Category Archives: environment

Toxic Trash Water

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Environmental Working Group has a report up on the toxins coming out of the tap. (hat tip to common dreams).

Even in Silent Spring, Rachel Carson put forth the idea that science could “correct” the mistakes made with the science of chemical pollution…so it’s depressing, but not out of character for science to combat water pollution with…more chemicals.  Chlorine is a poison (so is fluoride, but that’s for another blog).

Again, nature does it best with natural water filtration.  Here is a report on natural swimming pools–water filtration is by the same idea–using plants and stones for the water to naturally detoxify itself.

More here.  Aren’t these beautiful to look at as well as functional?  Here’s more from Australia…crikey, they’re all over the place!

Here’s a site explaining natural water filtration in a teaching mode.  It lays it out on how our zeal to tear down trees and pave the landscape has greatly interfered with the natural way of water filtration.  It touches on the importance of beaver dams–how they were destroyed because they were implicated in floods, but they were actually contributing positively by aiding water filtration–another myopic view by scientists who didn’t understand the “orchestra” of nature.  And who would have thought that flies have a positive impact?  Not I.

And here is a site on filtering water for yourself (I’m not linking to it for obvious reasons):  wilderness-survival-skills.com/how-to-make-a-water-filter.html

Finally, there’s this– an innovative showering system.  Makes me smile–I’d feel like I were showering in a jungle, but what the hey.  I’d think I’d rather go for a swim in the natural pool.  Also, this would make more sense if you’re using a biodegradable soap, such as Dr. Bronner’s. 

Lastly, all of this that benefits us also benefits the animals that inhabit this place with us.

Making free speech illegal

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…is what the Indiana Senate is trying to do with trying to make it illegal for animal rights activists to publish photos of animal abuse.

Story here.

People have a right to know if  farms are abusing animals.  And journalists have every right to publish that information without going through the police.  This is outrageous.

You will note that Rose Acre Farms complained about the bad publicity they received after video of their operations was made public.  Story here of the abuse. Well, of course they don’t like activists who photograph the abuse–it’s not the abuse that bothers them–it’s the bad publicity!  And if they can keep the photos from reaching the public, who refuse to buy their eggs, well then…

Once again, folks, know where your food comes from–I buy Amish chicken that is raised cage free, without hormones or antibiotics. Same with the eggs, which are locally produced.  And humbly thank the chickens for their sacrifice.

Haiti food shortage and disappearing money

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As if these folks don’t have enough to deal with–Haiti is in serious trouble with food shortages due not only to the after-effects of the 2010 earthquake, but from drought and flood…  Good Grief.  (Incidentally, I first read about this on a Guardian blog which is “supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation”–I refuse to link to it because of the so-called “doomsday seed bank” which is a megalomaniacal venture.  Playing God with seeds–and you can bet it won’t be the “little people” who will partake in the seed distribution if “doomsday” occurs…if you want to read the Guardian article, you’ll have to search for it yourselves.)

I know it sounds so “out there” reading the above link—but Monsanto has a proven record of destruction, not production.  And the Rockefellers have put money into eugenics.  Given Bill Gates’ business practices (by requiring a monopoly of his products, he shut out better operating systems, therefore acquiring his millions by false means–not true capitalism where the best product gets the market share.)

I couldn’t believe what I was reading in the article about corn being engineered to contain spermicide.  So…I looked on the web and found this by Alternet.  Wow.

This was an interesting quote:

Scientists and corporations alike embrace biopharmaceuticals with glee: “Imagine being able to harvest enough globulin (a compound that fights arthritis) for the whole world in all of fifty acres?” writes Dr. William O. Robertson for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “Imagine being able to find the protein healthy people use to prevent arthritis or breast cancer and being able to produce it in large quantities in rice and tobacco.”

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It’s just stunning how myopic these scientists are—especially with the knowledge that GM corn and other products are suspected of causing gut inflammation from GMO intolerance??  Destroying the immune system….to make people…better??  Note that he includes tobacco in products to be used by folks….yeah, now there’s a healthy product. /snark

As Brian Tokar brings up in the article, there are too many unknowns–it’s always an oversight by scientists to consider the effects to all of nature and how much humans’ health is affected by nature.

Here’s another article on pharming….and it’s in Indiana, where you can get away with anything while the press and politicians look the other way:          popsci.com/scitech/article/2005-06/pharming-underground

And another article here…also in Indiana:  intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WSIHW000/8124/21291/338465.html

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Okay, back to Haiti (sorry, got a little off topic there–am detoxing and I’m ADD a little more than usual. 🙂

The Guardian article brings up getting seeds to Haitians (and Africans)—which I thought was a great idea…until I saw the Gates Foundation and Monsanto supporting this….not hard to see that it is a propaganda piece to benefit them.  It can’t be just “coincidence” that they are in a deal with Monsanto and now promoting this idea of seeds to Haiti.  My fear is that these poor vulnerable folks are the guinea pigs for the Gates/Rockefeller/Monsanto venture. Disaster capitalism, my friends.

The misspent donations in Haiti.  Glad to see that people are still trying to help Haiti recover.  Haiti has to be the poster country for disaster relief mismanagement!

From the article:

 

In March 2010, UN countries pledged $5.3 billion over two years and a total of $9.9 billion over three years in a conference March 2010. The money was to be deposited with the World Bank and distributed by an internationally controlled fund called the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission Fund (IHRC). The IHRC was co-chaired by Bill Clinton and Jean-Max Bellerive, then the Haitian Prime Minister. 41 The IHRC was created by executive order of Haitian President Preval to exist for a period of 18 months beginning on April 21, 2010.42

This money effectively bypassed all the Haitian public governmental bodies. 43

By July 2010, Bill Clinton reported only 10 percent of the pledges had been given to the IHRC.

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Feeling that they functioned solely as rubber stamps, the Haitian members complained of being “completely disconnected from the activities of the IHRC”; given no background information on the projects they are supposed to fund; given no time to “read, nor analyze, nor understand- and much less respond intelligently- to projects submitted”; no follow-up on the previously approved millions in funds; and not knowing the names of IHRC consultants nor their respective tasks.” As if to prove their point the IHRC meeting, held in the Dominican Republic, continued despite the absence of co-chair and Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive.

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(Once again, the Clintons screw things up.  They say Reagan was the “teflon” president because nothing ever stuck to him…well Clinton ranks right up there with him.)

While typing, the chemtrails phenomenon popped into my head– I remember reading a connection between Gates and chemtrails and was wondering about their effects on rainfall.  My thinking is that it can’t just be climate change that is creating the drought.  I found this blog on it, but it was a general synopsis.  Then I found this.  It is an observation of the interference with rain clouds by chemtrails.

A side note~~  A petition against the Gates Foundation’s $27 million investment in Monsanto.  Um-hmm…follow the money, folks.

 

Evil Environmental laws and the UN

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Really, now, the conservative toadies for the oil companies reeeeeally need to come up with some new words besides: “Freedom”

“Liberty” , “way of life”, and this is a good one “our heritage”….to manipulate the public into doing things that are the opposite of what is in their best interests…

…since when is polluting water, land, and air part of our heritage??

If I recall correctly, the Native Americans lived here for over 10,000 years and one could drink from any stream, swim in any river, and eat fish from any body of water and not get poisoned from fertilizers, mercury, plastic, pesticides, nor herbicides….THAT, my friend, IS our heritage!

 

Farmers protests

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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.

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

 

Gluten and dementia

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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.

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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.

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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

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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…

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.