Countries outside the euro zone also find themselves caught up by the effects of the gathering financial storm and are attempting to pitch their camps as appropriately as possible to deal with it.

But one thing that countries both inside and outside the euro zone share is a common problem of ‘debt’. Levels of national borrowing (sovereign debt) have, over the past decade, exceeded the ability of many countries to pay back the ensuing interest and capital within permitted time zones, thus catalysing the ‘restructuring’ of these loans by the lenders and the setting of new terms for repayment. The ‘lenders’ are thus put in a position of great power: they can pull the strings and set the agenda – so long as the countries which are borrowing wish to maintain their particular moneytary policies and ambitions for ‘economic growth’.

Poland, however, finds herself in a position of reasonable resilience to the euro zone storm. With a an economy that is largely internally stimulated and not overtly reliant on exports, the Country looks in fair shape to resist at least the worst consequences of the black hole which the euro zone is rapidly turning into.

All the more bizar then, is the determination of prime minister Tusk to throw his Country right into the centre of the black hole and to thereby surrender Poland’s hard won independence to a bunch of unelected technocrats who are the puppet masters of the European Commission and its various agencies.

Donald Tusk is making a name for himself by singing the praises of the European Union at every opportunity. A few months ago he he was quoted as saying that “The European Union is the greatest institution in the World.” He has now been joined by the foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who seems particularly keen on supporting German leadership of radical reforms to the euro zone. Tusk and Sikorski are, it seems, absolutely determined to hook Poland into the euro and ‘moneytary union’ within four years – “provided the euro zone undergoes necessary reforms” (Sikorsky).

So what might these reforms be?

If Angela Merkel’s reform package does indeed become the accepted way forward, then it will mean that Brussels will have hugely increased power over the economic and fiscal affairs of euro zone Countries. They will have to account to the European Commission and be open to the surveillance and even management of their economies, so that near guarantees can be made as to the credit worthiness of each Country.

Tusk is gunning for just such a recipe for Poland’s future. One which “will make Europe an effective enterprise with mechanisms of internal control and discipline” (Tusk, Warsaw Voice 5 December 2011). According to this ethos Polish citizens will find themselves paying contributions not only to Brussels and Warsaw but also into the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. Under such a regime, Poland will simply become ‘a unit of administration’ in a bureaucratic spiders web whose nerve centre is situated within the unelected cabal in Brussels. The danger lights should be flashing.

The European Union has already been responsible for hundreds of petty rules and regulations that make daily life more and more tedious and onerous. But they also include some very direct interference in civil liberties that strongly suggest a movement towards a totalitarian, centrally controlled Europe, where decisions will be taken without public debate – because they are unilaterally deemed “the right choice for the economy.” Such proclamations have their origins in corporate greed. A disease which stands behind all political insistence on obeying the demands of ‘market led’ moneytary forces.

In Poland, these same corporate and government calls to ‘put the economy first’ are currently being used to put the squeeze on both citizens and the natural environment. Just witness the covertly calculated attempts by government to by-pass vital public debate on the huge hazards presented by GMO and by hydraulic ‘Fracking’ for underground gas supplies. The Vice Minister of the Environment, Bernard Blaszcyk recently stated “We will do everything to assure that protests are not able to stop shale gas exploration in Poland”. Such threatening language is becoming the hallmark of institutions that appear to be moving inexorably towards dictatorship rather than democracy. The same barely veiled threat characterises Tusk and Sikorski’s increasingly strident calls for Poland to become deeply engaged in the euro zone.

But by lending support to the ‘one currency for all’ euro regime we would be selling our souls to the shadowy architects of a ‘one world government’. An institution which would, if it were allowed to manifest itself, exercise a central controlling influence over all our lives – an influence over which we would have no redress.

Already Greece and Italy have, at the blink of an eye, become the recipients of unelected technocrat leaders, whose job it is to enforce austerity measures meated out by the International Moneytary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank. When prime minister Papandreou stepped forward to offer the Greek government a referendum on whether they wished to accept the austerity terms of the IMF – he was viciously attacked by the architects of the euro zone. His courageous stand lasted just three days: the idea that the people should be asked their opinion on this momentous decision was smashed on the weathered rocks of the Accropolis, the birthplace of European democracy.

