Fluoride...it doesn't go away

Look at this fluoride crystal, beautiful and yet disturbing. Seen one way it reminds of a hardened old man, pointing; frozen in a 'Lot's wife' gesture.
Every time an article appears anywhere discussing the problems connected with fluoride in our water supply you can be sure that a few weeks later there will be a counter article with 'scientific evidence' of its merits.
Such a recent article appeared in the Irish Examiner, Friday, 15 November, and it was an affront to intelligence. It was expected; a month or so before there had been an announcement that the percentage of fluoride in our water would be reduced.
The article was titled Fluoride in water reduces tooth decay. It cited a study commissioned by the government called North South Survey of Children's Oral Health in Ireland. However it omitted to mention which organization or company had been commissioned to do the study or what their interest might be. The article stated that children from 1984 to the present were compared, as though the addition of fluoride to water had been the only change in childrens' lives during that time. The article was also obscure in other ways, quoting the Irish Dental Association as questioning 'the department's credibility on dental issues.'
We need to know that there are only three countries left in the EU that continue to fluoridate their water supply, Ireland, the UK and Spain. Of these Ireland is the most heavily fluoridated. All other countries have found fluoridation to be ineffective at best and harmful at worst. We also need to know that recycling fluoride, a waste product of the chemical industry, is a lucrative business.
Switzerland has not had fluoridation with the exception of the city of Basel which ended its use in 2003 by overwhelming vote. To quote the GSK (Basel Health and Social Commission):
..serious doubts had arisen about the effectiveness of water fluoridation. Adding to these doubts were recent findings showing that tooth decay had risen in Basel's children since 1996, coupled with an absence of any evidence showing Basel to have a lower rate of tooth decay than other Swiss cities.
According to Board member Tobias Studer, 'the freedom of the individual to choose the appropriate prophylaxis method was also a major point in the debate.'
As noted in the GSK report, 'only a minimal part of so-called drinking water is used for drinking and cooking.' The GSK estimated that 'over 99% of the fluoride' added to water is never consumed by humans, leading in turn to 'an unnecessary load on the environment...Fluoride is a poison that loads our rivers.'
It was supposed that fluoridation of table salt has a much higher efficiency.
Moreover, when a medicinal product is added to the water supply there is an inability on the part of governments to control the dose each individual receives, due to the wide variation that exists not only in individual water consumption but also in exposures to fluoride from other sources. The inability to control the dose is particularly important considering:
* Exposure to fluoridated water doesn't just last a week or a month, but an entire lifetime.
* Individual susceptibilities to fluoride vary greatly (eg those with impaired kidney function or nutritional deficiencies are more vulnerable to fluoride's toxic effects).
*The margin of safety between the range of fluoride exposures typically found in fluoridated communities and the range of exposures associated with fluoride-related health problems (such as arthritis and bone fracture) are poorly defined and, if existent, remarkably narrow.
In the United States water fluoridation is touted by government authorites as being 'one of the top 10 public health achievements of the 20th century.' The Centers for Disease Control state that water fluoridation has been the key factor in the decline of cavities among US children during the past 50 years. Based on such statements from the US Government one could be forgiven for assuming that Western Europe has somehow suffered higher rates of tooth decay by not fluoridating its water.
However, according to extensive data compiled by the World Health Organization, unfluoridated countries in Western Europe including countries with little or no salt fluoridation have experienced, without exception, the same general decline in tooth decay over the past 30 to 50 years, as that experienced in the US...children today in unfluoridated countries such as Denmark, Germany, The Netherlands and Sweden have as low--or even lower--levels of tooth decay as US children.
The evidence from Europe, therefore, suggests that water fluoridation is an entirely replaceable and unnecessary means of reducing tooth decay--a fact consistent with the Basel Health and Social Commission's conclusions, but at profound odds with the massive promotion campaign by the US Government to fluoridate more water in the US.
The above information was reported by Michael Connett and can be accessed at http://fluoridealert.org/basel.htm
This brings us back to the beginning of this post and the wizened fellow in the photo. Fluoride is a powerful poison. It hardens, and not only teeth. Over time it will affect the hypermineralization of bone (NIA Workshop on Aging and Bone Quality, 1992, Bethesda Maryland) and who knows what hardening effect it has on the brain or other tissues. Such studies may perhaps exist, or they may not. In any case it is not responsible to inflict this poison on Ireland's water supply.

