GMOs - Adulrated food or Poisson

This process with allowing one or two Companies to take control of the food supply is criminal to the extreme.
To control other food systems through pollution and adulterations is fascist.
To own life is abhorrent .
No more need be said on this as we are educated people.

Is it good business to remove ones choice to acquire unadulterated food.
Is it Good business to adulterated food.
Is it good business to create short term profit at the cost of long term existence.
Is it good business to poison your children.
Only if your business is war and destruction.

I grow more of the food I consume in my own garden or acquire it from farmers markets & organic outlets. I avoid supermarkets. If I cannot be assured of my choice I shall choose in a different way, with my feet.

I will not knowingly support business or processes who's default design is to adulterate food or
build poisons into children's toys etc.

The Government needs to ensure that..............................

* Support maintaining state moratoria on GM food crops
* Support strict liability where the GM company is liable for any economic loss caused by their product
* Support independent health testing
* Support independent small scale performance trials
* Support ensuring the GM company is legally responsible for totally containing their product
* Support continued supply of uncontaminated GM-free seed
* Support AQIS screening to prevent GM contamination in imports.
* Support the International Biosafety Protocol.
and
* Oppose increased costs and liabilities for non-GM farmers and non-GM consumers
* Oppose acceptance of tolerance levels
* Oppose large scale commercial release in the guise of coexistence trials
* Oppose commercial release under GM industry self management plans

It is necessary to ensure that this world is for all not the greedy alone and their poisoned victims.

http://www.gefreeaustralia.org/
http://www.truefood.org.au/index2.html
http://non-gm-farmers.com/take_action.asp

Greening the Desert

Husband the Earth

Be mindfull! Husband the Earth. Protect her from greed and violence.

Build humbly, plant trees, grow flowers and cloth her with dignity.

Respect all her creatures.

Honer her natural laws & the universe witch cradles her.

Above all Hartley worship the source of all that is.

.

This world needs secret heroes!

Be brave, speak the truth, heal the sick, make peace, be strong, serve patiently.

love generously, live simply, enjoy fellowship, eat & drink modestly,

celebrate the festivals.

Breath deeply, sing & make music, walk often, cycle & recycle.

Be thrifty, prefer cash flow to possessions, and give good measure.

let your work be your prayer.

.

Put on the whole Armour of light!

Unearth the beauty in everything. Inhale the spirit of goodness.

Kindle kindness, especially towards yourself.

Embrace the sweet silence of your own soul.

Fear nothing, Accept what you are & while you have breath.

Give thanks.

unknown author

How do we love all the children of all the species for all time

William McDonoug

"How do we love all the children of all the species for all time"

Cradle to Cradle

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/104
http://www.mcdonough.com/writings/cradle_to_cradle-alt.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEyYFYDBhW0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwWWFQ2tiNY

Permaculture

If any one would like to help in a Permaculture project I have a room to spare.
It was almost rural, now its suburban, can we help one another.
A room and stable home for help growing the food.

The taste of oil is getting bad.
so it looks like organic and biodinamic

What to do?

I’ve paid the rent enough food for the week, a bit in the yard

What to do! I've looked for a job, Get a job what's that?

The pubs a boor, don’t have the money, don’t read well & TV crap.

What to do, not sitting around being bored.

To the garden down the road

Fruit trees, berry bushes, everything something you can eat.

Different a park, a garden, a meeting place.

Beds of mixed herb’s, insects & birds:

Eat a strawberry, a sweet pea, share a simple joy.

There’s a house with a veranda in the sun & tables & chairs

The best coffee & caring people.

Laughing, taking a break from the world

Can we gain a sense of play?

Get our nails dirty; laugh together with the soil.

What about me over 35

What's this community center I here about

Skate ramp, graffiti, Get lost you old bum

Scattered vacant empty blocks empty & bear

Poker machines horses football, can I win?

