How Monsanto Tricked California Voters
What I love about this article is that although the proposition did not pass this time, journalists are writing about the lies and misrepresentations made, and the issue will come up again and again until it passes. Big money calls the tune in a lot of places, but idealists can be pesky and persistent, and in the long run, persistence can outplay big money.
As for me, I follow the great advice “shop the perimeter,” looking for the least processed food. We also have a wonderful store in Pensacola, Everman’s, where you can buy local and organic foods. It is a treasure.
Did Monsanto Trick California Voters?
Ocean Robbins
Author, speaker, http://www.foodrevolution.org
The “No on 37” campaign spent $46 million burying the state’s voters in an avalanche of misleading ads and outright falsehoods. Their efforts defeated the proposition, 53 percent to 47 percent.
But Monsanto and their peeps didn’t just spend $46 million promoting their opinion. They also lied and got away with it. Check out these examples:
1) They illegally included the FDA logo in a “No on 37” mailing to state residents, and made up a quote from the FDA, which the FDA refuted. The FDA did not and cannot express an opinion on ballot initiatives.
2) They used the Stanford logo in TV ads and mailers, when the University also did not take a stand on the issue. And they said that Henry I. Miller, their hired gun, is a professor at Stanford when in reality, he works for the Hoover Institution — which rents office space on the campus.
3) They paid a PR firm with expertise in fighting recycling legislation (on behalf of the soda pop industry) to generate a misleading “study” that was designed to show the proposition raising food prices by hundreds of dollars per state resident per year. This despite independent economic analysis concluding that it would not raise prices in any meaningful way, and that in Europe, mandated labeling was not linked to an increase in food prices. (Do you really believe the pesticide and junk food companies would spend $46 million trying to save you money?)
4) They said there have never been any documented ill-effects from GMO consumption. But many allege that 37 direct human deaths and 1,500 disabilities linked to a toxic batch of the supplement Tryptophanwere caused by a genetically engineered strain of bacteria used in production. And there are numerous reports of livestock that have died as a result of grazing on GMO cotton. There could be far more widespread ill-effects, but without labeling, it’s nearly impossible to find out conclusively.
5) They said Prop 37 was full of exemptions for special interests. But in reality, the exemptions were modeled after those adopted throughout the European Union and every other country that calls for labeling. For instance, livestock that are fed GMO grains don’t have to be labeled genetically engineered unless the animal, itself, is genetically engineered. That’s not a special interest exemption — it’s basic science.
What’s Next For The Food Movement?
In the last decade, the movement for healthy, sustainable food has been growing exponentially, with consumption of organic foods growing from $8 billion in 2000 to $31 billion in 2011. We’ve seen an equally dramatic rise in the number of farmer’s markets and CSAs. Still, it’s a big jump to move from 4 percent market share, to changing national food policy. Tobacco was found to be harmful to health in 1950, and it took nearly half a century to meaningfully change laws.
The food movement is growing fast, but as a political force, it’s still in its infancy. Big agribusiness still controls the purse strings in Congress, and runs the show at the FDA. At least for now.
An ABC News poll found that 93 percent of Americans want to know if their food is genetically engineered. Even after a narrow loss against a heavily financed and deeply entrenched food industry, the rapidly growing food movement may be just getting started.
“The arc of history is long,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told us, “but it bends towards justice.” As we’ve seen time and time again, when enough people demand it, eventually, change does come.
Ocean Robbins is founder and co-host (with best-selling author John Robbins) of the 60,000 member Food Revolution Network, an initiative to help you heal your body, and your world… with food.
The End of Days
My good friend was visiting, and was late the first day of our visit, arriving breathless, and with her arms full of flowers.
“I am so sorry! I am late!” she apologized, “but I could not find a single florist!”
The truth is that she could arrive empty armed and I would love her as much. She doesn’t need to bring me anything, just her coming to see me is enough. It was a wonderful visit, full of laughter and shared moments, time with family and friends.
