A group of feminist professors recently discovered that Instagram selfies taken by women in college can reinforce “traditional gender roles.”
In a study led by Mardi Schmeichel, a University of Georgia (UGA) professor specializing in “feminist theory,” a team of professors analyzed 233 selfies that were posted in 2013 within 24 hours of the first UGA football home game of the semester.
Schmeichel and her team analyzed these selfies to see if they represented “the idealized symbol of the southern lady,” which they note is an aesthetic trope that “has had significant and enduring consequences on notions of femininity in the South.”
This symbol of the southern lady, they argue, is typified by students’ formal wear, soft and flowy dresses, a significant amount of jewelry, and clothes that emphasize “feminine curves without revealing what might be considered ‘too much’ skin.”
Bright red lipstick and white teeth are also considered emblematic of this southern aesthetic, Schmeichel argues.
After analyzing selfies posted in the time surrounding the first 2013 UGA home game, Schmeichel found that 25 percent of women who posted photos embody this harmful aesthetic.
“The clothing, makeup, posing and editing used in the southern lady images work together to achieve a hyperfeminine gender performance that differs significantly from the images of women in the other selfies,” Schmeichel laments.
“In the southern lady images, attention to a traditionally gendered performance has been emphasized,” Schmeichel writes, lamenting that “the southern lady images that circulate in these selfies reinscribe a traditional femininity organized around/on a binary.”
She also notes that students’ embodiment of femininity can be troubling.
“The celebration of traditional femininity has been is [sic] a vexing concern for some feminists, who have interpreted it as a rolling back of hard-won progress to eliminate women’s association with these rigidly gendered and often marginalized subject positions.”
“If we are committed to destabilizing gender binaries and working toward a world in which bodies, and images of them, are not traded as capital, then there must be some attention paid to ways in which women’s [Instagram] practices and behaviors can get in the way of these goals,” Schmeichel concludes.
Campus Reform reached out to Schmeichel and her team for comment, but did not receive a response in time for publication.
A Pennsylvania State University sociology professor recently argued that eating meat perpetuates “hegemonic masculinity” and “gender hegemony.”
In the most recent issue of the Journal of Feminist Geography, professor Anne DeLessio-Parson argues that “hegemonic masculinity implies an imperative to eat meat” and that this helps reify other power hierarchies as well.
To study the link between masculinity and meat, DeLessio-Parson interviewed 23 vegetarians who live in Argentina to probe how they deal with their country’s “meat-centric” culture, finding that being vegetarian itself is a political act.
Vegetarians also contribute to the destabilization of the gender binary, she argued.
“The decision to become vegetarian does not itself destabilize gender, but the subsequent social interactions between vegetarian and meat-eater demand gender enactment - or resistance,” DeLessio-Parson discovered.
“Refusing meat therefore presents opportunities, in each social interaction, for the binary to be called into question,” she said, noting that women, for example, may not consider dating men who eat meat, while male vegetarians might end up spending more time in the kitchen as opposed to outside on the grill, all actions which can destabilize gender norms.
In an interview with Campus Reform, DeLessio-Parson explained that her interest in the issue arose after spending five years as a vegetarian in Argentina, where she worked with community organizations and as an English teacher.
There, she realized that vegetarianism isn’t just a lifestyle choice, but a feminist act.
“Women, one of the ways they push back against patriarchy, they say, "This is my body. You don"t get to tell me what comes in and out,’” she told Campus Reform, explaining that vegetarianism is a way women can assert their agency and autonomy.
She also noticed characteristics unique to male vegetarians, asserting that although many men in Argentina “still have these very hegemonic masculinity traits,” male vegetarians “seem more egalitarian and respectful” and “more open about talking about how sexism exists.”
DeLessio-Parson concludes that vegetarianism can help “destabilize not just gender, but also other hierarchies, and drive social change.
“If we can pay more attention to what we put in our bodies...we can create a better sense of peace in the world. Vegetarianism is a part of that,” she writes.
Monsanto thought they had developed an amazing scheme to corner the Midwest farming market when they developed new genetically engineered seeds that were resistant to their new herbicide called dicamba. The resistance of Monsanto"s new magical seed crops to dicamba meant that the herbicide could be sprayed liberally by farmers to eradicate weeds and boost yields.
Alas, as we pointed out last week (see: Meet Monsanto"s Other Herbicide Problem...), a small problem emerged when spray drifts from those liberal herbicide applications began to wipe out the crops of neighboring farmers who didn"t plant Monsanto"s dicamba-resistant seeds.
Now, as the Wall Street Journal points out today, after allegedly wiping out millions of acres of farm ground across the Midwest, Monsanto once again finds itself in a familiar spot: the courtroom.
Monsanto’s new version of the herbicide called dicamba is part of a more than $1 billion investment that pairs it with new genetically engineered seeds that are resistant to the spray. But some farmers say their nonresistant crops suffered after neighbors’ dicamba drifted onto their land.
The agricultural giant in October sued the Arkansas State Plant Board following the board’s decision to bar Monsanto’s new herbicide and propose tougher restrictions on similar weed killers ahead of the 2018 growing season. Monsanto claims its herbicide is being held to an unfair standard.
Arkansas has been a flashpoint in the dispute: About 900,000 acres of crops were reported damaged there, more than in any other state.
About 300 farmers, crop scientists and other attendees gathered in Little Rock on Wednesday for a hearing on Arkansas’s proposed stiffer dicamba controls, which Monsanto and some farmers are fighting. The proposed restrictions are subject to the approval of a subcommittee of state legislators.
As we pointed out previously, the EPA has reported that farmers in 25 states submitted more than 2,700 claims to state agricultural agencies that neighbors’ dicamba spraying shriveled 3.6 million acres of soybeans. The herbicide is also blamed for damaging other crops, such as cantaloupe and pumpkins.
The massive crop damage prompted Arkansas’s Plant Board to propose the idea of prohibiting dicamba use from mid-April through the end of October to safeguard growing plants. The state has also refused to approve Monsanto’s dicamba product for use in Arkansas, saying it needs further analysis by University of Arkansas researchers.
Of course, delays didn"t sit well with Monsanto which stands to make some $350 million a year in dicamba and related seed sales according to Jonas Oxgaard, an analyst with Bernstein who described the products as "their big moneymaker."
Meanwhile, farmers are exploring their own legal options with some joining a class-action lawsuit against Monsanto and BASF, seeking compensation for damaged crops.
