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Friday, December 26, 2003
"I advocate world government because I am convinced that there is no other possible way of eliminating the most terrible danger in which man has ever found himself. The objective of avoiding total destruction must have priority over any other objective."
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Thursday, December 25, 2003
How Much Is That Dogma In the Window?
The terminal cost of mankind's dogmatic persistence in continuing prohibition has revealed itself. Degeneration toward an increasingly violent and sickly extinction, prohibition as social policy, has proven beyond a doubt, to be a counter-productive blight. Over the past sixty-six years, this blight has mutated into an agricultural blight, that scientists now say will make bananas commercially extinct in ten years. As with the banana, so goes mankind.
As can be seen in many of the current imbalances that mankind is trying, and failing, to deal with, prohibition is an experiment that is blowing up in our faces with gross under-reaction to the irrationality of it being mankind's worst mistake.
There are so many negative, sometimes lethal effects caused by prohibitionist dogma, that to select the most obvious one is a depressingly difficult task. Mass starvation and malnutrition are horrifying subjects, whose genesis can be directly related to prohibition of the world's most nutritious and potentially abundant seed, namely Cannabis seed.
Species extinction. Inner city violence, police and political corruption, degeneration of the Rule of Law, corrosion of traditional moral and spiritual values, disrespect for the Natural Order...the list is long, the outcome tragically predictable. I read that someone observed recently, "One more terrorist attack and the U.S. Constitution won't mean anything." Prohibition is primarily responsible for that. And environmental indicators indicate a similar decay of the Earth's environment.
Consider what is happening with bananas. As an indicator species, bananas can be compared to the canary in a coal mine who is starting to wobble on his perch. The banana plant's genetically homogeneous vulnerability to Fusarium oxisporum fungus should warn people of how proximate and serious the current paradigm is, and how high the stakes are for not paying attention. It is estimated that in ten years there will be no more bananas. The problem is that bananas have been in-bred and genetically homogenized for so long, that they are no longer resistant to disease, such as Fusarium.
"Panama disease is a classic vascular wilt disease, in which a fungus, Fusarium oxysporum, gains entry to the water-conducting xylem vessels, then produces spores that are carried upwards in the water stream.The upwards spread is blocked temporarily when the spores lodge on the perforated vessel end walls that occur at intervals up the plant. But then the spores germinate and the hyphae grow through the perforations to produce a further batch of spores. The whole xylem system is colonised rapidly, leading to the characteristic symptoms. The older leaves turn yellow at the margins then die progressively towards the midrib, and the dead leaves hang down as a skirt around the stem. Eventually the whole shoot is killed, but meanwhile it has produced apparently healthy 'suckers' from the underground rhizome. These will grow in the following season but will also succumb to the disease."
From: The Microbial World: Vascular wilt diseases
1. Panama disease of bananas
Produced by Jim Deacon, Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology, The University of Edinburgh
http://helios.bto.ed.ac.uk/bto/microbes/panama.htm
Fusarium oxysporum is being shown to follow application of glyphosate, commonly used by home gardeners and commercial growers alike, under the brandname "RoundUp". Glyphosate is also being heavily rained down by 'drug warriors' spraying Cannabis and coca crops in Colombia, in the United States and in other parts of the world.
In spite of the fact that this has no effect, other than to drive up the price and profitability of the black market drug trade in general, hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent to enforce 'extinctionistic' laws.
People make their own problems. Prohibition is a fundamental flaw that will continue to cripple our culture until we stop believing that the balance of power in prohibitionist governments are actually trying to solve the problem, rather than raise revenue to engorge a terminally inefficient predatory bureaucracy.
Wishing you all a thoughtful, meaningful, peaceful Holiday and New Year.
respect,
Paul von Hartmann
Project P.E.A.C.E.
Planet Ecology Advancing Conscious Economics
http://www.webspawner.com/users/projectpeace/
for more please see
http://formalcomplaint.blogspot.com/
The terminal cost of mankind's dogmatic persistence in continuing prohibition has revealed itself. Degeneration toward an increasingly violent and sickly extinction, prohibition as social policy, has proven beyond a doubt, to be a counter-productive blight. Over the past sixty-six years, this blight has mutated into an agricultural blight, that scientists now say will make bananas commercially extinct in ten years. As with the banana, so goes mankind.
As can be seen in many of the current imbalances that mankind is trying, and failing, to deal with, prohibition is an experiment that is blowing up in our faces with gross under-reaction to the irrationality of it being mankind's worst mistake.
There are so many negative, sometimes lethal effects caused by prohibitionist dogma, that to select the most obvious one is a depressingly difficult task. Mass starvation and malnutrition are horrifying subjects, whose genesis can be directly related to prohibition of the world's most nutritious and potentially abundant seed, namely Cannabis seed.
