SchwartzReport: Genetic Modification of Crops Insanely Criminal — and Chemicalization of Agricultural Production Contributing to Climate Change

01 Agriculture, 07 Health, Commerce, Corruption, Idiocy

schwartz reportRegulators Discover a Hidden Viral Gene in Commercial GMO Crops
JONATHAN LATHAM and ALLISON WILSON – Independent Science News

The more I read about the GMO controversy the more it appears to be a story of commercializing a new technology before it was really understood, leaving us vulnerable to unintended consequences. Here is an example of what I mean.

The Agricultural Fulcrum: Better Food, Better Climate
Atlantic

As long as we see ourselves as something apart from the great cycles of nature, which is a fundamental assumption of our energy and agriculture sectors, we will destroy the earth and ourselves. There is an alternative.

Yoda: China — A Focal Point

02 China, 03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 07 Health, 11 Society, Earth Intelligence
Got Crowd? BE the Force!
Got Crowd? BE the Force!

To be Jedi is to face the truth, and choose. Give off light, or darkness, Padawan. Be a candle, or the night.

–YODA, Dark Rendezvous

China's Urban Air Kills Rural Plants

As people in Beijing and northern China struggle with severe air pollution this winter, the toxic air is also making life hard for plants and even food crops of China, say researchers who have been looking at how China's plants are affected by air pollution.

china pollutionBeijing's extreme smog event this week has made headlines, with the American Embassy calling the pollution levels “hazardous” and Beijing writer Zheng Yuanjie blogging that “the air smells like sulfur perfume, as the capital city currently looks like a poisonous huge gas can,” according to a report on Al Jazeera.
BLOG: 7 of 10 Most Air-Polluted Cities Are in China

“In the last 50 years there has been a 16-fold increase in ozone pollution” in the Beijing area, said Hanqin Tian of Auburn University in Alabama, who studies the effects of China's pollution and climate change on plants. He said the soup of pollutants, including harmful sulfur and nitrogen compounds “is definitely expanding into new areas; into the countryside.”

Read full article.

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Continue reading “Yoda: China — A Focal Point”

SchwartzReport: McDonald’s McRib — Toxic to the Non-Bone

07 Health, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government

schwartz reportBrings new meaning to counter-intelligence.

McDonald’s McRib Sandwich a Franken Creation of GMOs, Toxic Ingredients, Banned Ingredients

Anthony Gucciardi

Natural Society, 8 January 2013

It’s ‘McRib season’, and thousands across the nation are scrambling to use online websites like the ‘McRib locator‘ to stuff the McDonald’s McRib sandwich down their throats. A sandwich that is not only full of genetically modified ingredients, a medley of toxic fillers and preservatives, but also some ingredients that are actually banned in other nations around the world. But honestly, are you surprised?

The McRib is the result of intensive marketing by McDonald’s. Utilizing the basics of supply and demand through creating scarcity over the McRib by only unleashing the culinary abomination for a fraction of the year that is only known once it is released, McDonald’s fans have been known to ‘hoard’ McRib sandwiches and eat them in extreme excess. It’s even a topic of the popular documentary Super Size Me, where filmmaker Morgan Spurlock (who gorges himself with McDonald’s for 30 days only to find serious health consequences) encounters ‘McRib hunters’ who actually travel the country eating McRib sandwiches.

Related: 3 Fast Food Secret Ingredients

McDonald’s even made McRib fans sign a petition to ‘save the McRib’ online, bringing out a conglomerate of fans to bring back their favorite franken sandwich.

What’s Inside a McDonald’s McRib Sandwich?

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: Be afraid, be very afraid.  The McRib is a perfect metaphor for the information environment within which most Americans subsist — barely.  Toxic to the non-bone, no truth here.

See Also:

SchwartzReport: Criminalization of Preganancy Among Poor — Mental Institutionalization, Criminal Proceedings, and Forced Medical Procedures on Rise in Radical Right States

01 Poverty, 06 Family, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Law Enforcement

schwartz reportThis story should horrify, and outrage you. I read it early this morning, in my first pass for today's SR. It upset me so much that I had to just stop and sit, and meditate for some moments. And it worried me that I knew nothing about this. That's how deeply buried this part of the war on women has been.

As you can see, this is where personhood amendments take us.

Notice that this is 75 per cent a Red value state issue. For this reason I see it as also part of the Great Schism trend. Not only on the basis of values, but because the Blue value states are tiring of financially supporting the lunacies of the Red value states.

Study finds widespread ‘criminalisation of pregnancy' in US institutions

Study cites misinterpretation of Roe v Wade in array of cases where women were denied rights based on pregnancy status

NEW YORK — Hundreds of women have been arrested, convicted, jailed, detained in mental institutions or forced to endure medical procedures as a result of the “criminalisation of pregnancy” over the last four decades, a new report has found.

In the first study of its kind, to be published on Tuesday, researchers from the National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) identified 413 criminal and civil cases across 44 states involving the arrests, detentions and equivalent deprivations of pregnant women's liberty between 1973 and 2005. NAWP said that it is aware of a further 250 cases since 2005. Both figures are likely to be underestimates, it said.

The report, which will appear in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, found that women were denied a wide range of basic human rights, including the right to life, liberty, equal protection and due process of law “based solely on their pregnancy status”.

