Boycott 'em all

trouble in organic paradise?

Lots of talk and chatter about boycotting Whole Foods, the walmart of natural food retail.

Boycotting them is self-evident for those of us who grew up watching the organic and natural food movement evolve. That evolution into a corporate monopoly for the educated but elitist consumer only in high income neighborhoods is not exactly what we had hoped for. Our hope was for a local based food supply with regional distributors supplementing the small business retail stores.

Putting that aside, this 'whole' thing is nothing but another diversion to keep us from thinking and acting on some more important issues like war...and...

A boycott involving tens of thousands against a company because of the political meanderings of the CEO? Just think of what a boycott against some major criminals might do?



I boycott Whole Foods for a couple of reasons.

1st, unless you are well off, you really can't afford to shop there. It's elitist and in middle Tennessee, the stores are only located in the elitist neighborhoods.

2nd, being the capitalist millionaire that John Mackey is, he bought out his competition, Wild Oats, and except for a few small out of the way natural food stores, has close to a monopoly in Nashville.

They are a Fortune 500 company, a giant corporation with large mark ups and buyers that squeeze the suppliers.

It's a far cry from the early to late 70's when there were several small natural food stores in many of the surrounding towns. All of them ended up not making a living as there weren't enough enlightened customers.

I worked for a couple of them. The Good Earth in Woodbury was opened by the previous owners of the first natural food store in Nashville, the Sunshine Grocery. They had sold out there after a year for lack of income and customers in 1973, but not because of the quality of the endeavor. They were ahead of their time and it takes time for the rest of the world to catch up.

Trying again with a co-op concept in Woodbury around 1976, there just was not enough participants and after a couple of years with a shortage of rent money and cash flow, the business folded.

I worked next at the Readyville Mill and the mill store. Same story, not enough customers.

Both places were incredible. Local produce in season, homemade bread, stone ground wheat and corn, raw cow and goat milk, fresh country eggs and a variety of US produced foods supplied by a Florida distributor. Sometimes a little homemade wine and moonshine and... We talked the talk, learned a lot and shared many good times.

Now after over 30 years, the customers with money are there, for now, but the small time aspect is gone.

As always, when mega-corporations take over from the little guy, the prices go through the roof and that personal touch is lost.

We should boycott as many of the major corporations as we can, all of the walmarts of the various niche markets and try to bring back a few local jobs. The economy is forcing us to anyway.

The emergence of local farmers markets gives us some hope. I talked to one guy who has sold over $1,200 of produce out of his garden so far this season.

Who needs Whole Foods?

Will We Let the Criminal Congress Destroy Our Food and Health?

art by Autumn Skye Morrison


There are so many proposed anti-human laws festering in the depths of Congress that it's hard to keep up. Destroy our small farms yet give exemption to Chinese food imports, shoot us up with toxic vaccines, allow the continued use of GM food to wear down our health, make new mothers submit to mental health exams before bringing their babies home...drug them if they don't pass the test. That's just a few.

An unhealthy, dumbed down and drugged citizenry is easier to control. They are killing us slowly for profit and de-population purposes and all we do is ask Congress to not pass these laws.

Like the criminals in Congress are listening. Just get on your knees and say please.

Rep. DeLauro: Ever hear of the US Constitution?

The wire tap skills of the Investigative and Enforcement Services of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, of the United States Department of Agriculture are the world's most sophisticated. There are no bounds to the budget, the equipment, and the staff used to locate family farmers who may be in violation of one of over 18,000 USDA regulations, laws and policies. This IES agent may be watching you. His salary is evaluated by his dedication to enforce penalties on livestock producers. Unless you are sure you know all the new USDA regulations that can be enforced against you, your farm, and your family -- watch for this highly paid enemy on a road near your farm.

Dear Representative DeLauro:

I live in the United States. Not the Washington D.C. Corporate zone, but in the sovereign state of Minnesota in the sovereign United States. You may be unfamiliar with that and the subsequent documents that establish not only my personal rights, but which also limit the reach of government, but then again, maybe not. Its apparent you live in some other part of the world where individual liberties and rights are not a consideration; a place where police state conditions are not only accepted but, encouraged.

I just read the bill you authored H.R. 875 and am left wondering just who it is you work for and where it is you live?

