Category Archives: ecology

Farmers protests

by

I missed this when it was first published.  The family farm is in danger of being run over by not only Monsanto, but the Too Big To Fail corporate farms.  God help us.

The rightwing radio nooz casters mentioned the Indiana farmer with the case before the Supreme Court against Monsanto.  Vernon Bowman was portrayed as a greedy farmer who tried to get away with “stealing” Monsanto technology without paying for it.  I was just stunned.

More farmer protests here.

And British farmers’ action.

Protests in Poland.

And in India–farmers protesting pipelines.

In Canada.

Taiwan.

And here is a piece of history--farmers protesting the 1977 Food Bill–when the blizzard struck.

From the last link:

The protesters stayed, camped out on the Washington Mall. During that time a blizzard hit the city with 20-inches of snow. Farmers used their tractors to help dig out the city. Some tractors transported doctors and nurses to hospitals. AAM women even cooked and cleaned in hospitals when other staff couldn’t make it in.

~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

 

This from Occupy Monsanto. Stone Soup Day April 8, 2013.

 

Gluten and dementia

by

I’ve touched on this previously, but wanted to put out the links I’ve found about the connection between Celiac and dementia.  This really hits home because of my Mom’s suffering, which I am more and more positive comes from undiagnosed Celiac.

This is an interesting link about how someone might have Celiac, but the symptoms are neurological, not in the gut.

From the site:

British clinician, Dr. Maios Hadjivassiliou, a world renown authority on gluten, reported in The Lancet that gluten sensitivity can be at times exclusively a neurological disease.2 In other words, people suffering from gluten intolerance can have absolutely no digestive symptoms but will have issues with brain dysfunction.

~~~~~~~~

This is my Mom, in a nutshell.

Here’s another short and sweet site with a connection. Note that it says that the Celiac diet only helped one patient.  I would question that because the sample is too small and it doesn’t state what exactly the person was eating.  I have actually seen sites and cookbooks that claim to gluten free and they had gluten in the recipes.  And I would also want to know if the diet contained GMO food, which is also suspect at causing Celiac.

Another site here. Note that they say they saw a reversal of symptoms…nothing short of miraculous!

They often talk about how our compromised gut allows Candida (yeast) to get waaaay out of control, which also affects brain function.  They talk about it here on celiac.com and a post here on the NY Times site –-these are very good descriptions on what we go through–it’s also a good description of heavy metal poisoning sufferers. Note IrishHeart’s description of holding her husband’s sleeves when they went out–that shyness/autistic-like symptom.  Been there, done that…still have *those* days…

Another neurological affliction linked to Celiac is Ataxia–your balance is off and you look like you’re drunk (walking sideways)  when you walk.  People have been mistakenly diagnosed with multiple schlerosis when their symptoms were from Celiac disease.

Remember the teacher who wanted to carry a gun in school?  Remember the constant movement of her eyes?

From the site:

About 80% have problems with their eyes, in which their eyes move involuntarily back and forth.

~~~~~~~

Now look again at that video here. I would say she’s probably a Celiac and has heavy metal poisoning.  (That will be $100 for a diagnosis. :p )

Once again, I am in awe of our miraculous bodies and how the body will constantly try to fix itself….if only given the proper tools of organic (gluten free) diet, clean air, clean water, and exercise….

 

 

 

First Impressions

by

Utility companies are not known for being friendly towards environmentalists…

…so it was with some amusement this morning at the organic grocery that I noticed a couple of young guys in Carhart’s getting what appeared to be their lunch for the day–hummus and some other healthy stuff.

Obviously they were employed in a profession that required them to be outside. Farmers? Not likely to come all the way in town for just a few things. Street dept. workers?  Possibly.

I got my answer when I left the building and saw a utility company truck parked in the lot.

Yeah, so I’m not sure if these guys supported sustainable agriculture (which means a decrease in toxins in the environment if we’re to survive) or if there is a total disconnect and they’re buying organic/healthy food without a care of how it got there….