For farmers, “it’s highly emotional,” said Doug Goehring, North Dakota’s agriculture commissioner.
Tom Burnham, who farms 11,000 acres near Blytheville, Ark., said he hired a lawyer to advise him on how to handle a neighbor whose errant dicamba spraying, Mr. Burnham said, reduced some fields’ harvest by 5% to 20%. Mr. Burnham said he didn’t expect to make money on any lawsuit he may file. “I’m doing it just to make a point.”
The ‘Free World’ has taken on where the Soviet scientists and psychiatrists left off.
German and American scientists of renowned Universities in Bonn and Lübeck do research on treatment for politically undesirable behaviour like their Soviet colleagues from the infamous Serbsky Central Research Institute in Moscow. In the Soviet Union people who protested the system had to undergo psychiatric treatment.
Vladimir Bukovsky, a world-known dissident survived one and described it.The same will be the fate of the so called Free World’s citizens if they fail to conform to the idea of a multi-cultural society. The powers that be have given a signal, and obliging, complaisant scientists are already busy working on bettering our collective and individual psyche. Apart from homophobia and Islamophobia, xenophobia is another psychiatric condition that needs to undergo therapy...hormonal therapy.
Throughout history, the world has been torn by two opposing factors that face each other with daggers drawn. These are natural biological, and unnatural forces, or reality and dystopia. It is natural for a human being to want to possess things and work as little as possible; to counter it, dystopian socialists, communists or Christian heretics came up with an idea of a society governed by the principle: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
It was supposed to work. And it failed miserably everywhere it was installed and implemented, from Cuba to East Germany, to the Soviet Union, to North Korea.
The human being, an evolutionary extension of the animal world, is endowed with certain indelible features at the genetic level. Group loyalty and fear of aliens are among them. Man cannot survive alone. Mankind is not a biologically monolithic, homogeneous family. Rather, it is made up of human groups (clans, tribes, nations, races) that as a result of their long development are moving apart from each other. Biology is the basis on which human communities create culture and ultimately civilization, not the other way round.
Human groups, which have come into being as a result of living separately from each other for ages and so have developed incompatible cultures and religions, compete for resources i.e. for survival. Since man cannot make it through life on his own, he is a part of a group (clan, tribe, nation). In order for the group to function well and safeguard its (and simultaneously its members’ survival success), each group member is equipped with two psychological mechanisms (i) in-group loyalty and (ii) out-group enmity.
Group members collaborate, and support each other even to the point of sacrificing themselves for the whole. That’s the origin of altruism. Defection to another group means weakening one’s own group and strengthening the alien group, which has always been regarded as the gravest mortal sin: treason. (Dante’s hell has Judas Iscariot in its centre, which is the severest punishment for it).Altruism towards members of the out-group is something between in-group loyalty and defection. Its exuberant instances are technically referred to as pathological altruism.
The phenomenon can be compared to the rivalry among soccer teams. The team’s (survival) objective is to win the cup. The prize will be shared by all team members. In order to achieve it, each one of them has to cooperate with the others: no cooperation with members of any other, opposing, team is thinkable. A team’s player may want to sacrifice his personal career for another player from the same team by helping him to score as many goals as possible and thus becoming the team’s star, or by fouling the opposite team’s player and thus risk being sent out of the playground (death), thus enhancing the chances of his team’s win, but the same will not make things easier on the playground for any member of the opposing team. Helping members of the other team means lessening the chances for winning the cup (survival) of one’s own team and, ultimately one’s own chances.
If my well-being and survival depends on that of the group that I am a member of, and, conversely, if my group’s survival is contingent on the cooperation, altruism and self-sacrifice of its members, including me, then in-group loyalty is in high demand whereas out-group (pathological) altruism is detrimental. That’s evolutionary mechanism. That’s game theory. That’s common sense. Everybody knows it. So do social engineers.
Since social engineers have come up with the idea of building new, multi-racial, multi-national, multi-religious, multi-cultural societies, they have encountered the natural barrier: xenophobia, which is another name for in-group loyalty and out-group avoidance. Xenophobia is a biological mechanism imprinted at the genetic level that carries a survival advantage. It tells an individual to create bonds with members of the same group and be on his guard against aliens.To put it in plain language: xenophobia is practised at the very basic personal level each time parents warn their offspring to be wary of strangers: not to open the door to them, not to trust them. So modern social engineers have a problem. They need to overcome this deeply rooted biological barrier.
A sign has been given, most probably followed by substantial grants and other financial incentives, and so scientists got down to work to find a cure for xenophobia. One of the research teams included psychologists and psychiatrists from Bonn, Tulsa, and Lübeck scientific institutions. Urged by the increasing globalization and the mass migration of peoples, as they say, the mentioned scientists, who otherwise dutifully recognize the evolutionary advantage of the in-group loyalty/out-group exclusion, nevertheless set themselves a task of demonstrating whether oxytocin can enforce the acceptance of aliens and reduce xenophobic out-group rejection. To this end they devised experiments in which subjects were asked to donate a certain amount of money to people in need, either compatriots or refugees. Before the experiment the subjects were screened for the level of xenophobia. During the experiment the subjects were either allowed to act on their own, or were exposed to peer pressure or were administered oxytocin intranasally. It turned out that (i) refugee-directed donation among the subjects scoring low on xenophobia were significantly increased by oxytocin, whereas (ii) oxytocin alone was not enough in the case of the subjects scoring high on xenophobia: their out-group avoidance (or parochial, as it is patronizingly named, altruism) could only be overcome by the orchestrated operation of oxytocin and peer pressure.
The conclusions are obvious.
Citizens of host countries must be forced to accept the influx of aliens whether they like it or not. If they do not comply then, in the name of high-flown ideals of universal brotherhood of men, they will be forced either by peer pressure or by oxytocin or by both.
Oxytocin suits this purpose very well as this hormone raises the emotional well-being, it so to say oh-so humane. Like Aldous Huxley’s soma in his book Brave New World. The human being with his biologically-driven likes and dislikes is not to be tolerated, he must be changed. By ideological interaction or by chemistry. He must not be left alone. He must accept what he does not like not merely passively. He must be made to like what he previously disliked.
There was systematic political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union, based on the interpretation of political opposition or dissent as a psychiatric problem. The ‘Free World’ has taken on where the Soviet ‘scientists’ left off.