Having printed off and actually reading your bill, I see that there are massive and extremely punitive punishments and fines for non-specific violators most of which would be leveled against small and independent producers, family farms and non-corporate operations. In other words, you did not site specifically just who would be subject to these police state actions, nor did you specify who would possibly be exempt….like maybe small independent and family farmers and herders who aren’t the cause of the known food borne illnesses.

I also noted that exemptions are provided for foreign importers such as China; a known source of contaminated foods, medicines and other products. For the life of me I can not figure out why you would provide an exemption for countries that have consistently shown their disregard for the US consumer.

I couldn’t help note that in Sec. 406 you state:

In any action to enforce the requirements of the food safety law, the connection with interstate commerce required for jurisdiction shall be presumed to exist.

This section says a whole lot in a very few words. Any actions, enforcement, requirements, with regards to an assumed (not presumed) connection to food safety laws; in other words you can just assume interstate commerce is involved and claim jurisdiction. That kind of blows away the “this isn’t going to affect farmers markets, home gardens, etc., doesn’t it? It seems to me if interstate commerce is going to be assumed to exist in any attempts to enforce this new food policing law, anyone who produces, buys, or otherwise touches food from any source is by your definition and planned targeting, already engaged in interstate commerce and by extension and without any evidence needed, guilty.

Question: Would this apply to Monsanto?

Your bill goes on to say that there will be no judicial review allowed, even to determine the validity of the charges that may be levied against an individual.

more - Marti Oakly at OpEdNews and The Proud Political Junkie's Gazette

__________________

Corporate Swine Project Significant Profits for Toxic Flu Vaccines

by megan kargher

Disease is big business and pharmaceutical corporations are cashing in on the destruction of health worldwide. Akin to their sinister forbearers at IG Farben, who were convicted of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Trails, today's pharmaceutical corporations are now perpetuating genocide on a global scale.

Millions are spent funding candidates from both political parties ensuring that no matter who is in office the laws enacted favor them. Pharmaceutical firms contributed $1,995,384 on the Obama campaign alone. These corporations purchase, sorry, "fund" not only the government officials, but also most of the institutions who are supposed to safeguard the public health, which means all of these institutions have been affectively subverted. In fact the major pharmaceutical firms and their corporate partners in crime fund everything from medical schools to the American Dietetic Association to United Nations sponsored programs like Codex Alimentarius (international agreements controlling production and distribution of food and supplements).

Companies like Monsanto have not only been profiting from the poisoning of the people of the world, (giving us useful products like agent orange and aspartame,) but have been for many years buying and working in partnership with major pharmaceutical firms and therefore also profit on the treatment of the symptoms caused by their poisons. One pharmaceutical company purchased by Monsanto in 1985 was G.D. Searle & Company. Donald Rumsfeld was CEO of G.D. Searle & Company at that time and he played a major role in Monsanto's acquisition of the company. Searle is now Pfizer.

Many medications and vaccines potentially cause more problems than they solve. This is not a side effect, this is part of how big pharmaceutical companies make their money. There is far more money in keeping patients dependent on expensive drugs than there is in curing them. If a drug causes more illness, (particularly one which seems unrelated,) the new symptoms must then be treated. The more problems a patient suffers from, the more drugs you can sell them. These companies are pushing the deadliest and most addictive substances known to man and they do it legally.

Vaccines are out and outright toxic. Here is just a short list of some of the chemicals and heavy metals commonly found in many vaccines: formaldehyde, aluminum hydroxide, aluminum phosphate, aluminum sulfate, sorbitol, bensethonium chloride, and phenol. Some vaccines such as GalaxoSmithKline's Havrix for hepatitis A contain diploid cells from aborted fetal tissue. In addition there are the vaccines which get accidentally, so they claim, contaminated. Oops, was that bird flu we put in there?

New studies are connecting the skyrocketing autism rate with vaccination. Is it any wonder that children are suffering from the effects of as many as 36 toxic shots by the age of five in America, 20 in the UK and 26 in Australia? If vaccines protect your child, how is it possible that of the three countries listed the USA has the most vaccinations and also the highest child mortality rate under five? I personally know a young couple whose beautiful vibrant two year old daughter died due to complications from her vaccination.

The fear of a pandemic alone is enough to generate major profits for the big pharmaceutical companies. A new vaccine or treatment is advertised and governments, hospitals and even common people will stockpile the medication out of fear of infection. Each time the media plays up the new pandemic flu, be it bird or swine, the big pharmaceutical firms laugh all the way to the bank.