In the back corner, patchy disjointed & lame

Offensive fences defending

Untouched Begot ten from an alien world

Why do we hide them? A burden A shame!

Come to tee garden, come & play,

Plant a seed & help it grow

Eat the fruit, taste the bake

Soil plant Animal…… What an Alchemy

Where’s this garden Does anyone know?

Where’s this park down the road

I limp a bit & need some help.

Give a hand!!!’

These videos are eye openers

ABC Science - Crude
ABC Four Corners - Peak Oil
The Massachusetts School of Law - The future of food
The Monsanto Story - Part 1

After getting your mind around this you can see why it is so important to grow food locally.

On Atheism

I dont think I could match the words of this man.

http://positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/twain.htm

The best minds will tell you that when a man has begotten a child he is morally bound to tenderly care for it, protect it from hurt, shield it from disease, clothe it, feed it, bear with its waywardness, lay no hand upon it save in kindness and for its own good, and never in any case inflict upon it a wanton cruelty. God's treatment of his earthly children, every day and every night, is the exact opposite of all that, yet those best minds warmly justify these crimes, condone them, excuse them, and indignantly refuse to regard them as crimes at all, when he commits them. Your country and mine is an interesting one, but there is nothing there that is half so interesting as the human mind.
-- Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth

Animal Cruelty

When we enable or profit from the cruel behavior of others, weather it be towards Sheep Cattle Whales or any animal including human, we are also guilty of horrific crimes towards all life.

If we cannot see that our way of life brings great suffering to all including ourselves, we are less than alive, less than the lives we destroy.
Does calling ourselves or others Christian Muslim Jew Japanese Australian American make any difference to our crimes.
Cruelty in any form is unacceptable.

http://www.handlewithcare.tv/

Animal Cruelty group targets Australia
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/

Congratulations

Dear friends,

Last year, tens of thousands of GetUp members across the nation launched one of our most important campaigns ever: demanding that the next parliament and PM say 'sorry' to the Stolen Generations as their very first act on the very first sitting day.

Congratulations, yesterday the PM agreed! Yet as we speak the shape of this historical moment is still being determined in meetings between Labor and Indigenous representatives, in the Liberal party room and in the minds of the millions of Australians who aren't sure how they feel about an apology.

The most important thing the GetUp community can do is demonstrate to all our politicians the broad groundswell of support for a sincere and unifying apology from the whole Parliament. Can you email your MP a quick note right now - and urge all your friends and family to do the same? Our new online tool makes it easy - just enter your postcode.

www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaySorry

Last October, we indicated that Australia's parliament holds a key to a new way forward - symbolically and practically: 'An apology is not about guilt or shame or individual responsibility - it is the embodiment of the spirit of reconciliation, and the springboard for a nation committed to stamp out the systemic ills that still flow from a nation unable to address its past wrongs'.

Our Indigenous colleagues have stressed two factors in the success of this new way forward. First, the supreme importance of cross party support when the PM takes to the Parliament floor. So, if your MP is Liberal, please urge him or her to push the party leadership to support the apology.

Second, the apology was always only meant to be the first step and must be acknowledged as such. So, if your MP is Labor, please support, commend, and thank them - but also remind them that this a starting point and that what is required now is the full and comprehensive response to the Bringing Them Home Report.

Help make this moment the kind of new beginning it deserves to be.

www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaySorry

Thanks for being part of this,

The GetUp team

PS - Our friends at Reconciliation Australia have produced an excellent fact sheet about the apology. If you are unsure about its meaning or want to explain to others about the importance of the apology, please click here and forward it on. The Bringing Them Home Report can also be found here.

__________________________

GetUp is an independent, not-for-profit community campaigning group. We use new technology to empower Australians to have their say on important national issues. We receive no political party or government funding, and every campaign we run is entirely supported by voluntary donations. If you'd like to contribute to help fund GetUp's work, please donate now! If you have trouble with any links in this email, please go directly to www.getup.org.au. To unsubscribe from GetUp, please click here.