I’m left to ponder…

~~~~~~~

One of our rightwing radio hosts was talking Friday about the return of the robins to the area soooo early.

He tried to say that these were Canadian robins, therefore they were *south* for the winter….

Um, yeah…

I’ve lived in Indiana all of my life, and it has always been a right of Spring for them to return.  We never saw them the entire winter. Never.  That’s why it didn’t make it for the state bird–because it didn’t stay here all winter.

We were always excited when the first robins returned–we’d “stamp” the first one we saw for *luck*.

Canadian robins….pshaw.

 

A Man’s View

by

Continuing along the thoughts on Friday’s blog~~~

I don’t mind telling you that this blog brought tears to my eyes. Really stunning to read such honesty and depth.  And he’s not gay! (meaning that, as Patrick states, most gay guys “get” women and their perspective, but straight guys, especially straight white guys don’t.)

From the interview:

Growing up in my house, feminism was actually a positive word. My mother, who is a strong woman, has always identified as a feminist. Despite this fact, she found herself being mistreated by my father. This just goes to show that even strong women — even feminist-identified women — can find themselves involved with men who treat them badly.

~~~~~~~~~

This was so powerful…because in the finger-pointing department, when blame is being handed out, it’s always the woman’s fault if she is mistreated.

This, too, was powerful:

Seeing the way she was treated, and experiencing mistreatment myself, showed me that boys who grow up in violent households do not have to follow the path of the abuser. Instead, we can follow another path — the path of empathy for our mother, and that we can become allies in the struggle for women’s equality, rather than just another violent enforcer of male supremacy.

~~~~~

This is the thing that is so hard to understand:  why do some men recognize what was done to them and their mothers, but then go on to abuse others?  Why do some choose that path and others fight against it?

And this reinforces my thoughts on a previous blog on how some folks are abused but do not go on to continue the abuse.  I’m thinking there are more out there than is being acknowledged, because they aren’t the ones being arrested for committing acts of cruelty…they are the ones quietly living their lives without repeating the abuse…

…but that also doesn’t mean that all of those committing acts of cruelty are being dealt with by society…such as men who beat their mates, but the mates refuse to press charges (or never call police to report it.)

Further down the post, Patrick goes into what defines feminism–and how women themselves cannot agree on the definition. I know that I don’t.  As I’ve posted before, I believe in equality, but I don’t think abortions should be performed after six weeks’ gestation.  But feminists don’t see it that way–they feel a woman should be able to have an abortion any time she wants it–right up until birth.  I can’t in good conscience agree with that thinking.  In the feminist world, that automatically excludes me from being called a feminist.  This point of view wasn’t easy to come by, either, as I have seen the photo of the woman dead on a hotel room floor with a hangar protruding from her vagina.  I don’t want to see women in such desperate circumstances that they resort to that–it is much better to have safe, reliable contraceptives available to her. (Yes, men should be responsible for contraception, too, but since she is the one who will be most impacted by a pregnancy, and he could be unreliable, she needs to take responsibility for her own sake.)

Feminists in the 70s were so anti-homemaking that women who chose this route were treated as if they were mindless dummies.

It’s an odd circumstance that things that defined us as women–the home, childbirth and raising children, became so hated.  It’s as if they wanted us to become equal by embracing the stereotyped attributes of men.

In other words, we could only be thought of as valuable and therefore equal….if we became men…

…and the unintended consequences of that is the world tilted even more towards the masculine and diminished the feminine.

What we need to right the world is to once again embrace the feminine as valuable–to recognize that one can be soft as well as strong and that those two attributes don’t have to be mutually exclusive.  That we can prop each other up when one is feeling weak, instead of attacking.  That it’s okay for women to have an opinion different than a man’s and it’s just as valid and valuable. That taking care of the Earth is the feminine that needs to be honored.

There’s more to write, but perhaps for another day.  I’m out of time.

Whales

by

So, I finally got around to turning my calendar over to the month of February this morning.  It’s a nature based one, and this month has a whale majestically propelling itself out of the deep blue, much like this one.

A cool event here with a whale.  Playing hide-and-seek…gotta love it.

This once again proves that we know very little about wildlife and how they can display compassion.

Greenpeace is still fighting the good fight. 

This bears repeating:  the sad story of seagulls attacking the whales. Argentina has this plan to thwart them, but I think it’s not really addressing the reason behind the gulls’ attacks.  Something has caused them to begin attacking eight years ago…I hope that they’re going to test the dead gulls for mercury and other toxins, since it’s been documented that the birds are pretty messed up with mercury.  This would explain why they suddenly began this eight years ago–the rubbish aspect doesn’t really make sense to me because we’ve had garbage around for decades…why now?

Finally, a wonderful story here. The will to survive never ceases to amaze me…no matter how we screw up, nature still tries to come back.  Awesome.

The winter scene

by

I was watching TV in our community room, when I see a motion out of the corner of my eye.  I look to see a border collie mix running and jumping in the snow, grabbing at an object and throwing it up in the air with his teeth.  The owner is shoveling snow and throwing the play toy to the dog’s delight.  As the owner walks along, pushing the shovel, the dog puts the toy next to her, but she’s busy and keeps moving.  The dog looks for a second at her, and then picks up the toy and places it even closer to her than before.

I love seeing the simple delight in dogs when they’re at play.  They’re just playing…freely enjoying the moment without thinking about the next moment….

