me, even for five minutes, you know that I hate the US food industry with great gusto. Every single day, though I try very hard not to, I read something about the obesity epidemic and the alarming rates of depression, anxiety, ADHD, heart disease, diabetes, cancer. The list of woes goes on ad fricking infinitum.

Before I rip on the government, who should be watching over the food industry to ensure that our food supply is safe and nutritious, but most assuredly isn’t, not only because they are fascist bastards who love corporate goodies, but also because they are fucking idiots who know absolutely nothing about health or nutrition…. breathe….. before I rip on them, let me say that the joke known as the food pyramid has actually, finally, been revised a tiny bit in the right direction. Still, the pyramid only addresses the quantities of food that should be consumed and doesn’t speak a word about nutrition, so it’s still pretty worthless.

What do you think of when you hear the word enrich? Does it conjure up images of a living thing, mangled and dissected until nothing of value remains? Do you picture its skeletal carcass, picked clean by vultures and bleached in the desert sun until it is devoid of not only life, but color as well? If somehow it fell upon you to enrich the poor dead thing, what would you do? Dress it up in fancy clothes? A nice hat? Maybe even googly eyes?

Do you know why the food industry is so good as to enrich wheat flour after they’ve milled it, discarded the nutritious parts, and bleached any remaining life out of it? Why they then throw worthless synthetic vitamins in the coffin? A guilt offering perhaps. But more likely its because they have to for their bleached white flour to be considered, get this, FOOD.

I’ll cut right to my point. A kernel of wheat, or a wheat berry, is a living thing, a seed. It consists of three separate parts: the bran, the germ and the inner core, the endosperm. A kernel of wheat contains over 30 different nutrients, dispersed throughout the component parts, and is the primary food source for most of the world. In the US, instead of acting as our nutritional savior, as the good Lord intended, most wheat isn’t even food.

But I don’t buy bleached flour! I buy stone ground whole wheat products! Sorry to tell you but once a kernel of wheat has been milled, even if it is not subjected to the atrocities committed on its less fortunate counterparts, it is still nearly worthless, possessing only 10% of all vitamins, minerals and trace elements found in a wheat berry. As soon as wheat is ground into flour it begins to oxidize. Within 24 hours, most nutrients have dissipated into the atmosphere, and spoilage sets in soon after. Freshly-milled, highly-nutritious whole wheat flour has almost NO shelf life. Which is why the food industry spends so much time and money on our eventual enrichment.

My poor kids have suffered for years under my ruthless hatred of American flour. They are the physically fit, calm and well-behaved little souls who forlornly peel their Clementines while cruel classmates taunt them with flour-y treats. They are the oddballs, the misfits, the outcasts. At least they were.

Now I buy hard red wheat kernels at Mountain Mamas for $.67/lb. I grind the flour in my handy Nutri-mill (For purposes of full disclosure, this runs about $250. I’ve had mine for 10 years, no trouble). Within minutes I use the freshly ground flour to make cinnamon rolls, muffins, cookies, waffles and other delicacies. My kids are popular again and, almost more importantly, stuffed full of 30 vital nutrients. They have good physical health and energy, good mental health, stable moods. It’s a happy place, this home.

If you do one thing this year to improve your life, grind your own flour and learn to bake a few things. And never ever ever believe that the US food suppliers, or the US government, cares one iota about your health and well-being.

Chemistry in the food supply

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Ask any veterinarian what you’re supposed to be feeding your dog or cat, they’ll tell you dry food only, and water. So perhaps people poisoning their pets with wet canned meals have achieved their result, more recently accelerated by the accidental Melamine additive in wheat gluten imported from China.

The FDA has been reluctant to reveal the companies behind the wayward toxin, even as the public grapples with the possibility that the plastic derivative may have reached the human food supply. Naming names reveals not just the corporate logos but also the extended interweaving of chemical companies in the food industry.

Did you have any idea the can of Alpo held by Mr. Publishers Clearinghouse contained Wheat Gluten from Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. or partner Suzhou Textile Import and Export Co. of Jiangsu, China; imported by ChemNutra Inc. of Las Vegas, Nevada; sold to pet food giants Nestle Purina, Del Monte, Hill’s Pet Nutrition, and behind-the scenes giant Menu Foods Inc. of Canada which makes 100 of the different smaller pet food brands? Whatever are you deliberating in the pet food isle, which TV commercial will best please your domestic companion?

You knew pet food wasn’t made by Keebler Elves or the Jolly Green Giant, but did you suspect the truth was so sordidly mundane? Nearly all people food passes through the chemical fingers of Archer Daniels Midland or Monsanto or both. Wait until the FDA tries to keep their names out of the spotlight.

The Borriello Brothers secret ingredient

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The best pizza in Colorado Springs is made by the Borriello Brothers at the foot of General Palmer’s statue, on Platte Avenue between Nevada and Webber, across from Palmer High School.

I followed some fans from a YMCA basketball game and was warned that addiction would ensue. I can report only that they were right, and I have no idea as to the secret ingredient. I think it’s cheese. I felt like a loser not knowing which delicacies to request for the toppings, but I followed the youngsters’ request for plain cheese pizza. Now there’s no turning back, it’s plain cheese for me, and from nobody but the Borriello Brothers.

Now if they could use only non-BGH dairy products and whole grain ground wheat, I could feel good about my new diet.

The Colorado Springs anti-antiwar list

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Trying to cajole community leaders into putting their weight in support of a couple progressive causes, it had been recommended to me not to address the small matter of the war. Fair enough, with consensus-building comes compromise.
 
So next up however for Colorado Springs: an ANTI-ANTIWAR list. You want to avoid taking a stand on the war, fair enough, let’s put it on record. Are you against the illegal war in Iraq? Yes or no. Taking no position is the same as no.

We’ll figure out where to publish this list, but we’ll begin taking names immediately. It may be divisive, but what need do we have for people who will not take a stand? Let’s now separate the wheat from the weak-minded, and move forward knowing who stands for righteousness. You don’t have to march, you don’t have to speak out. Merely for the record, speak now. Guilty or not-guilty?

Resolved: the war in Iraq is an illegal act, a crime against humanity, and must be stopped.

Those in favor: World Tribunals, etc, etc.

Those opposed: your name, etc, etc.

Justice is not decided by democracy. An illegal, immoral war is not made right because the values of a population have degenerated to not knowing right from wrong.

No-one is suggesting that you won’t have your day in court. Even a serial killer gets his day in court. But before that point, the serial killer must be apprehended. While the rampage continues, someone has to decide that the killing is wrong and must be stopped.

Who is doing the killing in Iraq? With whose consent?