Authorised by Brett Solomon, Level 2, 294 Pitt St, Sydney NSW 2000

The fourth Global Environment Outlook (GEO-4)

Now or never to save the planet: UN

The fourth Global Environment Outlook (GEO-4)

Humanity is changing Earth's climate so fast and devouring resources so voraciously that it is poised to bequeath a ravaged planet to future generations, the United Nations warned in its most comprehensive survey of the environment.

The fourth Global Environment Outlook (GEO-4), published by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), is compiled by 390 experts from observations, studies and data garnered over two decades.

The 570-page report - which caps a year that saw climate change dominate the news - says world leaders must propel the environment "to the core of decision-making" to tackle a daily worsening crisis.

"The need couldn't be more urgent and the time couldn't be more opportune, with our enhanced understanding of the challenges we face, to act now to safeguard our own survival and that of future generations," GEO-4 said.

The UNEP report offers the broadest and most detailed tableau of environmental change since the Brundtland Report, 'Our Common Future', was issued in 1987 and put the environment on the world political map.

"There have been enough wake-up calls since Brundtland. I sincerely hope GEO-4 is the final one," said UNEP executive director Achim Steiner.

"The systematic destruction of the Earth's natural and nature-based resources has reached a point where the economic viability of economies is being challenged - and where the bill we hand on to our children may prove impossible to pay," he added.

Earth has experienced five mass extinctions in 450 million years, the latest of which occurred 65 million years ago, says GEO-4.

"A sixth major extinction is under way, this time caused by human behaviour," it says.

Over the past two decades, growing prosperity has tremendously strengthened the capacity to understand and confront the environmental challenges ahead.

Despite this, the global response has been "woefully inadequate," the report said.

The report listed environmental issues by continent and by sector, offering dizzying and often ominous statistics about the future.

Climate is changing faster than at any time in the past 500,000 years.

Global average temperatures rose by 0.74 degrees Celsius over the past century and are forecast to rise by 1.8 to 4 Celsius by 2100, it said, citing estimates issued this year by the 2007 Nobel Peace co-laureates, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

With more than six billion humans, Earth's population is now so big that "the amount of resources needed to sustain it exceeds what is available," the report warned, adding that the global population is expected to peak at between eight and 9.7 billion by 2050.

"In Africa, land degradation and even desertification are threats; per capita food production has declined by 12 per cent since 1981," it said.

The GEO-4 report went on to enumerate other strains on the planet's resources and biodiversity.

Fish consumption has more than tripled over the past 40 years but catches have stagnated or declined for 20 years, it said.

"Of the major vertebrate groups that have been assessed comprehensively, over 30 per cent of amphibians, 23 per cent of mammals and 12 per cent of birds are threatened," it added.

Stressing it was not seeking to present a "dark and gloomy scenario", UNEP took heart in the successes from efforts to combat ozone loss and chemical air pollution.

But it also stressed that failure to address persistent problems could undo years of hard grind.

And it noted: "Some of the progress achieved in reducing pollution in developed countries has been at the expense of the developing world, where industrial production and its impacts are now being exported."

GEO-4 - the fourth in a series dating back to 1997 - also looks at how the current trends may unfold and outlines four scenarios to the year 2050: "Markets First", "Policy First", "Security First", "Sustainability First".

After a year that saw the UN General Assembly devote unprecedented attention to climate change and the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the IPCC and former US vice president Al Gore for raising awareness on the same issue, the report's authors called for radical change.

"For some of the persistent problems, the damage may already be irreversible," they warned.

"The only way to address these harder problems requires moving the environment from the periphery to the core of decision-making: environment for development, not development to the detriment of environment."