Polish citizens need to ask themselves just why Mr Tusk is so keen for his Country to join this unbending cabal? Just why is his government looking to the German nation to take control of the future of Europe – and therefore the future of Poland?

There are historical lessons that supposedly have been learnt – the hard way. No one Country or one entity (The European Commission) should be given the authority to take a dominant role in pan European decision making. The future freedom of our children and grand children demands that we never allow ourselves to become slaves to such a centralised nexus of power. And this means vigorously taking control of our individual and collective destinies in the here and now.

European nation states can manage their financial and social affairs without being dictated to by the European Commission or the German federation. In the loosely knit extended family which is Europe today, no two Countries and cultures are ‘the same’ nor do they wish to be. We should celebrate this fact, because that is the beauty of our individual yet diverse Europe. Yet the ‘fiscal unity’ medicine of the euro plan would squeeze this individuality into Orwellian conformity, turning the richness of diversity into a sterile monoculture to be overseen by faceless corporations and tunnel vision bureaucrats.

Right now, we have a vital opportunity to cut short the advance of this monster – which is looking to wrest absolute control over the democratic experiment. For Poland, this will mean citizens activating themselves to resolutely demand a public debate and referendum: on the Country’s desire for – or rejection of – becoming a co-partner to a supranational technocracy that has no roots in the European tradition and no public mandate to set the rules of other nations.

Julian Rose  December 2011.

However, in a world undergoing seismic socio economic and environmental convulsions that are growing by the day, gold may not prove to be the solution to our future security that many are hoping for.

If one stands back a little from the spinning vortex of speculative financial roulette that preoccupies the world’s media and many of her better-off citizens, one will observe that unfortunately gold is inedible (some will say ‘fortunately’) and is less easy to turn into plough shears than other baser metals. A fact that has not gone unnoticed by globally oriented financial investors. These speculators have recently started pouring money into agricultural land holdings as a hedge against higher food prices, set against a guaranteed demand for world staples like wheat, rice, maize and sorghum. Unfortunately the objective of such investment policies are not benign, but rather are symptomatic of the same convulsive profit driven motives that have catalysed the seismic economic swings of the past decade.

So, where to turn when all around is turmoil stirred by inflated egos, unashamed greed and rabid exploitation?

The answer to this starts by firstly recommending careful consideration of the circumstances that have brought us to this point. Then, a plan of action which offers a longer term commitment to a saner and perhaps ‘simpler’ model of everyday living – one which shifts decisively away from the present day capitalist consumerist ethos that has brought our planet to the brink of asset stripped ecocide and unchecked human inequality.

In seeking to raise our awareness of the background to this unprecedented upheaval, it soon becomes apparent that there is some other force operating behind the front line villains picked out as being responsible for the rising and falling fortunes of the global economy. Those ‘in the news’ are often simply puppets of this unseen regime which appears to be intent upon a far going domination of global events for its own ends. The regime appears to be composed of a rather small group of very wealthy individuals and corporations that have established a controlling influence over both national government and the international financial institutions that form the lynch pin of the global economy. It is a mostly shadowy cartel whose field of influence includes such institutions as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation. Its leaders are also strategically placed to control events within the European Union, the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) and the Pacific Rim economic zone.

Banking empires, pharmaceutical giants, oil magnates and food and seed monopolies are well represented within this club, which exercises decisive control over all our lives without us ever really noticing it. At their behest, moral codes and human values are flaunted and dispensed with with reckless abandon, and brutal wars are started in foreign countries with almost complete impunity.

One soon becomes aware that the fascist regime of the last Great War did not end with the Nuremburg trials, but re-established a formidable foot-hold within Western and North American society – performing this stealth-full manoeuvre right under our half closed sleep filled eyes.

The fact that this state of play is successfully disguised as ‘democracy’, is proof of their cleverness and our stupidity.

