Readers Forum Tuesday 17th March 2009

5 Responses

1. 

   JeffT
   March 18, 2009 at 12:16 am

   G’day Ray,
   Your post made me look up the references to this problem. The name of the standards for food, food additives and supplements (vitamins) is Codex Alimentarius, or shortened to Codex.
   Google Codex Alimentarius, produces some interesting results.
    
   The Therapeutic Goods Administration’s web site labelled Codex assures us that vitamin supplements are administered by the TGA and are not at risk, unlike Europe and the US, but that site was last updated in 2007, predating Kevin07, with WTO , FTA’s and pressures from large pharmaceuticals.
   Back in 2007 there was petitions and representations to ministers, by people and health food store owners, which has appeared to keep access to supplements open.
    
   Something I have become aware of recently is juggling of ownership and changes of supplier names:
   In Queensland, Golden Glow Supplements has had a few owners, is now owned by Symbion Health, who also have their brand name on Pathology suites, Medical imaging(x ray), and probably own private hospitals.
    
   Scary stuff indeed, as my wife and I have supplemented for 35 years, and this has allowed us to keep away from a lot of common health problems.

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2. 

   Steve
   March 17, 2009 at 10:24 pm

   G’day Deborah,
    
   Did you know that you can actually post the YouTube Video with your post rather than a link?
    
   All you do is click on the Youtube Video icon next to the smiley face, insert the Youtube link address and hit insert.
   Here is the video that you linked to above.

   Reply
3. 

   Ray Jamieson
   March 17, 2009 at 9:11 pm

   This is scary stuff!  Just as in the USA and Europe now it’s illegal to buy Vitamins A, C and E in a strong formula now, if you can’t grow vitamins in your vegie patch, then we had better start looking for another game to play.  Or we could stand up and fight these boofheads as though our lives and livelhoods depended on it!  Now there’s an idea!  Let’s just hope it rates higher in importance to the general public and especially the rural communities than regrowth clearing!
   I look forward to hearing from the various industry organisations and associations about this ASAP on Agmates and in the wider media!
   Ray Jamieson

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4. 

   Deborah
   March 17, 2009 at 6:05 pm

   <div style=”margin: 0px;”>Hi Agmates, re the news item today I thought you should see this!.</div>
   <div style=”font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;”>Big Agra (e.g., Monsanto, Cargill, Tyson, ADM) are pushing to BAN organic farming

   Very broad wording, pushing to ban organic farming . which could including gardening as well. Yes, its that broad.

   YouTube clip:

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epXNJNjYBvw

   PDF file of legislation:

   http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h875ih.txt.pdf

   Pay special attention to:

   * Section 3 which is the definitions portion of the bill-read in it’s entirety.
   * section 103, 206 and 207- read in it’s entirety.

   What the proposed legislation wants to accomplish:

   * Legally binds state agriculture depts to enforcing federal guidelines effectively taking away the states power to do anything other than being food police for the federal dept.

   * Effectively criminalizes organic farming but doesn’t actually use the word organic.

   * Effects anyone growing food even if they are not selling it but consuming it.

   * Effects anyone producing meat of any kind including wild game.

   * Legislation is so broad based that every aspect of growing or producing food can be made illegal. There are no specifics which is bizarre considering how long the legislation is.

   * Section 103 is almost entirely about the administrative aspect of the legislation. It will allow the appointing of officials from the factory farming corporations and lobbyists and classify them as experts and allow them to determine and interpret the legislation. Who do you think they are going to side with?

   * Section 206 defines what will be considered a food production facility and what will be enforced up all food production facilities. The wording is so broad based that a backyard gardener could be fined and more.

   * Section 207 requires that the state’s agriculture dept act as the food police and enforce the federal requirements. This takes away the states power and is in violation of the 10th amendment.

   Eric Pollitt
   Global Hemp, Inc.
   401 E. Illinois Ave.
   Peoria, IL 61603
   Tel: 309-686-9000
   Fax: 309-686-9009
   http://www.globalhemp.com/
   http://www.globalhempstore.com/</div>
   <div style=”font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;”>Deborah

   </div>

    

   Reply
5. 

   Blue Dog
   March 17, 2009 at 5:19 pm

    
   REAL ECONOMICS!
    