- AFP

ABC News

The Bacterium That (Almost) Ate the World

The Bacterium That (Almost) Ate the World

Nature's Operating Instructions: The True Biotechnologies, Sierra Club Books

Elaine Ingham would never treat soil like dirt. She reveres it, as we all should, since this precious substance is the thin brown line between plenty and starvation. Given the necessity of topsoil to human survival, you'd think we'd have legions of soil biologists on the case, but Elaine is one of only a handful of serious scientists delving into this microcosmos that feeds the world and helps support life on earth.

Until recently an associate research professor of forest science at Oregon State University, Elaine has twenty-five years of experience in microbiology, botany, plant pathology, and soil and ecology research. She founded Soil Foodweb Inc. and is currently president of the Soil Foodweb Institute in Australia and research director of Soil Foodweb in New York. She serves on the boards of several sustainability organizations and is an active member of numerous prestigious microbiology and ecology associations. She has done stints as president of the Soil Ecology Society and program chair of the Ecological Society of America and has penned over fifty peer-reviewed scientific papers.

Elaine speaks to groups around the world on how to grow plants without the use of toxic pesticides or synthetic fertilizers while at the same time increasing soil fertility and crop production. She has led countless workshops and training sessions at which farmers are taught highly practical techniques for building soil health, using sophisticated composting methods, and enhancing microbiological communities for crop production. Unquestionably one of the world's leading specialists in soil health, she is an exceptionally creative innovator who has made major contributions to our understanding of the soil food web (as she likes to call it) and its structure and function in terrestrial ecosystems from arctic to tropical climates.

Her research spans agricultural. grassland, and forest ecologies, where she has analyzed the action of bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes, and mycorrhizal fungi from over 30,000 soil samples.

When a scientist of Elaine's stature warns us about the catastrophic potential of topsoil loss and the escape of genetically modified organisms into the already compromised environment, we do well to pay close attention. ----

Unnatural Selection: The Bacterium That (Almost) Ate the World

Elaine Ingham IN MY PROGRAM at Oregon State University in the early 1990s, we started testing the ecological impacts of most of the genetically engineered organisms being produced at that time. The question our lab was asked to address was, Did these engineered organisms have any impact out there in the real world?

The first fourteen species that we worked on - microorganisms, bacteria. and fungi - were organisms incapable of surviving in the natural environment. Putting them in the world would be like taking penguins from the South Pole and dropping them into the La Brea tar pits. Would there be any ecological effect if we dropped a penguin into the middle of the tar pit? Probably not; the impact would be rapidly absorbed by the system.

These first fourteen species of GMOs that we tested had a similarly negligible impact. On this basis. the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, the regulatory agency that was determining U.S. policy on genetically engineered organisms, set a course that essentially said that a genetically engineered organism posed no greater risk to the environment than the parent organism does.

GMO number fifteen, however, was a very different story. Klebsiella planticola, the bacterium that is the parent organism of this new strain, lives in soils everywhere. It's one of the few truly universal species of bacteria, growing in the root systems of all plants and decomposing plant litter in every ecosystem in the world.

The genetic engineers took genetic material from another bacterium and inserted that trait in the GMO to allow Klebsiella planticola to produce alcohol. The aim of this genetic modification was to eliminate the burning of farm fields to rid them of plant matter after harvest. The idea was that you could, instead, rake up all that plant residue, put it in a bucket. and inoculate it with the engineered bacterium, and in about two weeks' time you would have a material that contained about 17 percent alcohol. The alcohol could be extracted and used for gasohol, for cleaning windows, or for myriad other uses: cooking with alcohol in Third World countries, for instance.

The genetic engineers thought this transformation would bring huge benefits. We would no longer have to burn fields, we would breathe better in the fall, and both the company and farmers would get a product that could be sold. There was actually a fourth win: the sludge at the bottom of the bucket is an organic fertilizer, and there are no waste products from that material.