Florist shops have almost disappeared in Pensacola, and I suspect elsewhere, as hard times continue. Fresh cut flowers are such a luxury, and one of the first things to go when people start cutting back. Times are getting better, but slowly. Flowers are still a luxury. There are a couple shops I know still open, but not many.
Today’s reading is from Revelations, about the end of times, and set my mind adrift about the identity of Babylon (there are many ideas about this) and about God’s time. We may be in the end of times, I muse, but we don’t even know it because God’s time is so different from our earthly time. An instant can be a couple thousand years – we don’t know.
The author of Revelation uses symbolic language and can be a sort of Rohrshach test which tells more about the interpreter than the text interpreted.
Revelation 18:1-14
18After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority; and the earth was made bright with his splendour.2He called out with a mighty voice,
‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!
It has become a dwelling-place of demons,
a haunt of every foul spirit,
a haunt of every foul bird,
a haunt of every foul and hateful beast.*
3 For all the nations have drunk*
of the wine of the wrath of her fornication,
and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her,
and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power* of her luxury.’
4 Then I heard another voice from heaven saying,
‘Come out of her, my people,
so that you do not take part in her sins,
and so that you do not share in her plagues;
5 for her sins are heaped high as heaven,
and God has remembered her iniquities.
6 Render to her as she herself has rendered,
and repay her double for her deeds;
mix a double draught for her in the cup she mixed.
7 As she glorified herself and lived luxuriously,
so give her a like measure of torment and grief.
Since in her heart she says,
“I rule as a queen;
I am no widow,
and I will never see grief”,
8 therefore her plagues will come in a single day—
pestilence and mourning and famine—
and she will be burned with fire;
for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.’
9 And the kings of the earth, who committed fornication and lived in luxury with her, will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning; 10they will stand far off, in fear of her torment, and say,
‘Alas, alas, the great city,
Babylon, the mighty city!
For in one hour your judgement has come.’
11 And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo any more, 12cargo of gold, silver, jewels and pearls, fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet, all kinds of scented wood, all articles of ivory, all articles of costly wood, bronze, iron, and marble, 13cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, olive oil, choice flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, slaves—and human lives.*
14 ‘The fruit for which your soul longed
has gone from you,
and all your dainties and your splendour
are lost to you,
never to be found again!’
Doc by Mary Doria Russell
Mary Doria Russell is one of my favorite authors because she tackles large topics fearlessly, humorously and with great compassion. I first read her many years ago in a novel called Children Of God; you can read it stand-alone as I did, but I should have read The Sparrow, which preceded it. That one is about the Jesuits who take the Gospel into outer space, and has some laugh-out-loud moments in the midst of utter hopelessness. Yes. She’s that kind of author, my kind of woman.
Here is the ending Question and Answer from an interview at the back of Doc, an interview with John Connelly:
Q: Authors are often asked what advice they’d give young writers. I would like to ask you a similar question: What do you think the worst advice a young writer could get is?
Mary Doria Russell: Major in English. Join a writer’s group. Blog.
My advice is to major in and do something REAL. Have an actual 3-D life of your own. And please, shut up about it until you’ve got something genuinely wise or useful or thoughtful to share. Then again, I’m a cranky old lady! What the hell do I know?
Reading a book about legendary heroes of the Old West is not something I looked forward to, so the book languished on my “to read” pile until one day I picked it up just because it is written by Mary Doria Russell, and because she has knocked my socks off with every book I’ve read by her.
It starts off slow, summing up the early genteel years of John Henry Holliday in Georgia, just prior to, during and after the War Between the States. At 22 he is diagnosed with acute tuberculosis, and is advised that a drier climate out West might provide him with a more comfortable life, as short as it was likely to be. He had trained as a dentist, so he had a skill. Times were hard, and while he was a very very good dentist, it was a good thing he also had skills with card playing, to supplement his income when people didn’t have the money to go to the dentist.