Earlier this year we wrote about a series of court documents that were unsealed and seemingly revealed a startling effort on the part of both Monsanto and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to work in concert to kill and/or discredit independent, albeit inconvenient, cancer research conducted by the World Health Organization"s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) related to their key herbicidal product, RoundUp. The efforts to kill the research came even as Monsanto"s own lead toxicologist, Donna Farmer, admitted that she"cannot say that Roundup does not cause cancer" because "[w]e [Monsanto] have not done the carcinogenicity studies with Roundup" (see: Monsanto Colluded With EPA, Was Unable To Prove Roundup Does Not Cause Cancer, Unsealed Court Docs Reveal).
But, as Reuters points out today, RoundUp isn"t the only Monsanto herbicide causing outrage in the ag community these days as state regulators all across the country say they"re being flooded with reports from farmers that Dicamba, Monsanto"s other herbicide, is increasingly becoming airborne and killing crops far away from the fields where they were actually applied.
U.S. farmers have overwhelmed state governments with thousands of complaints about crop damage linked to new versions of weed killers, threatening future sales by manufacturers Monsanto Co (MON.N) and BASF SE (BASFn.DE).
Monsanto is banking on weed killers using a chemical known as dicamba - and seeds engineered to resist it - to dominate soybean production in the United States, the world’s second-largest exporter.
The United States has faced a weed-killer crisis this year caused by the new formulations of dicamba-based herbicides, which farmers and weed experts say have harmed crops because they evaporate and drift away from where they are applied.
Regulators in several major soybean-growing states, including Arkansas, Missouri and Illinois, each say they received roughly four years’ worth of complaints about possible pesticide damage to crops this year due to dicamba use.
Now agriculture officials face long backlogs of cases to investigate, which are driving up costs for lab tests and overtime. Several states had to reassign employees to handle the load.
“We don’t have the staff to be able to handle 400 investigations in a year plus do all the other required work,” said Paul Bailey, director of the Plant Industries division of the Missouri Department of Agriculture.
In Missouri, farmers filed about 310 complaints over suspected dicamba damage, on top of the roughly 80 complaints about pesticides the state receives in a typical year, he said.
Nationwide, states launched 2,708 investigations into dicamba-related plant injury by Oct. 15, according to data compiled by the University of Missouri.
Of course, Monsanto has bet on dicamba-tolerant soybeans to replace those that withstand glyphosate, the key ingredient in RoundUp, because it has become less effective over the years as weeds develop resistance...and because of that pesky European research which suggests the product causes cancer.
The problem is that if you"re not planting dicamba-resistant soybean seeds then you could quickly find yourself among the growing list of Monsanto"s spray drift victims....so you better buy Monsanto seeds...see how that works?
Of course, Monsanto has decided to simply blame spray companies saying that the "herbicides are safe when properly applied."
Monsanto and BASF say the herbicides are safe when properly applied. They need to convince regulators after the flood of complaints to state agriculture departments.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last year approved use of the weed killers on dicamba-resistant crops during the summer growing season. Previously, farmers used dicamba to kill weeds before they planted seeds, and not while the crops were growing.
However, the EPA approved such use only until Nov. 9, 2018, because “extraordinary precautions” are needed to prevent dicamba products from tainting vulnerable crops, a spokesman told Reuters in a statement last week. The agency wanted to be able to step in if there were problems, he said.
Next year, the EPA will determine whether to extend its approval by reviewing damage complaints and consulting with state and industry experts. States are separately considering new restrictions on usage for 2018.
In conclusion, with Dicamba usage up for regulatory review, it seems that it may be time for Monsanto execs to start pulling some strings at the EPA again...
A 40-year-old essay predicted the end of an empire and current events sure make it look like we’re watching it happen in real time.
I spend a fair bit of time scanning the news every day for my site, Preppers Daily News. And some days, I just have to shake my head as I realize that people are so desperate for…something…that they just keep going to further and further extremes to try and find that elusive thing their lives are missing.
The more I read, the more likeness I see to Sir John Glubb’s essay, The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival. (It’s only 24 pages and you should definitely read it – it’s brilliant.) Sir Glubb wrote this outstanding work when he was 79 years old, after a lifetime of being a soldier, traveling the world, and analyzing history. It’s well worth a read as he goes into detail about the fall of empires past.
The final stage of the end of an empire is the Age of Decadence.
Some signs of this age are political dissensions (Antifa, anyone?), an influx of foreigners (Europe, anyone?), the welfare state (America, anyone?), despair (350 million people diagnosed), depravity (see below), and the rise of frivolity as people try to fill lives that have less and less meaning.
Sound familiar?
This video is a brief synopsis of the signs of an empire that is near its end.
A synopsis I read makes Glubb’s theory entirely applicable to modern society:
In the age of decadence many people choose to behave in ways that are unsustainable, apparently unaware of the consequences. They indulge in excessive, often conspicuous, consumption. An absurdly wealthy elite emerges, but instead of repelling the masses it is admired and celebrated. Those outside the elite aspire to similar levels of consumption, and are encouraged by the availability of cheap credit. People become convinced that increased consumption is the key to happiness, but in its pursuit they become measurably less happy. As David Morgan says, “you can never get enough of what you don’t need.”
At this point in the life cycle of an empire frivolity, as Glubb calls it, comes to the fore. In order to distract people from what’s really going on, the economy creates diversions. Voyeurism becomes central to culture: the gladiatorial spectacles in decadent Rome are mirrored in today’s ‘reality’ television. People become fixated on celebrity as the genuinely noteworthty become understandably camera shy. These invented celebrities are ‘famous’ just for being famous…
…Debauchery is another recurring theme at the end of empire. Society develops a strangely immature obsession with sex. People drink themselves to the point of unconsciousness and shamelessly collapse in the street. In Roman times, binge drinkers were left to their fate. Today’s debauchery is supervised by the police; its ‘victims’ are taken care of by hard-pressed health care professionals, placing further pressure on the public purse. And, all the while, supermarkets and corporations make a killing selling discounted booze to people barely old enough to buy it. This is our modern-day bread and circuses, with obese citizens literally becoming a burden on the state.
But the small can never satisfy the large. Cheap pleasures fail to compensate for the absence of meaning in so many people’s lives. A hankering for something greater remains…growing numbers are denied access to work; they can find no meaningful involvement in their community, so their potential goes unfulfilled. When people are prevented from fulfilling their potential, they often self-destruct. (source)
By “Empire,” I’m not referring specifically just to the United States in particular, but Western Civilization in general. We’re watching our friends in Europe go down the same path. How can anyone look at the following stories and think that we are all okay and that this is sustainable?
