Agent Orange is one of the most devastating weapons of modern warfare, a chemical which killed or injured an estimated 400,000 people during the Vietnam War -- and now it's being used against the Amazon rainforest. According to officials, ranchers in Brazil have begun spraying the highly toxic herbicide over patches of forest as a covert method to illegally clear foliage, more difficult to detect that chainsaws and tractors. In recent weeks, an aerial survey detected some 440 acres of rainforest that had been sprayed with the compound -- poisoning thousands of trees and an untold number of animals, potentially for generations.
Officials from Brazil's environmental agency IBAMA were first tipped to the illegal clearing by satellite images of the forest in Amazonia; a helicopter flyover in the region later revealed thousands of trees left ash-colored and defoliated by toxic chemicals. IBAMA says that Agent Orange was likely dispersed by aircraft by a yet unidentified rancher to clear the land for pasture because it is more difficult to detect than traditional operations that require chainsaws and tractors.
Last week, in another part of the Amazon, an investigation conducted by the agency uncovered approximately four tons of the highly toxic herbal pesticides hidden in the forest awaiting dispension. If released, the chemicals could have potentially decimated some 7,500 acres of rainforest, killing all the wildlife that resides there and contaminating groundwater. In this case, the individual responsible was identified and now faces fines nearing $1.3 million.
i am questioning said report so give me a bit to do more research.
Originally posted by: samUwell im going to add a few more government backed corporations to the Legion of Doom:
Suez
Veolia Environnement
Thames Water
im beginning to think these companies are more evil that Monsanto.
Foriegn water companies bought American Water Works a while back. American Water works is the largest private industry water utility in the United States. They also bought other water companies in the US or have been contracted to run municipal owned systems
To some degree the state has the most power over who controls our water based on the local water regulations, they can essentially set the limits and fine any water company working in the state so much that their profit vanishes if they chose to. They set up the permitting processes through various channels with stipulations as to how everything should be done, when to apply penalties, and the frequency of the renewal process for potential competition to emerge.
The biggest room for corruption is in the bidding process just like we see for major construction projects where the state favors one corporation exclusively for the bulk of its work. The process for bidding will not always work as it should, we put a lot of responsibility into the hands of a select few with the assumption that they're working for our best interest instead of their own.
Its not unheard of in my state to hear of one corporation getting a contract over another only to learn later it was because a key official was bribed in a pay-to-play style deal.
If your state is working for you in good faith, they should be regulating the corporations they've determined are the best to operate their public utilities in a transparent and fair manner.
It wasn't long ago that my state set up an enforcement wing of the DEP (Now the DEEP after the natural gas plant purging incident brought energy under their supervision) that has all the power of a police force with a specialty in environmental regulations. It took them a looong long time to go from just regulating to enforcing, but in my opinion thats a slow step in the right direction.
i find it interesting when oil tycoons begin to buy up lots of land that has clean water.
T. Boone Pickens: A Water Baron for the 21st Century
His company Mesa Water has been scooping up water rights in the Texas Panhandle for more than a decade. But it’s an often overlooked piece of his energy portfolio — and it’s turning out to be one of his smartest bets yet.
The Bush land is close to a new U.S. military installation, the Mariscal Estigarribia Air Base. It is also nearby a huge tract of land purchased by Sun Myung Moon that sits astride Latin America's largest water aquifer, the Guarani aquifer.
if God made man to consume everything on earth, why did he make the surface of the earth 70% salt water?
Originally posted by: [-NM-] -SS- Off the top of my head...
Deiselfumes:
Vote for obama? Check.
Bash McCain? Check.
Sides with the most left poster (cobalt) on issues? Check.
Bashes the cops? Check.
Hates them military? Check.
Criticize Bush consistently? Check.
Stand up for unions, especially the UAW? Check.
Bash Pillbug for criticizing progressives / liberals / democrats? BIG FUCKIN CHECK.
Ever state disparaging things about congress under democratic super majority [for TWO YEARS] prior to 2010 elections? Nope.
What a fun game of manipulation to obfuscate political positions and misrepresent one's self!
People have personas on this forum, you said so yourself in correspondance with me. I'm not going to get in the middle of this pissing match, but I can tell you from his FB page...you can take at least half of your list down. He has railed both sides of the aisle. I could say more, but I'll respect his privacy. But if he was lying here in these forums, I would call him out....in a heart beat. I'd say that graph he posted is accurate.
