The Obama Administration Is Selling Us down a River of Cash
Organic Lifestyle Comments Off on The Obama Administration Is Selling Us down a River of Cash
Okay—why is a blog devoted to organic food getting involved in the current debate about transnational trade agreements? The answer is that organic farming represents the world as we want it to be: wholesome, clean food grown and distributed by companies concerned about our health and the environment, food of the people, by the people, and for the people. Similarly, international trade agreements should represent this world that we want. And by “we,” I mean We the People.
But the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) would fast-track at least three highly secretive trade deals—specifically the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP)—and potentially more deals. And what does “fast track” even mean?
When you find out (by reading this blog post), you will be aghast. I guarantee it.
Let’s start with something I heard on the PBS News Hour. Judy Woodruff was interviewing the Obama administration’s spokesperson. She said, “Why, if these agreements are such good deals, are they secret?” And he answered, “That’s just not true. They’re not secret at all. Every member of Congress can read the negotiated agreements.”
So I was waiting for Judy to follow up with the obvious question any responsible journalist should ask: “Only members of Congress? Not the public?” But she didn’t ask the question. So let me explain:
Right now, TiSA and T-TIP text are completely secretive and unavailable for even members of Congress to read, while the TPP text is available for members to review—although they need to go to a secret room inside the Capitol where only members of Congress and certain staffers with high-level security clearances, who can only go when members are present, can read the bill.
So only Congresspeople can read the TPP part of the agreement, but not the other parts. And the public can’t read any of it.
Isn’t this completely backwards in a supposedly democratic society? If only Congress can read the bill, that means that lobbyists and the guys with big bags of money are the only ones who get to whisper in the ears of our Congressional representatives. And those whispers tend to be to the choir, since we know Congress is already bought and sold by huge transnational corporations. So that means that Congresspeople will have already made up their minds to support the agreements, because then they can get the bags of money they need to get re-elected.
Hold on here! Aren’t we supposed to be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people? Shouldn’t it be that We the People get to read the bill, make up our minds, and then instruct our Congresspeople to vote according to our wishes? Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work? Aren’t our Congressional representatives there to apply the will of the people? Do I have this wrong? Or are they there to apply the will of corporate America TO the people?
So the White House spokesman went on to say that after the bill is passed, there will be a 60-day period in which the public can read the final draft and comment, and that if Congress then so chooses, it can make changes based on the will of the people. But this is completely disingenuous because the White House wants the agreements fast tracked. What does fast tracked mean?
It means that once the bill is passed and signed, Congress isn’t allowed to make any changes, no matter what the people say after they read the bill and comment in the 60-day period. In other words, the White House is lying to us.
I say it’s time to get out the tar and feathers and ride these anti-democratic, anti-American, four-flushing political criminals out of town on a rail. And then remember that the Constitution begins with the words We the People. The TPA, TPP, TiSA, and T-TIP are agreements that give away the country to the big corporate interests. This isn’t the organic way, and it’s not the way this country is supposed to work.
If you’re aghast, I’m even more aghast. We are being sold down the river.
***
THAT NICE SMELL YOU’RE SMELLING MIGHT HURT YOU
SC Johnson, the maker of Glade air fresheners, has decided to tell consumers more about the chemicals they are breathing, according to The New York Times.
The company recently disclosed ingredients in the fragrances used in more than 200 of its air fresheners, candles and scented oils on its website. Companies have increasingly responded to safety concerns not from government regulators, but from customers who demand to know more about everyday products like moisturizers and cleaning products.
Kelly Semrau, the SC Johnson senior vice president for global corporate affairs, said, “We just feel that transparency in this area is the right thing to do.”
Customers have already been able to see specific dyes, waxes and other ingredients used in Glade’s various air fresheners and candles. But the chemicals behind scents like “Aruba wave” and “Hawaiian breeze” have largely been a mystery. Some of the ingredients for Aruba wave, for instance, include 2-t-butylcyclohexyl acetate, 2,6-dimethyl-7-octen-2-ol, allyl caproate, benzyl salicylate, ethyl 2,2-dimethyl hydrocinnamyl and ethyl hexanoate.
“Fragrance disclosure is a really big deal and consumers have been asking for it for a really long time,” said Janet Nudelman, the director of program and policy for the Breast Cancer Fund.
Typically, a fragrance is listed simply as “fragrance,” even though each fragrance could contain hundreds of individual chemicals. SC Johnson buys its fragrances from fragrance houses, which are known for closely guarding the formulas of their scents.
Fragrance ingredients also are often exempted from the disclosure requirements that apply to other chemicals, like those used in cosmetic products like perfumes and lipsticks.
SC Johnson will disclose ingredients in two ways. When there are more than 20 chemicals in a fragrance, it will disclose the top 10, or it will disclose the highest concentrations down to 0.09 percent of the formula, “whichever provides the most information,” the company said in a statement.