Don’t skip over the early years, because what happens in the early years resonates into his years living in the West. The majority of the book takes place in Dodge, a border town where laws are made over a card game and by the men who will profit from them. Lives are hard, and short. While it is surely the wild west, the focus is on the relationships Doc builds – Wyatt and Morgan Earp (all the Earp brothers), Bat Masterson, the gals . . . here is where Russell’s artistry shines; the cardboard figures begin to become real people. We start to like one or two, admire another, despise one more.
Here’s what I love about Mary Doria Russell – without being at all preachy, she makes you stop and think about some of the values you hold most dear. Once you get west, 80% of the women featured in the book are prostitutes. Most of the characters drink heavily, and routinely use drugs which are today restricted to prescriptions. There is corruption, and murder, and arson, and abortion, and contraception, and adultery, and there is no one character who is purely good or purely evil, they are all complicated, just as we are. She can lead you to dislike a character, who at just the right moment knows just the right thing to say, and suddenly, you see that character differently, because another facet of his or her character has been revealed.
In the questions at the back of the book, we are asked if we were to meet Doc Holliday, would we like him? I had to ask the question the other way around – if I were to meet Doc Holliday, how would he perceive me? I found myself thinking outside the box, found myself thinking that if I knew my life were going to be very very short, would I want to hang around with normal people, dull, predictable people? Maybe people who look better on the outside than they are, or think more highly of themselves than they ought? Doc Holliday hung around with lawmen and gamblers and prostitutes and bartenders; his patients were law-abiding church-going citizens. Who gave greater color and meaning to his life? Who were more likely to be down-to-earth and practical and unpretentious?
There is an absolutely delightful segment about a Jesuit priest from an old Hungarian aristocratic family who finds himself riding out to visit all the small Catholic Indian parishes on a donkey, replacing a highly popular priest who is very sick; he is teased and mocked and treated with disrespect. One night, cold and wet, covered with dirt and filth in the desert, he has an epiphany that changes his life. Mary Doria Russell books have these luminous moments, worth reading the entire book for, and which will bring a smile of memory to your face long after you have finished reading the book.
By Secret Ballot
I hear people talking back and forth; feeling one another out. Most assume their friends will vote Republican; it’s Republican country up here in the westernmost part of Florida. Yards are littered with Romney – Ryan signs, with a few timid Obama signs here and here in a yard or on a car fender.
My Dad taught us, when we were very young, that the only appropriate answer when asked how one would vote is “I am voting by secret ballot.” He taught us how precious the right is to cast your vote and to know that no one can intimidate you into voting for someone else, because we vote by secret ballot. No husband can command his wife, no father can command his family, no minister can command his church. We each vote our individual conscience.
So we have the luxury of worrying whether we will vote the right candidates into office. We can only do the best we can with the information we have. I don’t want opinions, I want to see where a candidate stands on the issues that are important to me. And, in the end, I trust in the Lord:
Psalm 20
Now this I know:
The Lord gives victory to his anointed.
He answers him from his heavenly sanctuary
with the victorious power of his right hand.
7 Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.
8 They are brought to their knees and fall,
but we rise up and stand firm.
9 Lord, give victory to the king!
Answer us when we call!
When I hear people moaning in the locker room, or jeering in the parking lot, I walk right by. It’s not my problem. I vote my conscience, and I leave the outcome in the Lord’s hands.
Fairbanks, Alaska or Brazil
I would have loved to be able to actually watch and see when the actual 2 millionth visitor visited, but as it does, life got in the way. There were things that needed doing, people that needed time and attention, and I by the time I got back to check, I had already gone over.
Using StatCounter, I was able to go back 78 people and figure out that it was either the visitor from Brasil or a visitor from Fairbanks, Alaska.
A couple times, I have thought I would quit blogging, like when I hit 5 years, then six, or maybe when I hit 2 million hits . . . Now, I don’t know. There are times when it is hard to get inspired, hard to think of anything I might have to say that you might find interesting, too.
