SchwartzReport: Focus on Bees and Accountability

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 07 Health, 11 Society

schwartz reportThis is the latest on the collapse of the bees. The loss of these little beings is beginning to impact humanity, as this report shows. Part of the problem may be a particular mite. But as I read the literature the overwhelming cause is pesticides and herbicides.

Yet still the Obama Administration, its Department of Agriculture, the EPA, even the State Department, are supporting and protecting Monsanto, Dow, and the four other companies who produce and promote these poisons, in their quest for profit. If this continues, in my view, within the next decade we are going to have a world food crisis.

Where's the Buzz? N.J. Crops Affected by Decline in Honey bee Population
REBECCA FORAND – South Jersey Times

Here is yet a different facet of the great geopolitical trend that is changing our world; in this case the rise of what amounts to a new global hereditary elite. What continues to amaze me is how passive populations around the world have been about this.

Let me also note the references to Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow, who I think are the best socially progressive intellects on cable television. They actually understand what data is, and how to interpret it. In the media today this is almost as rare as a white crow.

How Inbred Elites Are Tearing America Apart
DAVID DALEY – AlterNet (U.S.)

Neal Rauhauser: Rivers of the Fertile Crescent (Six Graphics)

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 12 Water
Neal Rauhauser
Neal Rauhauser

Rivers Of The Fertile Crescent

The Fertile Cresent is often referred to as the cradle of civilization. The map show the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates. Not shown but equally important are the Jordan, which drains to the Dead Sea, and Lebanon’s Litani River.

Each of these waterways is shared between at least three countries, with the exception of the Litani, which has been determined to be entirely within Lebanon’s territory. Each is heavily overdrawn and plagued by mishandling, most often in the form of aging, leaky irrigation infrastructure.

Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

The area was the scene of our mastery of agricultural and animal husbandry between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago. Cities such as Damascus and Jericho are believed to have been continuously occupied for the last 11,000 years. But current reports on all five drainage basins point to trouble brewing for the entire region.

Water issues are embedded in any geopolitical concerns for the region, but this far I have only written The Nile’s Annual Flood, Losing The Euphrates, and mentioned the Jordan in passing in Monitoring The Golan Heights. Like my attention on wheat production, examining rainfall and groundwater usage can provide insight into the potential for trouble far in advance of events that actually make the news.

Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

Continue reading “Neal Rauhauser: Rivers of the Fertile Crescent (Six Graphics)”

Yoda: America the Refrigerated Nation — What Happens When….

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, Commerce, Cultural Intelligence
Got Crowd? BE the Force!
Got Crowd? BE the Force!

Interesting, this is.

CABINET, Issue 47 Logistics Fall 2012

The Coldscape

Nicola Twilley

More than three-quarters of the food consumed in the United States today is processed, packaged, shipped, stored, and sold under artificial refrigeration. The shiny, humming stainless steel box in your kitchen is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak—a tiny fragment of the vast global network of temperature-controlled storage and distribution warehouses cumulatively capable of hosting uncounted billions of cubic feet of chilled flesh, fish, or fruit. Add to that an equally vast and immeasurable volume of thermally controlled space in the form of shipping containers, wine cellars, floating fish factories, international seed banks, meat-aging lockers, and livestock semen storage, and it becomes clear that the evolving architecture of coldspace is as ubiquitous as it is varied, as essential as it is overlooked.

. . . . . . . .

To engineer a consistent supply of a highly perishable product, Big Juice (Tropicana, Florida’s Natural, and their ilk) pasteurize, de-oil, and then strip the oxygen from their OJ before chilling it to 32°F and pumping it into million-gallon, refrigerated, epoxy resin-lined, carbon steel, aseptic storage tanks.

Read full article with photos.

Michelle Monk: Monsanto Wounded Still Dangeous

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, 12 Water
Michelle Monk
Michelle Monk

93% of Americans Want GMO Labeling… Why Isn't It Happening Already?! Oh, right, Monsanto's Sleeping With The Government

Ernest Barnes, Kansas Farmer, Sues Monsanto Over GMO Wheat Discovery

Genetic Roulette Full Documentary on Health Dangers of GMOs!

How The March Against Monsanto Can (and will) Change The World

Monsanto backing away from GMO crops in Europe

Monsanto Employees Within The Government

Monsanto's Losing! We Have Reached a Tipping Point!!

Roundup, An Herbicide, Could Be Linked To Parkinson's, Cancer And Other Health Issues, Study Shows

Victory!!! Monsanto Loses in Europe! Literally Giving Up!

Chuck Spinney: The Oslo Peace Process Scam

01 Agriculture, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, 12 Water
Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

The chart below shows that Oslo Peace Process was simply a cover and deception operation to ensure Israel's successful colonization of West Bank

The graph on the left shows how the settler buildup was not even slowed down by the so-called Peace Process. Note also how the rate of settlement in the West Bank accelerated after the accession of Barack Obama to the Presidency. The map on the right lays out locations of settlements (red areas). Areas A (brown) and B (tan) are the areas under varying degrees of Palestinian control as of 2012. Not shown are the Israeli only access roads connecting the settlements and the Israeli roadblocks that effectively restrict Palestinian travel among their areas, stifling the flow of Palestinian commerce. Also not shown is the fact that Israelis control all but one or two of the major springs in the West Bank and all of the pumping stations that extract water from the crucial aquifers lying under the West Bank. (One third of Israel's water budget comes from the aquifers under the West Bank)

Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

So, why did President Bill Clinton go along with the scam during the Oslo process in the crucial 1990s, and why has Barack Obama allowed the rate of settlement to accelerate on his watch?

Well, as the American humorist Russell Baker said, “Politics is about money; where it comes from; where it goes?” Attached is but one small window into the convoluted pathways implicit in Baker's world view:

Bill Clinton takes a cool half-million from Jewish National Fund for speech in Israel

Berto Jongman: Peak Soil

01 Agriculture, 01 Poverty, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, True Cost
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Experts unearth concerns over ‘peak soil'

In the past 40 years, 30 percent of the planet's arable land has become unproductive due to erosion, scientists say.

Reykjavik, Iceland – Soil is becoming endangered, and this reality needs to be part of our collective awareness in order to feed nine billion people by 2050, say experts meeting in Reykjavík.

And a big part of reversing soil decline is the use of carbon, the same element that is helping to overheat the planet.

“Keeping and putting carbon in its rightful place,” needs to be the mantra for humanity if we want to continue to eat, drink and combat global warming, concluded 200 researchers from more than 30 countries.

“There is no life without soil,” said Anne Glover, chief scientific adviser to the European Commission.

“While soil is invisible to most people it provides an estimated $1.5tn to $13tn dollars in ecosystem services annually,” Glover said at the Soil Carbon Sequestration conference that ended this week.

The dirt beneath our feet is a nearly magical world filled with tiny, wondrous creatures. A mere handful of soil might contain a half million different species including ants, earthworms, fungi, bacteria and other microorganisms. Soil provides nearly all of our food – only one percent of our calories come from the oceans, she said.

Soil also gives life to all of the world's plants that supply us with much of our oxygen, another important ecosystem service. Soil cleans water, keeps contaminants out of streams and lakes, and prevents flooding. Soil can also absorb huge amounts of carbon, second only to the oceans.

“It takes half a millennia to build two centimetres of living soil and only seconds to destroy it,” Glover said.

Read full article.