Recognising this state of affairs for the first time can be a shock, especially if one has pinned ones faith in the status quo to see us through these “troubled times”. However, reality it is, and once we have absorbed the truth there can be no turning back. Which brings us once again to the question:

“Where does one turn when all around is turmoil ..?”

The answer is – firstly we have to turn to ourselves; to recognise that we are complicit in allowing such a dark agenda to have become adopted right in our midst. After all, we live in what citizens of Europe and North America like to refer to as a “modern democracy”. Yet it is we ourselves who have repeatedly put our faith in autocratic charlatans who freely exercise the levers of despotic power. It is we ourselves who have handed responsibility to run our affairs to those who are masters of spin, deception and propaganda. It is we who have filled the role that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain filled on the cusp of World War two when he held up a scrap of paper and declared it to contain Hitler’s promise that Nazi Germany would never invade the United Kingdom. We too, like Chamberlain, have appeased ourselves in submitting our destinies to the diktats of the corporate vandals and the smiling politicians in their pay.

We have freely allowed ourselves to be duped into a state of virtual paralysis by a corporate backed media whose agenda has nothing to do with “raising awareness” but a great deal to do with keeping us busy with the trappings of superficial consumerism and junk status entertainment. The vast propaganda machine that pumps out the relentless message that we should strive ceaselessly to acquire the means to purchase our pleasures from the glittering shelves of the global market place.

However, these shelves are now beginning to lose their lustre, and we are beginning to lose the scales from our eyes. We can begin to see that we confused this ‘virtual reality’ with actual reality. The world turns out not to be a hypermarket after all, but a sentient being in an advanced stage of severe fever; poisoned, polluted and exploited almost beyond recognition – by us – the trolley pushing, brand seeking puppets of the global corporate elite. That small cartel marching on its robotic way to the grand take over of every last bankable asset on planet earth, as well as all those who, consciously or unconsciously, submit to becoming porns in its sinister master plan.

But now its time to take back our power and to take firm control of our destinies. We can still make this choice – its not too late. Nobody with the means of survival needs to be a slave – and nobody with some land needs to go without food. We are fast becoming aware that ‘money in the bank’ is no guarantee of our future security. As dying state and private financial institutions increasingly empower themselves to reach ever deeper into our pockets, we struggle to grasp the fact that much of what they steal goes straight into the pay cheque of the brightest scavengers and the bonuses of already bloated bosses. We barely seem to notice when our revenue payments are utilised to further crank up the deadly imperialist war machine so it can bludgeon its way through yet more oil and mineral rich countries in order to fulfil insatiable material addictions and barely disguised neo-colonial ambitions.

However, behind all events is a law of karma which states “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” And just as the despotic forces of imperialism appear to be wresting decisive control over mankind, strong voices of reason and truth are rising to challenge its dominion. Right in amongst the genocidal acts of nefarious despots we are witnessing the dawning of fresh visions of another way mankind can look after itself and this sentient planet upon which we all reside.

In fact we have arrived at something of a watershed; one where it will no longer be possible to sit on the fence and not commit to a resolution of this age old conflict, one way or another.

Thus, those now fretting about how and where to securely invest their financial savings, just might find that cosmic Lila has brought them to an auspicious karmic fork in the road of life. Pointing to the left – a signpost saying “Financial Security” and to the right a sign saying “Voluntary Simplicity.”

Those whose priority is to preserve their wealth will take the left fork and they will put their money into gold. Those who seek to deepen their awareness and move beyond material dependency will choose the right fork. Those who turn left may find themselves still in familiar territory with no lack of advisers on how to put up barriers against uncertainty and change. However this will merely ensure an extended contract with the dark ways of the old regime. For those who turn right will be a challenge of a very different nature: how to shift away from old material dependencies and towards a simpler and more harmonious relationship with the non material values of existence; the universal energies that are held back by materialistic indulgence. Those who take this path may wish to consider investing whatever funds they possess (individually or collectively) in some fertile land capable of producing good quality, ecological food, fuel and fibre for their daily needs. Thus taking control of their destinies and ultimately achieving independence from the clawing centralised control system which feeds upon the compliant serfdom of its participants.

