Archive for the ‘The Law & CODEX’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Food Fight! Codex vs. Organic Food

Sunday, September 25th, 2005

If anyone had a shred of doubt that Codex is creeping toward us on all of its loathsome legs as quickly as possible, rather like a venomous centipede, that doubt should vanish by the time you finish this blog. Each of the segments of the Codex creature may appear to be unaware of what the others are doing, but the net result is forward movement coordinated by some ganglion of control somewhere. Where? I don’t know, but I do know that the effect is one I don’t like one bit.

This week and next, the Joint House/Senate Appropriations Committee will be finalizing the 2007 Agriculture Spending Bill. Using the thinly veiled excuse of meeting the requirements of a Federal Judge who ruled in favor of an Organic Blueberry farmer in Maine in Harvey v. Veneman that the USDA organic standards violated the 1990 Organic Foods Production Act and that synthetic materials could not be added to food, the USDA is once again trying to destroy organic food purity by submitting a Draft Amendment to the Joint Committee which would BRING US ORGANIC FARMING STANDARDS INTO COMPLIANCE WITH CODEX ONES despite the fact that these standards are highly damaging to the American Organic standards. They will allow the following without labeling or identification:
– Pesticides to be used in the growing of organic food
– Synthetic materials to be included in organic foods
– Cattle can be treated with antibiotics and then administratively converted back to “organic
– Large percentage of non-organic feed for supposedly organic animals

This is the same imitative that the same USDA and the same industries attempted to bring us in 1997-78 when they wanted to use toxic sludge containing cadmium and other heavy metals as “fertilizer” for organics along with the ever-popular pesticides, herbicides (many of which contain mercury, by the way) and veterinary drugs for animals.

This is the same initiative that is leading to the attempt to undermine, gut or overturn DSHEA (by the way, if you haven’t sent your letters to Congress to protect DSHEA, please do so now). The target here, however, is yet another set of protective regulations embodied in the Organic Foods Production Act which give us the option of purchasing a reliably healthy, non-polluted, non-GMO, non-toxic food supply.

If you value your right to make meaningful choices about your health AND if you value your health AND if you see the relationship between your food and your health, NOW IS THE HOUR! Write to Congress now to impress upon them how important retaining meaningful organic food standards are to you!
You know, if I were reading this and other blogs and emails the Natural Solutions Foundation sends out I might get weary: there are so many issues, so many times I get asked to write to Congress, so many different problems. And that is exactly the point. If the issues can be fragmented and we can be driven into apathy, Codex and its organizational brethren, global control and loss of personal freedoms, win. The Bigs, who have enough lawyers and publicists and campaign managers, win. Big Pharma, Big Agribiz, Big Biotechna, Big Chema and Big Medica get to set the rules, set the standards and reap the benefits. Your illness and needless suffering and mine are not even collateral damage because they profit two Bigs on that list: Big Pharma and Big Medica.
So yes, there are a lot of letters to write and there will be more. And yes, there will be a lot of issues coming at you. And yes, this war is being fought on many fronts. Remember Jefferson, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”. Which side would each and every one of the Founding Fathers and Mothers (yes, there were women partitions, too) have been on? Corporate greed and the apathy that allows it to flourish or the battle for our bodies and our rights under our own control?

So please contact Congress NOW! We have about 1 week on this one, perhaps less. “Urgent” does not even begin to describe this one!
Oh, two more things: don’t forget about starting a Health Freedom Meetup (go to http:.//healthfreedom.meetup.com to get started). You pick the time, date and location. Let people in your area know about it by email, word of mouth and some posters in health food stores, etc. Schedule it with me and I will do a phone visit via speaker phone and provide materials to make organizing easier. Grass roots give us the strength we need. Spreading the word is absolutely crucial. It’s a numbers game: the number of their dollars versus the numbers of our voices! If we have enough numbers, we win. If not, we loose. It’s that simple.

The other item is donation to our $10,000 fund. We are less than $800 away from our fund raising goal. If you have not yet done so, please donate generously. Think about what having dedicated health freedom warriors on your side is worth to you and share that amount with us. Consider making a monthly pledge so that we can spend our time on the battle, not on finding the resources to stay in the battle.