Doctors who speak out against dangerous drugs are put on hit lists . Merck had a list of doctors who were to be "neutralized" or "discredited" because they had criticized the painkiller Vivoxx (now withdrawn from the market.) Those Doctors who play ball with the major pharmaceutical corporations and prescribe large enough quantities of a company's drugs may receive "incentives."

Alternative healthcare is under attack. Anything which can not be patented and controlled by the big pharmaceutical firms, such as herbal remedies and vitamins, are being legislated out of existence. Codex Alimentarius plays a key part in this assault on nutrients, by reclassifying them as toxins and limiting the amount you can get with or without a prescription. Further legislative impediments to nutrition include the American bill H.R. 875 which seriously threatens organic farming and can only result in more ill health. Such a prohibition on nutrients and quality foods will likely result in a resurgence of easily preventable diseases such as scurvy.

For those with a healthy body, the pharmaceutical pushers industry has a drug for you anyway. Got the blues? Got worries? Medicate them away. Even new mothers are a target. The Mothers Act seeks to assess the mental health of women before they can take their babies home. How many will be told they need to take mood altering pills if they wish to retain custody of their children? (Ron Paul has introduced HR 2218, the Parental Consent Act, to battle mandatory mental health screening and forced medicating of children.) The same sort of mood-altering medications are all too often prescribed to foster children. These are also the same type of drugs which are now frequently being connected with cases of suicide and mass violence, including school shootings.

The actions of the pharmaceutical industry are nothing less than criminal. In 2004 a complaint was submitted to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague accusing the major pharmaceutical companies and many of the key government officials they fund of genocide and other crimes against humanity as well as war crimes. Among the accused are: the CEOs of Pfizer, Merck, GalaxoSmithKline and Eli Lilly from pharmaceutical industry and George W. Bush, Tony Blair, John Ashcroft, and of course Donald Rumsfeld from the political arena.

While the western world is kept busy looking for terrorists in their trash bins, the pharmaceutical corporations continue to endanger the health of billions with impunity. Now is the time to act before Codex Alimentarius comes into full effect, before organic food has been legislated out of existence. Boycott toxic vaccines. Support alternative medical practitioners. Take your health and well being out of the hands of profiteers. {source}

GM Food Nightmare Unfolding in the Regulatory Sham

No Need for Condoms - GE Corn Can Do the Job

Food Freedom is under Assault, H.R. 759 Worse than H.R. 875


Exposing disinformation about HR 875 or some disinformation in itself?

The Monsanto Connection

The 2009 Food 'Safety' Bills Harmonize Agribusiness Practices in Service of Corporate Global Governance

Abandoned small farms, total management of the food supply and seed, control of nutrients and further entrenchment of the pharmaceutical and corporate farming industries is the goal of certain elements influencing legislation now before Congress. It's another criminal end around to destroy the rights of individuals and undermine the health of the nation.

Nicole Johnson presents a concise evaluation of the individuals and corporations involved.

Read it here.

Destroy the Afghan Opium Crops for Monsanto

From this to this?
The occupation of Afghanistan will include a farming mix of opium and corporate genetically modified seed and herbicides.

The Afghan opium crops and the resulting drug trade create a multitude of problems for a great number of people. It also creates a monster of a money trail from the farmers right on up to the globalist world banking system.

It doesn't matter if you are totally anti-drug or for legalization to stop the insane 'war on drugs' or somewhere in between, there are a few corporate/government/fascist side trails that should be looked at.

Monsanto is not one to shy away from exploiting the US war/occupation of Afghanistan. It plays one side for the made for TV crop eradication programs and the other as 'friend' who will give the Afghani farmers 'free' seed if they won't grow their only cash crop.


Destroy the crops.

Although opium poppy production is reported to have decreased 19% in 2008, Afghanistan remains the world's largest producer of the drug, reports The Raw Story, which quotes new Obama-administration ambassador Ambassador Richard Holbrooke speaking at the Brussels Forum conference:
"The United States alone is spending over 800 million dollars a year on counter-narcotics. We have gotten nothing out of it, nothing."

One eradication method is aerial fumigation, a Bush-era policy of spraying chemicals such as Monsanto herbicide Roundup Ultra to eradicate the crop. Aerial fumigation -- one of the widest anti-drug efforts in Afghanistan -- began in 2008.