So what's the problem? Suppose you're a farmer and you've got live, alcohol-producing Klebsiella planticola that you're going to spread on your fields (which might be easier than gathering up all the plant waste and putting it in buckets). Can it wash into the root systems of your plants? Most likely. Once it's there and growing in the root systems of your plants, it's producing alcohol. What level of alcohol is toxic to plants? It's one part per million. How much alcohol does this engineered organism produce? Seventeen parts per million. Very soon you will have drunk dead plants.

We did this experiment under controlled conditions in the laboratory because I wasn't going to take this kind of risk out in the field. We constructed three kinds of microcosms of a field, filled them with normal field soil as a growing medium, and planted wheat plants in the three separate systems - each consisting of multiple units - and put them in an incubator. In the first third of the units, we added only water. We added parent, non-GMO bacterium to the second group and the engineered Klebsiella planticola to the third.

About a week later, we walked into the laboratory, opened up the incubator, and said, "Oops, what did we do wrong?" Many of the plants were dead and were turning into slime on the surface of the soil. In all the units with just water in the system, the plants were doing okay. In those that had been inoculated with the parent Klebsiella planticola, the plants were even bigger, because increased nutrient cycling in the root system makes more nitrogen available, causing the plants to grow bigger. Clearly the parent organism was a benefit to the plant. But where the engineered bacterium was growing, all the plants were dead.

Later we tried this experiment using several different kinds of soils, but the result in every case was dead plants.

Take that information and extrapolate it to the real world. Given that the parent organism lives in the root systems of all plants, what's the logical outcome of releasing this organism into the natural environment?

Very possibly, we would have no terrestrial plants left. Some plants, such as riparian and wetland plants, have mechanisms for dealing with alcohol production in their root systems. But the logical extrapolation of that experiment is that we would lose terrestrial plants.

I have attended some of the United Nations biosafety protocol meetings. At the 1995 meeting in Madrid, the U.S. delegation was the strongest in saying, in essence, "Don't worry, be happy. Trust us. We don't need a biosafety protocol. Why would biotech companies ever do anything to harm people?"

To me, their words echoed those we've heard before from tobacco, pesticide, and fertilizer companies. At one such meeting, I related the story of Klebsiella planticola as an example of the lack of adequate testing for the ecological impact of genetically engineered organisms. The biotech companies object that it costs too 'much to do this kind of environmental testing. In my view, that's just hype, because I pointed out that our lab spent a very insignificant amount of money to do these simple experiments, especially considering that if this bacterium were let loose in the environment, we would have some very significant problems with our food supply.

No one in his or her right mind is going to test for the kind of risk Klebsiella planticola represents because once you release an organism, there is no way to get it back.

How far does a single-point inoculation of a genetically engineered organism spread in one year? An engineered Rhizobium bacterium that was released in Louisiana in the mid-1990s spread eleven miles per year and has by now dispersed across the North American continent.

At these United Nations meetings I warned that corn pollen is going to move a lot more than three feet away from the plant. "Oh no," said the biotechnology representatives present. "Corn pollen falls out of the air three feet from the plant." I would say, "Wait a minute, you've never heard of bees? How about birds? and insects? and wind "Oh no, it falls out of the air within three feet of the plant." Why do our bureaucrats choose to to believe these "scientists"? Just open any plant textbook and you find that corn pollen can be found in the Antarctic and the Arctic. But if you listen to Monsanto, corn pollen can't possibly be there. Armed with the knowledge of this peril, we need to convince members of Congress that appropriate ecological testing must be done prior to releasing GMOs into the environment. If this happens, it could help keep the problems that are already starting to occur from getting worse.

Addendum from Dave Blume:
I talk about the Klebsiella debacle in detail in my book, Alcohol Can Be A Gas, and it was actually a lot worse than this post relates. The original researchers threw out samples behind the lab and discovered the dead plants, got curious and discovered that the Klebsiella was alive and they had to dig up all the soil and incinerate it. Dr. Ingham subsequently elucidated the mechanism. I would add that the organism was engineered to eat cellulose and make alcohol. So in addition to the alcohol poisoning of the roots the bacteria was also eating the cellulosic root tips of the plants. I often tell this story and add that we really need to lock up all the genetic engineers in a very nice country club type prison since they have nearly ended life on earth several times already with bonehead projects like this.

