Nutricide - Criminalizing Natural Health, Vitamins and Herbs

[Canuck Wisdom]

take alex's jones out of that paragraph and put the UN Sustainability Program and you have the official admission that this shit is for real.

Its SO fucked and its real, its happening RIGHT NOW (literally, food riots, starvation etc) we're living through it. What can be done? Its so easy to feel as though I've fallen into the trap of believing there is nothing I can do about these sorts of things. And frankly, alone, no one really can do anything, in the sense that we need to live with the actions of the people around us and resisting something like codex alone does very little.

The proletariat really need to get our shit together and take organization and unity seriously.

[Canuck Wisdom]

...here is some more.

Multinationals make billions in profit out of growing global food crisis - Green Living, Environment - The Independent

Multinationals make billions in profit out of growing global food crisis

Speculators blamed for driving up price of basic foods as 100 million face severe hunger

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Sunday, 4 May 2008

Giant agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is driving millions of people towards starvation, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry.

The prices of wheat, corn and rice have soared over the past year driving the world's poor – who already spend about 80 per cent of their income on food – into hunger and destitution.

The World Bank says that 100 million more people are facing severe hunger. Yet some of the world's richest food companies are making record profits. Monsanto last month reported that its net income for the three months up to the end of February this year had more than doubled over the same period in 2007, from $543m (£275m) to $1.12bn. Its profits increased from $1.44bn to $2.22bn.

Cargill's net earnings soared by 86 per cent from $553m to $1.030bn over the same three months. And Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world's largest agricultural processors of soy, corn and wheat, increased its net earnings by 42 per cent in the first three months of this year from $363m to $517m. The operating profit of its grains merchandising and handling operations jumped 16-fold from $21m to $341m.

Similarly, the Mosaic Company, one of the world's largest fertiliser companies, saw its income for the three months ending 29 February rise more than 12-fold, from $42.2m to $520.8m, on the back of a shortage of fertiliser. The prices of some kinds of fertiliser have more than tripled over the past year as demand has outstripped supply. As a result, plans to increase harvests in developing countries have been hit hard.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation reports that 37 developing countries are in urgent need of food. And food riots are breaking out across the globe from Bangladesh to Burkina Faso, from China to Cameroon, and from Uzbekistan to the United Arab Emirates.

Benedict Southworth, director of the World Development Movement, called the escalating earnings and profits "immoral" late last week. He said that the benefits of the food price increases were being kept by the big companies, and were not finding their way down to farmers in the developing world.

The soaring prices of food and fertilisers mainly come from increased demand. This has partly been caused by the boom in biofuels, which require vast amounts of grain, but even more by increasing appetites for meat, especially in India and China; producing 1lb of beef in a feedlot, for example, takes 7lbs of grain.

World food stocks at record lows, export bans and a drought in Australia have contributed to the crisis, but experts are also fingering food speculation. Professor Bob Watson – chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who led the giant International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development – last week identified it as a factor.

Index-fund investment in grain and meat has increased almost fivefold to over $47bn in the past year, concludes AgResource Co, a Chicago-based research firm. And the official US Commodity Futures Trading Commission held special hearings in Washington two weeks ago to examine how much speculators were helping to push up food prices.

Cargill says that its results "reflect the cumulative effect of having invested more than $18bn in fixed and working capital over the past seven years to expand our physical facilities, service capabilities, and knowledge around the world".

The revelations are bound to increase outrage over multinational companies following last week's disclosure that Shell and BP between them recorded profits of £14bn in the first three months of the year – or £3m an hour – on the back of rising oil prices. Shell promptly attracted even greater condemnation by announcing that it was pulling out of plans to build the world's biggest wind farm off the Kent coast.

World leaders are to meet next month at a special summit on the food crisis, and it will be high on the agenda of the G8 summit of the world's richest countries in Hokkaido, Japan, in July.