Species extinction. Inner city violence, police and political corruption, degeneration of the Rule of Law, corrosion of traditional moral and spiritual values, disrespect for the Natural Order...the list is long, the outcome tragically predictable. I read that someone observed recently, "One more terrorist attack and the U.S. Constitution won't mean anything." Prohibition is primarily responsible for that. And environmental indicators indicate a similar decay of the Earth's environment.
Consider what is happening with bananas. As an indicator species, bananas can be compared to the canary in a coal mine who is starting to wobble on his perch. The banana plant's genetically homogeneous vulnerability to Fusarium oxisporum fungus should warn people of how proximate and serious the current paradigm is, and how high the stakes are for not paying attention. It is estimated that in ten years there will be no more bananas. The problem is that bananas have been in-bred and genetically homogenized for so long, that they are no longer resistant to disease, such as Fusarium.
"Panama disease is a classic vascular wilt disease, in which a fungus, Fusarium oxysporum, gains entry to the water-conducting xylem vessels, then produces spores that are carried upwards in the water stream.The upwards spread is blocked temporarily when the spores lodge on the perforated vessel end walls that occur at intervals up the plant. But then the spores germinate and the hyphae grow through the perforations to produce a further batch of spores. The whole xylem system is colonised rapidly, leading to the characteristic symptoms. The older leaves turn yellow at the margins then die progressively towards the midrib, and the dead leaves hang down as a skirt around the stem. Eventually the whole shoot is killed, but meanwhile it has produced apparently healthy 'suckers' from the underground rhizome. These will grow in the following season but will also succumb to the disease."
From: The Microbial World: Vascular wilt diseases
1. Panama disease of bananas
Produced by Jim Deacon, Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology, The University of Edinburgh
http://helios.bto.ed.ac.uk/bto/microbes/panama.htm
Fusarium oxysporum is being shown to follow application of glyphosate, commonly used by home gardeners and commercial growers alike, under the brandname "RoundUp". Glyphosate is also being heavily rained down by 'drug warriors' spraying Cannabis and coca crops in Colombia, in the United States and in other parts of the world.
In spite of the fact that this has no effect, other than to drive up the price and profitability of the black market drug trade in general, hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent to enforce 'extinctionistic' laws.
People make their own problems. Prohibition is a fundamental flaw that will continue to cripple our culture until we stop believing that the balance of power in prohibitionist governments are actually trying to solve the problem, rather than raise revenue to engorge a terminally inefficient predatory bureaucracy.
Wishing you all a thoughtful, meaningful, peaceful Holiday and New Year.
respect,
Paul von Hartmann
Project P.E.A.C.E.
Planet Ecology Advancing Conscious Economics
http://www.webspawner.com/users/projectpeace/
for more please see
http://formalcomplaint.blogspot.com/
The terminal cost of mankind's dogmatic persistence in continuing prohibition has revealed itself. Degeneration toward an increasingly violent and sickly extinction, prohibition as social policy, has proven beyond a doubt, to be a counter-productive blight. Over the past sixty-six years, this blight has mutated into an agricultural blight, that scientists now say will make bananas commercially extinct in ten years. As with the banana, so goes mankind.
As can be seen in many of the current imbalances that mankind is trying, and failing, to deal with, prohibition is an experiment that is blowing up in our faces with gross under-reaction to the irrationality of it being mankind's worst mistake.
There are so many negative, sometimes lethal effects caused by prohibitionist dogma, that to select the most obvious one is a depressingly difficult task. Mass starvation and malnutrition are horrifying subjects, whose genesis can be directly related to prohibition of the world's most nutritious and potentially abundant seed, namely Cannabis seed.
Species extinction. Inner city violence, police and political corruption, degeneration of the Rule of Law, corrosion of traditional moral and spiritual values, disrespect for the Natural Order...the list is long, the outcome tragically predictable. I read that someone observed recently, "One more terrorist attack and the U.S. Constitution won't mean anything." Prohibition is primarily responsible for that. And environmental indicators indicate a similar decay of the Earth's environment.
Consider what is happening with bananas. As an indicator species, bananas can be compared to the canary in a coal mine who is starting to wobble on his perch. The banana plant's genetically homogeneous vulnerability to Fusarium oxisporum fungus should warn people of how proximate and serious the current paradigm is, and how high the stakes are for not paying attention. It is estimated that in ten years there will be no more bananas. The problem is that bananas have been in-bred and genetically homogenized for so long, that they are no longer resistant to disease, such as Fusarium.