I have a little trick. When I am stumped, I think of our aqua aerobics group in Doha, Qatar. We weren’t very serious, but we were very committed. We had to show up because the others counted on us. Our motto was “any exercise is better than no exercise” and on very cold days in January, exercise counted as sitting in the hot tub and kicking. We talked to pass the time, and not to think about exercising. We talked about books we had read, dishes we had cooked, movies we have seen, and events in the news. So when I can’t think of anything much to say, I think about my friends, the Aqua Babes (LOL!) and I can usually come up with something.
A long time ago, in Kuwait, there was a blogger called (something) Red, I followed, and she thought about quitting and asked us to give her reasons why or why not. I remember writing that we blog because it’s what we do, we write because it is something in us that needs to be written. Until I wrote that to her, I didn’t even know that I thought that. I guess that is why I keep on, because there is something in me that needs to do what I am doing, and when I don’t need to do it, I will stop.
Summer in Seattle Comes to Pensacola
(LOL, not quite there yet)
Today is a gorgeous Seattle summer day, lows last night in the low 40’s, and high today MIGHT hit 60. It’s a great day for being outside, trimming back the rose bushes, taking cuttings for some new starts. It’s a great day for mulching, weeding, all those things I dread when the weather is hot and humid.
Only tiny drawback is the mosquitos; we have both nile fever and dengue to worry about with those pesky mosquitos, as well as other mosquito borne illnesses. I actually have a beautiful mosquito netting we bought in Bruges for when we lived in Germany, with our windows open all summer, but we have our windows open so seldom it is hardly worth it to put it up, and I think it annoys Adventureman having to get in and out of bed with the net, LOL!
We still have tomatoes and peppers and eggplants ripening, our pomegranates are ready, and our lemons are beginning to ripen – it is a great day to be alive.
Not the Day I Expected
Last night just before we went to bed, I reminded AdventureMan to set his alarm clock back for the end of daylight savings time. It was so much fun, having an extra hour to do things, to read. It was so relaxing, waking up and knowing we had plenty of time to get to church. I got up, fixed my coffee and changed all the clocks downstairs.
As we drove to church, I noticed all the outdoor clocks along the way, still on the same old time. I was feeling very smug.
When we drove into the parking lot, it was full, which was odd, because it was early, even for the early service. When we saw people leaving, as we were driving in, I had the “aha” moment.
Oh wait. This isn’t the first week-end in November . . . 😦 I’ve gotten ahead of myself. I got the fruitcakes all done and I was ready for November, so ready that somehow, I thought it was a week later . . .
We missed the early service, LOL. We always think of the early service as Episcopal Lite; the express version. Instead, we attended the 10:30 service, and had a great treat at the end, Ken Keradin playing Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, you might know it as background music for other creepy movies.
You know how once a day gets started the wrong way, the rest of the day just seems weird? It is a gorgeous, chilly day, bright sunlight, and I can’t get started on any of my projects. I feel jangled, turned a little upside down. Now I have to go through all the clock changes again next week-end!
It’s Demographics . . .
I never thought I would see this day:
I remember when we lived in the Tampa area, we had a mortgage at 8%. We were selling the house, and I got a lot of calls from people who wanted me to take my next mortgage with them. I remember one guy, when I laughed at the rate he offered me, he asked what rate I thought I could get. I said 6% – and I told him, it’s demographics. The baby boomers are aging and are going to start selling or downsizing. There isn’t going to be the same market for housing that there used to be. He laughed at me and wished me luck before hanging up.
I think I got the next mortgage around 7%. We only had it five years and paid it off, and when we got the next mortgage, it was at 5.5% and we laughed every time we made a payment.
When we bought this house, we had a mortgage at 4%. To me, I had thought 6% was about the lowest mortgages could go, I was so so so so wrong.
Now, when I see these mortgage rates, I feel like I SHOULD buy something, but we are all paid off and we don’t need anything more. It sure is tempting, but it’s like Sam’s Club, where you get a great deal on nutmeg, if you need 10 lbs of nutmeg, but who can use ten pounds of nutmeg in a lifetime? It just doesn’t make sense, but the low rate is SO tempting . . .
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