~~~~~~~

So, yeah, we have the normal winter weather that’s to be expected in Indiana….

…and I notice that a flock of birds are perched in the tree outside my apartment.  I do a double take when it looks like….no, it can’t be…yes, it is…a robin!  NO!!! They are not supposed to be here for another month!

Nope, there’s no climate change…

As a side note~ back in the day when Indiana was deciding what it’s state bird was going to be, the robin was up for it, but they decided against it because the robin flew away for the winter.  They wanted a bird that stayed here all winter and the beautiful cardinal won out.

If the climate change isn’t arrested, the robin will once again be back in the running for the state bird because it will be so warm that it will just stay here all winter…

…well, that’s if there are any robins or birds once we get done poisoning them in their (and our) environment…

<sigh>

There’s no climate change…

by

Well, I shouldn’t be surprised, but yet, I still am about the gushing by the nooz broadcasters on the spring weather…

They were just all over the “nice” weather we’ve had the past few days—-50-and 60-degree days.  They even went out “on the street” to ask the public their opinion about the great weather we’re having….and they were all positive comments on how great it was to wear a light jacket or no jacket at all in January in Indiana…and they even mentioned that all the comments were positive, except one…guess which one didn’t make it to the broadcast?  This was a deliberate choice, folks.  Newsroom editors wield huge power in what gets on the air and what doesn’t.  And what does get on the air has an enormous impact–they know this.

So…I was a little beside myself with this broadcast.  I mean, are people really that dense?  Do they not know what is happening?  Do they even think about how this summer is going to be if we’re having 60-degree weather in January?  Good Grief, how soon they forget when we had 90 degree heat throughout the summer, with a drought, last year, and how dangerously low the rivers were.  Thankfully, we’ve had some good rain and that good snow in December, and the rivers are now up to level.  A small victory, but it won’t last if we start having 80-degree heat in March like we did last year.

But there’s no Climate Change.  These people will just go on their merry way until the last drop of water comes out of the tap…

I mean, seriously, doesn’t anyone think beyond their nose?

What about the too warm water that is a threat to nuclear power plant ability to cool the nuclear core?  If the warming trends continue, we will lose the ability to cool the core….can anyone say meltdown?  I hate to even think of a worse case scenario of a plant in a scramble that cannot be cooled because the water is too warm to cool it.

Another scenario is this.  Discharging hotter water into the already warm water, leading to fish kills and other destruction of the carefully constructed eco system is not a good, well thought out plan.

Speaking of the effects of the warmer weather, the plants are also being affected, as my Sedum Autumn Joy is starting to pop up from the soil.  (I brought it here with me–it’s a plant that I’ve had since my son was a baby.  I dug it up when I lost my house.)

This weather is not normal and not something to be celebrated.

Earth will survive.  We won’t.

Boycott Kellogg’s

by

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.