Additional research by Vandna Synghal

[DdC]

Bill C-51 Will Eliminate Natural Health Products, Vitamins, Non-Pharmaceuticals

A former New Democrat MP claims that the Conservative government's proposed amendments to the Food and Drugs Act are the result of lobbying from big pharmaceutical companies. Lyle MacWilliam, who represented Okanagan-Shuswap from 1988 to 1993, told the Georgia Straight he formed part of former Liberal health minister Allan Rock's 17-member transition team that helped set up the Office of Natural Health Products, now the Natural Health Products Directorate, where "the landscape for a new regulatory structure for NHPs arose". Bill C-51 would amend the Food and Drugs Act and multiple other statutes, and this has MacWilliam worried for the fate of the natural-health-product industry, which he said will be placed under "stringent" and onerous conditions. full story
Marc holds the first movie about him, Messing Up The System. Photo by Teresa T. Marc Emery: A Pothead's Pursuit of Justice

London, Ontario - Marc Emery is standing behind the counter at his former business, the City Lights bookstore on Richmond Street, talking about his quixotic quest to end society's prohibition on marijuana. "My argument for marijuana is not that it's good for you and not that it's safe," he says. "It's that any law that punishes peaceful and honest behaviour is an unjust law and must be struck down." Canada's self-proclaimed "prince of pot" -- the man whose ongoing legal battle with the U.S. government has prompted profiles by the Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone magazine, 60 Minutes, CNN and CBC -- is in London to visit his ailing mother. But Emery rarely passes up a chance to proselytize. And so, he talks. full story
The Drug War and US prison system are broken beyond repair Tough-On-Crime Policies Ineffective, US Sentencing Expert Contends

OTTAWA - The Harper government is embracing tough-on-crime policies even as the United States backs away from similar approaches that have produced record levels of incarceration, huge taxpayer costs and racialized prisons, says an American expert on sentencing policy. "We've had this get-tough movement for three decades now," says Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, which promotes reforms in sentencing law and alternatives to incarceration. "If that's the best way to produce safety, we should be the safest country in the world, and clearly that's not the case." full story
Kaara, Dana and Rebecca celebrate 420 Vancouver Seed Bank Celebrates Two Years!

Vancouver's newest marijuana seed outlet is celebrating their two-year anniversary with a big party on Saturday, May 31st. "I can't believe that it's been two years," says Dana Larsen, former editor of Cannabis Culture Magazine and co-founder of the Vancouver Seed Bank (VSB). "We are going to have a great party at the end of May." Larsen founded the VSB with his partner Rebecca Ambrose in May 2006, less than a year after their friend Marc Emery was charged with exporting marijuana seeds to the USA. Emery is still facing extradition and could get a 30 year sentence in an American prison. full story
Holy Smoke, in Nelson BC Nelson, BC "Holy Smoke" Shop Owners Defend Designated Dealers at Trial

Four Nelson men accused of selling marijuana say they were practising harm reduction techniques intended to reduce street-level drug dealing, while also making a political statement about the illegal status of the drug they consider a holy sacrament. The men's lawyer, Don Skogstad, said on Monday at the start of the trial that his clients admit they sold drugs to undercover police officers two years ago, but said he will argue the sales were part of a harm reduction program. full story
Bill C-51 Will Eliminate Natural Health Products, Vitamins, Non-Pharmaceuticals

[Canuck Wisdom]

Sooooo, is yahooka aware of codex alimentarius?

[LetsPlayYourWay]

Sooooo, is yahooka aware of codex alimentarius?

Unless harper snuck it in somewhere else right now, bill c-51 died the day of the last election. Unless it was reintroduced and voted in, the January 2009 effective implementation date should no longer be a problem. Anyone got any links to Parliament readings of the bill?

[SquirrelDog]

I'm taking Permaculture workshops in the spring. Let's see the elites stop me from growing my own food. :finger:

[SquirrelDog]

Go Ron Paul btw.

[Dozer McDozer]

me and my dad are starting a garden this spring.

should be great hes a golfcourse superintendent. i'll have to wait til i get my own place to grow bud or if my brother gets an apartment soon which he should.