NOTE: The story below isn’t pretty and there is adult content. If you are offended by adult content, take my word for it and do not read on. If you do read on, don’t get mad that you read adult content and complain in the comments. Thanks. DL
Dissent
Never have America and Europe seen their citizens more at odds. Here in the United States, the last election caused more division than any other in history. Friendships and family relationships ended over who people’s voting choices. Once Trump was inaugurated, things didn’t settle down. There are still groups who want to overthrow the “Trump-Pence regime.” Some students can’t even tolerate the existence of those with opposite beliefs.
In Europe, the UK voted to leave the European Union and Catalonia voted to leave Spain. People are firmly divided between welcoming immigrants and banishing immigrants.
Chaos is everywhere and there is little middle ground.
A Hollywood fixture has been accused of assaulting and harassing dozens of women, which led thousands of other women to share their horror stories with a #MeToo hashtag on Twitter. I have seen report after report recently of teachers having sex with their high school students.
Premature Sexuality
Sexuality is being introduced to our children far too early, For example, libraries around the country are having “Drag Queen Story Hour.” A picture is worth a thousand words.
Drag Queen Story Hour aims to give young children “glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models,” according to the programme’s website…
…The Drag Queen Story Hour site explains that the event “captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood”.
“In spaces like this, kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where people can present as they wish, where dress up is real.
The programme “happens regularly in LA, New York, and San Francisco, and events are popping up all over the world!”
I actually don’t have an issue with adults who are drag queens – heck, I sang along at a show in Vegas, and as a libertarian, I believe that consenting adults can do what they want. I have not raised my kids to mistreat others because of their sexuality. They’d be in massive trouble if they did. I did, however, manage to teach them to be kind individuals without taking them to Drag Queen Story Hour when they were 3.
Let me be absolutely clear that while I don’t think Drag Queen Story Hour is an attempt to sexually abuse children, it does lead me to the over-sexualization of kids. I don’t even know the names of all the genders and sexualities that are being claimed and LBGT keeps adding so many initials, I can’t keep up. No wonder kids are confused. I’m confused and I’m a grown-up.
Decades ago, anything on TV before 9 o’clock was pretty innocent. We didn’t have laptops and cell phones that allowed us to learn way too much, way too soon. We didn’t take quizzes on Buzzfeed to see if we were ready to have anal sex that night and we didn’t turn to Teen Vogue to learn about oral sex. These days, Teen Vogue is racier than Cosmo was in the early 80s. How do we protect our children’s innocence in this environment? How do we let them just be kids and find their own ways? Heck, even in Disney movies, everyone’s gotta have a love interest. Why?
Normalization of pedophilia
Children are exposed to far too much, far too young. This makes them ripe targets for pedophiles. Let me be clear on this too. Pedophilia is always, always wrong and extraordinarily harmful to children.
Our website is intended to reduce the stigma attached to pedophilia by letting people know that a substantial number of pedophiles DO NOT molest children, and to provide peer support and information about available resources to help virtuous pedophiles remain law-abiding, and lead happy, productive lives. These are our stories. There are brief bios of the two founders of the site and collections of other personal stories. (source)
I keep wondering, are the people in charge of media trying to normalize this so that when they inevitably get outed for molesting children, no one will care? Watch this video about the rampant pedophilia in the entertainment industry – and then remember, these are the people who influence the views of the folks who idolize celebrities.
Tony Podesta, the brother of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, was spotlighted for his incredibly disturbing art collection that showed the torture and murder of children. (Here is a shocking post with images found using “Tony and Heather Podesta’s art collection” as a search term.) And who can forget that sick “spirit cooking” scandal during the election? There are some things we simply cannot unsee.
Speaking of “art,” a Slovenian woman just won a prestigious art award for being “in seclusion” with her dogs for 3 months. Of course, for some of us, just hanging with pets sounds awesome, but we don’t hang out with pets like Maja Smrekar does. She breastfed a puppy and fertilized one of her eggs with what she says was a “fat cell” from another of her dogs. Mmm hmm. This video that documents her “art” is another thing to add to the can’t-ever-unsee-it list. The jury that awarded her the prize said, “What is making this artwork so special is the total commitment of the artist.” Apparently, I just don’t understand art. Or commitment. Or what cool people do with their pets.
Bestiality is actually legal in these US states: Hawaii, Kentucky, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming, and the District of Columbia. Apparently, parties are organized where people can engage in sex acts with animals. Publicly.
Not to be outdone, this gal is done with humanity altogether and says she now is…a cat. I wasn’t sure if this went in the bestiality section or where.
The emptiness of society
Perhaps people should first examine the depravity and frivolity that passes for art and entertainment these days. A walk in the woods to look at fall leaves will not suffice for much of the population.
People are so desperate for that rush of endorphins that they’re constantly seeking something more and more outrageous to give it to them. Normal things no longer give them that fleeting feeling of joy. Their own lives are so empty that they focus on the lives of people famous for being famous to fill them up.
When society is more interested in reality television than actual reality, how can we expect that same society will be invested in our future?
“We have so much wind and wave power that it is retrograde in the extreme to lend any support to the fracking industry.”
Environmental groups from around the world applauded Scotland on Tuesday for its decision to ban fracking, following an overwhelming public outcry against the practice - and called for the United States and the rest of the United Kingdom to follow suit.
The Scottish government held a public comment period in recent months on fracking, attracting about 65,000 responses - the majority of which came from people in communities where the natural gas extraction would take place. An overwhelming 99 percent of Scots who participated were opposed to the practice.
"Fracking will lead to an increase in pollution and the decimation of parts of the Scottish landscape and environment,” wrote one respondent.
“People will feel even more devalued as a result of having been ignored, communities wll be damaged by fracking wells and health will suffer as a result of noise, ground water contamination and probably indirect air pollution. Scotland can’t afford to damage the health of its residents any more.”
In addition to environmental concerns, many Scots said they weren’t convinced of the potential economic benefits of fracking; the auditing firm KPMG found that it was likely to only increase the GDP by 0.1 percent. Others said relying on the risky method of energy production would signify a lack of innovation in the country.
“We should be moving to renewables. This is a backwards step,” said a commenter.
In a four-month public comment period, 99 percent of the 65,000 Scots who responded expressed opposition to fracking. (Photo: Friends of the Earth Scotland/Flickr/cc)
Another added that the practice was “likely to be entirely detrimental as Scotland’s international reputation as an innovator in design and engineering projects is undermined by our agreement to proceed with fracking…We have so much wind and wave power that it is retrograde in the extreme to lend any support to the fracking industry.”
