NFB film imperative viewing for all activists

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-world-according-to-monsanto/

this film whacked me in the head bone by virtue of default astonishment even tho i thought i was informed: the Whole Earth is being affected by the gmo revolution that is led by the corporate "powers that be" as shown in the above excellent & imperative movie for everyone-- who eats anything-- to watch!

NFB source:
http://search.nfb.ca/search?q=The+World+According+to+Canada&btnG=Search&entqr=0&output=xml_no_dtd&sort=date%3AD%3AL%3Ad1&client=beta_onfb&ud=1&oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF-8&proxystylesheet=beta_onfb&proxyreload=1&hl=en&lr=lang_en&site=beta_onfb

other related links to monsanto:
http://theyrule.net/drupal/map_633
http://www.percyschmeiser.com/
http://organicconsumers.org/monsanto/index.cfm

forwardstl posted this post 4 me:
 http://www.forwardstl.org/post/26291252915/nfb-film-imperative-viewing-for-all-activists-write

Reading the news, fighting the blues. . . .

Some days and times I feel discouraged by the events in the world. Who cannot, while we still wage wars, and produce environmental changes that imperil other species besides humans? Somewhere I heard that our human population will be around 10 billion by the end of the current century. That is certainly supposition, considering that we will in the interim face our own survival threats. In many places people already do. We consider ourselves blessed in the United States, somewhat overly optimistically, as though we can continue the same mistakes indefinitely without cruel consequences to our children's children. We are taking little responsibility for our errors. And the whole world sees those errors as American. We plant denial rather than objective reasoning in our media through the prevalent advertising campaigns of large business.

Despite all the knowledge we have accumulated we continue to exceed ourselves in numbers while simultaneously waging long wars, disrupting the balance of nature by recklessly using resources. The wars are aimed at obtaining access to resources. To say they are defensive is a universally understood lie. Corporate raids on other continents are seen by local peoples as outright robbery, with environmental consequences in Nigeria, Mexico, South and Central America, plus elsewhere, that serve our consumerist culture.

Sometimes I have to just laugh outright about political ideas that are so naive and sometimes backwards, being voiced by leadership inside D.C.

Plant bioengineering, which is extremely expensive, is being seen as quite successful by some people in political positions. Meanwhile, in reality, the use of genetically modified (GM) seeds has been resisted in Europe while it "seems" extremely popular among growers in the USA. As to all the ins and outs of why this is so, let's just boil it down to money versus common sense. Monsanto, an International Corporation based in St. Louis, has been The major producer of GM seeds. How many citizens here even know this story?? Among the most vilified of corporations on earth by environmental and justice activists, Monsanto is rich enough to fight any opposition to the use of their seeds in court, including in Canada.

Just from a purely personal perspective I have found that eating corn based foods that are produced, processed and packaged in the USA is hazardous to my digestive processes. Some sort of corn is widely distributed in all sorts of prepared and packaged foods. Blue corn I do tolerate, but not yellow. This is only my own minor evidence that it doesn't suit me well, of course. But scientists do recognized that bio-engineered plants are not being investigated adequately for adverse affects to human consumers. No, I never watched the movie KING CORN, but I think I get the picture.

We have a stunning lot of money available to research certain areas of human life, including food production, commercial and manufacturing products like computers, machinery, electronic gadgets, and the sciences. How much time and success, on the other hand, do we devote to social investigation, conflict resolution, conflict intervention and diplomacy that have proven positive outcomes? Are we simply a genetically impaired species that cannot make any sense out of ourselves and how we relate? Why exactly does a world leader not envision his or her own country boundaries as friendly territory with a neighbor rather than as a challenge to be overwhelmed by dominance?

Isn't it obvious, when you are watching old episodes of Star Trek, that the science of a live future is human communication?

Maybe I am just naive, even in old age.

Medea Benjamin on Real News about Gaza Freedom March

A Valentine for You

http://poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16944

Dream State of Mind

We are driving down a brown country road,

no town in sight, just low earthy mountains,

when we are stopped by the soldiers waiting for us

as though we are expected.

