Franklin's Focus 5/17/10

Corporations Go After Health Food Stores and Organic Farming

http://Vaticproject.blogspot.com/2010/05/goodbye-farmers-markets-csas-and.html

A reader forwarded the appended article to me. Monsanto and their ilk
have caused havoc in food production in countless countries. In India,
Monsanto's control of agriculture resulted in over 5,000 Indian
farmers committing suicide. Monsanto is an organization that is vastly
more cruel and destructive than the Mafia, and is so on an
international basis. It is no accident that Monsanto is an American
corporation. We generally win all the prizes for the most hideous
forms of international exploitation and imperialism.

The endlessly growing international power of Monsanto can be
attributed to the members of Congress, the State Department, and the
White House.

An effort is even underway to shut down health food stores. I have
repeatedly discovered products at my local health food store that are
vastly superior to the medications bribed doctors prescribe to me.

Pardon the following repeat, but I once spent two weeks at Mayo
Rochester being tested for cerebral seizures. $8,000.00 later, they
sent me to their Freudian abreactive shrink because my malady surely
had to be psychosomatic. The shrink asked me one single question. He
then decided I was suffering from a clinical depression which was
causing hysterical seizures.

I returned from Rochester in a foul mood. I immediately went to
consult with the owner of my local health food store. He asked me two
questions. I answered. He then said, 'You are suffering from a severe
shortage of B12 resulting from the pump inhibitors that have been
prescribed to you by your doctor. I told him I regularly took B12. He
answered, 'Your have been taking it improperly. You must take it
sublingually in order to take a detour around the actions of the pump
inhibitors.' He added, 'And please take it with fish oil.'

I went home and did so. I never again had one single seizure or even a
cerebral twitch. That was years ago. My health food consultant had
made a correct diagnosis and prescribed exactly what I needed. The
relief was stunning. I bought the products off the shelf with no
prescription and instantly cured myself.

Now they want to close down all health food stores in America because
the people who own and run them allegedly don't know anything about
diet and health! Over the years, I've noted that people launching such
stores go out of business very quickly if they don't know their stuff.
Customers expect clear, empirically based information when buying
health food products. I've never met an experienced owner who was not
an expert in health food products. The general rule is that
entrepreneurs who open retail businesses and don't know a damned thing
about their merchandise will likely not succeed unless they are
running a shady business like the used car racket.

I've never once met a family doctor who had any in depth knowledge
about health and nutrition. All of them have insisted I should never
buy or swallow anything found in a health food store! I recently heard
a nationally known doctor-author being interviewed on public radio.
When a woman called in with a question, and it came out that she was
ingesting some health food products, the doctor said to her, 'Never
ingest anything whatsoever that is sold in health food stores!' There
goes CoQ10, a health food product that has been hailed as the 'miracle
drug of the 21st century'!

If they close down the health food stores, I will be forced to make
frequent drives to Canada to stock up on the products I deem necessary
for my health.

Once again, it is several major corporations that are pushing through
legislation to close health food stores. If they succeed, however, I
believe they will have gone too far. There is a large population of
Americans who depend on these stores which keep them in good health.

There is a clause saying that people graduating from medical schools
with degrees in nutrition will be given licenses to open stores. The
problem with this is that the nutritional education of these people is
nearly always a farce. I've had discussions with nutrition nurses who
were hideously ignorant about health food. Nutrition courses are
taught in medical schools which are notorious for their fanatical
hatred of health food. There is a conflict of interest involved here.

There are cancer deterring products such as curcumin sold in good
health food stores, Family doctors never prescribe these to patients
even if they have family members with dispositions toward cancer.
Never mind that curcumin has made India the most cancer free country
in the world throughout its long history. Why? Because the most
popular food spice in India is rich in curcumin.

Did you know that among the huge proliferation of products for
insuring regularity, none of them is properly effective and healthy to
take? Psyllium husks, sold in capsule form in all health food stores
is a natural, healthy, effective product. It is the only product for
regularity that is strongly endorsed by Worst Pills, Inc., a hugely
important Nader's Raiders organization.

And so on. Forgive my occasional repeats. Some matters need to be
repeated. Now check out the appended item while keeping a shot of
whiskey handy.

Warmest regards,
Richard

=======================================================

2010-05-16 (this item was sent to me by a reader)

Goodbye farmers markets, CSAs, and roadside stands

Posted by Vatic at 10:00

Vatic Note: Please take special notice of the excellent solutions
she recommends in this article. I am going to include them in the
strategy and tactics section of the people to people initiative. So
please visit there when you need to refresh your memory about what
steps we can take to counter all of this. This is just another
assault on our food and when added to SB 510 or the house bill it
becomes obvious that this is more than just greed, or a bail out to
the agricorps, but also a "control" mechanism over the masses. Food
and Water and they would do air if they could.

Goodbye farmers markets, CSAs, and roadside stands
Stop HR 875, HR 814, SR 425, and soon, HR 759
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Goodbye-farmers-markets-C-by-Linn-...
By Linn Cohen-Cole - Writer
The "food safety" bills in Congress were written by Monsanto, Cargill,
Tysons, ADM, etc. All are associated with the opposite of food safety.
What is this all about then?

