Tim DeChristopher on Moyers. Bidder 70 in theaters. Why he went to jail. Global movements can start with the power of 1.
Then, just stopping Monsanto is not a march in the park or jeering jutting jaw jack-booted Trek Bike Cops!
It’s about stopping MORE stuff in the water. These people who push toxins, more pollutants, hell, even vaccinations, have ZERO knowledge of the synergistic effects of compounds compounded by human physiology compounded by the varying effects of compound x on compound y, let alone, ALL 500 post-industrial elements now peculating in the average big city dweller’s human ecology — think hard about some teenager having grown up next to a square mile of factories in a city, err, like Cairo or Shanghai. That blood of ages is more than just polluted! He or she is a bio-hazard worthy of beached killer whale yellow tape fame.
But perhaps there is most concern over endrocrine disrupters, the “gender-benders”, which interfere with hormones. These have had feminising effects on wildlife: half the male fish in Britain’s lowland rivers have been found to be developing eggs in their testes. And they are increasingly blamed for a precipitate decline in human sperm counts: measurements in more than 20 countries show that, on average, they have fallen from 150 to 60 million per millilitre of sperm fluid in five decades.
Yet all this is still only a small part of the potential problem. There are some 100,000 chemicals in use, but we only have good information on how safe – or otherwise – 15 per cent of them are. The proportion that is adequately regulated is even smaller. It is a massively neglected environmental and public health issue. “It’s time to tackle chemicals,” wrote the then Danish environment minister, Karen Ellemann, as the International Year of Chemistry opened.
More here **.
…the downside of this chemical revolution – what Yale Professor John Wargo describes as “an unexpected side effect” of our prosperity, “a change in the chemistry of the human body”. For many of the substances that have built our economies are now embedded in our tissues and coursing through our veins: some, it seems, are up to no good.
20:19 GMT: Over 6,000 people have marched in Portland, ME, expressing their frustration with the biotech giant Monsanto.
In Portland [Oregon], thousands of protesters took to Oregon streets. Police estimate about 6,000 protesters took part in Portland’s peaceful march, and about 300 attended the rally in Bend. Other marches were scheduled in Baker City, Coos Bay, Eugene, Grants Pass, Medford, Prineville and Redmond.
Some Photos of the Portland, OREGON, event. Story coming!