The Monsanto Story - Part 1
currentconcerns

Care for her and all her creatures

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-4I.iPnMwabPybam0PHuWMw--?cq=1

The enterprise is exploration into god.

The human heart can go the length of god.
Dark and cold we may be, but this is no winter now.
The frozen of misery centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move;
The thunder is the thunder of the flows, the thaw, the flood, the upstart spring.
Thank god our time is now, when wrong comes to meet us everywhere,
Never to leave us till we take the longest stride of soul that men ever took.
Affairs are now soul size,
Where you making for?
It takes so many lives to wake.
But will you wake for pity sake. Christopher Fry

To live we must daily brake the body and shed the blood of creation.
When we do this knowingly lovingly, skillfully and reverently it is a sacrament.
When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily and destructively it is desecration
It is in such desecration, we condemn ourselves to spiritual moral loneliness and others to want

I used to ask this question what it is about this realm. What is it that it/she teaches? What does she ask of us?

Everything on this earth lives by taking the life of something else. In a web a cycle a chain of life. The earthworm manages bacteria in the soil the bacterium consumes animal and plant wastes returning life to the soil. Plants grow from this. The earthworm consumes plant and animal wastes. The small creatures and birds eat worms larger ones eat theses. Structure and energy moves up the food web in ever increasing complexity through time and space. At every level nutrients and energy rain back down through the structures to be picked up again incorporated. Fish bring nutrients their life from the oceans up stream. Animals eat them and move this away from the rivers to be taken up by plants. The birds carry information away from its origin through the system. At every level life is in flux moving but stable. Biomass remains the same even though the species move & change; in short life lives by consuming itself. With one exception, an impute of energy from the sun.

The lesson is life consumes life to live
We must eat to live and in tern are eaten so life can live, then we are consumed
To eat and be eaten, To know, to give ourselves completely to life.
To truly live we need to embrace this.

In the year 2000 early summer I was sitting on my front step in the sun feeling lonely deeply alone. Asking a question within myself “why am I alone in this life, why do I need to live alone? Why can I not follow the way of others to feel comfort in the congregation of the church of humanity? Why find my own path, where is the beloved.

I heard a voice, a voice sounded in my heart my ears my mind every pore of my being all around me with the most amazing feeling of love sadness joy acceptance “Why do you fret so, you should know I am all ways with you”. But there was no one around. I was surrounded by light and a overwhelming sense of compassion and connectedness. It was a feminine voice, an angel, the conscious self of this earth, I don’t know.

That was a beginning of a conversation that went on for a couple of weeks. The main points were -

To care for her and all her creatures. That when a person dies they need something larger than themselves to contain the spirit until they can re-embody themselves. That I knew how the spiritual life of the earth works and to tell everyone, and It would be a good idea to get away from large centers of population within ten years. I queried this and was told that the psychic space will be so corrupted that it would not be a good place to be for sensitive ones. While this was happening I was surrounded by a blue light, it felt like I was being tucked under a wing, I remember thinking this is why they say angels have wings.

I could not believe the experience and questioned my sanity, asking for some kind of proof that this was real, the next week there was a lottery wining in my postbox for the same amount as my tax dept. coincidence maybe,

I could not accept the prophet bit, to many bible stories in my youth, and turned my back on the experience, and that was one of the biggest mistakes I have ever made. I lost my soul and found hell.

About two years ago I woke up to this and started to do as she had asked, life has changed, it is not easy but I am whole in myself, damaged but whole.

And her main message

Care for this earth and all the creatures, is the most important spiritual thing a person can do, for themselves and all life now and forever more.

Phillip