Food and Water Watch gave credit to the Scottish people for standing up to corporate entities that supported fracking. “Giant energy company Ineos, which invested heavily in its Scottish facility at Grangemouth, fought hard against this ban, even threatening to explore legal action against the government if it passed,” said executive director Wenonah Hauter in a statement. “But people power prevailed, and it will continue to prevail. We can’t let companies like ExxonMobil and Ineos stop the inevitable march towards clean energy. Bold and swift policy change is our only hope for addressing our climate goals. We applaud the Scottish government for doing what’s right for people and the planet.”
Scotland’s decision leaves its neighbors, England and Wales, alone in their embrace of fracking.
“With all our nearest neighbours having banned or halted fracking, our government is increasingly out on a limb in pursuing it in England,” said Rose Dickinson of Friends of the Earth.
Hauter also called on the U.K. as well as the U.S. to follow in Scotland’s footsteps.
“Banning fracking is a necessary step towards beating the worst effects of climate chaos, and the U.K. and the U.S. should follow Scotland’s example,” she said.
“In the U.S., we already have the means to start moving off of fracking swiftly - the Off Fossil Fuels For a Better Future Act, which would mandate a just transition to 100 percent clean renewable energy by 2035, starting with 80 percent within the next 10 years.”
As in Scotland, public opinion in the UK and the US is not in fracking’s favor, despite officials’ insistence that the practice creates jobs and revenue. A poll by England’s Business and Energy Department this summer found that only 16 percent of citizens support fracking, down from 21 percent last year.
In the U.S., opinions are more evenly split, but a 2016 Gallup poll found that 51 percent of Americans oppose fracking, while 36 percent support it.
Duke University is recruiting male students for a nine-week program that pledges to “destabilize masculine privilege” and “interrogate masculinity.”
The program, known as the Duke University Men’s Project, seeks to help men examine how their masculinities exist “often in toxic ways” while beginning “the work of unlearning violence.”
“There is a misinformed narrative that gender equity and feminism hurts men,” a description for the program suggests, adding that “through conversations on the limits of masculinity and healthy alternatives we demonstrate that men have much to gain.”
Over the course of the nine-week program, men will participate in weekly discussion groups conducted through an “intersectional feminist lens,” with the hope of helping male students learn an “intersectional understanding of masculinity” and creating “spaces to destabilize masculine privilege.”
Organizers warn that the program isn’t for the faint of heart, explaining that the discussion groups will make men feel “vulnerable” and “will be challenging,” and should thus be “taken seriously.”
Notably, the application for the program, which closes Wednesday, asks students to describe how “privilege...operates to create inequality on Duke’s campus” and list their preferred gender.
While the project was founded last year with a single group of fifteen students, it has added an additional discussion group this year to accommodate increased student interest.
Upon successful completion of the program, participants will be dispatched across campus to host events for other students on topics such as “pornography and rape culture, male privilege and taking up space, and gender disparities in emotional labor.”
Although the men’s project specifically targets men, it appears that at least some female students are involved with leadership of the program, though when Campus Reform reached out to some of its organizers, all declined to comment, citing “university policy.”
Participants will not be paid for the program, though the school did recently hire a Men’s Engagement Intern who will earn $9 per hour to help lead the program and foster “collective buy-in on the part of men.”
Additionally, the weekly discussion groups will be held at the university’s Women’s Center, which formed in 1987 after students submitted a 76-page proposal for its creation, now with a mission of helping both men and women “resist patriarchal oppression.”
Campus Reform reached out to Duke University for comment, but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Further, issues like wasted food, poor working conditions, polluted ecosystems, mistreated animals, and greenhouse gases are just some of the concerns that people have about our current supply chains.
Today’s infographic from Futurism shows how food systems are evolving – and that the future of food depends on technologies that enable us to get more food out of fewer resources.
THE NEXT GEN OF FOOD SYSTEMS
Here are four technologies that may have a profound effect on how we eat in the future:
1. Automated Vertical Farms
It’s already clear that vertical farming is incredibly effective. By stacking farms on top of another and using automation, vertical farms can produce 100x more effectively per acre than conventional agricultural techniques.
They grow crops at twice the speed as usual, while using 40% less power, having 80% less food waste, and using 99% less water than outdoor fields. However, the problem for vertical farms is still cost – and it is not clear when they will be viable on a commercial basis.
2. Aquaponics
Another technology that has promise for the future of food is a unique combination of fish farming (aquaculture) with hydroponics.
In short, fish convert their food into nutrients that plants can absorb, while the plants clean the water for the fish. Compared to conventional farming, this technology uses about half of the water, while increasing the yield of the crops grown. As a bonus, it also can raise a significant amount of fish.
3. In Vitro Meats
Meat is costly and extremely resource intensive to produce. As just one example, to produce one pound of beef, it takes 1,847 gallons of water.
In vitro meats are one way to solve this. These self-replicating muscle tissue cultures are grown and fed nutrients in a broth, and bypass the need for having living animals altogether. Interestingly enough, market demand seems to be there: one recent study found that 70.6% of consumers are interested in trying lab grown beef.
4. Artificial Animal Products
One other route to get artificial meat is to use machine learning to grasp the complex chemistry and textures behind these products, and to find ways to replicate them. This has already been done for mayonnaise – and it’s in the works for eggs, milk, and cheese as well.
TASTING THE FUTURE OF FOOD
As these new technologies scale and hit markets, the future of food could change drastically. Many products will flop, but others will take a firm hold in our supply chains and become culturally acceptable and commercially viable. Certainly, food will be grown locally in massive skyscrapers, and there will be decent alternatives to be found for both meat or animal products in the market.
With the global population rising by more than a million people each week, finding and testing new solutions around food will be essential to make the most out of limited resources.
Documents released yesterday in a lawsuit against Monsanto have resulted in new questions about the company’s efforts to influence the news media and scientific research and revealed internal debate over the safety of its highest-profile product, the weed killer Roundup.
As the New York Times notes today, new internal emails, among other things, reveal ethical objections from former employees to "ghost writing" research studies that were pawned off as "independent" analyses.
The documents underscore the lengths to which the agrochemical company goes to protect its image. Documents show that Henry I. Miller, an academic and a vocal proponent of genetically modified crops, asked Monsanto to draft an article for him that largely mirrored one that appeared under his name on Forbes’s website in 2015. Mr. Miller could not be reached for comment.