Contemplations on Politie

The writer, poet and ‘myriad man’ George Russell (AE) wrote in 1912:

I fear that (even) without State socialism we may yet get worship of the State and belief in its powers, developed to such an extent that the community will place itself completely in the hands of the government to the utter destruction of self-reliance, initiative and independence of spirit. When a man becomes feeble-minded his friends place him in a home. When a people grow decadent and feeble-minded they place themselves in the hands of the State…

If an individual, ignoring the wise warning of the Gospels, condemns any one over much, what he condemns is meted out to him. If he says some one is very vain, vanity blooms all over him as he speaks, for the remark implies that the speaker believes he is stainless so far as this fault is concerned. If he says some one else is a most irritable person, he grows irritated himself, and so on through the whole range of emotions.

Any philosopher who studied Irish problems calmly, if such a thing were possible, and seeing the intense hatred of the Irish of any government they had to deal with, could have prophesied they were bringing upon themselves the fate of being the most governed people on the face of the earth. Already one in every forty persons in Ireland is in the employment of the State and the demand for more government departments is increasing with feverish intensity. Within only the last couple of years demands have been made for a department with a million a year to develop industries. Forestry eagerly claimed a department all to itself. Next the railways were to be bought by the State and departmentalized also. Another demand was for State banking, and the income of the already existing departments has never been sufficient to satisfy either the departments or the people. They always ought to be doubled. The State is rapidly becoming a kind of fetish in Ireland, a fetish which is kicked and prayed to alternately, the kicking testifying to as much belief as the prayers.

We complain quite justly that we are the most expensively governed people in Europe and we go on asking for more expensive government departments. If we got all the things we ask for those who asked for them would instantly count up the cost, add it to that of already existing departments to prove still more conclusively that the solar system could not possibly contain a more expensively governed race and this would be put forward as a new reason why still more departments should be founded to balance or redress the wrong. Any one who has the misfortune I have of being forced every week to read a great number of country papers will bear me out when I say that nothing is more common than the demand in every parish meeting, board of guardians, rural or urban council, for State aid or State subsidies in some form of other. It is the tragedy of the decline and fall of the human will in the people we are witnessing, a far worse tragedy than the emigration which is deplored so much. The will is growing powerless to act without partnership with its fetish or idol the State…

…The forms which a social order may take are many. The best is that which produces the finest type of human being, with the social or kindly instincts most strongly developed. The worst thing which can happen to a social community is to have no social order at all, where every man is for himself and the devil may take the hindmost. Generally in such a community he takes the front rank as well as the stragglers. The phrase ‘Every man for himself, is one of the maxims in the gospel according to Beelzebub. The devil’s game with men is to divide and conquer them. Isolate your man from obligations to social order and in most cases his soul drops into the pit like a rotten apple from the Tree of Life. Fine character in a race is evolved and not taught.

Visitor

It suddenly appeared, feathers ruffled, tired, hobbling from wall to perch, unbalanced.
And yet with dignity and quiet.
It's head, held on the perch of its neck, swung slowly back and forth, then rested as if pondering, gathering itself inward. I brought it little shrimps in water, but they were declined and rather, by the next day, head was under wing.
It was not disturbed in its silent sleep, but I wondered, would the life ebb from the beautiful body? I quite expected this when I came down the following morning and was amazed to find the discrete thing gone without a trace. What a privilege it was, to meet this child of nature.