It found a wide range of cases in which pregnant women were arrested and detained not only if they ended a pregnancy or expressed an intention to end a pregnancy, but also after suffering unintentional pregnancy loss.

The cases of detention and forced medical intervention varied widely and included one in which a judge in Ohio kept a woman imprisoned to prevent her having an abortion.

Another involved a woman in Oregon who refused a doctor's recommendation for additional testing for gestational diabetes. She was held in a locked psychiatric ward. Another case involved a court in Washington DC, which ordered a critically ill woman to undergo caesarian section over her objections. Neither she nor the baby survived.

Read full article.

SchwartzReport: Mercury Poisoning Going Critical

03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, 07 Health, 11 Society

schwartz reportMercury poisoning is a growing global menace we have to address

As the US knows to its cost, coal-fired power is a major cause of mercury pollution. The world needs a treaty tough on emissions

and

guardian.co.uk,

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Click on Image to Enlarge

Next week, diplomats from around the world will gather in Geneva to negotiate a treaty on global emissions of mercury – a lethal neurotoxin that includes, among an inventory of grim effects, brain damage and the loss of IQ points in unborn children, injuries to kidneys and heart, and results in tens of billions of dollars in healthcare costs every year in the US alone. The Geneva conference is the final of five meetings, with a treaty expected soon thereafter.

While global mercury emissions are on the rise, negotiators, unfortunately, appear to be leaning towards a treaty with soft measures unlikely to prevent continued catastrophic impacts from this deadly and debilitating poison. Ironically, signatories propose to ink their treaty in Minamata, Japan, a town that famously suffered widespread mercury poisoning.

Health experts first described mercury poisoning, then called “Minamata disease”, in Minamata city, in Japan, in 1956. Mercury discharges from the Chisso chemical plant contaminated finfish and shellfish, devastating the community's human and animal population for decades. Many of the region's citizens died and tens of thousands of people suffered mercury-related illnesses.

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Mercury Poisoning Going Critical”

Berto Jongman: US Spends 7.4 Billion a Year on Bio-Defense, to Zero Effect

07 Health, Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, Ineptitude
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Bio-Terror & Infectious Disease Outbreak: Detection Technologies and Global Markets – 2012 Edition

The US Bipartisan Bio-Detection 2011 Report Card Status Evaluation
(Source: The US Bipartisan WMD Terrorism Research Center, October 2011 Bio Response Report Card)

Events of the recent decade confirm that the threats of bio-terrorism and infectious disease outbreaks are real. Attacks such as the 2001 Anthrax scare, the 2004 Ricin letters, the 2003 SARS and 2009 H1N1 outbreaks have driven governments to increase their bio-surveillance budgets. Public healthcare and HLS agencies' urgent need to establish an early and reliable bio-surveillance detection infrastructure will drive the market onto a much higher trajectory than ever before. We forecast that the cumulative 2012-2016 market (including: systems sale, consumables, upgrades and service) will reach $22.8 billion.

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The recent year that saw the seventh review round of the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention, demonstrated that demand for biosecurity remains high. As developed countries continue to refine their organizational and technological approach to potential bio-terror and disease outbreak threats, many key emerging markets are also ramping up programs to acquire solutions that provide early outbreak-attack detection. These will require the shortening of bio-attack alarm response time and the proliferation of 3rd generation cost-effective bio-detection technologies and reagent-less detection assays.

In contrast to the US colossal spending of $67 billion on biodefense programs during the 2001-2011 period, the US bipartisan WMD Terror Response Center report card (September 2011) graded the world's leading “US bio-detection and attribution programs” as the Achilles heel of the US BioWatch program. It received a score ranging from “meets minimal expectations” to a catastrophic “fails to meet expectations” (see table above). It stated that “Although naturally occurring disease remains a serious threat, a thinking enemy armed with these same pathogens, or with multi–drug resistant or synthetically   engineered pathogens could produce catastrophic consequences“.

Over the next five years, we forecast that, led by the US, Germany, France, China, Japan and India, the global bio-detection market (including systems sale, service, upgrades and consumables) will reach $5.6 billion by 2016.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: US Spends 7.4 Billion a Year on Bio-Defense, to Zero Effect”

SchwartzReport: Corrupt Health System, Urban Farming Lowers Crime

01 Agriculture, 07 Health, 09 Justice, 11 Society

schwartz reportHealth Insurers Raise Rates Bigtime Despite Obamacare
NEAL COLGRASS – Newser

This is the flaw in Obamcare. You simply can't create a viable nationwide healthcare system when it's principal function is to produce profit. Other countries have shown profit can be part of the program, but not its principal function. The greed in America is so great we cannot seem to muster the political will to overcome its drag. As a result we have some of the worst healthcare in the developed world, and pay! vastly more than any other country.

During The Worst Flu Season In A Decade, Workers Across The Country Can’t Stay Home Sick
PAT GAROFALO – Think Progress

Here is an unintended consequence of a system which does not make national wellness a priority. If you get the flu there is a good chance this is how you contracted it — a worker who can't afford to stay in bed because they have no sick leave.

Plant Tomatoes. Harvest Lower Crime Rates.
ALEX KOTLOWITZ – Mother Jones

This is a wonderful story. An inexpensive, life-affirming reconnecting of people with growing plants. Such programs illustrate how our problem as a society is not money, it's a lack of vision and a failure of respect.

 

noble gold