Category Archives: communications/media

Boycott Kellogg’s

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Organic Consumers posted this a while back (I’m sooo far behind in emails).  Financially supporting the companies that truly have the best interests of their consumers at heart is the best way to go.  Well, that and labeling our food.

Read the note on Kashi’s using genetically engineered soy in their “organic” products.  It is such a cop-out to claim pollination was the reason the soy was GMO–an easy way to escape accountability.  Instead of fighting GMO labeling, they should be fighting against Monsanto and the others involved in genetically modified food.  This food is highly likely involved in leaky gut, as the body cannot recognize the grain anymore, and treats it as a foreign substance and that leads to gut inflammation and eventually leaky gut.

A link here to eye problems and leaky gut and GMO’s.  Very interesting.  My eyes have begun to improve–I was using 1.50 readers and now am able to use the 1.25 magnification.  I’m also able to distinguish fine degrees of color, and I had lost some of my ability to determine colors.  I know this by my embroidery thread that I used for counted cross-stitch–the thread is numbered and has very minute distinctions, and it was difficult for me to separate them by color.  I grew so frustrated at it that I just put them all in one bag, unable to organize them.  This began to change when I started to detox.

Here’s a good opinion on the GMO’s.

More here on the global effort to get GMO’s labeled.

A debate between a professor and a neoliberal. (hat tip to organic consumers).

Lastly, I really wonder about the exposure even if you’re not eating GMO foods (or at least trying not to by buying organic).  I say this because every year, around late July, I begin to have more severe allergy symptoms, culminating in September, when I usually have headaches several days out of the month (this has been after mercury poisoning–at least, that’s when I first noticed it).  I found a link here on the increase in allergies and GMO’s.

Here is a paper that must have been written by a Monsanto toadie, it is so slanted towards GMO’s and gives very little attention or support for research towards health concerns.  This is what I was seeing when I was a student in college and I took a class in science writing:  they had a forum at this strongly agricultural school on GMO’s when they were first being introduced in 1997-98 (only we found out later that they had been unleashed onto the unsuspecting public earlier.)

A good blog here on GMO.

 

 

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Related to this is an stunning affirmation of those in power that amalgams are safe.  Just stunning. Absolutely stunning.  (hat tip to organic consumers).  It just goes to show that Washington is bought by those whose interests don’t include the health and well being of the public, but of who has the $$$ to fund their campaigns.

And my previous blog  with this on how not only mercury affects us, but the animals, as well.  My other blogs on it here and here.

And I’m finished.  So much for catching up on my emails. 😛

 

 

Failure to prosecute Wall St.

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…because we’d much rather go after computer wizzes who have legal access to files and download them for the public so that the public knows what their government is doing…

link here.

bgrothus has this link in the comments section.  Remember, folks, the derivatives were the cause of the meltdown.  They were betting on people losing their mortgages….these scumbags were betting on people like me losing their houses. 

…and not only betting on people losing their houses, but on people dying.  It’s amazing how they can make it seem….normal.  Just coldly predict how long someone lives and apply a monetary value to it, i.e., insurance $$.

(crap, I have to go, and I wanted to explore this more….argh)

Aaron Swartz

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I found this interesting post on Aaron Swartz, which raises more questions than it answers…

I found another post on this site Saturday, but couldn’t find it again looking today.  It mentioned a post by Marcy Wheeler on what was going on with Aaron Swartz and his suicide after being hounded by authorities.  (Be sure to click on the NY Times link, which explains a little better.)  More here.

This chills one to the bone.  And what exactly was he downloading that caused such concern?  The articles dance around it. Anyway, Aaron Swartz believed that the information out there that was paid for by taxpayers deserved to be easily accessed–that is, without paying high $$ to join JSTOR or any other program to gain access.  It was noted that many documents are being electronically copied with limited access to the public.  This is incredibly disturbing, as everyone knows that Information is Power. And knowledge can inform the American citizen what their government is doing. (This is why stuff like Kindle worry me–taking information off of physical books and putting them in electronic gadgets that require a battery and software to view is dangerous in that if either of those fail to work, the information is inaccessible.  One can easily see how this can turn into denial of information–book burning a la the information age.)

The thing is…Swartz had legal access to the information, via Harvard!  He had the legal right to access. He was trying to make a point that the copyright laws protected electronic information that the taxpayers paid for, but were denied access to.  Now, think of the library books one checks out…they are copyrighted materials, but one can still access the information via a library card.  I think Swartz was applying those same principles to his providing this information.  Note that JSTOR refused to prosecute him once they learned he had legal access.

