Rabid Liberal Rants

So what happens when you dump radioactive toxic water into the ocean? The fishes become radioactive! And how do you get people to eat radioactive fish? Set a standard that says how much radiation in fish is OK!

Which is what Japan is doing:

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano says the government will apply the maximum allowable radiation limit for vegetables to fish.

The move came after the health ministry reported that fish caught off Ibaraki prefecture — which is about halfway between the plant and Tokyo — contained levels of radioactive iodine that exceeded the new legal limit. Cesium was also found just below the limit. The fish were caught Friday, before the safety limit was announced Tuesday.

Please. No level of radio active material inside the body is safe. The TEPCO folks are saying the radiation in the water will dissipate. What they don’t tell you is that the little radioactive fish you just ate will continue to give off radiation inside your body.

Meanwhile the increasing use of chemicals in agriculture is being found to damage bees, weakening their immune systems, with laboratory studies showing that some insecticides and fungicides can act together to be 1,000 times more toxic to bees. They can also affect the sense of direction, memory and brain metabolism, and herbicides and pesticides may reduce the availability of plants bees need for food and for the larval stages of some pollinators.

Seriously? Who really thinks that Big Agribusiness companies care about the bee population? It doesn’t matter what you or I think. They will continue using insecticides for their crops. I sadly predict that bees will no longer be part of this Earth in 15 years…

Humans must change behaviour to save bees, vital for food production – UN report.

With the harsh weather in Australia, the drought in China, wheat prices are expected to go waaay up. Seems like our basic breads and cereals will see some price increases as well. This is no good.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

Everything now depends on this year’s harvest. Lowering food prices to a more comfortable level will require a bumper grain harvest, one much larger than the record harvest of 2008 that combined with the economic recession to end the 2007-08 grain price climb.

If the world has a poor harvest this year, food prices will rise to previously unimaginable levels. Food riots will multiply, political unrest will spread, and governments will fall. The world is now one poor harvest away from chaos in world grain markets.

From BusinessWeek:

Demand for wheat from Australia, the fourth-biggest shipper, is strong, said exporter AWB, as buyers from Europe to the Philippines battle for supplies amid prices near their highest level in more than two years.

From Wall Street Journal:

Prices surged to their highest intraday level since late August 2008 after the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO, said severe drought in China’s main winter wheat region could pose a serious threat to the Asian giant’s output. The reduced production comes as world markets already face supply strains, particularly for high-quality wheat used for flour.

From the Atlantic:

On Thursday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that the United State Department of Agriculture (USDA) had approved the unrestricted planting of genetically modified alfalfa sold by Monsanto Co. and Forge Genetics, despite protests from organic groups and public health advocates and comments from nearly 250,000 citizens asking the department to keep this GMO genie in its bottle.

Monsanto and big business wins again! There’s no way to prevent cross-contamination, to restrict the GMO crops to a given area. It will be on our dinner plate one way or another.

Thank you Big Business, Big Government!

Enjoy!

A pesticide made in Germany but banned in Germany, France, Italy and Slovenia, was approved for use by the EPA, in the USA, despite the EPA’s own scientists  concerns about it’s safety. It was banned because it was dangerous to pollen- and nectar-eating bees.

read more…Leaked Memo Shows EPA Doubts About Bee-Killing Pesticide | Wired Science | Wired.com.

Big Business  wins again! Screw the honeybees! Who cares if the honeybee colonies collapse? We don’t need bees to “fertilize $15 billion worth of U.S. crops”! Right Mr. EPA?

(damn stupid government agencies)…

Here comes the corn industry again:

The Corn Refiners Association, which represents firms that make the syrup, has been trying to improve the image of the much maligned sweetener with ad campaigns promoting it as a natural ingredient made from corn. Now, the group has petitioned the United States Food and Drug Administration to start calling the ingredient “corn sugar,” arguing that a name change is the only way to clear up consumer confusion about the product.

Read more –> A New Name for High-Fructose Corn Syrup – NYTimes.com.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – It’s always about the money.

BP has released a statement denying that the company had any specific role in his release, but acknowledging that they lobbied the British government to enter into a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya. Read more…

This is just way too funny. In fact, it’s probably something I would have done myself. You gotta give the guy some credit for being ballsy. In a private meeting with other G-8 summit leaders, President Bush finishes  a meeting with the words “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.” Not only that, he pumps his fist into the air. I’m not his biggest fan but you gotta love it. Kinda reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Homer steals some candy from a candy convention and while being chased by the convention folks, he lobs a pack of pop rocks candy and soda at them. Before the explosion he yells “See you in hell candy boys!”.

A leaked report by the World Bank, purportedly confirms that biofuels, not increased demand from India and China, has caused the world’s food prices to increase by 75%.

President Bush has linked higher food prices to higher demand from India and China, but the leaked World Bank study disputes that: “Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases

The news also suggests that the report was finished back in April, but was held back:

Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.

It all sounds to corny to me, hehehe….

Here we go again. The corn industry, this time under the guise of the New Fuels Alliance and FoodPriceTruth.org, are saying that higher food prices, in particular, chicken, are NOT a result of more corn going to corn based biofuels instead of chicken feed.

Yeah, right. Same old story.