“It’s a good first step but it doesn’t go far enough,” Ms. Nudelman said, saying that many of the chemicals her group is concerned about have effects at much lower doses than what SC Johnson is disclosing.
A handful of Glade products are excluded from the new policy. Ms. Semrau said that those products’ scents came from companies that SC Johnson no longer worked with and they would be phased out. The company said it planned to expand its fragrance disclosures to other brands, including Pledge, Windex, Shout, and Scrubbing Bubbles.
***
MONSANTO BUYS UP HEIRLOOM SEED SUPPLIERS
The NM Tree and Garden Center located in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, has discovered that Monsanto is buying heirloom seed companies, according to Maddy Harland, writing in Permaculture. It’s also buying the trademarks to a number of heirloom seeds. This means that you may think you are supporting an heirloom seed company but in reality the company is owned by Monsanto. The seeds themselves are still non-GMO and heirloom and they can be saved at the end of the harvest and sown next season, but you are still giving money to Monsanto.
Monsanto is also buying trademarks, so that no matter where you buy certain seeds, they get money from it.
In Europe we have witnessed a proactive corporate program to buy up ethical/organic companies. Estée Lauder now owns The Body Shop and has a poor record for animal testing. Green and Black fair trade chocolate was bought in 2006 by Cadbury, who was then acquired by Kraft Foods, one of the huge food multi-nationals. Rachel’s Organic, founded by Welsh farmers, is now a subsidiary of French company Lactalis.
This is a deliberate strategy–so much so that Triodos Bank actually has a European fund to help small organic companies stay independent and resist being bought up.
Why are small organic/heirloom marques being acquired by the big global corporations? First, there is a commercial market for them. Second, what you own you can control. Third, if you are a vast industrial corporation and own one of these companies, you can marginalize its market if you wish.
Europe may have opened the gates to Monsanto to grow genetically modified crops. Due to an accepted proposal by the EU Environment Council, GM crops could be planted across Europe as soon as next year.
Even worse, the proposal could give Monsanto and other biotech giants the power to overturn decisions made by democratically-elected governments to ban GM crops.
Here’s what the Council’s website says about the proposal: “The draft directive on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) provides a legal basis for member states to restrict or prohibit the cultivation of GMOs on their territory for reasons other than health or environment considerations.
“The proposal, presented by the Commission in July, 2010, applies to GMOs that are authorized or under authorization at EU level. Possible grounds that can be used by member states to ban or restrict GMOs include: socioeconomic reasons, land use and town planning, agricultural policy objectives and public policy issues.”
So it sounds as though member nations can restrict or allow GMOs at their discretion, while the EU’s Environment Council takes its hands off the issue.
***
UNITED STATES NOW AN OLIGARCHY RATHER THAN A DEMOCRACY
From The Telegraph, UK, as reported by Zachary Davies Boren:
The US government no longer represents the interests of the majority of the country’s citizens, but is instead ruled by the rich and powerful, a new study from Princeton and Northwestern universities has concluded.
The report, entitled Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, used extensive policy data collected from between the years of 1981 and 2002 to empirically determine the state of the US political system.
After sifting through nearly 1,800 US policies enacted in that period and comparing them to the expressed preferences of average Americans (50th percentile of income), affluent Americans (90th percentile) and large special interests groups, researchers concluded that the United States is dominated by its economic elite.
The peer-reviewed study, which will be taught at these universities in September, says: “The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”
Researchers concluded that US government policies rarely align with the preferences of the majority of Americans, but do favor special interests and lobbying organizations: “When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.”
The positions of powerful interest groups are “not substantially correlated with the preferences of average citizens,” but the politics of average Americans and affluent Americans sometimes do overlap. This is merely a coincidence, the report says, with the interests of the average American being served almost exclusively when it also serves those of the richest 10 per cent.
The theory of “biased pluralism” that the Princeton and Northwestern researchers believe the US system fits, holds that policy outcomes “tend to tilt towards the wishes of corporations and business and professional associations.”
The study comes in the wake of McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, a controversial Supreme Court decision which allows wealthy donors to contribute to an unlimited number of political campaigns.
Jeff here now: So much for our government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We can see pretty clearly now what the game is: corporate control of the economy, the government, and most important of all, the military. Why the military? Because the military sucks all the money, resources, and energy out of the country and its people and creates endless war. The endless war enriches the oligarchs, who control the economy and the government. Our country is being looted right under our noses.
Now where did I put those feathers, and who has the tar?
***
ARE SEX LUBRICANTS CAUSING A PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS?
The following article was written for this blog by Wendy Strgar, founder and CEO of Good Clean Love, a company that manufactures organic personal lubricants for sexual purposes. In it, she describes problems with conventional products and why organic and non-toxic versions of these products may be the answer. I checked her lubricant, and it’s based on organic aloe leaf gel and natural substances such as xanthan gum, agar, lactic acid, and natural flavors. But it also contains potassium sorbate and sodium benzoate, two manufactured chemical preservatives. To her credit, the package says, “95 percent organic” and doesn’t purport to be something other than what it is. Here’s what she has to say:
Initially, the business was spawned because there seemed to be a need in America for all natural or organic products for those allergic to products containing petrochemicals.