 

Martin Luther King, Jr. and Beyond Vietnam

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Susie Madrak has a post up on MLK’s birthday celebration.  This is my view, too, on how everybody brings up “I Have a Dream” speech, and then fail to acknowledge his “Beyond Vietnam” speech (which he gave a year to the day before his murder).

He was expanding from the Civil Rights protests towards protesting the condition of the poor and of the terrible consequences of war.  This was more of a threat to the status quo than anything he had done prior.  Indeed, even his friends that had supported him during the Civil Rights era were abandoning him when he started advocating for the poor and protesting against war.  According to those that knew him, he never felt so alone.

He knew that advocating those positions was dangerous.

And he did it anyway….

 

A good option?

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As I was walking the other day, I thought about the states that legalized marijuana in the past election…and something about it bugged me.

Something that David Crosby said in a 60s documentary popped into my head:  while talking about the positives of the peace movement of the 60s, he remarked that cocaine had been the downfall of it all.

Whenever I see repubs suddenly change their opinions in a 180 degree direction, it gets my attention.  A few of them have been advocating legalization of small amounts of pot in this conservative area…another reason to question their motives.

Now, you can call me a conspiracy theorist (wouldn’t be the first time), but there is something going on….and I don’t know about you, but I could see pot doing the same thing as cocaine did—stopping a positive movement by messing with people’s cognitive function.  I’m not sure of all the effects of pot, but that is one of them, along with possible lung cancer and heart issues.  I’m not looking down my nose, mind you, I tried it when I was seventeen. (I’m one of those who wonder what all the fuss was about–it really did nothing for me).

I’m just putting this out there because I think it needs to be said.  I mean, I look at Timothy Leary, and see him as an under-the-radar drug pusher.  I was pretty young when he was in his element of “Tune in, turn on, drop out” (or whatever version), but had the opportunity to revisit his mindset again when I started in college in the 90s.  We read a bit of his assertions back in the day –he had used scare tactics, much as the conservatives are using now, to advocate for LSD and other drug legalization–saying that there would be agents in helicopters hunting down people using drugs and other scare tactics.

And I don’t get the videotaping his death…ego?  Pfft.  I don’t want to be videotaped, I want to go quietly, just me going to God.  And I don’t even want a headstone—I like what my aunt did–she had her ashes spread over San Francisco Bay.    After I’m gone, I hope that there will be people around to remember me…but if not, no stupid headstone and no video of me will truly speak of who I was and what I did while here….

(A side note–and this may or may not have anything to do with Leary, but he had a wife and daughter commit suicide.  So much for finding happiness in drugs.)

So…I guess this post is about a warning not to repeat the same mistakes of the 60s….

 

 

 

 

A trail of bullets…

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C.J.Chivers of the New York Times had this up over the weekend–a post on ammunition being supplied to Africa.  I thought I’d post it because of the focus on Africa.  Perhaps it’s just me, but it seems that Africa is becoming a focal point…or perhaps it was always there, but ignored?

Anyway, I thought that it’s striking that a lot is said about Iran’s nuclear capabilities, but not of small arms ammunition and shipping it to other countries.

The question one has to ask is…why?  What do they hope to gain?  Is it for their political benefit or just plain guns profits?

 

And my new favorite Twain quote is…

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“If Christ were here,  there is one thing he would not be…A Christian.”  Brilliantly said.  Trying to act like Christ is a little too much work…as it requires following “Do Unto Others…”

Diane Sweet has a post up on the fundamentalist Pat Robertson, doing what fundamentalists do:  putting women beneath them…

I disagree with one of the commenters who said that this kind of thinking was dying out.  It’s a dangerous assumption, and from what I’m seeing, far from being a thing of the past.  This crap has been going on for thousands of years, in different forms and won’t “die out” until women are seen and treated as equals. Women are a still not thought of as having equal value in whatever they do–if they stay home to raise the children and care for the house, or if they work outside the home.

The issues with rape and the degradation of the young woman in Steubenville are classic examples of treating women as “less than” and making moral judgments against her that are not made against the men.  She’s a slut to be peed on.  He’s just having a good time.

 

 

The Flu scare is on….

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(sigh) Once again the scare tactics are on for the flu vaccine.

