Genetically Modified Food Dangers

My cousin Gary Chernipeski, through Facebook, posted a link to this. I found it reviewed a few clicks later; the review summarizes nicely the whole issue, and the links following trace back to the info Gary shared. Read before you eat, or shop, or party!

GM Watch review by Claire Robinson

Hidden Dangers in Kids’ Meals: Genetically Engineered Foods – Set of three videos on DVD by Jeffrey M. Smith

Orders: Tel (outside the U.S. add 001) 888 717 7000 or via www.gmfreeschools.org

While Jeffrey Smith’s book “Genetic Roulette: The documented health risks of genetically modified foods” is a model of clarity, it isn’t everyone’s idea of bedtime reading. For those of us who, at the end of a day’s work, find anything more demanding than The Simpsons a challenge, or for the many who would rather learn by watching and listening than by picking up a hefty book, Smith has provided a solution. He has produced a set of three accessible videos that present the health dangers of eating GM foods, with a special focus on children. Children are most at risk because they have fast-developing bodies that respond more drastically to toxins, their immune systems are less formed and thus more susceptible to allergies, and any problems with nutrition can affect them for life.

Though there are three videos in this set, it is (in football manager parlance) a game of two halves. The first two videos set out the dangers and proven harm of GM foods. The third video presents the enlightened alternative: the Wisconsin School Nutrition Program, which has seen extraordinarily positive results from feeding schoolchildren natural, unprocessed food, and perhaps not coincidentally, from avoiding GM foods.

Video number one features a posse of scientists reporting adverse findings from research on GM foods and explaining why they should worry us. Then there are the inadequate regulations. US FDA apparatchiks override the warnings of their own scientists in line with a government edict to foster the biotech industry. Monsanto people slip into the FDA via the revolving door to write the policy that allows Monsanto GM foods onto the market.

Then, the problems begin. Experienced farmers tell how female pigs fed Bt corn deliver bags of water or nothing instead of a litter of piglets. When farmers stop giving GM feed, the problem goes away. Given a choice, many animals, including cows and deer, won’t eat GM feed. Professor of Ecology Terje Traavik warns of coming “ecological and health catastrophes” from GM foods. University of Minnesota biologist Phil Regal predicts: “People who push genetic engineering are going to have to do a ‘mea culpa’, come clean, ask for forgiveness, and admit they made a mistake, like the Pope did about the Inquisition.”

The second video is a filmed talk by Smith. He’s a dramatist and story-teller who weaves science into his narrative in a way that is utterly compelling. And he does it all without notes or autocue, and without “ums” or “ers”. Here’s an idea for a class study topic: watch Smith speak, then George W. Bush. Question: which one eats GM foods?

Smith tells the story of the l-tryptophan catastrophe, in which 5-10,000 Americans got sick and hundreds died after eating an l-tryptophan supplement made using GM bacteria. Many of us are familiar with the bones of the story, but the details as fleshed out by Smith show the corruption of the regulators. The symptoms of the disease were horrific. People’s hair fell out; they suffered the worst pain their doctors had ever seen; their white blood cell counts went sky-high. But here’s the rub: the epidemic was only noticed and its cause traced because the disease was acute, rare, and had a fast onset. If any one of these conditions had been absent, the disease would have slipped under the radar. Thus, though the incidence of cancer, heart disease, and diabetes continues to rise in the US, no one can tell if GM is a culprit, because these diseases are chronic, common, and slow in onset.

With l-tryptophan, the FDA went to great lengths to deny any GM link. The FDA’s biotech coordinator James Maryanski claimed that two dozen cases of the rare disease had shown up *before* genetic modification of the bacteria began in 1988, and thus GM was not the likely cause. The FDA leapt on the alternative cause favored by industry, a new filter that failed to take out impurities. Interestingly, nobody in government or industry was curious to know why this brand of l-tryptophan uniquely contained dangerous impurities that needed to be filtered out in the first place.

Then, a bomb dropped. A confidential document, forced into the open by writer William Crist, revealed that the strain of l-tryptophan implicated in the disease was GM *strain number five*. GM strains one to four had been used in the production of l-tryptophan since 1984 – and Centers for Disease Control documents showed that at least a hundred people, not two dozen, as FDA claimed, got the disease before 1988.

Crist wondered why the FDA didn’t know about the earlier GM strains. Then he noticed a fax imprint on the document: “FDA September 17, 1990.” It had been faxed by the FDA. The FDA already knew back in 1990 that the earlier strains were GM, but as late as 1996 Maryanski was still claiming ignorance.

An even greater omission occurred in July 1991, when Douglas Archer, deputy director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, testified to Congress about the epidemic. Not only did he not discuss the earlier bacterial strains, he did not mention GM. Instead, he blamed the disease on “health fraud schemes” – alternative health supplements. The FDA used this lie to take all l-tryptophan, GM or not, off the market.