Three Basic Rules

Trauger Groh, who was described earlier in this blog, visited several farms here in Dingle in June. He will be back soon to give some workshops. For now, here is a quote from his book Farms of Tomorrow Revisited:

The farms of tomorrow will not be just family farms. They will be so complex and diversified that they will require the cooperation of many different, unrelated, free people. Such farms will need the cooperation of several households as well as the open support of households whose members are not actively farming but who share the responsibility, the costs, and the produce with the active farmer.

Three basic rules were once given to Trauger Groh by Wilhelm Barkhoff, a lawyer who had a deep interest in and personal experience with these questions…In many years of farming Trauger has found them to be true and helpful.

The first rule, do not work too many hours. Farming is labour, craft and art. The art arises out of a deeper understanding of nature based on thorough ongoing observation, reflection, and meditation on all surrounding natural phenomena and processes. If the active farmer is working too long hours, he lacks the leisure for this. He loses his art, handing it over to extension services and agricultural schools. They themselves transform the art of farming, which is the true agriculture, into materialistic natural science and they transform the inherent, developed economics of the farm organism into a merely profit-oriented exploitive agronomy of plant and animal production. Finally the farmer is no longer, he is just applying their recipes. In the end he loses a lot of his craft depending less and less on farm skills and more and more on the supply of sophisticated machinery. He often becomes a badly paid, highly indebted labourer with hopefully high technical skills.

The second rule, buy for the farm as little as possible from the outside world. The less you purchase in the way of sophisticated tools, machinery and farm buildings the more you are financially independent and free to work with and out of nature. Use the help and skills of all friends who are related to the farm. The secret of successful Amish economic life lies in relying on human beings to work the farm and not buying too many things…

The third rule, take all the initiative for your actions on the farm out of the realm of the spirit, not out of the realm of money. What does this mean? The more we penetrate the spheres of nature, the more we become aware that what surrounds us in it is of overwhelming wisdom. What we call scientifically an ecosystem is penetrated by wisdom so that all parts serve the whole in the most economic way. In awe we stand before the higher ‘intellect’ of a bee-hive, or an ant colony. The cooperation of micro-organisms, earthworms, springtails, and others in the soil in breaking down plant material and in building humus is something deeply rational and wise which cannot be copied or synthesized by man . This we can describe as the spirit that is spread out in nature. This spirit organizes nature with the highest economy. The more we understand and follow this ‘wisdom’ in nature, this outspread ‘spirit’ the more rationally and therefore economically we can organize the farms of tomorrow. The profit motivation, applied to nature, has led to vast depletion of soil and dangerous exploitation of animals and plant material. If we follow the spirit in nature, we put into our service both the rationale and the economy of nature. This, ultimately, is the basis of the life of humanity.

Bird Flu

In 2000 and 2001, during spring and summer, we were inundated with warnings about ‘West Nile Virus’ affecting crows and other birds. The local news reported numbers of unnamed human deaths—sometimes 7, other times 5 or 3, somewhere in a vague part of Long Island or New York City. I couldn’t help but question these reports; not of course that birds might be dying, but the hysteria which culminated in part of our county being sprayed with an offensive chemical, by helicopter. We were assured that the spraying was harmless to humans, yet were warned to stay indoors. Later there were reports of people with adverse reactions to the spraying. Then all was quiet.

This past year the bird flu (H5N1) scare was pervasive in Europe and by all accounts continuing in the Far East. Free range chickens in the European Union were been banned indoors by order of law, and a vaccine, Tamiflu, speedily developed by a drug manufacturer. It was the I-don’t-know-what’s-going-on talk of the day. Now summer has come and the birds are here but, suddenly, again, all is quiet. Again, I have no doubt birds sicken and die. But why?

An article appeared in ‘Das Goetheanum’ Swiss weekly newsletter, 19. May, 2006, by Michael Kalisch. The title translates as: How Fare the Birds? Here is a condensed review:

We have read about sick and dying birds in epidemic numbers in Asia and that there was an outbreak of bird flu in Turkey. In the European Union the virus was found in some wild birds and predatory animals, and even in some pets but with little or no outbreak. However the risk of a pandemic is assumed because the bird flu virus might mutate into a highly pathogenic version and, because a flu epidemic is overdue.

