‘War on Life’

 

Health is about life and living systems—and the "philanthroempirilaism” peddled by Bill Gates is a threat to both.

In her latest book, “Oneness vs. the 1%,” Vandana Shiva doesn’t hold back when it comes to Gates. The billionaire’s attempts to push his “solutions” on the world serve only to increase his own wealth and power, Shiva says.

Meanwhile, democracy, biodiversity, nature and culture are “erased.”

The health emergency of COVID-19 is “inseparable from the health emergency of extinction, the health emergency of biodiversity loss, and the health emergency of the climate crisis,” Shiva says, and is rooted in the worldview that humans are separate—and superior to—other beings.

“As we clear-cut forests, as we turn farms into industrial monocultures that produce toxic, nutritionally empty commodities, as our diets become degraded through industrial processing with synthetic chemicals and genetic engineering, and as we perpetuate the illusion that earth and life are raw materials to be exploited for profits, we are indeed connecting. But instead of connecting on a continuum of health by protecting biodiversity, integrity and self-organization of all living beings, including humans, we are connected through disease.”

Our survival hinges on whether we resist the “war on life”—or whether we allow our humanity to be extinguished by a “greed machine” that knows no limits.

Read ‘Bill Gates’ Global Agenda and How We Can Resist His War on Life’

Buy “Oneness vs. the 1%” by Vandana Shiva

'Bat Woman'

 

She’s known as China’s “Bat Woman.”

Shi Zhengli is a virus hunter and microbiologist, and director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Wuhan Institute of Virology.

She also plays a central role in a whodunnit that may ultimately prove impossible to solve.

Shi’s work involves collecting bat viruses and using techniques of genetic engineering and synthetic biology to enable these viruses to infect human beings.

Since the Biological Weapons Convention took effect, what scientists like Shi do has been called “gain-of-function” research or “dual-use research of concern” (DURC).

In other words, Shi, and other scientists like her, are in the business of weaponizing viruses by genetically engineering or otherwise altering them to make them more lethal, and more easily transmitted, to humans.

Did Shi have a hand in creating the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing the current COVID-19 pandemic? The National Institutes of Health is investigating. But that doesn't necessarily mean we'll ever learn the full truth.

Read 'Shi Zhengli: Weaponizing Coronaviruses, with Pentagon Funding, at a Chinese Military Lab'

Visit our Gain-of-Function Hall of Shame

SIGN THE PETITION: Stop the Genetic Engineering of Viruses! Shut Down All Biowarfare Labs Now!

Wise Words

 

With the passing last week of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, we were reminded of the many issues she stood for and fought for, and of some of her words of wisdom.

This one often-cited quote attributed to Ginsburg hits close to home for those of us trying to reform food and farming policy:

"Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time."

Like you, we’re often frustrated by how long it can take to create “real” and “enduring” change.

We’re even more frustrated by what stands in the way of that change—corporate greed and the corporate takeover of not just our food and farming system, but of our entire political system.

But we can’t, we won’t, give in to frustration. Because real, enduring change is worth fighting for—and we live in a time when real change is desperately needed.

With your support, we’ll keep at it. One step at a time. If you can, please make a donation today to support our work.

Make a tax-deductible donation to Organic Consumers Association, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit

Support Citizens Regeneration Lobby, OCA’s 501(c)(4) lobbying arm (not tax-deductible)

Donate $100 or more and we’ll send you a copy of Ronnie’s new book

Click here for more ways to support our work

‘Conscious Consumption’

 

As early as June, COVID-19 was having an impact on how consumers buy meat.

Food Navigator, reporting on the findings of a New York research firm, referred to it as “conscious consumption.”

Increasing sales of local, organic, grass-fed, pasture-raised, regeneratively produced meat and animal products is great news—for independent farmers, for consumers, for the environment and for farm animals.

But will consumers go back to buying industrially produced meat after the pandemic is declared officially over?

Or can we educate enough consumers on the value of “conscious consumption” to have a permanent impact on the marketplace?

One roadblock, for some consumers, is knowing how and where to buy meat that doesn’t come from industrial factory farms. To help, the #BoycottBigMeat campaign will hold a 1-hour panel discussion on how to purchase grass-fed and pasture-raised meat next week, on Tuesday, September 29 at 7 p.m. CDT.

Panelists will include: Valerie Shannon, Buffalo Gal (bison); Chris Petersen, C&K Farm (pork); Doug Darrow, Rapid Creek Ranch (beef and chicken); and Greg Gunthorp, Gunthorp Farms (pork, poultry, duck).

Not yet convinced that it matters where your meat comes from? Watch this video from White Oak Pastures, a multi-species ranch in Georgia, where all forms of life are considered essential to a healthy ecosystem.

Register to join the panel discussion via Zoom

Sign up here to watch the panel discussion via Facebook (and don’t forget to share with your networks)

Can’t join live? Register here, and we’ll send you a link you can watch anytime

Power to the People

 

If ever we needed a reminder that our government is supposed to work for “we the people,” that time would be now.

And this video does a beautiful job of delivering that message.

Six years ago, during Climate Week NYC, musician Jesse Paris Smith and cellist Rebecca Foon founded Pathway to Paris, a non-profit organization dedicated to finding solutions to climate change.

This week, Paris Smith and Foon launched a video, featuring Patti Smith, Joan Baez and artists, activists, students from 24 countries, 38 cities and 6 continents.

About the video launch, Paris Smith told Rolling Stone:

“A vision for the future includes a just transition out of the era of fossil fuels and into an era of 100% renewable energy, including the critical issues of racial justice, gender equality, protected rights of the indigenous and the end of suffocating poverty. An adoption of true human compassion while dismantling a climate of fear, leaving prejudice and hate in the past and moving toward a future of global unity.”

Hear, hear!

Watch the video

SIGN THE PETITION: Green Consumers for a Regenerative Green New Deal

Essential Reading

 

International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) Is a Food Industry Lobby Group

Our Food System Is Broken and Inhumane, But It Can Be Fixed

Climate Disruption Is Now Locked in. The Next Moves Will Be Crucial.

Axios-Ipsos Poll: Distrusting Big Pharma and the FDA

Why Some US Cities Are Plotting a 'Green Recovery' After the Pandemic

These 10 Pills Could Obliterate COVID-19, Where's the Media?