Thanks for you continuing active involvement. Your emails and calls are inspiring and heart warming. I learn from them every day and I appreciate the new ways of fighting this war coming from you.

Yours in health and organic freedom,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director

Posted in Activism, CODEX Consequences, Legislation to Oppose, Medical Hazards, The Law & CODEX | 7 Comments »

Thursday, September 22nd, 2005

Adaption is the process by which a stressed system attempts to regulate itself in response to a new set of factors in order to achieve balance and harmony (often called “homeostasis”). Countries adapt, plants and animals adapt, social organization such as cultures adapt and so do we humans.
In fact, health promoting substances called “adaptogens” (which enhance regulation) are used in natural medicine because they help the body increase or decrease whatever is out of balance.

The good news, then, is that we are individually and collectively wondrously adaptable. Up to a point. Please prepare yourself and click here to see a graphic and heartbreaking example of what happens when we stretch the adaptive rubber band so far that it snaps. Because that is what we are doing with our bodies by exposing them to hundreds of thousands of toxins never encountered by any living thing prior to the last hundred years including deadly pesticides, radiation at levels unknown in nature, toxic, untested chemicals, new organisms and weird DNA.

How much can an organism, a gene, an organ, a marriage a brain or a society take before its adaptive abilities are overwhelmed and the stress is greater than the compensation for the stress that the system can manage. The result? Damage to the ability of the organism to function, self protect and self correct. If the stress is great enough to show, we call it by the name of some illness or another: cancer, social decay, infertility, depression, psoriasis, rising crime rate, looting, suicide, drout, autism, monster storms. The disorder and dysfunction (and the diagnosis) depends on the system being stressed but the principle is the same.

What can you do about it? Reduce the load. Reduce the number of stressors that the system has to adapt to and give the adaptive systems help, support and

Posted in The Law & CODEX | 3 Comments »

Thinking About GMOs

Sunday, September 18th, 2005

I have been thinking about what to write about in this blog all day. This week the Natural Solutions Foundation did 15 radio shows on Codex and the Eat Smart, Eat Safe Buy-cott. Most of the shows were call-in shows and I have told who-knows-how-many people about Codex? 1 million? 10 million? 25 million? I have no way of knowing.

So I am full up to the eyeballs with facts and particulars about GMOs and Codex protocols and procedures and so on. Instead of giving you more facts and figures, I thought that I would share two quotes which capture the issues with precision and beauty and one which is breathtaking in its arrogance and inaccuracy (“Fair and Balanced”?). We’ll go back to the hard facts and statistics tomorrow. But I believe that when we make our choices, move through life with clarity and let our minds and hearts reverberate to truth, it is useful to have more than facts.

Eileen Dannemann, President of the National Coalition of Organized Women has this to say about GMOs:

“The Genetic engineering of the nation and world’s seeds is the broadest and single most offensive stroke of aggressive and covert manipulation against womankind in the history of humanity. Biotech’s “terminator” and “exorcist” technologies seek to sterilize the reproductive value of Mother Nature Herself. To sterilize the reproductive nature of seeds is a violation of a principal law of nature, the Law of Abundance. The only outcome that can result from this kind of trend in thinking is scarcity. After being chemicalized, cauterized and sterilized, errant man dares to implant genetically manipulated, foreign life forms into Her womb. What can She yield? Any good woman would recoil at such an offense and have a spontaneous abortion. We are looking towards an imminent agricultural collapse and a global agricultural holocaust as long as Congress supports the economic plan for the United States to own the world food supply.”

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of Transcendental Meditation Technique, was aware of Biotechnology’s dangers and he offered a specific warning about it:

“Tell those who eat genetically engineered foods that their lives have been severely shortened. So tell them to meditate with the little time they have left on the planet”

And, now for something completely different: 3 of America’s leading scientists, Vernon Cardwell (ASA President), Ronald Phillips (CSSA President), Donald Sparks (SSSA President) have circulated among US scientists the following [astonishing] statement:

“Many biotechnology detractors gain public support for their cause through the use of misinformation and emotional appeals… In short, biotechnology, this incredibly powerful and valuable tool with seemingly limitless potential to resolve health problems, increase crop yields, and treat diseases, is at risk of serious setbacks.”