After Smith recounts another set of lies that were woven by industry and the FDA to get Monsanto’s GM bovine growth hormone rBGH approved, the third video provides welcome inspiration. “The Wisconsin School Phenomenon” tells the astonishing story of a failing special needs school, Appleton Central Alternative School, that was turned around simply by a change in school meals. Processed, sugary, and junk foods were banished, and natural, unprocessed, fresh foods were brought in.

Before the Wisconsin nutrition programme started in 1997, teachers described the students as rude, obnoxious, and out-of-control. Weapons violations were common, and the school asked a cop to patrol the school full-time. But once the food and drinks were changed, the atmosphere was transformed. The students became calm. Discipline problems vanished. Once a year, the principal has to fill in a state report giving the number of dropouts, expulsions, drugs offences, weapons violations, and suicides. Since the programme began, she says, “Zeros are what I have to report.” Academic learning has also improved.

Though this video does not mention GM, Smith points out that most GM foods in the human food supply are concentrated into processed foods, and an enterprising young scientist has already raised the question of behavioral effects when he turned experimental mice into anti-social and frightened creatures simply by giving them GM feed.

British readers of this review who followed TV chef Jamie Oliver’s heroic struggle to feed schoolchildren healthy food on the government-set budget of 37p (75 US cents) per meal – less than prisons budget for their inmates – may be wondering about the cost of all this. The school principal explains that one cost reduces another: “I don’t have vandalism, litter, or high security.” The school district superintendent confirms that due to the success of the programme, he was able to cut USD 5 million out of his operating budget in two years. One problem that Jamie faced – obese mothers shoving emergency supplies of junk food through the school railings at their poor, deprived offspring – doesn’t seem to have arisen in the US, where parents and students fully support the programme. It must help that the programme has spread to elementary and middle schools, so children are educated into healthy eating habits at an early age.

The conclusion of these videos is that we can choose either one of two worlds. In the first, the food that should nourish children, poisons them; the regulators who should protect children, endanger them; and the science that seeks truth is twisted into lies. In the second, the truth is as simple and obvious as it should be: nature provides delicious food, and the children who eat it have a radiance that (if the food programme was widely adopted) could reverse the mass exodus from the teaching profession. The choice is, as they say in the US, a no-brainer.

Sources:
http://www.responsibletechnology.org/GMFree/AboutGMFoods/GMFoodsataGlance/index.cfm
http://www.seedsofdeception.com/utility/showArticle/?objectID=1434
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Obama Image

courtesy, time.com:

This image caught my eye, linked on huffingtonpost.com today. Our next president, at this age, looks like the regular guys, the normal everyday guys I hung out with in the early 1980s at my public high school in southern Michigan.

My mind is tempted to caption this photo: “Would you want this guy to be your president? Absolutely!” Why? Because, in fact, he had the privilege of experiencing life as a “normal guy,” unlike too many who rise up through the ranks to become candidates. Having read biographies of our current President Bush, and of the former, no one would ever be bold enough to characterize anyone of the Bush clan as “normal guys,” raised with as much privilege and wealth as they have.

My heart is still rejoicing that we have a president (soon!) who not only is a black man, but is a product of a marriage between two different ethnic backgrounds. Do we realize what a triumphant event we are witnessing? Until very recently, so-called “mixed race” marriages were not even legal in all fifty states. In the 1967 Supreme Court case (appropriately called) Loving v. Virginia, this country finally legalized marriage between races, and put behind us that terrible commonality we shared with racially divided regimes such as Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa. Triumphant, indeed. No, of course it does not erase the racism still festering in the hearts of some Americans. But still, triumphant!

Forty-one years after Loving v. Virginia, this dashing young man, Harvard Law star and former “regular guy,” takes the office which has been until now occupied by a long, long line of very White guys, hardly any of them fitting the description “normal,” least of all the present occupant. Who else but Bush would have gotten shoes lobbed at him by a citizen of a nation he recently (according to him) “liberated,” (by destroying and then occupying it)? Yeah, the white man has had his chance; let someone else have a turn.

Welcome Barack Obama. Welcome, and good luck to you.

Obama Blue

Well, my candidate won, and so did his party, as shown by the resurgence of blue color symbolizing the Democratic victories in the Senate and the House. The high school students at the small Christian academy where I teach religion and history have been divided over this election race, and, at times, argue with one another. Some students cornered me as I supervised them at lunch, and wouldn’t accept my evasive answers to their persistent questioning: Who did you vote for, Mr. Miles? So I told them; it felt like a casual enough moment, outside the classroom, far from the authoritative “speaking as teacher” mode during which all teachers are loath to bring in their personal political opinions for fear of unduly imprinting their own values on impressionable kids’ minds.