Everyone jumps out-- except me

because I'm not able. Yes, i'm vulnerable.

The officer looks in on me.

All the guns in the world can neither protect

nor threaten me. All that can is my state of mind,

the one thing I pack with me wherever I go, even to this dream.

We cannot mine for love the way we do for diamonds.

We cannot drill for forgiveness in the desert of our souls.

The sins of our forebears since industry revolted

are moving in with us like unwelcome relatives.

What is this monster we have called commerce,

power, or yoke? Aren't garage sales more fun and wondrous?

We have so much stuff here it threatens to choke us.

At least I know I do, but none of it's worthless.

Unless, that is, we add it to landfills, or flush it down drains.

Or continue buying more plastic water bottles

We need to be realistic, together, as we

wage our war against borders, barriers, walls,

tall buildings hemming persons in and others out.

Turn it around one plot of ground after another.

Plant gardens on our roofs, in our neighborhoods,

in our minds and spirits, our expectations, inspirations, artistry and work.

West Coast forests are slowly turning brown & dying--

why is a mystery. What are we doing in Afghanistan?

No one can lead us anywhere, forward or back,

to the right, to the left, up or down, without our consent.

We can never know precisely what will grow well

until it comes up. But we do have some clues.

The question now is where will the rain fall?

How many of us can these rains save from earth on hell?

Or relegate them there? Not just you and me, them over there too.

We have to pull in, downplay the spaces in between,

live a little more snugly, simply, interchangeably,

keeping reason, knowledge and skill among our riches.

Each of us is stronger than all the others in some way.

When we share our unique gifts, well, in unity is strength.

While we do nothing to face the conclusion

others remain in their fateful collusion.

Some sustainable energy solutions in Missouri

This article is promising a revolution of sorts. They have made kits for local start ups to manufacture solar panels. Do any of you have some business expertise? This could provide jobs as well as help the transition, although Taiwan is across the globe somewhere.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=cranking-out-pv-panels&SID=mail&sc=emailfriend

Another person who has been active in establishing some work on renewables in St. Louis is the Rev. Larry Rice, most known for his homeless shelter downtown. He has TV spots on his channel, 24? about solar panels, as well as wind turbines that are small enough to put on a roof.
Do any of you St. Louisans know any more about this? Could a renter install a wind turbine? How much power would it provide, for what cost, etc.?
http://moreenergy.org/main.htm

We also have a wind farm in NW MO., only one I have heard about so far.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/missouristatenews/story/EBDFFCB0634D549686257492001CAF6C?OpenDocument

Actually what I find the most exciting is the relatively new project being worked on at SIUE (Southern Illinois University--Edwardsville) across the river from here. I think they may also have a connection with Washington University. The Green Roofs concept has been used widely in Europe from what I have read. It not only provides great insulation, especially for all these old flat roof buildings like I am currently living in, it also increases green space with benefits to the air, etc. Done properly, established rooftop gardens require very little maintenance since the plants are ones that live well on existing rainfall and tolerate a wide range of temperatures.

Anyone want to talk my landlord into installing one? ;-> Then I would not have to move. They are still a relatively expensive investment at this point, but perhaps eventually they will be helped along by government grants or something.
http://www.greenroofs.com/projects/pview.php?id=454
http://www.green-siue.com/
http://www.stop158.org/2008/2008-02-18-Edwardsville.htm

To me it seems obvious that we will have to take ahold of moving forward to such methods ourselves on local levels in order to reduce our dependence on foreign resources as well as the least desirable fossil fuels that continue to pollute and increase global warming. This will require a lot of political cooperation, but I do think that people are more ready now than ever. Ultimately it is one of the most helpful ways to work for world peace.
It is great to know that a lot of ecological approaches have been initiated in Missouri, and enthusiasm is building toward actual solutions instead of the same old denial arguments.

"The Price of Silence" video celebration and call to action

http://us.oneworld.net/article/359165-the-price-silence-music-video

Talking Turkey on the Economy

This year the American people have more than ever to be grateful for. While this might sound contradictory to a lot of us in the face of this economy, we have been given another chance. How often does that happen? Think about it.