In the simplest terms, organic food and a rebirth of farming were
winning. Not in absolute numbers but in a deep and growing shift by
the public toward understanding the connection between their food and
their health, between good food and true social pleasures, between
their own involvement in food and the improvement in their lives in
general, between local food and a burgeoning local economy.

Slow Food was right - limit your food to what comes from your region
and from real farmers, and slow down to cook it and linger over it
with friends and family, and the world begins to change for the better.

And as we face an unprecedented economic crisis, and it is hard to be
sure what has value, one thing that always does is food. Which is why
the corporations are after absolute control over it. But what
obstacles to a complete lock on food do they face? All the people in
this country who are "banking" on organic farming and urban gardens
and most of all, everyone's deepening pleasure in and increasing
involvement with everything about food.

Farmers markets. Local farmers. Real milk. Fresh eggs. Vegetable stands.

Those are things we not only all want, but things we are actively
getting involved in, and things we very much need. And where they are
truly good, they are growing.

The international financial corporations which have wreaked havoc
around the world with astounding nonsensical "solutions" that are
destructive of everyone but them, are brothers to the international
agribusiness giants (Monsanto, Cargill, Tysons, ADM, etc.) which are
just as aggressively after their own form of "taking." Just seeds,
animals, water, land.

And freedom.

Because human beings are by in large good and by in large incredibly
resilient and clever, and left to their own devices - that is, free -
they would handle this gargantuan financial stupidity the corporations
brought us with NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT and all other globalized schemes
(which they hope to eventually top off with CODEX). How? By being
productive in real ways and locally. And farming is the solid ground
under that. Farmers produce something of real value (something we used
to take for granted), and from that base, businesses grow up. Local
markets, local food processors, local seed companies, local tool and
supply companies, local stores ... and an economy based on reality and
something truly good for us, too, begins to grow.

So, look again at what has been exciting us - Farmers markets. Local
farmers. Real milk. Fresh eggs. Vegetable stands. - and realize that
they are not only wonderfully healthy but fun and naturally community
building. And more, they are a real economy and deeply democratic -
and just at a time we need something that works economically, that
supports our democratic rebirth, and that protects food itself and our
easy access to it.

And it is all those things that threaten the corporations ... which is
why we now have these massive "fake food safety" bills in Congress.
Everything is going under thanks to these fools, and they wish to be
there like vultures to make sure that every drop of blood that can be
sucked out of our resources and us, is theirs. To wit, they must get
rid of such good and innocent things and yet truly powerful things as:

Farmers markets. Local farmers. Real milk. Fresh eggs. Vegetable stands.

And how will those who contaminate our country's food with pesticides,
hormones, antibiotics and more, do that? Why, by setting standards for
"food safety" that are so grotesquely and inappropriately and even
cruelly applied to a local, independent farmers and ranchers that
there is no way they can manage. Imagine your being faced with a 100
page IRS form and facing a million dollar a day penalty for screwing
up. That would be in the ball park of the impossible complexity mixed
with threat facing our farmers. Imagine having the government and
corporations deciding every single thing you can do and must do in
your kitchen and backing that up with the threat of 10 years in prison
for screwing up - though you have never made anyone sick, and those
corporations have. Imagine being surveilled 24 hours a day by GPS
tracking devices that feed into ... a corporate data bank, one they
have now moved out of the country so no one here can have legal access
to see what is in it.

Imagine the devil himself - or a whole boardrooms of them, dressed in
suits - defining the only safe and healthy food in this country as
dangerous and burdening hard working farmers with more work then
anyone could bear, while his own, their own, food is so dangerous at
this point that in the last 10 years alone, diabetes has gone up 90%.

And how did they get this far with such a scheme to apply insane
industrial standards to every farm in the country? Through fear of
diseases and of outbreaks of food borne illnesses, both of which they
cause themselves.

How it works: Tyson helps Bill Clinton get into office. Bill Clinton
immediately and significantly lowers contamination standards for
poultry as a thank you. And it is such contaminated waste from
transnational poultry factories which is now implicated as the source
of bird flu. Then fortunes on made on that fear. And then poultry
industry uses the crisis they created to push out small farmers and
take greater control than ever. Their mantra? Biodiversity not only be
damned but be eliminated. And get rid of those damn farmers who
protect it while we're at it.

The bills would require such a burdensome complexity of rules,
inspections, licensing, fees, and penalties for each farmer who wishes
to sell locally - a fruit stand, at a farmers market - no one could
manage it. And THAT is the point. The whole dirty tricks point. The
whole "be in tight control of everything needed for survival because
it'll be worth a fortune" point.

So, if you like farmers markets, local farmers, fresh milk, fresh
eggs, vegetables stands, and freedom, let your friends know that it's
all on the line right now with those "fake food safety" bills brought
to us with well-planned evil and more of it to come, by Monsanto,
Cargill, Tysons, ADM, etc.

[snip]

Send a message to Congress.

We need millions to be fighting this. Contact Eli Pariser at MoveOn moveon-help@list.moveon.org
to tell him MoveOn is badly needed.

And below, where Oped News offers a means of writing your local
newspaper, take advantage of a chance to vent.

Take action -- contact your local newspaper or congress people:
Stop HR 875, HR 814, SR 425, and soon, HR 759

Met libertarian and conservative farmers and learned an incredible
amount about farming and nature and science, as well as about
government violations against them and against us all. The other side
of the fence is nothing like what we've been taught to assume but
great people with immense decency.

End