The more we can free ourselves from from this unholy contract, the less power it will have over us and our World, and the more realised we will become in the fulfilment of our deeper needs and creative aspirations. Once the collapsing institutions of the status quo have dragged all that has value into the cauldron of its hastening demise – where we find our next meal, how we generate our energy and where we acquire pure water – will become of paramount importance. The skills of the land will be at a premium, whereas the skills of money making will become a useless impediment.

We can start right now. We can take our money out of the mainstream banks which fund the oppressive institutions of this planet – and put it instead into ethical investment institutions, local ecological food and farming ventures, local human scale renewable energy initiatives and/or the thousands of localised land based and artisan ventures now springing up all over the planet. We can, right now, begin to end years of energy sapping compromise and finally put our money where our hearts are. Because when the corporate gods are toppled and the lights go out, we will need to be prepared.

This preparation process can catalyse a new and positive interaction at the community level. One where we start purchasing the basic necessities of life from those who are already operating humane, responsible and environmentally benign enterprises; and not those who are exploiting the last seams of planetary wealth for their personal profit and power.

So to those who think they will find their salvation in precious metals, I would countenance them to think again. One cannot eat gold.

Julian Rose
September 2011

Julian is a British pioneer organic farmer, writer and activist. He is currently President of the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside which is leading the fight against GMO in Poland. He is author of “Changing Course for Life – Local Solutions to Global Problems”

www.changingcourseforlife.info

Both appear to be teetering at the edge of a financial precipice and the great politico-bureaucratic machines that run the show – on both sides of the Atlantic – seem incapable of agreeing what economic medicine might keep this beast on the rails.

They, and we, are now learning that in a finite world no resource is infinite, least of all institutionalised financial wealth whose very existence is dependent upon interest payments made on capital lent to those who cannot sustain the levels of repayments demanded of them. In a ‘debt based’ economy (which ours is) all participants will ultimately land up losers.

We cannot know the exact timing surrounding the unhinging of a large sector of the global market place, but that some form of large scale collapse is imminent, there can be little doubt.

With this collapse will also ultimately go the entire foundation of modern day capitalism, and particularly the ‘perpetual growth’ based economic formulae that have driven this planet to the edge of ecocide and the mad growth machine perilously close to its own ultimate demise.

The vast debt based financial manipulations of the past decade already signalled that a global crisis was in the making. And attempts to solve this crisis by applying an ever tighter squeeze on the already minimal assets of the working man and woman has now reached a ‘back against the wall’ point of no return, provoking the first waves of citizen based ‘non compliance’ uprisings. We are likely to see more of these as the elite bankers and corporate despots who hold the reins of power, try to hang onto this power by exerting their repressive authority on an increasingly disenchanted populous.

The entire edifice which we were led to believe constituted the secure foundation of a modern civilisation, is now falling on its knees and the centuries old profligate ‘top down’ theft of both people and the planet is now rebounding on its perpetrators, dragging all and sundry in its turbulent wake. As a result, we are, in the next half decade, going to pass through the vortex of a huge change to our customary ways of life. A change for the better, if you don’t like the ‘take-all’ consumerist package at the helm of modern neo liberal capitalism. A change for the worse if you do.

Desperate rescue attempts will of course take place in which billions of dollars, Euros, pounds, yen and roubles will be thrown at the sinking banks, financial institutions and corporate marketing machines, in a vain attempt to resuscitate – one more time – the dying machine. But it won’t rise again because there is no crane big enough to lift it out of the grave it has dug for itself.

What will this mean to you and I?

Well, that depends on how reliant we each are on the trappings of the neoliberal consumer society.

If we are heavily reliant, we will have a long way to fall and will not have an easy landing. If we are not too trapped we will have less far to fall and may have a softer landing. However, we will all be subjected to an intense propaganda campaign as the wounded beast throws out its grasping tentacles to try to further enslave us in its accelerating demise. Beware of this. We will be heavily indoctrinated not to let go of old patterns of thought and behaviour which give a false sense of security concerning the strength of the status quo to see us through “these hard times”. We will be lent on – even by many of our friends – to tow the line and submit to the “austerity” measures dictated by our increasingly autocratic governments. Beware of this, for it is a deception. Austerity demands that hard working people continue to cut back on their meagre savings in order to enable the elite wealth mongers to maintain their seemingly impenetrable financial empires.