And, indeed, consumer opposition has lead to the cancellation of field trials of GMOs in England, the abandonment of Monsanto’s GMO wheat (when Japan and the EU threatened a boycott of US wheat, given that they buy 45% of all of our wheat) and over 3000 GMO free zones (2 in California).

In fact, the Biotech Bullies are encountering strong opposition from consumers. That’s you and me!

The Eat Safe, Eat Smart Buy-Cott needs your help to push them off the map. I am in the process of designing a web site for the campaign and need information on products.

We know that organic foods are GMO free. We also know that many supplement and food manufacturers are sourcing GMO materials for their products. We need to know who they are.

Here is what I would like you to do: email the companies that make the things that you like and use (including herbs and supplements) and ask them to provide information about the presence or absence of GMO materials in their products. Get it in writing! Once you have that email, please forward it to me at info@healthfreedomusa.org and I will make sure that the information is added to the site so that other people can make healthy choices based on that data, too.

If a company states that their products are GMO free, we will list them on the Eat Safe, Eat Smart Buy-Cott site. If not, we will mention that they did not provide that assurance. It is my hope that with your help we will quickly be able to provide a great deal of vitally important information to anyone who needs it.

Oh, one more thing: We have reached $7698 on day 18 of our fund raising drive! We have recieved large gifts and small ones and we are better than 3/4 of the way there in our goal to raise $10,000. But we are not there yet! Won’t you become part of the Freedom 400 and donate $25 or more to make sure that we can continute to work for your health and your health freedom?

We are depending on you.

Yours in health and freedom from GMOs,
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director

Posted in Activism, Buy-Cott, GMOs, The Law & CODEX | 4 Comments »

And Now, A Word From Our President

Wednesday, September 14th, 2005

Today’s Blog comes to you from the Natural Solutions Foundation President, Major General Albert N. Stubblebine III (US Army, Ret.)

Hello. 300 years before Christ (or thereabouts) Sun Tzu wrote the greatest treatise on winning a war ever written. He said there are only a few Principles of War: follow them and you win, violate them and you loose.

The first is Mass: numbers will carry the day. The more of us who communicate our position, the stronger each one of us becomes since we have grass roots support by people who vote, lots of people who vote. Another Principle is Offense . You never, never win a war by sitting on your hands and accepting the pabulum of inane responses by people who are supposedly responsible to you for their actions.

I know that many of you are writing to your Congressmen and women, http://tinyurl.com/c5jmw, and receiving empty, meaningless or even irrelevant letters in return. This is not acceptable. Democracy demands dialogue. Like you, I wrote to my Congressional Delegation and, like some of you, I received an absolutely empty letter in return. Please let me know who the Congressmen and women are who are abusing our trust in this way and the Natural Solutions Foundation will publish a list of those non-communicators.

I had written to my Representatives urging their strong opposition to Susan Davis’ disastrous HR 3156 because it represents a potential danger of massive proportion to the health and health freedom to the population of the United States. Of course, there are other major threats, too. SA 1379, attached to the Defense Spending Bill, is a serious threat to our health and nutrient access as well. As it happened, the letter I received was about HR 3156. It might just as well have been about any of the other bills we urge you to oppose.

In this case, I received an email back thanking me and telling me that HR 3156 was in Committee and “I will take your views into account when considering this bill”. There was no substantive information or indication of a position on the issues in the reply I received. Not acceptable!

Many of you have told us you are getting the same unacceptable letters from your Congressmen and women. The natural tendency is to throw up your hands in disgust and not write again. Wrong. That means that you have allowed yourself to be fobbed off by a meaningless letter and you accepted it. That is not how we win the battle and not how we win the war. Rather, what you need to do is go back to the email engine on our site, http://tinyurl.com/c5jmw, and write a letter demanding a real answer and telling your Congressman or woman that he or she works for you and needs your vote in the next electoral cycle. Therefore, you need a straight answer and a vigorous protection of your rights and interests in this electoral cycle. You can also remind your Congressperson that he/she needs to win the primary in order to secure re-election and that you are an active member of your community who will remember and share the interactions which you have with your Congressional Delegates. If you do not get straight answers to straight questions and get mealy-mouthed verbiage instead of straight talk, you will let other people know that this is not a trustworthy person to send to Congress again.