 

 

~~~~~~~~

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. 😛

 

 

Exploring the link between diet and health

by

I wanted to explore the health factors that indicate heavy metal poisoning and the African Americans.

I found this link on BET.  Diabetes can be caused by heavy metal poisoning, and high blood pressure is linked to the adrenals and kidneys which can be severely affected by heavy metal toxicity, therefore, affecting blood pressure. And, of course, heavy metal poisoning is closely associated with autistic symptoms.  I say “symptoms” because I’m not sure that the poisoning causes autism, but it most definitely causes autistic symptoms, as has been my experience.

Here’s another site.  I’ve come across a couple of websites geared towards the African American link to autism, but they are exploring the issue of comparison between whites and blacks being diagnosed later.  I’m trying to get away from that because it’s not helpful.  It is not going towards the issue itself of autism and the possible causes behind it.  It’s upsetting to me because the blanket statement that whites get diagnosed sooner than blacks is not my experience, nor others who also diagnosed themselves.   I, a white person, was not diagnosed by any damn doctor, after years of low thyroid, adrenal issues, chronic fatigue, migraines, and the symptoms of autism of wanting to be left alone, wanting to stay in my house and never leave it, diminishing communication skills, memory loss, hyperfocusing, exaggerated startle response, etc.

When I searched for a link with African Americans and heavy metal poisoning, I again came up empty.

I searched “chronic fatigue and African Americans and found this.  As I read the paragraph:

Psychosocial variables may influence the experience of chronic fatigue, especially in individuals of color. Overarching psychosocial realities such as the endemic nature of ethnic/racial discrimination and the complexity of the acculturation process may bear on the experience of fatigue. This study evaluated whether the acculturation process was related to chronic fatigue and racism among African Americans and Latinos. While associations among the predicted variables were not statistically significant, distinct divisions among levels of acculturation appeared between African Americans and Latinos. Membership in a community of color likely increases the complexity of the experience of chronic fatigue in a manner that requires further investigation.

~~~~~~~~

Okay, what I’m reading from this is that the psychobabble is stating that chronic fatigue is a psychological problem.  Pfft.  Yep, they’ve been telling women that for decades…didn’t even acknowledge that it was a true physical condition until very recently.  These women were just lazy and hypochrondriacs who needed to get a life, when in reality they were the first to suffer the effects of low thyroid and adrenal fatigue from a toxic environment.

Reading this website, the symptom onset after a traumatic event, either physical or emotional, with the compromised immune system is a red flag for an inflamed gut from Celiac or gluten intolerance.  It’s the final straw that breaks the body. I have issues with the link to the psychological, although stress does affect the immune system, I don’t think it’s the cause of it.  It’s too convenient to blame psychological stress than to explore things such as heavy metal toxicity and/or leaky gut. It’s been proven that gluten intolerance can cause psychological symptoms, and this has been known since before WWII.  Therefore, the psychological stuff comes *after* the leaky gut or whatever physical issue is beleaguering the body, not necessarily the other way around.

As a side note, I found this link.  I had forgotten about the Gulf War syndrome being the first serious acknowledgement that chronic fatigue was an actual physical ailment and not psychological.  And the link between Gulf War syndrome and vaccines should not be ignored.

From the website:

“Despite these agreements between FDA and DoD, and DoD’s official subsequent decision to administer the vaccine voluntarily, many PGW veterans claim that they were not told what vaccine they were being given, or what the risks were, either orally or in writing. Many report that they were told not to tell medical personnel that they had received a vaccination, even if the vaccination caused pain or swelling. No record of the vaccine was available in medical records; as a result, physicians who were concerned about any local or systemic reactions were uninformed about the possible causes. Veterans who claim they were harmed by the vaccine or pyridostigmine frequently have no proof that they were vaccinated or took the pills, or that they had an adverse reaction. Moreover, virtually none of the soldiers received more than two of the botulism vaccinations, even though DoD informed FDA they would administer the three shots necessary for protection…

~~~~~~~~~~~

So, folks…you should run right out and get that flu vaccine.  Run! NOW!