I agree with him, at one point this site was ridicuously right. A lot of Bush nuthuggers that embraced the mantra of "if you aren't with us, then you are against us". What a crock of shit, just like if you don't like Obama, your a racist.
On Monsanto, let's not forget the douchebag that covered a statue of the lady of justice because she had an exposed breast....John Ashcroft. He was a former mucky muck at Monsanto and turned a blind eye when a major lawsuit was filed against his former company.
Originally posted by: [-NM-] -SS- Off the top of my head...
Deiselfumes:
Vote for obama? Check.
Bash McCain? Check.
Sides with the most left poster (cobalt) on issues? Check.
Bashes the cops? Check.
Hates them military? Check.
Criticize Bush consistently? Check.
Stand up for unions, especially the UAW? Check.
Bash Pillbug for criticizing progressives / liberals / democrats? BIG FUCKIN CHECK.
Ever state disparaging things about congress under democratic super majority [for TWO YEARS] prior to 2010 elections? Nope.
What a fun game of manipulation to obfuscate political positions and misrepresent one's self!
People have personas on this forum, you said so yourself in correspondance with me. I'm not going to get in the middle of this pissing match, but I can tell you from his FB page...you can take at least half of your list down. He has railed both sides of the aisle. I could say more, but I'll respect his privacy. But if he was lying here in these forums, I would call him out....in a heart beat. I'd say that graph he posted is accurate.
I agree with him, at one point this site was ridicuously right. A lot of Bush nuthuggers that embraced the mantra of "if you aren't with us, then you are against us". What a crock of shit, just like if you don't like Obama, your a racist.
On Monsanto, let's not forget the douchebag that covered a statue of the lady of justice because she had an exposed breast....John Ashcroft. He was a former mucky muck at Monsanto and turned a blind eye when a major lawsuit was filed against his former company.
Please shut the fuck up. Are you now sucking off that little pile of dung? _______________________________________________________________
"If guns kill people then spoons make us fat!"
The USDA has been under fire recently for its admitted assault against nature, after multiple investigations have uncovered its deliberate tampering with both plants and animals alike. One such investigation has put an end to the mystery surrounding the death of millions of birds, with USDA documents revealing the organization’s role in the massive slaughter. In addition to the mass bird killings, it turns out the USDA was fully aware that a highly-popular herbicide chemical was a known bee-killer, which may have aided the bee decline. The USDA has also threatened the genetic integrity of the nation’s crops. Information has surfaced regarding the USDA’s illegal approval of Monsanto’s biotech crop, sugar beets. These crimes are simply an excerpt from the long list of USDA crimes that are continually being exposed.
[.....]
The Govt sponsored killing of the Birds
A Nebraska farmer was apparently complaining that the starlings were defecating in his feed meal. The answer to this conundrum apparently isn’t to cover your feed meal but rather call the USDA and ask them to poison thousands of birds. The USDA complied, apparently agreeing this was a brilliant idea. So they put out a poison called DRC-1339 and allowed thousands of birds to feed on that poison.
“Cows are supposed to eat grass. If you are running a cow operation where the birds are eating your grain and you think the birds are the problem, the real problem is that you’re feeding cows the wrong food! If you raise your cows on grass, the birds don’t get into the grain and you don’t have to poison the birds.
“You see, when one ecological element gets out of balance (feeding grain to cows, for example), it then causes another problem that must be dealt with in some other destructive way (such as poisoning the birds). This cycle of disharmony continues and escalates until entire ecosystems are out of whack. Then the USDA shows up with a pickup truck full of poison bait and goes to work poisoning animals. The solution isn’t to keep poisoning animals and trying to control populations through toxic chemicals but rather to return to holistic web-of-life farming methods that work in harmony with nature rather than treating nature as the enemy.”
The government is committing what many people would call a crime. Killing mass amounts of animals via poison is a flagrant act of violence against nature that should not be tolerated or encouraged. People aren’t allowed to hunt in certain regions of the United States, but the government is allowed to kill off animals by the millions. Something is terribly wrong with this picture.
[.....]
The Govt sponsored mass slaughter of our Bees.
In recent years the world honey bee population has plummeted in North America. This is important because bee pollination is crucial for the fertilization of many crops. Just as many potential explanations arose over the mysterious bird deaths, many different theories have been proposed to explain the bee decline. Electromagnetic radiation, malnutrition, and climate have all taken the heat of critics looking for answers. Recently, however, a document was leaked revealing that a bee-killing pesticide put in use by the EPA may be to blame. Adding to the controversy, more records have emerged showing that the USDA was fully aware of the pesticide’s threat to not only bees, but humans. The two-month-old report released by the USDA itself unveiled that the toxic insecticide used on plants are not only a threat to insects’ central nervous systems, but are also a threat to the internal systems of humans.
Imidacloprid, one of the neonicotinoid family of pesticides introduced over the past 15 years, is likely to be responsible for Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), the recently observed phenomenon in which bees abandon their hives en masse, according to the study by scientists from the Harvard School of Public Health in the United States.
[.....]
Neonicotinoids, which attack the central nervous system of insects, are considered by some scientists as dangerous to species which are not the compounds’ principal targets, because they are “systemic” – meaning they do not just sit on the surface of a plant but are taken up into every part of it, including the pollen and nectar, where they can be ingested repeatedly by bees and other pollinating insects.
[.....]
Twice in the past three years, the Government has been asked, on the basis of compelling evidence, to suspend the use of the new generation of neonicotinoid pesticides, until the increasingly worrying evidence that they are extremely harmful to bees and other pollinating insects has been shown to be unfounded.
The first occasion was in 2009, by a coalition of environmental groups led by Buglife, the invertebrate conservation charity; the second was in 2011 by the Labour MP Martin Caton, after paper’s disclosure that America’s leading bee scientist had found a harmful link. On each occasion the request was ignored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
[.....]
Who's asshole is the govt sucking? Monsanto
Sugar Beets created by corporate giant Monsanto Company, who is leading the genetically modified food market, make up for about half of the nation’s sugar supply. The approval of these beets was initially made in 2005, granting Monsanto the right to plant genetically modified sugar beets that could withstand sprayings of the herbicide marketed as Roundupť. The entity responsible for the approval? The USDA. Unfortunately, the USDA hadn’t conducted a thorough review of the biotech crop, making the approval flagrantly illegal. To make matters more complicated, the USDA issued permits which allowed companies to plant seedlings that would later produce seed for future sugar beet crops. Judge White, the federal judge who deemed the approval illegal, issued that the seedlings be removed immediately. The immunity that the sugar beets possess against the herbicide being used on them is not exhibited by any other plant, or even humans. With excessive herbicide use comes more poisoned organisms consuming the sugar beets and thus becoming sickly. Additionally, conventional and organic crops are subject to contamination from an overflow of pesticides.
[.....]
If you thought Monsanto’s lack of testing on their current GMO crops was bad before, prepare to now be blown away by the latest statement by the USDA. Despite links to organ damage and mutated insects, the USDA says that it is changing the rules so that genetically modified seed companies like Monsanto will get ‘speedier regulatory reviews. With the faster reviews, there will be even less time spent on evaluating the potential dangers. Why? Because Monsanto is losing sales with longer approval terms.
The changes were expected to take full effect in March when they’re published in the Federal Register. The USDA’s goal is to cut the approval time for GMO crops in half in order to speedily implement them into the global food supply. The current USDA process takes longer than they would like due to ‘public interest, legal challenges, and the challenges associated with the advent of national organic food standards‘ says USDA deputy administrator Michael Gregoire.
mother fucking assholes.
so, we have a front on our food supply by evil companies like Monsanto, a front of our water supply by evil companies like Thames and we have a front on our breathing supply by the assholes from The Club of Rome.
birds and bees are posing a threat to their quarterly profit reports even though they are responsible for allowing us, the people with money to buy their shit products, to live because they pollinate the food supply so, they get the all knowing all caring govt to take care of the profit losses by killing them off, raising the price of the manufactured seed supply to sell to us.
and the lame stream media cannot report on this because they are so heavily involved in their quarterly profits that they rely on these evil corporations for revenue through ads/commercials. Post edited by samUwell at 4/9/2012 11:56:42 AM
this should be an interesting film. probably made up from bits and pieces of all the other water documentaries i have already seen but this one probably had a bigger budget.
There is a conspiracy of selling out happening in America. Politics and personal interest it would seem determine government policies over and above health and safety issues. When President Obama appointed Michael Taylor in 2009 as senior adviser for the FDA, a fierce protest ensued from consumer groups and environmentalists. Why? Taylor used to be vice president for Monsanto, a multinational interested in marketing genetically modified (GM) food. It was during his term that GMO's were approved in the US without undergoing tests to determine if they were safe for human consumption.
We were promised that genetically modified crops would enable us to feed the world. Well, the world is still starving, but we sure have seen super weeds, super pests and super diseases all develop as a result of genetic modification.
A recent article by George Dvorsky discussed how bollworms in China are now becoming resistant to the toxins grown inside Bt cotton….
As far as the real world mutated bollworms are concerned, they’re starting to take off in China. The researchers discovered that resistance-conferring mutations in cotton bollworm were three times more common in northern China than in areas of northwestern China where less Bt cotton has been grown.
A recent NPR article detailed how we are seeing something similar happen in the United States. Rootworms are becoming resistant to the toxins grown inside Bt corn, and this is starting to cause major problems….
The scientists who called for caution now are saying “I told you so,” because there are signs that a new strain of resistant rootworms is emerging. In eastern Iowa, northwestern Illinois, and parts of Minnesota and Nebraska, rows of Bt corn have toppled over, their roots eaten by rootworms. Entomologist Aaron Gassmann at Iowa State University, who authored the PLoS One paper, collected insects from some of these fields and found many with a greater-than-expected ability to tolerate Bt.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
But it is happening.
Meanwhile, we are also now learning that Bt corn may not be quite as “safe” for humans as we had been promised.
The danger of GMO's
The question of whether or not genetically modified foods (GMO's) are safe for human consumption is an ongoing debate that does not seem to see any resolution except in the arena of public opinion. Due to lack of labeling, Americans are still left at a loss as to whether or not what is on the table is genetically modified. This lack of information makes the avoiding and tracking of GM foods an exercise in futility. Below are just some of the food products popularly identified to be genetically modified:
1. Corn - Corn has been modified to create its own insecticide. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has declared that tons of genetically modified corn has been introduced for human consumption. Monsanto has revealed that half of the US's sweet corn farms are planted with genetically modified seed. Mice fed with GM corn were discovered to have smaller offspring and fertility problems.
2. Soy - Soy has also been genetically modified to resist herbicides. Soy products include soy flour, tofu, soy beverages, soybean oil and other products that may include pastries, baked products and edible oil. Hamsters fed with GM soy were unable to have offspring and suffered a high mortality rate.
3. Cotton - Like corn and soy, cotton has been designed to resist pesticides. It is considered food because its oil can be consumed. Its introduction in Chinese agriculture has produced a chemical that kills cotton bollworm, reducing the incidences of pests not only in cotton crops but also in neighboring fields of soybeans and corn. Incidentally, thousands of Indian farmers suffered severe rashes upon exposure to BT cotton.
4. Papaya - The virus-resistant variety of papaya was commercially introduced in Hawaii in 1999. Transgenic papayas comprised three-fourths of the total Hawaiian papaya crop. Monsanto bestowed upon Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in Coimbatore technology for developing papaya resistant to the ringspot virus in India.
5. Rice - This staple food from South East Asia has now been genetically modified to contain a high amount of vitamin A. Allegedly, there are reports of rice varieties containing human genes to be grown in the US. The rice will create human proteins useful for dealing with infant diarrhea in the 3rd world. China Daily, an online journal, reported potential serious public health and environment problems with genetically modified rice considering its tendency to cause allergic reactions with the concurrent possibility of gene transfers.
6. Tomatoes - Tomatoes have now been genetically engineered for longer shelf life, preventing them from easily rotting and degrading. In a test conducted to determine the safety of GM tomatoes, some animal subjects died within a few weeks after consuming GM tomatoes.
7. Rapeseed - In Canada, this crop was renamed canola to differentiate it from non-edible rapeseed. Food stuff produced from rapeseed includes rapeseed oi (canola oil) l used to process cooking oil and margarine. Honey can also be produced from GM rapeseed. German food surveillance authorities discovered as much as a third of the total pollen present in Canadian honey may be from GM pollen. In fact, some honey products from Canada were also discovered to have pollen from GM rapeseed.
8. Dairy products - It has been discovered that 22 percent of cows in the U.S. were injected with recombinant (genetically modified) bovine growth hormone (rbGH). This Monsanto created hormone artificially forces cows to increase their milk production by 15 percent. Milk from cows treated with this milk inducing hormone contains increased levels of IGF-1 (insulin growth factors-1). Humans also have IGF-1 in their system. Scientists have expressed concerns that increased levels of IGF-1 in humans have been associated with colon and breast cancer.
9. Potatoes - Mice fed with potatoes engineered with Bacillus thuringiensis var. Kurstaki Cry 1 were found to have toxins in their system. Despite claims to the contrary, this shows that Cry1 toxin was stable in the mouse gut. When the health risks were revealed, it sparked a debate.
10. Peas - Peas that have been genetically modified have been found to cause immune responses in mice and possibly even in humans. A gene from kidney beans was inserted into the peas creating a protein that functions as a pesticide.
[.....]
"When you bring a package of hamburger home from a supermarket, you have to treat it as toxic material." Mike McBane, Canadian Health Coalition
FRANKENSTEER is a disturbing yet compelling documentary that reveals how the ordinary cow is being transformed into an antibiotic dependent, hormone-laced potential carrier of toxic bacteria, all in the name of cheaper food.
The beef industry, supported by North American government agencies and pharmaceutical companies, has engaged in an on-going experiment to create the perfect food machine to increase speed of production and reduce the cost of manufacture. But there is a price in producing a cheap industrial product. This benign, grazing herbivore has undergone a radical rethinking in how it's raised, fed and slaughtered, including recent changes in inspection rules have shifted the responsibility for food safety from government inspectors to the people on the floor who do the slaughtering and packing.
FRANKENSTEER reveals some startling facts. Every year 50% of the total tonnage of antibiotics used in Canada ends up in livestock. And every year cattle raised in massive feedlots are routinely dosed with antibiotics even if they are not sick. For public health safety reasons during the current BSE (Mad Cow disease) crisis, North American health officials have labeled certain parts of the cow as bio-hazardous products and have ordered that they be handled accordingly.
i LOVE a good Rib-eye but the more and more i learn about what we are feeding them that we eventually eat, less and less of beef i eat.
and with the merger of big corporations and big govt controlling what we eat and drink, the harder and harder it gets to eat something that has not been altered in some lab.
In the 90s the dairy industry undercut dairy farmers relentlessly, eventually driving them out of business. This was the same industrialized farming outfit that would later go on to feed their cows all sorts of nasty stuff, and sell you the product with little to no competition.
Now we're seeing a resurgence of farmers who are marketing their dairy products and meat at extraordinarily higher prices than the industrialized cow factories could ever hope to get per pound. Their entire 'value' rests in the fact that they were raised naturally, as farmers have been doing for centuries, on the land. Organic free range beef and dairy products are seeing a comeback because they are better. It costs an arm and a leg, but thats the nature of small scale farming, you often get a better product in the end.
Originally posted by: Coba|t Its strange the way things work.
In the 90s the dairy industry undercut dairy farmers relentlessly, eventually driving them out of business. This was the same industrialized farming outfit that would later go on to feed their cows all sorts of nasty stuff, and sell you the product with little to no competition.
Now we're seeing a resurgence of farmers who are marketing their dairy products and meat at extraordinarily higher prices than the industrialized cow factories could ever hope to get per pound. Their entire 'value' rests in the fact that they were raised naturally, as farmers have been doing for centuries, on the land. Organic free range beef and dairy products are seeing a comeback because they are better. It costs an arm and a leg, but thats the nature of small scale farming, you often get a better product in the end.
That I agree with. Pride in farming! And the Chinese don't control our food supply _______________________________________________________________
"If guns kill people then spoons make us fat!"
I don't see it getting any better. This is mostly because many of the farms that were inactive were sold or otherwise transferred to non-farmers and their value has increased substantially (even after the housing bubble burst) to the point where securing a loan would be prohibitive even in good times for a small scale farmer.
I think you saw a lot of farm land lost to housing development as the urban sprawl ate up previously remote areas and turned them into suburbs.
Even if it was a wildly profitable venture to small-scale farm, the number of farms owned by people who actively want to farm has dropped substantially.
The price is a reflection of this lack of supply, so I think we can just expect that we will pay more for less organically produced product.