Corporate interests have declared war on Health and Health Freedom. This is a war that we must win! Inactivity won’t win it nor will allowing a ridiculous letter to pacify you.

Yours in health and freedom,
Major General Albert N. Stubblebine III
President

PS: Thanks for your outstanding email response demanding a Congressional Codex Briefing. More than 16,000 emails have been sent to Congress in the last two days by our supporters. Since Congress counts each one as the opinion of 13,000 voters, that’s a whole lot of people saying, “Protect our Health Freedom, Congressman!” Keep up the good work! ANS

Posted in Activism, Legislation to Oppose, The Law & CODEX | 3 Comments »

15,795 Americans Are Not Wrong!

Monday, September 12th, 2005

WOW! You have touched my heart!

I bring you the problems and challenges in the Health Freedom struggle via radio shows, emails and blogs and you create the solution! Fifteen Thousand, Seven Hundred and Ninety Seven people have taken the time and the effort to tell Congress what is important to you, that you want a Congressional Hearing and you are very, very, VERY serious about protecting your health freedoms.

Now, multiply that number by the “correction factor” Congress applies to grass roots activities: every letter or fax = the voice of 13,000 people! You shared the opinions of 20, 233, 500 people with Congress. You told them that all of us want our health freedoms intact and that it is important to us to make sure that Congress knows enough about Codex to work hard to protect us from it. That’s what your voice can do when it is part of a full throated chorus of political opinion from us, not from the professional speech makers.

I told you that Health Freedom is expensive and asked you to help float the Natural Solutions Foundation financial boat since we have no other means of support. We said that we needed to raise $10,000 in thirty days. Today, on Day 18, your help and support has brought us $6385! Many of you understand how important this battle is to our very liberty itself. So you have joined the Health Freedom 400, by giving $25 or more to sustain the Natural Solutions Foundation. I offer each of you who has taken a stand for Health Freedom and health liberty a heartfelt and personal “Thank you!” To those of you still waiting to become part of this funding drive, right now would be a really, really good time to join the ranks of the Health Freedom 400. Please do not to wait for anymore time to pass before you click here to become a member of the Health Freedom 400, http://healthfreedomusa.org/donate.

Thank you for your enduring support!

I told you that we needed grassroots action to get Congress to the [then scheduled] Congressional Briefing next week. Just counting those of you who used this site to , email Congress, http://tinyurl.com/c5jmw, alone, by midday Saturday (9/10/05) you had contacted nearly every Congressional Office to urge your Congressmen and women to attend our Codex Briefing. That’s not counting people who used other sites, phones, etc!

When I told you two days ago that the Congressional Briefing had been pulled out from under our firmly planted shoes, and asked you to email Congress to urge them to hold a Congressional Codex Briefing, you did that, too! In fact, since 10 AM Saturday morning (9/10/05) when I announced the “change in plans” with an email telling you what had happened, you have gone back to the computer and made those (virtual) wires hum! I am thrilled to tell you that 15,795 of you have written to Congress that health freedom is extremely mportant to you!

That’s a lot of grass roots and every one makes the basis of our Health Freedom movement stronger.

And remember when I brought you the problem that health freedom supporters are everywhere but we needed to find one another so we could get together? I suggested we use meetup.com, http://healthfreedom.meetup.com, to help us do that? Well, we now have a Health Freedom meetups in Los Angeles, one in Croton on Hudson NY, one in Seattle WA, one in North Carolina and people waiting to join meetups near their homes in Pennsylvania, Long Island, etc. So if you are interested in meeting with others who care about health freedom, go to http://healthfreedom.meetup.com and organize a meetup or join one.

Set the time and the location to be convenient to you and then meetup. Email me at info.healthfreedomusa.org and let me know you are having a meetup and I will email you materials to help organize and streamline the meeting. Keep me posted! Let’s use meetup as our electronic appointment book to find and share this immense task with others who understand what is at stake!

I am deeply honored to be in this struggle with you all because you are so responsive and persistent that we CAN win our health freedom!

Yours in health and determined freedom,

Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director

Posted in Activism, Events, The Law & CODEX | 2 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »