Millions against Monsanto: Putting Words into Action

Saturday, May 25, 2013, marches protesting GMO food [and the lack of food labeling in the USA] will take place in cities around the globe. There is every good reason to support this ‘mega march’ wherever you live because we are losing our sources of food and nutrition, which are being replaced by biotech industry oligarchs who think they can and must patent the human food supply.

If you don’t think activism counts and works, please check out what U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) did and said May 20, 2013 regarding what’s become known as the “Monsanto Protection Act.”

Senator Mikulski actually apologized for allowing the Monsanto Protection Act to go through and vowed to fight against GMOs and Monsanto. Bravo, Senator Mikulski. Let’s hope other members of Congress see the light about the dangers of GMOs and their not being labeled in the USA. Go, Barbara go!

http://www.nationofchange.org/monsanto-protection-act-may-soon-be-repealed-thanks-activism-1369061405

GMO food crops are sprayed with inordinate amounts of the chemical herbicide glyphosate. For some—not all—information regarding glyphosate, see what Wikipedia says here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate.

For information about genetically modified corn, a dietary staple in the USA and in many cultures, read what Natural News has to say here:
http://www.naturalnews.com/040210_gm_corn_march_against_monsanto_glyphosate.html

Will corn-on-the-cob become taboo? Who, in their right mind, would want to take a chance on the possibility of Bacillus thurigiensis growing in their gut?

Organically-grown corn ought to be safe, if it’s not been cross-pollinated by GMO pollen.

To find out where the nearest march to your zip code address will take place, please visit:

March Against Monsanto Everywhere

http://www.march-against-monsanto.com/

Here are some reminders why we should turn out in droves at the Millions against Monsanto marches:

Food Crops that are GMO or GMO contaminated Animal Foods:

• Alfalfa
• Milk (rBST hormone) dairy products
• Canola
• Beef fed GMO feed
• Corn

• Eggs from chickens fed GMO feed
• Cotton (cottonseed cooking oil)
• Chicken raised on GMO feed
• Hawaiian papaya
• Honey from bees in GMO fields
• Plums
• Rice
• GMO Fish
• Soy
• GMO Salmon
• Sugar beet 
• Some tobacco 
• Tomato
• Wheat
• Yellow squash
• Zucchini

New Animated Video About the TPP and its Chilling Effects on Internet Users

When most people think of a trade agreement, they're unlikely to think that it would have anything to do with regulating the Internet. For more than a decade however, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has included copyright enforcement in international trade deals. Such provisions empower countries to enact digital restrictions in the name of preventing illegal file sharing. In practice, these copyright measures strip Internet users of their rights to privacy, free speech, and access to knowledge and culture, and could even work to undermine their very purpose of enabling and promoting innovation and creativity.

Such provisions closely mirror the language carried in the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Up to this point, we have already seen over 15 years of harmful effects due to the DMCA and now there are widespread efforts in the U.S. to reform it. It's therefore both improper and contradictory for the U.S. Trade Rep to push the U.S. copyright system around the world when our own government recognizes that our system is defective.

This new animated video explains how two provisions of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement's intellectual property chapter threaten users' rights. First, it creates legal incentives for Internet and online service providers to police their users' activities for copyright infringement. Second, the TPP carries rigid protections for digital rights management (DRM) in ways that could create expansive chilling effects for anyone who wishes to legally share and interact with their content and devices.

Please share this video, spread the word about this secretive multinational trade agreement, and let others know how they can help fight it.

Take Action

You can express your concern about these problems — and others — that arise from a secret copyright agenda driving international agreements by signing our petition to stop it.

Wherever you are in the world, you can sign on to this petition directed at decision-makers to demand a Fair Deal.

If you’re in the U.S., take our action to send a message to your representative to demand an end to these secret backroom negotiations.

If you're in Peru, join Hiperderecho and tell the Peruvian president that our rights on the Internet are non-negotiable.

Spread the Word

Our website “Why the Heck Should I Care About the TPP?” lays out some of the worst consequences for Internet users if this agreement were to pass.

Share our infographic about the TPP! We have versions in both English and Spanish.