Crises are created by those at the sharp end of the power pyramid and have proven to be invaluable tools for the enslavement of the many. The main card in their austerity pack is the ‘fear card’. If we can be made to feel sufficiently frightened of what may lie on the other side of the collapsing financial world which is their citadel, then we will be more likely to do all that we are asked to do to avoid further rocking the boat. However, this is the road to unconditional slavery – and its what dying monsters feed upon to retain their self delusions of power.

So, if we want to avoid serfdom to the beast, we had better sit down and honestly ask ourselves here and now – before its too late – just what might lie on the other side of global economic collapse?

It will require some fortitude to look this question in the eye. It will require a deepening of our perceptions of what is actually going on around us and a willingness to research what forces stand behind extreme cyclical historical events. It will require recognition of the part that we ourselves – as well as our ancestors – have played in bringing about such crises and an awareness of the fact that they are largely a reflection of our own state of being. For the road to the great collapse is a long and pot-hole strewn one and is made up of many decades of blind adherence to false Gods.

We are all complicit – on different levels – and only by admitting this can we start to put things right.

Only when this first hurdle has been crossed will we be able to start constructing a proper platform for positive change. A platform which necessarily reintroduces us to some very simple premises concerning what steps to take to avoid being swept away, or reduced to serfdom, by the tsunami of global upheavals that are now under-way. I use the term tsunami advisedly because the way the planet has been treated over many generations of abject resource plundering, perpetual war and the toxic poisoning associated with excessive corporate greed, has resulted in a state of unprecedented geological, atmospheric and social destabilisation. A state mirrored by the current financial meltdown itself. How could it be otherwise? The two are inseparably locked into a cause and effect domino that has now reached breaking point.

Our ecology and climate cannot exist in hermetically sealed isolation from our financial activities.

The wounds we inflict upon our this Earth reverberate throughout and the repercussions return to haunt us. So, in taking our first steps of mitigation in the face of a world succumbing to both geological and financial turmoil, some very elementary questions shift into the foreground:

“Will I have the ability to procure enough food to feed myself and my family?”

“How can I be sure to have regular access to this resource?”

“How will we ensure that we have the basic security of a home, fresh water, warm clothes and enough energy to provide warmth, light and adequate cooking facilities?”

“What about our friends?”

“What if our savings are not enough to buy what we need?

“What if supplies dry-up?”

All these questions will crowd into the mind once we allow ourselves to face the truth. They are very valid questions – and they have answers. However, the right answers will not be arrived at via panic or fear. They must be nurtured into existence through prioritising another medium, an approach to problem solving which draws upon our latent creativity, inventive powers and love of life. As Albert Einstein so aptly pointed out “One cannot solve an existing problem using the same mode of thinking which created it.”

Metaphorically speaking the answer to all our questions lies ‘right in our own back yards’; and metaphysically speaking we will be guided – provided we remain flexible enough to allow our old skin to fall away and a new skin to emerge in its place. The very same process which our planet is now undergoing via the tumultuous cleansing process which will ultimately throw-off the toxic burden of generations of misguided inhabitants.

So now is the time to act in mitigation against being caught on the wrong foot before the collapsing structures of the old regime force us into last minute panic based survival actions. It is now time to seek out real answers and take real steps.

Emerging amongst the detritus of failing financial institutions and the war stained ambitions of global corporate giants, is a growing awareness that we have almost completely neglected the resources we have available to us right in front of our eyes; that a global problem often has a local solution and that this solution might not involve a seemingly inevitable descent into a lowly and disagreeable struggle to survive. On the contrary, it could lead to a more honest and simple approach to life which could enrich, rather than impoverish, the spirit while redeeming a lost sense of connection with the natural world.

