by Robert Wilkinson
Here are two stories of global significance. It seems someone quietly shuffled some paperwork through the Feds and there’s been covert fracking going on just off shore at Santa Barbara! As you can imagine, the locals are outraged. And it seems that India’s farmers are rejecting GMOs and asking the government to outlaw them.
Both of these stories come from the ever-fantastic TruthOut. The first, “Offshore Fracking Uproar Grows in California in Wake of Truth Out Report,” makes it clear that the parasites who want to fracture the Earth with technology known to create earthquakes AND which they don’t want anyone talking about are willing to drill along known fault lines potentially affecting tens of millions of people. (Links in that article to several more on the subject) And I’m just SURE that those who live in Santa Barbara want oil spills, coastal contamination, and fouled beaches along with the risk of local earthquakes.
Please check out the entire article. This is a huge mobilization in California against those who destroy the Earth and human life to drill for oil. Anything that could create even one more earthquake in coastal California is completely unacceptable.
This is for the thousands of friends of this website who live in India. In the second article, Battling India's Monsanto Protection Act, Farmers Demand End to GMO we read that “On August 8, thousands of farmers and activists from across 20 Indian states demonstrated in New Delhi against the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) Bill, and demanded an end to GMOs in India.” It seems Indian farmers are far more aware of the GMO menace and its related environmental problems than many Americans. In fact, it seems the entire world is more aware of the GMO menace and its related problems than many Americans. Or at least American politicians and banksters.
From the story:
India has a long and contentious history with Monsanto, the multinational ag-biotech corporation headquartered in Creve Coeur, just outside St. Louis, Missouri. The conflict goes back to Monsanto's introduction of BT Cotton here in 2001, when farmers were promised a robust cotton crop that would remain pest resistant.But there was little warning about the downsides.
GM seeds are prohibitively expensive to start with, as companies like Monsanto charge a premium to offset research costs. But touted as “magic seeds,” the aggressive marketing tactics ensured that many farmers fell victim. They were convinced that the high cost of seeds would be offset by the yield and savings on pesticides. Soon, farmers realized that their age-old pest control was no protection against the vicious bollworms that started attacking the crop.
Forced to buy pesticide from Monsanto at high prices, India's farmers incurred unforeseen debts that tripled once their crops failed and they were forced to buy new GM seeds for the new planting cycle. Still, their crops failed with alarming regularity.
Indian agriculture is very rain dependent, and plants growing from GM seeds need twice as much water as traditional crops. Traditional agriculture here works with the monsoons and the great amount of rain. But by this time the monsoons weren’t enough, and when the rains didn’t come — as they often don’t in India — the crops dried up and died.
A step that was touted to revolutionize food growth in India turned into a vicious cycle of forced debt, poverty and eventually mass suicides that pushed the issue to receive national attention. In a 2008 article titled “The GM Genocide,” the UK-based Mail Online noted that an estimated 125,000 farmers had committed suicide “as a result of the ruthless drive to use India as a testing ground for genetically modified crops.”
The Maharashtra region was touted as a “suicide belt” and the Indian Ministry of Agriculture confirmed that “more than 1,000 farmers kill themselves here each month.”
Nonetheless, the government pushed ahead and allowed companies like Monsanto to use the country's fields and food supply as a giant laboratory. In return for opening up its economy, the Indian government was granted massive loans by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Not all of that money was lost in corruption. The country’s cities boomed while its agriculture lay doomed.
As with the California coastal fracking hustle, please check out the entire article, especially if you live in India or have a friend in India. GMOs, besides being an environmental disaster, also do things to the human body that was never intended by Nature.
GMOs are just not worth the price in any way, shape, or form. This is not “selective breeding.” This involves genetic alterations that affect those who eat the crops. We can find other ways to take care of pests than creating genetic monstrosities that affect our bodies and the bodies of our children and grandchildren.
These are just two more environmental assaults by governments who are trying to circumvent telling we the people just what mischief they and their corporate pimps are up to. Fracking creates disease and earthquakes; GMOs create genetic havoc and environmental disaster. We do not need either of these to live long and well, since they both create circumstances where we do not live long and well.
© Copyright 2013 Robert Wilkinson
Hi all - On an unrelated note, here's the latest for today on this freaky, fracky Friday: Leak Forces Shut Down of NJ Nuclear Plant And of course, the "authorities" tell us it's nyet problema and all good. The leaking water is of course not unsafe and everyone's very confident that they are confident they will not say one thing other than there's "no safety threat to the public." Right.
Posted by: Robert | August 23, 2013 at 09:50 AM
I think one of the reasons why regulatory authorities "choose" not to tell the plain truth about all this fracking stuff and now that NJ Nuclear plant leak is the fear of causing mass hysteria and thus large scale movements of populations, imagine the consequences on the economy.. yes this wouldn't surprise me in the slightest, if they were thinking along those lines.. and to hell with our health they'll say! Not our problem, blame something or somebody else...
Down here in Australia we have our own battles with fracking > http://nofrackingway.org.au/
Mass take up and affordability of alternative energy technologies can't come fast enough, I'm not one for getting too involved in conspiracy theories but it makes one wonder why these environmentally friendly alternative energy sources take so long to mature, get into mass production and thus commercialized for global sales. For example, we all know solar technology is definitely getting better and more practical, but what do you do when there is poor sunlight or no sunlight? fuel cells (hydrogen) perhaps? plenty of info on the net...
Posted by: RodJM | August 24, 2013 at 06:36 PM