Birds have been prone to bird flu for many years. Since1997 app 180 people worldwide have contracted it. About half of those died. According to the World Health Organization well over 100 000 people die of regular flu each year. Bird flu assumes very close contact with infected animals. But to date no-one has observed an infection caused by a wild bird, and so far no tourist has contracted bird flu in any of the affected countries.

Migratory birds and ‘dirty’ small farms have been blamed for the spread of bird flu. However the pathways of bird flu from East to West have been found to follow trade routes. The virus type is the same in China as in Turkey, the location of the only significant outbreak outside Asia.

The migration theory doesn’t hold up. Countries such as Australia, visited by wild birds from Asian countries, show no cases of bird flu. Nigeria had an outbreak, outside migrating season, in one isolated chicken factory. Suspicion was that the factory imported chicks illegally froman affected country. In China wild birds carrying the virus died near a lake surrounded by industrial poultry farms which suggests that the birds were infected with a highly pathogenic variant, by the chickens, through the discarded excretions.

In Asia the poultry industry is undergoing a revolution with gigantic industrial growth, distributing beyond their borders, for example into Turkey. As in the seed industry, the old, local poultry breeds (optimally suited to their environment, resistant, rich taste) have been lost. A few ‘industrial’ breeds are distributed world wide by four Asian mega-companies intent on expansion. Whoever wishes to raise chickens must now buy everything from one of these concerns; livestock, feed, composted manure. (Laos stands out as a contrast. In that country 90% of poultry sold is raised on traditional small farms. As of March 2006 there were 45 bird flu cases in Laos, 42 of them occurring in one of the few poultry factories).

Thus we find not only the route but the probable origin of this highly virulent version of the bird flu virus. Mass, or ‘battery’ production of fowl not only weakens their resistance but allows for a rapid selection of already adapted ‘successful’ virus variants. Hens subjected to forced growth suffer the most, living in artificial light and ventilation, with bone weakness, ulcers, deformations and breathing difficulties, and with a constant uptake of antibiotics.

Is the solution mass culling and free range hens locked in covered sheds, or a ban on keeping poultry altogether? Or should the EU develop guidelines taking into consideration what chickens require to keep themselves, and us, healthy?

Calendar of the Soul

(for Gabriela)

In 1912 Rudolf Steiner brought out a remarkable calendar which among other things provided verses for each week, starting with Easter Sunday. Each verse fits the time of year remarkably. Here is the verse for this week, 12-18 June:

Forgetful of my ego's separate will,
Warmth of the cosmos, summer-heralding,
Begins to fill my spirit and my soul,
To lose myself in light
Is the behest of spirit vision.
Now strongly speaks to me my dawning vision:
O lose yourself, so you may find yourself

and the German:

Vergessend meine Willenseigenheit
Erfuellet Weltenwaerme sommerkuendend
Mir Geist und Seelenwesen:
Im Licht mich zu verlieren
Gebietet mir das Geistesschauen,
Und kraftvoll kuendet Ahnung mir:
Verliere dich, um dich zu finden

Bees and the Varroa Mite
(this post is definitely not for pharma-agribusiness enthusiasts (they don't believe in the effect of the cosmos on animals and plants)

The other day we bought comb honey at the Milltown farmer's market and were told it might be the last one available. The hives have succumbed to the deadly varroa mite which is destroying bees across Europe since the 1970's.

Rather than talking about a 'virus' or 'infectious disease' we might consider that mites have been able to take hold because the host has become weak. Chemical spraying and artificial fertilizing is affecting plants and so the health of the bees that harvest from them.