Let's talk turkey. We have been the most spoiled brat consumerist country in Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood for decades on end. The process accelerated under the Clinton Administration with the internet bubble and the passage of the first so-called "free trade agreements," and then blasted into outer space by the totally criminal Cheney-Bush war machine. Some of the experts are now saying the whole world economy was based on United States consumerism. No matter what the scientists told us about global climate changes threatening the lives of our own children we continued to buy stuff, bottled water, electronics, SUVs, houses, dinners out with ever increasing size of food portions. Nothing seemed to have any force of waking us up from our American Dream, the corrupted version, now available on DVD. We really must acknowledge the problem to begin recovering.

After the disastrous consequences of 9-11 and various Gulf Coast hurricanes we started yapping on and on, angrily blaming all our problems on the Muslim world, as if they could have done anything to have saved us from our hunger for more-- more oil, more bottled water, more corn syrup in our food and drink, more chain restaurants, more travel, more sex toys, more revealing clothing, more swimming pools and luxury homes, not to mention weapons, guns, bombs and the games that replicate them. Things were as they "should be," USA on top of the world, playing king of the hill, a dangerous and delusional game that could not but result in our eventual tumble down the hill alongside our friend jill, the EU.

Finally the inevitable happened and for the first time since our founding we have had to take a thoroughly good look at ourselves in the mirror of destiny. We haven't even begun to see our own image through that frosted up glass. And we may well remain in this fog until reality sets in. That is how delusional thinking works. "No, this can't be true, we are the wealthiest country on the planet, and nothing will ever change that." China chuckles, Russia outright laughs. And Higher Power, if it Be, raps us hard on our knuckles just for starters.

A lot of us, including me, have likened what we are now experiencing as analogous to the Great Depression. But it isn't. Yes, that fall was precipitated by a Gilded Age, a generous dose of materialistic obsession, as well as political corruption. But the real story today has more to do with the bottom line of natural resources. We have gobbled resources up like rats in a grain elevator who have a genetic metabolic disorder. It hasn't mattered to us how much we have or how little some others are living on-- we have still needed desperately to continue to eat, eat, eat, gobble, gobble.

Now, about those turkeys, and I don't mean the ones that are now leaving office. The turkey was the bird that Benjamin Franklin would have chosen for our national symbol instead of the bald eagle. He was, of course, talking about wild turkeys, the kind that I used to have in my rural front and back yards when I once lived in a little cottage up a gravel lane. They were close to extinction by mid twentieth century, with an estimated count of 300,000 birds nation wide.

The Eastern wild turkey is indigenous to Missouri and also a feed into our current state economy. Unlike eagles that soar in the sky these gloriously feathered creatures keep to the limbs of trees for safety, mostly living close to the earth where they consume insects, select grains and nuts. Every spring and fall these birds, related to quail, pheasant and grouse, reinstate themselves as a success story in the history of conservation in our state, bringing hunters out to rural areas to bag themselves a meal. Because of our first rate conservation efforts Missouri can now afford the hunting of over ten thousands of these creatures each year.

Where I was living in the late 80s, in Iron County, the turkeys were probably attracted to the pond on the roadside end of the property, a watering hole inhabited by peeper frogs and surrounded by tall grass and wildflowers. My undisciplined dog had alerted me to their presence by barking at them at night After that I noticed them more often as I traveled the countryside on home visits. They fly in small groups, gathering in flocks in some fields, and once I happened across a pile of feathers left behind by some hungry coyote.

The local people knew when hunting season began and when it ended so they could choose when they themselves would hunt. "Those city folks are going to be out here this weekend like flies on dead roadkill," they would say on the last days of the shotgun season. It was the most likely weekend for hunting injuries to show up in the ER and the worst two days for putting yourself in harm's way. Same with deer season. But it brought money in, which was important of course. Money is important to all of us, each in our own way. Some of us who are used to living more humbly are also more likely to survive the ups and downs because we have developed survival skills along our paths which we never forget.

Others ride individual private jets to Washington, D.C., to beg for a bailout loan. They expect their workers to keep them fat, even when some of us "lower" beings are starving. Here they are now, wearing their depleted money bags like millstones around their collars, having taken a workforce down with their lack of vision, not having planned ahead or faced the facts about the consumption of domestic and foreign oil that they have been selling to us for decades. We should help them out of this fix? Whatever for? So they can build factories in other countries for lower wage workers?

Instead we need to direct our attention to the workers, the people who create the wealth by their own sweat. We need to extend unemployment compensation, place some safe guards on IRAs and retirement funds, create a system of health care that treats everyone equally and covers all of us. We need infrastructure repair jobs created in every large city. We need mortgage assistance for the people who are in danger of losing their homes. And we will have to shore up the conservation efforts everywhere, planting neighborhood gardens, eating food that is within a two hour drive of where we live, and cutting back on the fertilizers that are creating dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico by farm runoff. We are going to have to start using some of the knowledge we have gained about renewable energy and energy conservation. If we want to remain a viable species in the web of life we will have to steward the planet in a more conservative and responsible way. This will be an exhilarating, wondrous experience as each community begins thinking and acting locally instead of just monetarily.

Globalization is necessary in the realm of human rights but not in the corporate world. The World Bank has not regulated global trade, it has facilitated escalation of exploitation by companies we know as "American," but what have they really become? Truly American corporations will need to be regulated with an eye to benefiting GDP, not CEOs. Capitalism is not in and of itself evil, but the motives behind it often become so.

Do we need any of these fat cats, who have been selling financial products that are essentially empty folders of bad debt? NO! Send them straight to prison. Empty some prison beds for them by creating recovery services for drug users and dealers that include training to work in self motivating neighborhood gardens, cooperatives, local theaters, shops, restaurants, and renewable or passive energy manufacturing. Make small business loans available in downtrodden urban neighborhoods instead of accelerating big business on the interstate edge of suburbia. We need to call a lobbyist what s/he is, a prostitute for corporate bigwigs, and make the job title "lobbyist" represent a felony crime. The johns in Congress need reforming as well as antibiotic shots into their every "but, but, but. . . ."

We are going to have to return to our roots as a community based democracy which is based on an assumption of sharing and responsibility for each other, a naturally occurring hierarchy of cooperation that is inherent in all primates. In the spirit of Thanksgiving perhaps we can remember that the living local model for American democracy was taught to us by the indigenous population of people whom the pilgrims met, and who were later to be exploited by the immigrant European concept of take, take, and take some more.

The reality is that we will have to accomplish this goal of community if we want to survive on a planet that our dear nation has been robbing blind. The word "corporation" in no way actually implies rights recognized by the Constitution. In fact the word has been expanded in meaning from a collection of like minded investors in business together so that it has taken on a connotation of corruption, imperialism, exploitation and downright evil. Money can only be a false idol to a social parasite.

Sometimes I feel kind of sorry for the Ayn Rand fans and other upper one per cent of the top ten percent of our population that control most of the world's wealth. They are so addicted to a way of life that feeds them more, more, more, that they have lost their sanity. If you dropped them off at a house trailer out on old Highway V they wouldn't have the foggiest notion what a turkey looks like or how to hunt for one.

Chances are the one they might spot would be in their own mirror, which is now beginning to defrost. And this is a good sign for the resurgence of true democracy, which has been handed back to the people after a recent significant election.

Just don't let yourselves down, folks. You are going to have some real work ahead of you. Vigilance is ever so. Change is welcome but never easy.