A similar issue appeared in academic research. An academic involved in writing research funded by Monsanto, John Acquavella, a former Monsanto employee, appeared to express discomfort with the process, writing in a 2015 email to a Monsanto executive, “I can’t be part of deceptive authorship on a presentation or publication.” He also said of the way the company was trying to present the authorship: “We call that ghost writing and it is unethical.”
The newly disclosed emails also reveal internal discussions which cast some doubt over whether internal scientists actually believed in the company"s external messaging that Roundup was, in fact, safe.
“If somebody came to me and said they wanted to test Roundup I know how I would react — with serious concern."
And, here"s more:
The documents also show that a debate outside Monsanto about the relative safety of glyphosate and Roundup, which contains other chemicals, was also taking place within the company.
In a 2002 email, a Monsanto executive said, “What I’ve been hearing from you is that this continues to be the case with these studies — Glyphosate is O.K. but the formulated product (and thus the surfactant) does the damage.”
In a 2003 email, a different Monsanto executive tells others, “You cannot say that Roundup is not a carcinogen … we have not done the necessary testing on the formulation to make that statement.”
Not surprisingly, Monsanto"s lawyers have argued that the comments above have simply been taken out of context...
Monsanto said it was outraged by the documents’ release by a law firm involved in the litigation.
“There is a standing confidentiality order that they violated,” said Scott Partridge, vice president of global strategy for Monsanto. He said that while “you can’t unring a bell,” Monsanto would seek penalties on the firm.
“What you’re seeing are some cherry-picked things that can be made to look bad,” Mr. Partridge said. “But the substance and the science are not affected by this.”
...you know, because the phrase, “we call that ghost writing and it is unethical," can be interpreted in so many different ways.
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For those who missed it, below is our note on similar revelations that came to light back in March 2017.
If we had a dime for every kooky, left-wing theory we"ve heard alleging some vast corporate conspiracy to exploit the treasures of the earth, destroy the environment and poison people with unknown carcinogens all while buying off politicians to cover their tracks, we would be rich. The problem, of course, is that sometimes the kooky conspiracy theories prove to be completely accurate.
Lets take the case of the $60 billion ag-chemicals powerhouse, Monsanto, and their controversial herbicide, Roundup as an example. For those who aren"t familiar, Roundup Ready is Monsanto’s blockbuster weedkiller, credited with transforming U.S. agriculture, with a majority of farm production now using genetically modified seeds resistant to the chemical.
For years the company has assured farmers that their weed killing product was absolutely safe to use. As proof, Monsanto touted the approval of the chemical by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
That said, newly unsealed court documents released earlier today seemingly reveal a startling effort on the part of both Monsanto and the EPA to work in concert to kill and/or discredit independent, albeit inconvenient, cancer research conducted by the World Health Organization"s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)....more on this later.
But, before we get into the competing studies, here is a brief look at the "extensive" work that Monsanto and the EPA did prior to originally declaring Roundup safe for use (hint: not much). As the excerpt below reveals, the EPA effectively declared Roundup safe for use without even conducting tests on the actual formulation, but instead relying on industry research on just one of the product"s active ingredients.
"EPA"s minimal standards do not require human health data submissions related to the formulated product - here, Roundup. Instead, EPA regulations require only studies and data that relate to the active ingredient, which in the case of Roundup is glyphosate. As a result, the body of scientific literature EPA has reviewed is not only primarily provided by the industry, but it also only considers one part of the chemical ingredients that make up Roundup."
Meanwhile, if that"s not enough for you, Donna Farmer, Monsanto"s lead toxicologist, even admitted in her deposition that she "cannot say that Roundup does not cause cancer" because "[w]e [Monsanto] have not done the carcinogenicity studies with Roundup."
And just in case you"re the super skeptical type, here is Farmer"s actual email, from back in 2009, which seems pretty clear:
"you cannot say that Roundup does not cause cancer..we have not done carcinogenicity studies with "Roundup".
And while the revelations above are quite damning by themselves, this is where things get really interesting.
In early 2015, once it became clear that the World Health Organization"s IARC was working on their own independent study of Roundup, Monsanto immediately launched their own efforts to preemptively discredit any results that might be deemed "inconvenient".
That said, Monsanto, the $60 billion behemoth, couldn"t possibly afford the $250,000 bill that would come with conducting a legitimate scientific study led by accredited scientists. Instead, they decided to "ghost-write" key sections of their report themselves and plotted to then have the independent scientists just "sign their names so to speak."
"A less expensive/more palatable approach might be to involve experts only for the areas of contention, epidemiology and possibly MOA (depending on what comes out of the IARC meeting), and we ghost-write the Exposure Tox & Genetox sections...but we would be keeping the cost down by us doing the writing and they would just edit & sign their names so to speak."
Finally, when all else fails, you call in those "special favors" in Washington D.C. that you"ve paid handsomely for over the years.
And that"s where Jess Rowland, the EPA"s Deputy Division Director for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention and chair of the Agency"s Cancer Assessment Review Committee, comes in to assure you that he"s fully exploiting his role as the "chair of the CARC" to kill any potentially damaging research..."if I can kill this I should get a medal."
All of which begs the question of whether the D.C. swamp is just too large to be drained.
In the 1960"s and 1970"s the US government tested chemical and biological weapons on US troops in still little known secret programs called Projects 112 and SHAD (Shipboard Hazard and Defense). The Vietnam era tests involved some 6,000 military personnel being subject to experiments involving deadly nerve agents like sarin and VX, as well as biological agents like E. Coli, all of which can result in quick death or potential lifelong debilitating health issues such as long-term central nervous system failure. A fatal dose of VX nerve agent, for example, can kill in minutes, but it is unknown if the program resulted in deaths because documents remain classified as "Top Secret" even 50 years later. Veterans advocacy groups have long tried to get specifics of the program declassified in the hopes that disclosure might allow victims of the tests access to health benefits and better medical treatment, but on Thursday Congress slammed the door on these attempts, leaving veterans and some congressional sponsors outraged.
USS George Eastman personnel were among those identified by the National Academies ofSciences as subject to US government experiments in biochem warfare.
Some limited details of the highly classified program came to light in 2000, when the Department of Veterans Affairs obtained documents related to the program from the Pentagon in order to study medical treatments for claimants. But veteran victims of testing have long been left in the lurch as the Pentagon decides how much information should be shared with the public. Veterans Affairs has an official statement on its website - the result of in-house studies in coordination with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, claiming there"s no evidence that exposure has led to ill-health:
Project 112/Project SHAD, or Shipboard Hazard and Defense, was a series of tests conducted by the Department of Defense from 1962 to 1974. Servicemembers participated in conducting the tests. The purpose was to determine the potential risks to U.S. warships and American forces from chemical and biological warfare agents.