Luckily, two towering innovators foresaw today's depletion of natural resources and brought help. Rudolf Steiner gave a course to farmers and gardeners in 1924, now available as the book Agriculture and subsequently Nine Lectures on Bees (The Permaculture Earth Repair Catalogue lists further books.) Maria Thun has studied plant and animal life and their relationship to the moon and planets for over fifty years. Her findings were obtained by practical experiment and her crowning achievement is her Biodynamic Sowing and Planting Calendar which she brings out each year with her son Matthias Thun. She is a storehouse of knowledge on the care of bees, both in their hives and in their surroundings.

In the current calendar she mentions the varroa mite problem and recommends a course of action based on Rudolf Steiner's advice to farmers. "Following a number of comparative trials we recommend burning and making an ash of the varroa mite in the usual way...take 50 or 60 specimens and burn them in a wood fire during the appropriate planetary aspect (this year, with sun and moon both in Taurus in May, from midnight on the 26th to 10 pm on the 28th). The resulting mixture of wood and pest ash should then be 'dynamized' by grinding it in a mortar for an hour." One gram of the mixture is then added to nine grams water in a closed bottle and dynamized in the homeopathic manner by shaking it vigorously for three minutes (D1). Then again one gram of the dynamized substance is mixed with nine grams water; the process repeated seven times until you have a D8 potency. Thun says: "This potency has been found to exhibit an inhibiting effect on the reproductive capacity of the pest when applied as a fine mist for three evenings in succession."

This may not work perfectly in the first season, but as Steiner points out in his Agriculture, lecture 6, when talking about nematodes: "Now it is necessary to perform this operation when the Sun is in the sign of Taurus. (If need be, you can keep the insect and burn it when the time comes)...People are unaware what a specialised thing the Sun is. The Sun is not really the same when in the course of a year or a day it shines on to the Earth from Taurus, or from Cancer, or the other constellations...if you prepare your insect-pepper...you can spread it out over the beet fields, and the nematode will by and by grow faint--a faintness you will certainly find very effective after the fourth year. For by that time the nematode can no longer live. It shuns life if it has to live in an earth thus peppered."

The Etherial Essence of Life


Imagine a raspberry bush in winter and then imagine its life returning in spring. What is this mystery of burgeoning life and how does it get caught in the raspberry bush? Life is the essence that raises the bush from the earth as it grows, giving it colour and fragrance in spring and the rounded taste of its fruit. The bush could not do this but for the influence of the cosmos: warmth and pure light of the sun and fresh water.
Have you noticed the luminous colour lying over the natural fields of Ireland? Do you perceive the difference in a sprayed or depleted field? The light is gone out of the latter because it is barely alive. These subtle differences also exist in food. Compare the taste and smell of an organic raspberry with one forced in chemical-laced soil. One is alive and satisfying the other largely inert and bland. Go beyond the theory of vitamins and minerals; let your body become the scientist and discern whether there is nourishment and life in the taste, smell and enjoyment of any given food.

Tara.

A friend was recently in Virginia. I remember Virginia from childhood holidays--a breathtaking state--the ocean to the east and mountains to the west, and every shade of beauty in between. It was one of the earliest states of the Union with a long history of land cultivation. Of course there was poverty too, but there was a sense of commitment to the land and community decision.

About ten years ago I drove south from New York and saw a changed Virginia; malls and housing estates, fast food joints and superstores. It was painful to see --or rather not to see--the land. And my friend tells me it is even more so now.

I would have thought it different in Ireland whose real wealth lies in the beauty and grace of its nature. But there are permit signs on every green field and hillsides heaved up for endless unpermeated little boxes.

Even Tara--that repository of ancient protection over Ireland--it is only a convenient road, we are told, but what follows all such roads? Malls, housing estates, fast food joints and superstores, and the venerable and beneficient ghosts inhabiting the hill will flee. Where will they go? Virginia?

Christus my babe draw near
Though brightest light now overshadows
The innocents preparing your home,
The cradle and the straw,
The closeness of the animals,
The warmth of fire and the moon’s bright glow,
The angels there for all to see:
This image keeps and holds the mystery
Of your first incarnation.
And so we see that you are there for all
And in the simplest smallest way
Our savior and the savior of this earth
That we belong to.