One of the missions of our company was to develop alternatives to keep America’s love life intact. But it turned out to be a much larger call to action, and the research we conducted and subsequent statistics proved that millions of American women are sick due to the petrochemicals used in traditional vaginal lubricants. As it turns out, these chemical-based products increase the likelihood of getting vaginosis, STDs, and HIV.
Good Clean Love was born, and offered women healthy alternatives for vaginal lubrication. Now our mission is to educate these women to understand the benefits of using natural and organic products as opposed to traditional over-the-counter products that dominate the market in a $219 million dollar industry.
Lubrication is a fact of life. In any relationship where working parts are at play, whether it is an engine, a dinner party, or an evening of love, everything works better when it is “well oiled.” Lubrication allows for glide, ease, and effectiveness. When lubrication is working well, it is invisible, a thought we don’t have. When it isn’t working, we know it immediately, although not always by its name. An engine without oil locks up in minutes; awkward silence and uncomfortable gazing down into the lap is immediately recognizable.
The competitive lubricant market is saturated with choices, but when you look beyond the packaging and brand hype to the ingredient panel, it quickly becomes clear that over 95 percent of OTC and adult lubricants are made with petrochemical ingredients including propylene glycol, used in products like anti-freeze and brake fluid, and polyethylene glycol, used in laxatives and oven cleaners. These are largely preserved with methyl- and propyl-parabens, which have been shortlisted as potential carcinogens and are not allowed in the EU.
When Good Clean Love first began making lubricants, we learned that petrochemical ingredients contained in competitors’ products were making women sick. I initially thought the illness was due to a sensitivity or allergy that was exacerbated by other issues like vaginal dryness or pain with sex.
Fast forward 10 years, and we discover that new lubricant studies commissioned by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to create a buffer gel for the prevention of HIV shocked the biophysicists who conducted and analyzed the studies.
What did they find? The petrochemical lubricants that dominate the market are damaging the genital and rectal tissue they are intended to protect. The problem is a biophysical issue, not an allergic sensitivity. For example, warming jelly’s cellular weight is 30 times that of skin cells. The warming jelly literally squeezes human tissue cells to death. The warming sensation you feel is actually the skin cells shriveling up and falling off the tissue, causing small tears and compromising the natural immune functions of the genital walls.
The most disturbing result of the use of hyperosmolar lubricants, as these products are called, is that women who use them are 13 times more likely to contract bacterial vaginosis compared to women using nothing at all (citation below). This is a public health crisis because the number of women impacted by BV is staggering. Depending on ethnicity, between 29 and 51 percent of all women are walking around with BV. Worse still, 84 percent don’t know that they have it. Yet as silent as this condition can be, the impact it has on susceptibility to other more lethal STDs and HIV is even more alarming. Women with BV are 60 percent more likely to contract other sexually transmitted illnesses, including HIV, than women without the infection. And although researchers aren’t clear about the mechanism of HIV transmission, women with BV are three times more likely to transmit the disease to their male partners.
Personal lubricants may be the last frontier of health care products to experience it, but there is a revolution afoot and there are many brands of organic and all-natural products that are entering the market to replace the dangerously toxic effects of conventional chemistry.
Take care of the most sensitive tissue in your body by reading labels and paying attention to your body’s adverse reactions. Good sex isn’t about feeling the burn; it is about feeling the warmth of someone you love. Choose wisely and realize that the body can teach the mind, and arousal and sexual enhancement may be as close as the bottle on your night stand.
About the author: Wendy Strgar is the founder of GoodCleanLove – a website that sells organic and natural sexual intimacy products, and also a source of medical research for women and men’s sexual health. She is the author of the book, Love that Works: A Guide to Enduring Intimacy. Her blog www.makinglovesustainable.com was named as the best sex/relationship blog by Intent.com for 2011 and has been listed many times as one of the best 100 relationship blogs on the web.
Citations: Marrazzo et al. reported lubricant was associated with an almost two-fold increased risk for diagnosis of BV by Amsel criteria.5 In a study of 396 women2, the research group found that among African American women, lubricant use was associated with a three-fold increased risk for disruption of vaginal microbiota as defined by Gram’s stain smear (p-value for interaction on ethnicity: <0.05). 2. Ravel J, Gajer P, Abdo Z, et al. Vaginal microbiome of reproductive-age women. ProcNatlAcadSciUSA 2011;108 Suppl 1:4680-7. 5. Marrazzo J, Thomas KK, Agnew K, Ringwood K. Prevalence and risks for bacterial vaginosis in women who have sex with women. Sex Transm Dis 2010;37:335-9. ###