"Panama disease is a classic vascular wilt disease, in which a fungus, Fusarium oxysporum, gains entry to the water-conducting xylem vessels, then produces spores that are carried upwards in the water stream.The upwards spread is blocked temporarily when the spores lodge on the perforated vessel end walls that occur at intervals up the plant. But then the spores germinate and the hyphae grow through the perforations to produce a further batch of spores. The whole xylem system is colonised rapidly, leading to the characteristic symptoms. The older leaves turn yellow at the margins then die progressively towards the midrib, and the dead leaves hang down as a skirt around the stem. Eventually the whole shoot is killed, but meanwhile it has produced apparently healthy 'suckers' from the underground rhizome. These will grow in the following season but will also succumb to the disease."
From: The Microbial World: Vascular wilt diseases
1. Panama disease of bananas
Produced by Jim Deacon, Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology, The University of Edinburgh
http://helios.bto.ed.ac.uk/bto/microbes/panama.htm
Fusarium oxysporum is being shown to follow application of glyphosate, commonly used by home gardeners and commercial growers alike, under the brandname "RoundUp". Glyphosate is also being heavily rained down by 'drug warriors' spraying Cannabis and coca crops in Colombia, in the United States and in other parts of the world.
In spite of the fact that this has no effect, other than to drive up the price and profitability of the black market drug trade in general, hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent to enforce 'extinctionistic' laws.
People make their own problems. Prohibition is a fundamental flaw that will continue to cripple our culture until we stop believing that the balance of power in prohibitionist governments are actually trying to solve the problem, rather than raise revenue to engorge a terminally inefficient predatory bureaucracy.
Wishing you all a thoughtful, meaningful, peaceful Holiday and New Year.
respect,
Paul von Hartmann
Project P.E.A.C.E.
Planet Ecology Advancing Conscious Economics
http://www.webspawner.com/users/projectpeace/
for more please see
http://formalcomplaint.blogspot.com/
As can be seen in many of the current imbalances that mankind is trying, and failing, to deal with, prohibition is an experiment that is blowing up in our faces with gross under-reaction to the irrationality of it being mankind's worst mistake.
There are so many negative, sometimes lethal effects caused by prohibitionist dogma, that to select the most obvious one is a depressingly difficult task. Mass starvation and malnutrition are horrifying subjects, whose genesis can be directly related to prohibition of the world's most nutritious and potentially abundant seed, namely Cannabis seed.
Species extinction. Inner city violence, police and political corruption, degeneration of the Rule of Law, corrosion of traditional moral and spiritual values, disrespect for the Natural Order...the list is long, the outcome tragically predictable. I read that someone observed recently, "One more terrorist attack and the U.S. Constitution won't mean anything." Prohibition is primarily responsible for that. And environmental indicators indicate a similar decay of the Earth's environment.
Consider what is happening with bananas. As an indicator species, bananas can be compared to the canary in a coal mine who is starting to wobble on his perch. The banana plant's genetically homogeneous vulnerability to Fusarium oxisporum fungus should warn people of how proximate and serious the current paradigm is, and how high the stakes are for not paying attention. It is estimated that in ten years there will be no more bananas. The problem is that bananas have been in-bred and genetically homogenized for so long, that they are no longer resistant to disease, such as Fusarium.
"Panama disease is a classic vascular wilt disease, in which a fungus, Fusarium oxysporum, gains entry to the water-conducting xylem vessels, then produces spores that are carried upwards in the water stream.The upwards spread is blocked temporarily when the spores lodge on the perforated vessel end walls that occur at intervals up the plant. But then the spores germinate and the hyphae grow through the perforations to produce a further batch of spores. The whole xylem system is colonised rapidly, leading to the characteristic symptoms. The older leaves turn yellow at the margins then die progressively towards the midrib, and the dead leaves hang down as a skirt around the stem. Eventually the whole shoot is killed, but meanwhile it has produced apparently healthy 'suckers' from the underground rhizome. These will grow in the following season but will also succumb to the disease."
From: The Microbial World: Vascular wilt diseases
1. Panama disease of bananas
Produced by Jim Deacon, Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology, The University of Edinburgh
http://helios.bto.ed.ac.uk/bto/microbes/panama.htm
Fusarium oxysporum is being shown to follow application of glyphosate, commonly used by home gardeners and commercial growers alike, under the brandname "RoundUp". Glyphosate is also being heavily rained down by 'drug warriors' spraying Cannabis and coca crops in Colombia, in the United States and in other parts of the world.
In spite of the fact that this has no effect, other than to drive up the price and profitability of the black market drug trade in general, hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent to enforce 'extinctionistic' laws.