News reports have been blasting on every news station I’ve listened to: radio, TV and newspapers.  Local coverage here:  http://www.fortwayne.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130109/NEWS/320139235?mytabsmenu=

On the rightwing radio station here, the head of the health dept. was pushing for everyone to get the vaccine, using a coercive technique of saying that “you may be healthy, and survive the flu, but you may expose someone else to the flu…” (if you don’t get the vaccine).  Of course, the talk show host did not question this line of thinking nor if there were repercussions to getting the vaccine itself.  This is one of the issues I had with the health dept–they don’t tell both sides of the story and reveal the downsides of vaccine to allow people to make their own decisions of whether they want to get the vaccine.

Here’s a blog disputing the numbers the CDC is using to scare the public into getting a vaccine that is not safe nor necessarily effective.  (Keep in mind, folks, that the CDC is now being run by the Dept. of Hysterical Security.)

People have such short memories on the swine flu “pandemic”...and all the hysteria that involved.  The key sentence in this report is this:

Most reports coming from the Southern Hemisphere in late August (the end of winter there) suggested that the swine flu is highly infectious, but not particularly lethal.

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The swine flu was contagious, but not particularly lethal–so the hysteria was just that–being terrorized over something that was not likely to cause severe health problems.

The story does say that whooping cough has been contained by vaccines, but from everything I’ve read, that is not true.  They have been saying that whooping cough is increasing in numbers, even though people have been vaccinated!

Another telling sentence in the above report is this:

Education, lifestyle, income, and many other “confounding” factors can come into play, and as a result, cohort studies are notoriously prone to bias.

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Bias. Bias. Bias.  Scientists have inserted their biases into research to obtain a certain result or support their own prejudices.  This has been demonstrated over and over and over again….and yet reporters and the public don’t question scientists or their research.

For instance, those who don’t see doctors and don’t get the flu (such as myself) are not going to be counted.  I should be getting the flu because of my compromised immune system and exposure to all sorts of germs at the library and my building…so where is the science in that??

(A side note ~ I heard or read somewhere that keyboards were filthier than toilet seats, so I began using the sanitized wipes on the keyboard before I type a letter. And in relation to that, you men need to wash your hands after using the toilet!  I did my own little “survey” when I worked (Gah, I once worked…)–the company’s break room was situated near the bathrooms, and I’d listen for the water to run after someone used the toilet.  All the women washed their hands…half of the men did. Blech.)

Link to the vaccine injury page.  Good info here.  Be sure to click on the link of the unvaccinated children.  There’s a particular statement by a speech pathologist who notes that children have seizures and their development is arrested after receiving the vaccines.  This makes sense to me because of all I know about the immune system (the gut) and the interference with brain function (migraines, seizures, ADD, clumsiness) when one has leaky gut (Celiac).  But you won’t hear this on the radio or TV or newspapers…

Also on the page is a link to the state of health of vaccinated children.  Two-thirds of the parents who had their children vaccinated would not continue.  Link here to the health effects after vaccination.

A good website here on the 1986 law effectively putting the burden of vaccine injury onto the taxpayers and allowing the pharmaceutical industry and doctors to avoid responsibility and accountability for the harm that vaccines cause.  (Note that this is during the Reagan administration.)

From the webpage:

There is a long list of things that are wrong with the VICP. First and foremost, while it is referred to as a court, it simply is not a court. There is no judge, no jury, no right to require the adversary to provide information, and no formal rules of evidence and civil procedure.

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This illustrates the lack of justice for the victims of vaccine injury.  A pharmaceutical company does not have to show their face in a court of law, to a jury, and most importantly, to the victim whose life has been altered due to their product, as the page states.  The hidden data of the Vaccine Safety Datalink was allowed to be viewed by the Justice Dept, but not the attorneys for the victims.

The page states that they only have a three year statute of limitations to file the case.  They feel, and I agree, that this is too short a time period.  For one, you have so many so-called professionals who will dispute the vaccine injury.  This is parallel  to my mercury injury from the amalgams–even though my migraines started one year after placement, it wasn’t until nearly ten years later that I discovered the link between them and the symptoms I was having.  All the professionals I had seen never considered amalgams as a source of health issues.  They still don’t.

And the biggest empty hole missing from this conversation is: DIET.  Not a word about how diet affects us and our immune systems and how a healthy immune system will successfully fight the flu bug and any other nasty stuff that comes our way.  Folks don’t die from the flu–they die from pneumonia, because of a compromised immune system that can’t fight it off.  Not a word about gluten intolerance and how that can lead to the gut’s inability to effectively kill the flu virus or the pneumonia bacteria.

The next biggest empty hole is: ENVIRONMENTAL TOXINS.  This being another devastating effect on the immune system.

But that would actually take using more than a myopic view, and we just can’t have that. /snark