To date, there is no clear evidence of specific, long-term health problems associated with participation in Project SHAD.
Disturbingly, the National Academies admits in a 2016 study that among the 6000 personnel involved in the tests...
Only some of the involved military personnel were aware of the nature of the tests at the time they were conducted.
Table: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine study of Project SHAD agents used on troop personnel and hypothesized health effects.
Reps. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., Don Young, R-Alaska, and Walter Jones, R-N.C. have worked on behalf of veterans groups to put the issue before Congress. The congressmen sponsored language in a defense policy bill this week that would force the secretary of defense to either declassify documents related to the chemical program or explain to Congress why he can"t. The Pentagon has kept silent on the issue.
On Thursday the House Rules Committee, which decides what goes before the House floor, struck down the proposal, so the declassification won"t even be up for discussion before Congress. An enraged Rep. Thompson called the fact that it didn"t even make it out of committee "shameful" and took to the house floor saying:
These tests were an ugly part of our history. They put veteran lives at risk. And our veterans have every right to know what it was they were exposed to, how much they were exposed to, we need to think about their safety and their security.
A number of veteran spokespersons questioned how greater public knowledge of the experiments would compromise national security, which appears to be the Pentagon"s position. Government classification often has more to do with covering up embarrassing secrets and preventing lawsuits than national security. A number of outrageously immoral programs going back to the middle of the last century are already well-known and documented, including Mk-Ultra, Operation Paperclip, and nuclear testing on soldiers. Thompson told McClatchy News just prior to the proposal going to committee:
It’s been over 50 years since these tests were conducted and the DOD has yet to provide a complete accounting of what truly happened to our service members. Veterans can’t wait any longer.
It is entirely possible that buried amidst the stacks of Top Secret DoD documentation on project SHAD is the United States" own horrific Ronald Maddison story. Maddison was victim of what is widely considered to be the most sickeningly scandalous case of human experimentation in UK history. In 1953 Maddison, a 20-year-old Royal Air Force engineer, thought he had volunteered for mild experiments related to curing the common cold. Instead he was given a large dose of liquid sarin drops applied directly to his skin by military scientists at England"s Porton Down labs in order to study the effects. Maddison died an agonizing death, which the UK government spent decades covering up.
Ronald Maddison, subject of UK chemical testing at Porton Down
Details of the Ronald Maddison story only came to light over 50 years after his death, when an unwitting eyewitness named Alfred Thornhill went public. Thornhill told The Guardian:
"I saw his leg rise up from the bed and I saw his skin begin turning blue. It started from the ankle and started spreading up his leg. It was like watching somebody pouring a blue liquid into a glass, it just began filling up. I was standing by the bed gawping. It was like watching something from outer space and then one of the doctors produced the biggest needle I had ever seen. It was the size of a bicycle pump and went down onto the lad"s body. The sister saw me gawping and told me to get out."
Maddison"s ordeal was not an isolated case of chemical weapons testing using human guinea pigs in either Britain or America, but it was certainly one of the ugliest in terms of the circumstances of his death. As 6000 possibly sick US veterans got the door slammed in their faces yesterday regarding project SHAD, we must ask: what is the Pentagon hiding?
After reading this article, you will never look at tap water the same way again.
Most Americans have generally assumed that the water coming out of our taps is perfectly safe, but the Flint water crisis and other similar incidents are starting to help people to understand that there are some very dangerous substances in our water. In particular, I am talking about things like arsenic, lead, atrazine, perchlorate and a whole host of pharmaceutical drugs. According to an absolutely stunning NRDC report, close to 77 million Americans received their water from systems “that violated federal protections” in 2015. And even if you get your water from a system that meets federal standards, that still does not mean that it is safe.
Reef-Sunset Unified School District Superintendent David East is worried about water. Not because of the drought—record rains this past winter ended five years of dry times. Rather, East, whose district encompasses the small towns of Avenal and Kettleman City on the San Joaquin Valley’s west side, is worried about the safety of the water that the 2,700 students in his school district are being given to drink.
That’s because arsenic levels in the drinking water at some schools in the San Joaquin Valley exceed the maximum federal safety levels by as much as three times. And arsenic is not the only threat to schoolchildren. High levels of pesticides, nitrate, bacteria, and naturally occurring uranium also contaminate groundwater in many rural parts of the state.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer says that arsenic is a “group 1 carcinogen”, and if you get too much of it in your system it can kill you. Sadly, the EPA has estimated that 36 million Americans are drinking tap water that contains dangerous levels of arsenic.
In addition to arsenic, a very nasty pesticide known as “atrazine” is often found in tap water supplies. The following information about atrazine comes from the NRDC…
This endocrine-disrupting chemical is one of the most commonly detected pesticides in U.S. waters. NRDC studies have found its contamination is most common in drinking water across the Midwest and the southern United States.
Perchlorate is another very dangerous substance that is commonly found in our drinking water. According to the NRDC, perchlorate has been discovered in water supplies “in at least 26 states”…
This widespread toxic chemical, used in rocket fuel, explosives, and road flares, can interfere with thyroid hormone production. Perchlorate has been detected in the water in at least 26 states, yet there is no federal standard for its presence in drinking water.
Of course lead in the water has been getting a tremendous amount of attention because of what happened in Flint, Michigan. The lawsuits that will come out of this case could take decades to resolve…
Flint’s water problems began in April 2014, when the city, in an attempt to save money, switched the town’s water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River. In the switch, officials failed to add a $200-per-day anti-corrosion agent that would coat the city’s antiquated pipes. The omission would prove disastrous as lead from the pipes began to leach into the water that flowed out of the tap, endangering thousands of children. Officials asserted it was “safe to drink,” above the outcry of residents who suspected the brown, odorous water was contaminated.
The first outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease — a serious type of pneumonia caused by Legionella bacteria — hit by summer. According to the water crisis interim investigation report released last week, Lyon and others knew about outbreaks for nearly a year before the public was notified and an emergency was declared. In all, a dozen people died from Legionnaires’ disease, though residents suspect there may be other victims who were never tested for the bacteria.
But Flint is far from alone. In fact, this week there have been headlines about serious problems with lead in the water in Chicago.