Source: EFF

The Government Wants A Backdoor Into Your Online Communications

According to the New York Times, President Obama is "on the verge of backing" a proposal by the FBI to introduce legislation dramatically expanding the reach of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA. CALEA forces telephone companies to provide backdoors to the government so that it can spy on users after obtaining court approval, and was expanded in 2006 to reach Internet technologies like VoIP. The new proposal reportedly allows the FBI to listen in on any conversation online, regardless of the technology used, by mandating engineers build "backdoors" into communications software. We urge EFF supporters to tell the administration now to stop this proposal, provisionally called CALEA II.

The rumored proposal is a tremendous blow to security and privacy and is based on the FBI's complaint that it is "Going Dark," or unable to listen in on Internet users' communications. But the FBI has offered few concrete examples and no significant numbers of situations where it has been stymied by communications technology like encryption. To the contrary, with the growth of digital communications, the FBI has an unprecedented level of access to our communications and personal data; access which it regularly uses. In an age where the government claims to want to beef up Internet security, any backdoors into our communications makes our infrastructure weaker.

Backdoors also take away developers' right to innovate and users' right to protect their privacy and First Amendment-protected anonymity of speech with the technologies of their choice. The FBI's dream of an Internet where it can listen to anything, even with a court order, is wrong and inconsistent with our values. One should be able to have a private conversation online, just as one can have a private conversation in person.

The White House is currently debating whether or not to introduce the bill. Here's why it shouldn't:

There's Little Darkness: Few Investigations Have Been Thwarted

The starting point for new legislation should be a real, serious, and well-documented need. Despite the FBI's rhetoric, there are few concrete examples of the FBI's purported need to expand its already efficient all-seeing eye. Current law requires annual reporting by the Department of Justice (DOJ) regarding the use of the government's wiretapping powers; the report includes statistics on how often Federal law enforcement has been impeded in a court-authorized investigation by encryption or has been unable to access communications. These statistics show that this has happened only rarely. In its most recent report—from 2010—DOJ reported that encryption had only been encountered all of 12 times.

Did the encryption stop the investigation, or even prevent the wiretappers from figuring out what was being said? No. The report admits that in all of these instances, police were able to obtain the plain text of communications. Previous years' numbers are similar. Aside from government reports, in 2012 telecommunications companies also revealed that a very low percentage of law enforcement requests for user information were rejected. In AT&T's case, only 965 out of over 250,000 requests for user information were rejected. Overall, the available public statistics don't appear to support the FBI's claims about its inability to access communications.

Read more: EFF

High Fructose Corn Syrup Addictive Like Cocaine, Says Researcher

Is the obesity epidemic due to the addictive qualities in food or that a lot more food is cheap and plentiful than ever before in history?

A paper presented at the 2013 Canadian Neuroscience Meeting, the annual meeting of the Canadian Association for Neuroscience - Association Canadienne des Neurosciences (CAN-ACN), says the problem is addiction rather than food wealth - the authors claim that high-fructose corn syrup can cause behavioral reactions in rats similar to those produced by drugs of abuse such as cocaine.  It's the "Food Addiction" hypothesis that has recently become popular, which posits that we could be addicted to food just like drugs.  

Addiction happens when drug use shifts from positive reinforcement to the negative kind; drugs are relied on to prevent or relieve negative states that otherwise result from abstinence (e.g., withdrawal) or from adverse environmental circumstances (e.g. stress).

Francesco Leri, Associate Professor of Neuroscience and Applied Cognitive Science at the University of Guelph, suggest food addiction could explain the global obesity epidemic, though binge eaters have greater rates of psychiatric diagnoses involving negative emotional states compared to the general population, so eating may be the symptom and not the cause. The National Institute of Mental Health recently declared an end to support for symptom-based treatment in mental health.