I just finished refereeing another heated discussion in our World History class, in which there are students fervently supporting each of the candidates. The McCain supporters today are disappointed, angry, and some are resigning themselves to the fact that this Obama win means the end of the world just got a little closer to becoming reality. The Obama supporters are rejoicing, proud, and full of hope in their country’s future, one in which they are now eager to play a part.

As they wrangled over campaign talking points which had gotten embedded into their minds over the past months, I stopped everyone for a moment and expressed to them my desire to see them never put party politics over their friendships with each other. I told them that since I had told some of them at lunch who I voted for, that I wanted a chance to say something else about my choice of candidates.

I told them that I wish I could see four parallel Americas going through the next four years; one, with a President Barack Obama leading us; another, with a President John McCain in charge; a third, with President Joseph Biden in the Oval Office; and a fourth with a President Sarah Palin. I told them, and I sincerely mean this, that I have seen things in all four Americans that I would love to see in action in the Executive Branch. I also told them that I believe that any reasonable American citizen could execute the office of the President, given that at this point, the best expert advice in the world is at the fingertips of whoever occupies that position. And so, I believe that any of the four candidates could have been good Presidents. But we don’t get to choose four, just one, and so we choose who we choose, and trust that we made the right choice, no take-backs, no do-overs.

I also said that it is our duty, no matter who is in office, to make known to them our desires and wishes, and never relax our vigilance in holding them to account for what they do while in that office, working for us. And I do not think we should hold up any victorious candidate as our Messiah, the one who will solve our problems, deserving of our worship and adoration. He’s just a man, and not God. He’s part of a system that, while holding great potential for serving the needs of a great many people, is nevertheless imperfect, and subject to the corruptions to which all human governments will always be vulnerable.

Even so, Come Lord Jesus, and Thy Kingdom Come, and set up that perfect government on earth, in which nobody votes, but everybody’s needs are perfectly met by the King and Creator of us all.
Amen.

Palin Scares Me

Sarah Palin, one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency if John McCain somehow wins Tuesday’s election, scares me.

And not just because of what she is unprepared to do, namely, meet the many simultaneous and complex challenges which daily assault our country’s chief executive. A President has the ability to call upon virtually any expert for help and assistance, if they are so inclined. FDR was so inclined, and set up his brain trust. Our current President… not so much. He was the “Decider.” Anyway, it’s not as if a President Sarah Palin would be making all the tough calls without (potentially) some of the greatest advice available to a political leader. She would simply be the one getting all the credit (and blame) for the decisions made in her name.

No, what scares me about Palin is her Christianity, and since I myself am a Christian, that statement probably confuses people who know me. Allow me to explain.

My Christian belief system is heavily influenced by Bible prophecy, especially those prophecies concerned with events at the so-called “end times,” also known as “last day events.” The prophecies in the Biblical books of Daniel and Revelation have much to say about the events surrounding the second advent of Christ, and one line of prophecy predicts that the United States will be pivotal in setting up a worldwide religious movement which ends up restricting the religious liberty of citizens who refuse to line up behind its efforts to enforce a certain kind of worship.

My scoffing fellow Christian citizens may think that religious persecution could never happen on American soil, but I remind you that persecution has a long history on this continent. I thank God that the framers of the Constitution learned the lessons from the Massachusetts Bay and Rhode Island colonies. Although Massachusetts Bay was established with Christian principles in mind by Puritans eager for religious liberty, it was a persecuting power to anyone who dared attempt to worship God differently than their leaders commanded. Roger Williams set up Rhode Island colony to be a haven of religious liberty, creating the freedom of conscience only possible by refusing to set up an official state religion or to allow any church to meddle in the affairs of civil governance. By the time it was necessary to create a nation from those colonies, Americans had rejected the Massachusetts model of church and state connectedness, and, especially in the Bill of Rights, enshrined the Rhode Island model of complete separation of church and state.

The First Amendment is the genius of American rule of law. And because of this wealth of religious autonomy enjoyed by Americans, my spiritual forefathers (the founders of the Advent movement and the Seventh-day Adventist Church) were able to freely teach the Bible prophecies which predict that, contrary to our beloved Law of the Land, someday this country would sacrifice religious liberty for the sake of some future crisis. This country has never lacked for crisis, and one only has to consult the stock market these days for fresh sources of panic.

The book of Daniel predicted the rise and fall of many empires which are now long gone, but also a religious power which would rise from the ashes of the Roman Empire and has indeed become the most visible and politically powerful segment of modern Christianity. The Roman Catholic Church and its leadership, the Papacy, were a bloodthirsty persecuting power during the Dark Ages. The book of Revelation teaches that someday the now dormant and docile persecuting Church will take up the sword again, bolstered by the religious and political authority of the gem of the New World, the United States.