Draw near now, permeate each grass, each drop of dew
With your sweet presence, let all be comforted.
They say the church of the Nativity stands empty:
Yes perhaps that is so for now
But if you fill the souls with love

Then rushing into emptiness will come new meaning.

I want to go where you were born and walk the path
Your earthly feet once traveled.
I want to pour my own love out
So that it spreads and spreads
Even unto coldness of stone,
Barrenness of field laid low by greed,
And suffering of beasts.

I want my love to sing out and be merry
So that stones begin to throb with joy,
The grasses grow and blossom into seed,
And beasts combine in concert
Kicking up their heels to such extent
That old earth mother and all her fairy
Helpers above and below
Ring out with laughter and well-being.

Poor is the land that carries dead soil
From far comes the wind that moves it
Burdened the folk that tarry awhile
And not tending it merely abuse it
We once had an Eden where grasses grew tall
And crickets hummed their sweet music
The fragrant abundance matured in the fall
Hands harvested, cherished and used it.

Come brothers and sisters, return to your task
Embrace what is yours—give it ferment
You know that without it your soul cannot last
Find your heart—be the earth’s willing servant.
Build a vessel for life from wealth wide and vast
A bequest to the children you parent
It will unchain your limbs, your true purpose unmask
And reward you with praise ever fervent.

Search the web for an article by Darina Allen in the Examiner, March 11...genetically modified potato planting in Ireland

Genetically Modified Pigs

Blogs flying around, some for and some against the issue of the socially and genetically improved pig (see Newsweek article on new phosphorus-low enviropigs, and other articles which you can find on other blogs) offering the perfect omega-3 rich grunter.

First of all, would you consider it strange that just when the issue is heating up of BASF going to plant GM modified potato seed in Ireland, and growing negative findings concerning GM, there is a diversion...the lure of an environmental and culinary MIRACLE cooked up by the genemod kitchen?

Would you find it strange that a Newsweek article writes about phosphorus pollution in rivers, but doesn't specify how that pollution came about, however connecting it to the excretions of pigs? Never mind that this was not an issue down through the ages when pigs and mankind and cows and birds lived easily together and waters were clean?

And would it not be excessively strange that in all of this the pig seems not to exist as a living, breathing, sentient being, a fairly intelligent being actually, and an affectionate one and not a thing, a product, an omega-3? Was not the farm animal cared for with respect previously and didn't this add to the nutrition of the meat it offered?

Are we going to watch our earth being destroyed because we only see its purely physical components without any consideration for the larger, subtler, connections that give us joy? An earth in which food is manipulated to create, as it were, supplements and medications for the diminishing vitality our materialists would like us not to notice?

And will we continue to fall for the repeated convenient fables and dogmas that pass for 'science' while our children are denied wholesome food so that they become too lethargic to protest? I have lived long enough to witness the decline and the hype that never lets up until we all believe it, and I can tell you, it is not funny.

Fruits have come
When all is said and done—
The myrtle creeping on the wall
Has even filled with rounded seed
And when we think that we have gone
Through thick and thin
And here and there
And now tis flown—
What will the next epoch prepare?
We have our task; we know not
has it met the needs of others—
Have we right principles and are we able?
Are all the places that we’ve had to furnish set?
The fruit laid out, is it all ready yet—
For now the guests are bidden to the table
Have we fulfilled and have we made
The purpose that we came for?
Are we now free, or is there more
And how will we be weighed?

Community Supported Agriculture

In 1997 a remarkable book was published by the Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association in the US, called Farms of Tomorrow Revisited, co-authored by Trauger Groh and Steven McFadden. Trauger Groh is an agricultural pioneer who spearheaded the extraordinarily successful CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) movement of the mid-1980's.