Twelve Points in favor of Impeachment

1. My support is fully behind pursuing impeachment of current members of the administration, George W.Bush and Richard (Dick) Cheney. I deign not to designate them by their presumed titles, President and Vice President.
2. Holding the current administration accountable is required to safeguard the United States Constitution.
3. The press has publicly recognized the fears of some members of Congress related to their inside knowledge of administrative policies that skirted legality. Not only was a sovereign nation illegally invaded and war illegally waged, but also illegal torture was used against persons who had not been given Rights which are sacrosanct to Americans as well as to civil society in the World. Lies were used to produce more lies and violence was initiated without warrant or due process
4. Congress now must act, since the truth has emerged, in order to effect a remedy. This will require courage. Courage is a quality admired by the populace.
5. Failure to pursue all legal means necessary to reign in the powers of the Presidency will result in damage beyond knowing to our nation. The failing economy is only the beginning of the decline that could ensue.
6. The outcome of pursuing every legal remedy, including impeachment proceedings against both persons known as the President and the Vice President, preferably simultaneously, will be to relieve our nation of its now damaged reputation in the eyes of the world and to restore confidence of its citizens in the government.
7. Assuming a political stance of looking forward rather than back as a way of protecting individual Congress members is not a choice. It smacks of cowardice. It is an inside-the-Beltway idea that has no relevance to the people who cast votes in a nation no longer recognizing the sovereignty of The People.
8. Our nation has ventured into the beginning of a reign of fascism, a too close alliance between government and corporate powers. The so-called "Bail-out" is symptomatic of this.
9. The Republican and Democratic Parties have become way too intertwined and mutually corrupt. Their members are deluded by material gain and illusory power rather than serving as our true representatives. Other Parties must be allowed equal access to office.
10. Currently reigning political corruption is most damaging to us in foreign policy. We often label other nations as intolerant and in violation of civil rights. In fact we are a nation of great resources and wealth with an obligation to share with those who are not so blessed. Yet we fail to provide some of our own citizens with "the pursuit of happiness" as could be provided by health care.
11. Money forfeited to the now defunct regime of evil, to be replaced by President-elect Barrack Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden, has been wasted on violence, personal accrual of assets, false and nefarious propaganda and directives such as the imperial rule of the Department of Justice, blasphemous violations of the Constitution by political operatives for political gain, abuse of the role of Commander in Chief, and establishment of illegal empire in foreign states. These are indeed high crimes and misdemeanors.
12. As a citizen of the United States of America, I demand that the Congress of these United States proceed with impeachment against George W. Bush and Richard (Dick) Cheney.

Nothing to lose but walls

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell underneath
And spills the upper boulders in the sun.
--Robert Frost

We used to see and hear the stories on TV, black and white back in the early sixties, of people trying to climb the Berlin Wall and being shot down, of others tunneling under, and we cheered them on. To us in our middle class neighborhoods these scenes were cruel aspects of some life far away from us, while we lived in freedom in America.

The Diary of Anne Frank, televised version, ended with that creepy up and down siren that lived on in the imagination afterward, even though that detail was actually a fiction. All of us little white children could never have imagined the horrors even in our own country of segregationist policies that kept some people out of the halls of power. Until they too showed up on that little screen in the living room, most of us were excruciatingly naïve. We had not yet comprehended our own shame, far less that of others, far less that of governments.

Oh, it was all in the Bible, those verses that we memorized and sought to practice against reprimands from our parents. But we had very little other context than our own back yards, the swing sets, the doll houses, the teeny little green rubber soldiers that engaged in make believe battles on the sidewalk or on the living room rug. A lot of us had fathers who were soldiers in World War II.

Across the street from where I was a new little house went up next to the giant oak tree and a family moved in with a couple of girls around my age and their little brother. Their father was a “Mason,” or so my mother told me with a touch of disdain in her voice. I never was sure what that meant or why it angered her. Maybe she was jealous.

But clearly it was some kind of distaste which was not even something described in the Ten Commandments, to my knowledge. I wanted her to be friends with the mother because one of those girls and I hit it off over making mud pies together. Before we moved away from there when I was twelve that family was already in another new house, bigger and better, around the block from us, and my first real friendship with someone outside the family had vanished into thin air. I never really knew what had happened. My first best friend had to be substituted for by some girls at school who were, presumably, of the right sort of Christian like us.