   To REALLY grasp what actually drives the “system” of finance we use, worldwide, and the inflation–deflation cycles we experience. At the heart of this drive is something we hear much less about, its “Usury” and “Fractional-reserve banking.” Usury (from the Medieval Latin usuria, “interest” or “excessive interest”) originally meant the charging of interest on loans and includes charging a fee for the use of the money. Fractional-reserve banking is where government requires banks to keep only a “fraction of their deposits in reserve” (as liquid assets, cash etc) lending out the remainder and charging interest on it.
    
   The practice arose before banks existed when goldsmiths rented out space in their vaults for storage of others gold and silver. They issued a “certificate” for the amount stored. The certificates themselves were then used to conduct business. The goldsmiths observed that the deposits in their vaults was not often withdrawn, so they issued double receipts for the same gold, in effect creating money “certificates” from nothing and then lending those certificates to depositors (creating debt) and charging them interest as well. Since these certificates represented more gold than actually existed, the certificates were “fractionally” backed by gold. Eventually some of these vault operations were transformed into banks and the practice of fractional banking continued.
   The system has the effect of “creating” monetary wealth from nothing, like “interest” Economists use the term “create” when observing the process by which this money comes into being. To get some understanding of the amount of this “new money” consider that approximately three trillion dollars is estimated to be placed on the short term money market around the world daily, and the amount of “interest” [new money] is “created” every minute of every day by banks and money lenders to name just too.
   This “new money” causes certain problems, and to see what these are we need to understand the difference between “created” or “new money” and “real wealth”. For example a sawmill takes a natural organic product “trees” and makes boards, workers then convert this product into “houses”, a window manufacturer does the same thing with organic minerals, a grain farmer does it with the earth and seeds, and a cattle farmer with cattle, gestation and the land. In these examples, they converted already existing materials into a more usable, and from our human point of view, valuable form “real wealth”
   The “new money” does not have this benefit, it can however, be used to purchase this “real wealth” This is how and why inflation grows, there is more and more “new” money available, and so the forces of supply and demand drive up the price of goods and services (land for example) is worth more “money” thus values “inflate” or rise. This is good news for those who own “real wealth” as they (sometimes) receive higher prices for their holdings but bad news for those who have to buy the wealth with the lesser (inflation based) wages/earnings they have received. The opposite is true when the money is “held” and deflation occurs.
   Manufacturing money is cheap, and whoever does the “creating” and issuing stands to make impressive profits, for example the USA ”Federal Treasury” actually consists of privately owned banks, who print money for Americans use and charge the American people a flat rate for printing their own money which is dutifully paid to the bankers from the income tax collected from the people by the government, consider then the massive windfall for these banks in the millions “created” in the recent economic meltdown.
    
   The financial system in use today has been developed since ancient times, and the problems it causes are historically systematic, for example in the Bible (Genesis 47 [verses 14 thru 24]) you can read about Egypt experiencing an intentional, government-sponsored deflation in the midst of a natural calamity, the money collapsed solely because the rulers (Joseph, second in command to Egypt’s Pharaoh) “held” the money from circulating. . Although a very small amount of gold and silver was allowed to circulate for local purposes, the vast mass of their Gold and Silver wealth obtained from Nubia was “held in reserve” by the Pharaoh.
   In this case history tells us it was a successful ruse to obtain control of the people and their “real wealth” by the ruler of the time, unfortunately it also tells us about the societys collapsed. Ultimately the greed for power over the people by their leaders (and henchmen) destroyed the society of the time. Some consider the continuing use of this financial system, as outdated and obsolete as maintaining the use of the wooden plough for the last 2000 years.
   History tells us that again and again, ancient, medieval, and modern civilizations have been ruined by the same practice of Usury, it is still happening right now. These historical lessons in the manifest long-range patterns of human financial behavior we have simply, as a people, not learnt from, and our political leaders are still making the same mistakes as regards fractional lending as was made 2000 years ago.
   A little further study on the effects of this system will show that the reason it is still being used is because those families and societies world wide, who have risen over centuries to the ultimate position of financial power have, and are still able, to use this system to manipulate governments, wars and consequently their societies [us] world wide for centuries.
   The Goldsmiths have become our masters.
   To quote Mayer Amschel (Rothschild) “Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes its laws”
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