life, love and the rest
to all Bay Area friends
what's up NorCal folks?!? here in the bay for a few days with lots of time on my hands...anybody want to get together for tea, beer, sushi, etc? ring my cellie 503.975.3682...peace and love, A.R.T.back in P-Town
hey there Portlanders and Eugenians...I'm back in the PNW for a few months...look me up, let's have lunch!gmo crops and dying bee colonies
read this on santa fe craigsiist rants and raves, thought this was worth sharing“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."
Albert Einstein is the one who actually said that. Perhaps that’s a bit over blown as far as the time line goes. After all we could pass laws requiring the hard labor of all those responsible for the destruction of bee colonies-CEOs, Politicians, lobbyists, you know the usual suspects. Once convicted they could be sentenced to hand pollinating trees, flowers and vegetables. The thought of Porky Barrel Pete Domenici doting in the fields of some hippie organic farmer does give a certain amount of delight.
But this fear of ol’ Bert is apparently staring us in the face. "Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD) is devastating bee colonies throughout America and, to an extent, Europe as well.
But is there someone to blame for "Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD)?
When I first started hearing about this my first thought was to consider GMOs (genetically modified organisms). Not out of the fact that I don’t trust them or the scoundrels who brought them to us. But simply by the idea of the time line. Simply put, one might just figure that these crops have been around long enough to start having noticeable effects upon the environment. In particular the jump in percentage of acreage under what is called “HT” (herbicide tolerant) since 1998.
And since the beginning of this year’s pollinating cycle CCD has reached devastating proportions folks are starting to take notice to something that appears to track the increased use of GMO’s.
However in a study for Congress by the Congressional Research Service there is no mention of a link between CCD and GMOs!!! Just like Merc and Vioxx, all the astute University researchers are also saying it ain’t so.
Well except for, of course, a study in Germany which was promptly de-funded-
*The study in question is a small research project conducted at the University of Jena from 2001 to 2004. The researchers examined the effects of pollen from a genetically modified maize variant called "Bt corn" on bees. A gene from a soil bacterium had been inserted into the corn that enabled the plant to produce an agent that is toxic to insect pests. The study concluded that there was no evidence of a "toxic effect of Bt corn on healthy honeybee populations." But when, by sheer chance, the bees used in the experiments were infested with a parasite, something eerie happened. According to the Jena study, a "significantly stronger decline in the number of bees" occurred among the insects that had been fed a highly concentrated Bt poison feed.
According to Hans-Hinrich Kaatz, a professor at the University of Halle in eastern Germany and the director of the study, the bacterial toxin in the genetically modified corn may have "altered the surface of the bee's intestines, sufficiently weakening the bees to allow the parasites to gain entry - or perhaps it was the other way around. We don't know."**
*By Gunther Latsch
Der Spiegel*
This is one of my old saws and frustrations. This bullshit need to cling to(when it is helpfull to the monied interests) what they refer to as Empirical Data. What a fucking bunch of horseshit when in the hands of those who wish to manipulate science.
I so remember, as a young man, visiting Salem Creek nuclear plant on a field trip and the slick as shit PR flack who spoke in the way so fancy auditorium they had there. We were a smart bunch of little pimple-poppers and gave the dippity-doo dink all the whatfor that he deserved. And what did he inevitably cling to? That there is no “proven” link to Radiation and cancer! Fast forward a couple of years and I’m at the tracks at Rocky Flats, hangin’ with A. Ginsberg and D. Ellsberg, doing the die-in at a hearing in Denver and what do they say-that there is no “proven” link to Radiation and cancer. Despite the spikes in Broomfield. And then a life time later, past forty, twenty five plus years later, I need to get my GET (general employee training, if I recall correctly-bloody get I call it) so I can get a “Z” number (whatever the fuck that is) at the Los Alamos Labs, so that I can do a little in the environmental remediation efforts up there and what does the overweight, nasty, growling, pasty, white woman say-That there is no “proven” link to Radiation and cancer!!! I promptly had to bring up the recent Padukah decision and of course was told that was not based on SCIENTIFIC DATA, but legal, litigious circumstances!
AHHHRGG!!!!
So, darlin’, would you like to sleep with a nice little amulet of plutonium-238? How about a little depleted uranium to spice up those old eggs?
Although I have great respect for the scientific process, indeed it is my love for science that gets me all bent out of shape lately, I do believe it is time to go back a little ways, in many ways, to look at guys like Galileo, Newton and even Jefferson who put so much more emphasis on simple observation.
Take the fucking blinders off and watch.
When one is to consider effect one needs to look into all possible causes-STARTING with any recently introduced circumstance which may be of cause. Like the fact that of all HT GMO crops most are soybeans, cotton and corn. Soybeans and cotton are completely dependent upon bees for pollination.
Take the fucking blinders off and watch.
And don’t ever believe anything from some “scientist” or “university” if there is some, more than likely literally cock sucker, from K Street involved.
disco freeks
click on each character to watch them dance...meatwad can really cut a rug, surprisingly enough...www.adultswim.com/shows/ath...index.html