Wherever there are old pipes, lead in the water is potentially a massive problem.
On top of everything else, our water systems are becoming increasingly polluted by pharmaceutical drugs. An EPA study actually found traces of more than two dozen pharmaceutical drugs in more than half of the water systems that were tested around the country…
Conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency, it is the largest study of water coming out of wastewater treatment plants.
It looked at samples from 50 large-size wastewater treatment plants nationwide and tested for 56 drugs including oxycodone, high-blood pressure medications, and over-the-counter drugs like Tylenol and ibuprofen. More than half the samples tested positive for at least 25 of the drugs monitored, the study said. High blood pressure medications appeared in the highest concentrations and most frequently.
“We were surprised to find that many drugs occurring across all the wastewater plants,” said Mitchell Kostich, the EPA research biologist who led the study. “We were also surprised to see so many drugs of a particular class—the high blood pressure medications—appear at those levels across the board.”
So those that drink tap water coming from these polluted systems are actually ingesting small amounts of dozens of different pharmaceutical drugs every single day.
No wonder so many of us are walking around like zombies.
So how did all of these drugs get into the water? The following comes from WebMD…
According to the investigation, the drugs get into the drinking water supply through several routes: some people flush unneeded medication down toilets; other medicine gets into the water supply after people take medication, absorb some, and pass the rest out in urine or feces. Some pharmaceuticals remain even after wastewater treatments and cleansing by water treatment plants, the investigation showed.
Are you starting to understand what an environmental nightmare we are facing?
But in addition to everything that you just read, many water systems around the country actually add toxic substances to the water purposely.
Of course the most prominent example of this is fluoride. We are told that fluoride “reduces cavities” even though this has never been scientifically proven. But what we do know is that fluoride is a highly dangerous neurotoxin that can have a very serious impact on early childhood development…
Scientific investigations have revealed that fluoride is an endocrine-disrupting chemical, and a developmental neurotoxin that impacts short-term and working memory, and lowers IQ in children. It has been implicated as a contributing factor in the rising rates of both attention-deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD), and thyroid disease.
And we also know that fluoride can cause a condition known as “fluorosis”, and the introduction of fluoride into our water systems has coincided with a dramatic rise in fluorosis all over the nation. In fact, more than half the children in the entire country have now been affected…
According to research presented at the April 2017 National Oral Health Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, 57 percent of youth between the ages of 6 and 19 years have dental fluorosis, a condition in which your tooth enamel becomes progressively discolored and mottled, according to data from 2011 to 2012.
Because of such overwhelming scientific evidence, fluoride in the water has already been completely banned in many industrialized countries, and if I end up in Washington I will push for a complete national ban on fluoride in the water in the United States.
All of us should be able to agree that we need to do whatever we can to keep the water that we are drinking clean and safe.
But until we can get this done, I would encourage everyone to either filter their drinking water or to get it from a source that they know is pure.
By drinking such polluted water, we are literally poisoning ourselves and our children, and we have no choice but to get this problem fixed.
Despite Big Agriculture claiming for years that their pesticides only kill pests, a report published in late June in the Journal Science proved what many people have suspected for years: the type of pesticides that Bayer pioneered, known as neonicotinoids, are responsible for diminishing numbers of honeybees.
“Two studies, conducted on different crops and on two continents … find that bees near corn crops are exposed to neonicotinoids for 3 to 4 months via nontarget pollen, resulting in decreased survival and immune responses, especially when co-exposed to a commonly used agrochemical fungicide.” the report said.
The studies even found neonicotinoid residue inside of hives where no chemicals had been used nearby. The study also noted that the presence of these insecticide residues was correlated with fewer queen bees in the hives and fewer egg cells in solitary bees nests.
This is especially troubling, because bees are responsible for pollinating nearly 75 percent of all crops grown for human and animal consumption worldwide.
And US honeybee colonies have been on a steady decline for the last four decades, as this chart illustrates:
However, perhaps the major contributing factor to not only the threats facing the honeybee but also many other species of plants and animals is the threat of globalization. A 2012 report in the journal Nature noted the following:
“Here we show that a significant number of species are threatened as a result of international trade along complex routes, and that, in particular, consumers in developed countries cause threats to species through their demand of commodities that are ultimately produced in developing countries. We linked 25,000 Animalia species threat records from the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List to more than 15,000 commodities produced in 187 countries and evaluated more than 5 billion supply chains in terms of their biodiversity impacts. Excluding invasive species, we found that 30% of global species threats are due to international trade.”
This map shows the species threat hotspots caused by US consumption. The darker the color, the greater the threat caused by the consumption. The magenta color represents terrestrial species, while the blue represents marine species. Credit: Daniel Moran and Keiichiro Kanemoto
While the Donald Trump presidency has placed the spotlight on the ways in which globalist policies have harmed the economies of the US as well as many other countries in the developed world, we tend to overlook the ways in which the demand for cheaper and more goods from the developing world harm our environment. Indeed, the Trump era has ushered in a demand not only for political decentralization, but also for the decentralization of our media, our currencies, and now our food supply as the damage of agricultural centralization becomes apparent. Our demand for 99 cent hamburgers has taken us to the edge of total ecological collapse, and at this point it is unclear if the damage is irreversable.
An interesting development over the last few years has seen large cities in the US most acutely ravaged by globalist policies, such as Detroit and Baltimore, turning derilect buildings within the city into multiacre urban farms as a solution to growing food insecurity within these deindustrialized urban centers. Urban flight from these cities over the years has facilitated the use of large swaths of the city to satiate demand for locally produced fresh produce, and has led to the growth of many year-round farmers markets that have helped to increase food security in these areas while decreasing dependence on these global agribusiness cartels. It seems that some of the Districts in our Hunger Games society are attempting to gain independence from the Capital.
Urban farms, such as this one in Baltimore, have increased food security in cities that have been hit hard by globalism and free trade.
Certainly, as we have noted before in previous columns, we are living in an era where massive change is taking place in almost every sphere of human activity. Right now is the critical juncture in which we will decide whether power will be returned to the people, or will be further consolidated into the hands of those who wish to micromanage every aspect of the human and natural world for their own private gain. The fight for control over the food supply is just one of many battlegrounds in this war for the future of the planet and our lives. Growing public awareness about the dangers of these pesticides as well as GMOs, and an increased demand for locally produced organic agriculture are signs that the public is waking up and understanding the great peril that agricultural centralization poses to not only our health, but the health and wellbeing of our entire planet.