Here are a few quotes:

'The financial and agricultural practices of recent decades have made it increasingly difficult for existing models of agriculture to prosper. In America, the family farm has fallen victim to a relentless marketplace; meanwhile, corporate farms have tended to place short-term economic advantage over our relationship with each other and the earth.'

'What do we want to achieve with nutrition besides keeping up our bodily functions? How can our diet support not only our physical health but also the development of our spiritual faculties so that they function in the best way? The point that men and women live longer today than in the past is a poor argument for the quality of our food if we do not pose questions about the conditions of our lives.'

'Nearly all manipulations with food--additives, radiation, and conservation methods--serve not the purpose of quality, but rather the purpose of distribution over long distances, shelf-life, and a pleasing appearance. Contrary to what might be right for many industrial products, the production, processing, distribution, and consumption of food favors quality when it is done locally.'

'We cannot move back to a rural society. We have to create a new relationship between the citizens and 'their' farmland that will make the benefits of farm experience available for anyone who seeks education, recreation, or therapy.'

The book goes on to describe steps for beginning with the CSA model.

We are fortunate to have Trauger Groh visiting us here in Dingle this June.



Technorati tags: biodynamics, agriculture, farming

Finding the Value in Food

Recently, organic food has been given positive press here in Ireland. Several days ago we noticed an article by Oliver Moore in the Irish Examiner; Food science advances have led to nutritional decline. I will paraphrase in part:

1. there is now a substantial body of nutritional information suggesting that we have sacrificed quality over quantity.
2. The Food Commission (UK) has found a decline in micronutrients in food since the middle of last century: 'highly processed foods mean we are likely to be overfed yet malnourished.'
3. the rise of industrialisation and globalisation of agriculture results in nutritional deficiencies.
4. medical interventions become a substitute for a healthy lifestyle.
5. while we may be living longer it does not necessarily follow that we are living healthier or particularly happy lives.

Now, fortunately, public attention is being focused on local, smaller scale foods, organic where possible, produced in a less intensive way...as Oliver Moore says: more seasonal, fresher and less processed foods with all the attendant socio-environmental benefits.

May Ireland preserve her verdant land and become a haven for living food.


Technorati tags: organic, food, farming

A new book review in LILIPOH 'The Translucent Revolution, How People Just Like You are Waking Up and Changing the World' by Arjuna Ardagh,New World Library, Novato, CA starts out like this: Late one evening, Robert was out taking a walk. He had passed through many trials and tribulations in recent years and his mood was blacker than the night. 'I am finished,' his mind announced. He still has trouble explaining what happened next. 'I was overcome by a sense of relief,' he reports, 'A sudden feeling of inexpressible freedom. My body was filled with happiness, as if I was suddenly getting a joke I'd been missing. I was totally here, in this moment. I could feel the trees around me, and hear the sounds without having to listen to thoughts telling me things needed to be different in some way. Everything was being experienced, but the 'me' was gone.'
Over the past 12 years the author has spoken to thousands of people who have passed through similar shifts of consciousness...the majority ordinary people...

Does this sound familiar?

To the Environmental Protection Agency
Co Wexford
Ireland

21 February 2006

To Whom it May Concern

We ask you to seriously consider the consequences of the steps you are contemplating in allowing GM crops to be planted in Ireland. Once you introduce modified GM seeds you are putting the control in the hands of a few, or possibly just one, corporation. This is extremely unwise and a possible future danger to the public.

It is also a surrender to monetary forces; blinding those in power to the protests against this defacement of the living earth.

Consider that this is truly a matter of life and death—the living forces of plants grown naturally are in a relationship to the earth, sun and moon. Manipulate plants as in GM seeds and this relationship is interfered with. Ireland is a verdant country. That is what draws people from other places to it. Compare a field of naturally grown produce with fields of GM crops, one is light-filled, the other visibly barren. Maybe you have not observed this. We have, to our horror.
Have the courage to say no to the giants from abroad and don’t imperil this land, not even with one field of potatoes. You do not want to contribute to another famine.