Where do those kinds of wall come from, the ones that prevent people from speaking their minds and honestly working out their problems, leaving some things unsaid with the blessing of humane acceptance? Those subtle walls known as prejudices slowly build over time into physical structures, separating us from the benefit of alternatives to our own rigid thinking. In the U.S. we now have the highest rate of incarceration in the world, and are building actual physical walls on our southern border.

Now, nearly half a century later than making my first solid friendship, everything on the computer screen is in color and you will not be able to watch TV next year if you have not yet made some adjustments for high definition. Oh yeah, it is all still about money. Some of us have access to information, political power, education and jobs and others do not.

And now we have businesses such as Boeing, a corporation which is a member of Dwight D. Eisenhauer's predicted military-industrial complex, benefiting from the current rage in building walls to keep people from crossing borders to our south, just like Israel has around Palestine. Here we have the effects of so-called “free trade” at work, along with climate change. Well, you know, it is all for our safety against terrorism (one of those “isms” in the same class as racism). And building walls provides Americans with jobs, not to mention gives some specific contractors access to government handouts. Who gives a deflated dollar if it hurts them there foreigners or does virtually no real good for us? For the most part it is kept totally out of our eyesight anyway, since the corporately owned media will not let us know what we are doing as a nation. And that keeps us innocent of any crime as individuals, at least in our imaginations.. It is all the property of the Homeland Security office or some foreign state that we underwrite. None of us need get our own hands dirty if we don't want to. It is just the way things are. We gotta have walls.

During my last couple of years in high school I lived in a southern state, not the Deep South, but close enough. We were some of the first students to go to the now desegregated school. The town was still divided, as it probably remains to this day, into black and white neighborhoods. Moving back to St. Louis again not long after graduation-- and even up until today-- our neighborhoods are still generally ethnically divided. People say that they want to live by people who are like them, but that is not the whole story and we know it, everyone who has half a brain. Yeah, we still have these walls, which we work together to maintain, despite those noble words of Robert Frost. If only they could tumble down so readily among us creatures so easily divided by hierarchical heritage with our fearful brains and hairless bodies hiding under clothes. Each of us insists we are some special breed because of the small piece of land upon which we were bred by circumstance outside of our command. Sometimes I feel lucky to be able to answer the eternally famous St. Louis question, “Where did you go to school?” with two words, ”Not here.”

Because I don't fit in anywhere. Because I started out working in the trenches with the least among us and did so for years and years, and I always wanted to learn something new. So I found out at a young age what dying was like, what a corpse actually looks like, how people are terrified by death and work like hell to bring someone back, rarely entertaining the idea that for some it might actually be an improvement over what they are experiencing on this plane.

And I went from hospitals to homes and usually made friends with the “lower class” workers and patients because they were more like me in many ways, despite some advantages that I have benefited from. In my own early life there had been violence, a lesson that imprints itself indelibly on the organism's physical body forever after, leaving trust of others always in question. Besides that I was “shy,” a quiet person who didn't talk excessively like most “leaders” do, so I became an astonishingly good observer, since that was my job, and also my lifestyle.

Politics are everywhere and nearly always involve dirt. When they sink to violence we might consider them animal, but the truth is that no other species is as self destructive as we are to ourselves. When Mr. Gorbachev “tore down those walls'” in 1989 as leader of the Soviet Union he was just a few years past the Chernobyl incident in the Ukraine. Reagan may have taken credit for it but internal pressure was probably more likely the cause of democratic moves in Eastern Europe.

Perhaps I have spent most of my life looking for something that will always remain totally inexplicable and elusive. We apparently cannot escape the despicable ways that humans beings behave so that we find lasting peace.

But this week I was given renewed hope by a small band of international human rights workers who sailed on a couple of fishing vessels into Gaza, opening the Palestinian citizens there to outsiders for the first time in forty-one years. The Free Gaza Movement had arrived.

On Saturday, August 23, two boats landed on the beach where they were welcomed by enthusiastic Palestinians, who have been blockaded into their small borders by the Israelis since 1967. Perhaps facing the devastation of ensuing global climate disruption will bring us forward into a new era of peace, working together for our common interests.

We really don't have much to lose in hoping.