Roundup Ultra, which has glyphosate as an active ingredient, has also been blamed for health problems in people living near the targeted sites
{more}

Enter the seed.

From Robert Soave...my outrage wasn’t triggered until the very end of the article {The Wall Street Journal (U.S. Defines Its Afghan Strategy, 03/27/09) }, where the plan for handling Afghanistan’s illegal opium trade was detailed. Farmers who grow opium — an illegal substance used to produce drugs like heroin and morphine — will be offered wheat seeds for free from either Afghan or U.S. officials to start growing wheat instead of opium. Then the kicker comes: “If the farmers refuse, U.S. or Afghan personnel will burn their fields, and then again offer them free replacement seeds.” Let’s repeat that for effect — U.S. personnel will burn their fields and then pressure the farmers again. And we wonder why the Afghan people have not yet warmed to our presence in their country. {more}

Corporate, hybrid, GM seed for the farmers. "The first one's free."

The genetically modified infestation into Afghan farming has been going on for awhile.

Multinational companies move into farming

Soya has never been grown in Afghanistan and it doesn't form part of the country's culinary tradition, but a new programme, supposedly devised to combat malnutrition, plans to change all that. 1 USAID has funded Nutrition and Education International (NEI), set up by Nestle, to teach Afghans to sow and eat soya beans. 2 NEI is linked to the World Initiative for Soy in Human Health (WISHH),3 which was founded by the American Soybean Association (ASA) in 2000,4 to organise the distribution of free soya milk to pregnant women and infants throughout the developing world. WISHH works with the North American Millers' Association (NAMA), whose members include global giants ADM, Bunge Milling and ConAgro. In Afghanistan NEI works with Stine Seed Company, Iowa, and Gateway Seed Company, Illinois, both of which supply it with genetically modified Roundup soya and Roundup-Ready herbicide to be sold on to the farmers. According to NEI, it distributed two tonnes of genetically modified soya seed in Afghanistan in 2005. {more}

The seed fascism in Iraq seems to have worked so the same plan is being implemented in Afghanistan.

The Real Victor in Iraq: Monsanto

It now looks like Monsanto is going to be the real victor in Iraq thanks to a postwar document known as Order 81.

Part of the infamous 100 Orders, Order 81 mandates that Iraq’s commercial-scale farmers must now purchase "registered” seeds. These are available through agribusiness giants like Monsanto, Cargill Corporation (a private company) and the World Wide Wheat Company (also private), but Monsanto is far and away the most significant player in the registered seed market.

Originally developed to avert world hunger (at least according to Monsanto), these GM crops not only do not produce more than their non-modified cousins, but the herbicide Roundup, developed in tandem by Monsanto to treat GM fields, is becoming increasingly ineffective. This has led to more herbicide purchases among farmers, greater profits for Monsanto, increasingly smaller yields, and greater environmental pollution overall.

Roundup, a glyphosate, is the direct descendant of Agent Orange (also produced by Monsanto), and is especially toxic to marine animals. Glyphosates, known as endocrine disruptors, are being increasingly implicated in neurological disorders, DNA damage and even death.

Order 81, by first forcing Iraq’s farmers to use GM seeds, and then by declaring natural seeds an infringement on Monsanto technology, will result in the sorts of tragedies seen elsewhere in the developing world, reducing Iraq’s farmers to drinking field-grade herbicides to escape financial catastrophe.

Nor will the Iraqi people benefit in terms of more food. Order 81, mandated under the dystopian title "Plant Variety Protection,” turns the agricultural world on its head by defining indigenous crops as invasive and GM crops as uniform and stable. Moreover, the six varieties of wheat developed for Iraq are primarily used in pasta. Since the Iraqis don’t eat pasta, one can only assume these food crops are destined for Western nations, leaving the average Iraqi that much closer to starvation.

Order 81, carefully crafted to look like humanitarian legislation aimed at rescuing a country decimated by half a decade of war, is in fact a Monsanto power play under U.S. government sponsorship. Farmers who do not comply will have seeds, farm implements and even land seized.

The infamous 100 Orders, of which 81 is only an instance, are clearly a ploy to allow multinationals like Monsanto to take over an entire nation. As Iraqi resentment over this privatization grows, expect continued resistance, more deaths, and ultimately a failure of democracy. {more}

The ones you don't kill, you must rape. That sounds like a good motto for the occupying empire and their corporate sponsors.