Leri says increased availability of such highly-palatable foods could partly explain the high incidence of obesity around the world, but simple availability does not explain why some people are obese and others are not, given the same amount of available food. Leri, and others have instead suggested individual differences in vulnerability to addiction. Surveys of consumption of cocaine show that though many individuals try these drugs, only a small percentage of them become addicted. Leri set out to show that the same could be true of "addictive foods". "We have evidence in laboratory animals of a shared vulnerability to develop preferences for sweet foods and for cocaine" says Leri. Specifically, Leri wants to prove that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is worse for us than table sugar.

Other studies instead say addiction is a disorder of decision-making. 

Leri used rats to examine the behavioral, chemical and neurobiological changes induced by consumption of "addictive foods" containing HFCS. "We are not rats, but our children do not think too much about the impact of sweets on their brain and behaviour. There is now convincing neurobiological and behavioural evidence indicating that addiction to food is possible. Our primary objective is to discover biological predictors of vulnerability to develop excessive consumption of high fructose corn syrup ," says Leri.

John W. Bode, President and C.E.O. of the Corn Refiners Association, said in a statement, “It is irresponsible and ultimately counter-productive for these researchers to associate safe and widely used foods, such as high fructose corn syrup, with illegal narcotics such as cocaine. There remains no credible scientific evidence to suggest that caloric sweeteners, such as sugar and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), are addictive to humans in general. One of the main weaknesses of the research conducted by Dr. Francesco Leri, like most research seeking to demonize HFCS and other caloric sweeteners, is they are often conducted on animals, such as rats, in scenarios not likely found in the real world experienced by humans."

Source: Science 2.0

Youth rioting in Stockholm, PM calls for calm

Rioters have set fire to 30 cars and torched a school and a nursery in poor immigrant suburbs of Stockholm. Three nights of unrest in one of Europe's richest capitals has marred Sweden's reputation for social justice.

Swedish police said Wednesday they had arrested eight young men during a third night of urban unrest in low-income suburbs of Stockholm from Tuesday into Wednesday.

The rioting had erupted on Sunday after police shot dead a 69-year-old man on May 13.

Police said officers had acted in self-defense when the man wielded a machete in the northwestern suburb of Husby. The shooting was being investigated by a special police unit.

A group Megafonen which works with youth in deprived areas, accused police of being heavy-handed and targeting immigrants indiscriminately. Cuts in services and closures of youth centers have fuelled discontent, said its spokesman Rami al-Khamisi.

Premier calls for calm

Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, who heads a center-right government, told the news agency TT that "burning your neighbor's car is not an example of freedom of speech, it's hooliganism." He appealed to "everyone" to take responsibility for restoring calm.

Stockholm police spokesman Kjell Lindgren said "around 30" cars had been set ablaze in the greater Stockholm area as rioting spread to southern Stockholm.

A school and a nursery had been torched and rocks thrown at police and firefighters.

'Failed integration,' says Reinfeldt

On Tuesday, Reinfeldt referred to heated Swedish debate on immigration by attributing the outburst to failed integration.

"Sweden is a country that receives large groups from other countries. I'm proud of that," he said, adding that the government had sought to improve Swedish language education.

The anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats party, which has risen to third in surveys ahead of a general election due next year, said the Stockholm riots were the result of an "irresponsible" immigration policy.

"Never before has so much money been spent on immigrant-heavy suburbs as today," party leader Jimmie Aakesson told the daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet.

Anna-Margrethe Livh of the opposition Left Party wrote in the Svenska Dagbladet: "We have failed to give many of the people in the suburbs a hope for the future,"

Social welfare benefits reduced

Reinfeldt's center-right government has over six years reduced social welfare benefits for which Sweden once had a world-wide reputation. As a result sharp inequalities have emerged, according to the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The left-leaning tabloid Aftonbladet said the riots represented a "gigantic failure" of government policies, which had underpinned the rise of ghettos in the suburbs.

Some 15 percent of Sweden's population is foreign-born, the highest proportion in the Nordic region. Unemployment among those born outside Sweden stands at 16 percent, compared with 6 percent for native Swedes, according to OECD data.

OECD figures also show that Reinfeldt's reforms, as well as earlier changes, some under the Social Democrats, introduced since a 1990s crisis, have given Sweden the steepest increase in inequality over 15 years amongst the 34 members of the organization.

Source: DW