Since the religion most commonly practiced within the United States has always been Christianity, it has always seemed to me that the prophecy in Revelation 12, 13, and 14 foresees a time when this country’s leadership will be taken over by Christian politicians who share a fundamentalist worldview with the many voters who sweep them into office and then somewhat mindlessly allow them to erode away the religious and civil liberties which made this country a uniquely free society. Sarah Palin, of all the four candidates (Presidential and VP), is the most likely to be that fundamentalist leader.

Most Presidents of this country have been church-going Christians. But very few have dared to make their religious faith a prominent part of their political agenda; this is wise, since the First Amendment so forcefully warns us away from institutionalizing any religion, and a President embodies in their person the very institution of the Executive Branch of our government. Lately, though, more Christian voters have willingly taken on the political agendas of their religious leaders, and of organizations like Focus on the Family, the Heritage Foundation, the Discovery Institute, and the Republican Party itself, which more and more looks and behaves much like a Christian institution. The twin issues, abortion and homosexuality, are the deciding factors for many Christians when it comes to deciding which political organizations to support or be influenced by.

And so the Republican candidates this election include Sarah Palin, a born-again believer from the Pentecostal and charismatic end of the Christian spectrum. She has strong ties to the popular and explosively growing Third Wave and dominionist movements in fundamentalist Christianity. These movements promote a very politicized set of beliefs and fervently pray, and work, and vote, for the Christian politicians they bless and send into campaigns in order to transform nations and other political entities all over the world into Christian “dominions.” They practice a complex form of spiritual warfare, battling demons at many levels which they perceive to be the barriers preventing Catholics, Jews, atheists, other Protestants, etc., from joining their particular movement.

The scary part of all this is what the media has not been bothering to find out regarding how much Palin is likely to be influenced by this extremely motivated, and fiercely political group of power-hungry Christians. One website dedicated to documenting these very questions is called Talk To Action. I recommend to all that you spend time studying their findings before you vote.

Barack Obama is a Christian, (not a Muslim, as the Republican rumor-mill has successfully gotten many of their flock to believe), and thus shares in this potentiality whereby he could be influenced by Christians in this country to do similarly damaging things to religious liberty. He just doesn’t seem to be as openly and obviously beholden to his spiritual mentors as is Palin; he seems more interested in political solutions than religious ones. And that makes good sense to me, in light of the wall of separation between church and state that we should preserve and defend to the end.

As an academic and an intellectual person (as most teachers, I suppose, are), I am drawn to Obama’s thoughtful, intelligent approach to tough issues. When others were complaining about his hesitation to make bold campaign pronouncements, I was respecting his sense of reserve, knowing that all the campaign rhetoric that gets you elected amounts to little more than access to a seat at that table where many, many others are also empowered to wrangle with you over the pressing problems of the moment. I would much rather have someone at that table who has the skills to unite, to compromise, to imagine solutions to problems from the perspective of one who has advocated for the neediest in the community (which is what his years as a community organizer gave him), than one who has only been a chief executive (mayor, governor) and who has mainly dealt with the needs of the least needy in the community (oil companies doing business in Palin’s Alaska).

Ultimately, I really don’t care who wins on Tuesday. Part of me wants my Lord to hasten His coming and take us home to heaven, and knowing that the prophetic events which Palin is very likely to set in motion makes me a little excited at the prospect of the end coming that much sooner, rather than later. But another part of me always wishes for the best for my home and country, for the sake of my family and the work God gave my church that remains so very unfinished, and thus I also hope for a little more time, more time to pray and work and watch my daughters grow up in a country they haven’t yet seen the best of.

Palin Remixed Presidency

The Palin Collective

I like Sarah Palin’s idea to collectively share the wealth of the oil companies, effectively establishing collective ownership of resources. She’s a popular governor in Alaska, where her administration presides over the most socialist (oops, don’t tell her that!) policies in the country.

The state that she governs has no income or sales tax. Instead, it imposes huge levies on the oil companies that lease its oil fields. The proceeds finance the government’s activities and enable it to issue a four-figure annual check to every man, woman, and child in the state. One of the reasons Palin has been a popular governor is that she added an extra twelve hundred dollars to this year’s check, bringing the per-person total to $3,269. A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist—Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine—that “we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.” (source)

I hope that whomever wins the election, Obama or McCain, that the United States will adopt the Alaska Collective model, abolish the federal income tax, and replace those revenues with taxes on the wealthiest oil, coal, and other energy corporations, just like in Palin’s State.

I vote for the Palin Collective! So should you, my fellow comrades! Er- citizens!

VP Debate Spoofed

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Final Debate in a Minute

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The Second Presidential Debate In a Minute

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http://www.236.com/video/2008/watch_second_presidential_deba_9434.php

The Vice-Presidential Debate In a Minute

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http://www.236.com/video/2008/watch_vp_debate_in_a_minute_9334.php