People make their own problems. Prohibition is a fundamental flaw that will continue to cripple our culture until we stop believing that the balance of power in prohibitionist governments are actually trying to solve the problem, rather than raise revenue to engorge a terminally inefficient predatory bureaucracy.
Wishing you all a thoughtful, meaningful, peaceful Holiday and New Year.
respect,
Paul von Hartmann
Project P.E.A.C.E.
Planet Ecology Advancing Conscious Economics
http://www.webspawner.com/users/projectpeace/
for more please see
http://formalcomplaint.blogspot.com/
Dear friends of P.E.A.C.E. whose path has led you here,
This article states a point of view that only lacks reference to Cannabis, as an organic, sustainable, rotational solution to many problems afflicting small-scale commercial farming.
Also I think any mention of GMOs ought to reference the banana. Bananas have been genetically modified to the point that scientists predict bananas will disappear as a commercial species in ten years. 'Fusarium oxysporum' is a fungus which kills bananas, which have lost their resistance to disease. Fusarium has been shown to thrive in the wake of glyphosate, known as "Round-Up" weed killer, manufactured by Monsanto. ( see http://www.corpwatch.org/news/PND.jsp?articleid=7715 )
Round-Up is being used by the DEA in "Plan Colombia", which is no less than armed chemical attacks on the people of Colombia, by their own government in collaboration with the BushCo political-industrial regime. Obviously immoral, spraying therapeutically valuable coca and 'marijuana' plants, in Colombia, the U.S., and the rest of the world, as part of a drug war funded by the chemical pharmaceutical industry is an extreme, collective insane, drug policy that must end immediately. To persist in practices which are so enormously damaging to environment,society, and the equitable distribution of Natural resources, is simply extinctionistic.
PvH
Article:
http://globalenvision.org/library/6/561/
Genetically Modified Organisms - the Last Thing the Developing World Needs
A disturbing trend is appearing in the battle for control of the world's food resources.
A disturbing trend is appearing in the battle for control of the world's food resources. Having largely lost the arguments over productivity and lost the confidence of markets outside the US, and with many lingering safety concerns, corporations who have invested heavily in Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO’s) as food have settled on a kind of moral blackmail: We should eat their GM products, they say, so that they can feed the poor.
When this argument was first used by Monsanto in the late 1990s, 'the poor' had other ideas. African delegates during special negotiations of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization from Ethiopia, Burundi, Senegal, and Mozambique "strongly" objected to the fact that "the image of the poor and hungry from our countries is being used by giant multinational corporations to push a technology that is neither safe, environmentally friendly, nor economically beneficial to us." In the developed world, customers, distributors, and retailers generally do not choose GM food.
The scientific community involved in GM food looks to hi-tech solutions to the complex social, environmental, and economic problem of hunger, regardless of whether they are best, or even appropriate solutions. Remember vitamin A rice? Meant to help prevent blindness in malnourished people? This seemed like a good idea at the time, until it became apparent that you would have to eat a truck-load of it to get a useful dose of vitamins. More importantly, the use of GMO in poor communities serves to obscure the real question of why these people are too poor to afford nutritious, locally available food.
So why do we need GM food at all? Even if the world was short of food, which it is not, available evidence suggests that using what is called "sustainable agriculture" – a mix of environmentally sustainable and 'pro-poor' approaches to growing food, bring massively higher increases in overall productivity than anything achieved through genetic modification.
The use of GMO in poor communities serves to obscure the real question of why these people are too poor to afford nutritious, locally available food.Almost everything that scientists are trying to achieve (so far with little unqualified success,) can be achieved in cheaper and less risky ways without using GMO. There are countless well-documented sustainable farming methods that can be used to control pests or weeds, and increase drought tolerance, yield, and nutrition. The problem for the poor is that these strategies are free, and do not return a profit to multi-national companies. GM advocates have only discovered the hungry now that they have something to sell.
To compound the problem, GM companies seem to ignore the reasons why people go hungry. It is not because there is not enough food - (with the possible exception of victims of war,) it is because poverty begets powerlessness, or a lack of land. GM crops do nothing to change this; in fact, they tend to further exclude the poor and marginalized through restrictive intellectual property laws, market distortion in favor of a few monopolistic companies, and the high levels of capital investment required by farmers.
The poor majority world has no chance to regulate, monitor, or segregate GM crops – they are being asked to let Monsanto decide their food and agriculture policies for them. Perhaps we should also ask them to let Enron run their utilities and Arthur Andersen keep their books.
Contributed by author Nick Macdonald, Senior Program Officer for Central Asia at Mercy Corps.
To read another Global Envision article about genetically modified foods, see Genetically Modified Food – "Panacea or Pandemic"