Should enough of us decide to pursue such a path now, we just might be able to relieve our planet of a whole extra level of suffering which is sure to be experienced unless a significant change of course is undertaken by a critical mass of humanity.

In the final analysis, there is not much choice in this matter. Once a combination of crises in the food, air, energy and water sectors reaches criticality – many are either not going to be able to afford to fulfil their customary daily needs or will not be able to access them due to transport and infrastructural blockages.

However, we are conditioned to believe that such events will probably never actually happen in Western Europe and North America. Our corporate owned western media does not want to unduly alarm paid up members of ‘consumer-soc plc.’. They don’t want too many thinking they might have to change their ways – for example by ceasing to watch TV and to stop buying from supermarkets. So, as long as we carry on consuming “the daily diet for the dumbed down” there is little or no chance of responding to the rising winds of change that are blowing across our overburdened planet. But free the mind and take a few steps out of this virtual reality world which we have so carefully constructed for ourselves – and suddenly the truth starts to make itself felt.

And just what is this truth?

It was put very nicely by Dr Fritz Schumacher, the author of Small Is Beautiful, some 40 years ago. While lecturing in North America, he was asked if a switch from fossil fuels to human scale and regional renewable energy sources would mean that we would all have to accept “a lower standard of living?”

“No” he replied “I don’t subscribe to the term ‘lower standard of living’ to describe a state in which we freely elect to move towards a life of voluntary simplicity.” A life of voluntary simplicity means a turning away from the heavy ecological footprint excesses of our 21^st century consumer society and finding that we can manage well enough – or even rather better – on rather a little; provided that this ‘rather a little’ is genuinely good quality and doesn’t harm our environment, our body or our soul. An aware mind and a light ecological footprint are therefore prerequisites for life both before and ‘after the crash’ and as soon as we can get started on on them the less devastating the repercussions of this crash will be.

Rather than list the thousands of localised self sustaining group initiatives that are currently emerging in counterpoint to the tottering globalised economy, I prefer to recommend that we pay attention to what I have named “The Proximity Principle.” The Proximity Principle is perhaps best understood as a blend between a law of physics and what we once called ‘common sense’. It instructs us to think and act on the basis that where we reside (hamlet, village, town, city) is the centre of a circle – and what we need (daily necessities) fan out around that centre like spokes from the hub of a bicycle wheel. It says that we should try to access the majority of our daily needs for our physical well being and nourishment from an area as close as possible to the centre of the circle where we reside. Thus we seek to access our fresh food ‘from our own garden’; our local independent small grocer; our farmers market – or perhaps even directly from our nearest ecologically aware farmer.

Large cities present a serious challenge: some highly creative collective ‘greening’ is about the only practical life line available to citizens living in population densities of over 1 million. Very large cities like London access the great majority of their food and energy from abroad and this makes such city dwellers particularly vulnerable to the increasing oscillations of the global market place.

For such vast conurbations, the provision of food alone requires an energy intensive and complex coordinated operation which is likely to break down once secure financial backing is no longer guaranteed. Processed foods require a further energy input and long distance transportation yet more.

‘Fresh local food’ however requires very little energy input and is alive with vital nutrients and vitamins that are lost in transport, packaging and days on neon lit supermarket shelves – all factors contributing to the demise of our planet Earth. And so with energy: start again from your own wood burning stove; passive and photovoltaic solar panels or small wind generator – or link into a community renewable energy scheme. Obtain your firewood from a local timber merchant or farmer/forester. Make a serious effort to wean yourself off ‘the national grid’ and the super market (hugely consumptive energy footprint) and start supporting the local traders of your community: when the chips are down and the lights have gone out – it is here where your solution lies and the relationship we build with our local community will define how well we cope down the pathway to ‘voluntary simplicity’. It is only at the local level that we can participate in the intimate trading transactions that connect the ecological farmer, forester, blacksmith, baker and transporter. Having money will not be so important when bartering and exchange once again become community led activities. Unless we are connected into the dynamic of this infrastructure, our chances of getting through coming seismic events without too much pain are very small.

By following “The Proximity Principle” we will be guided towards the most elegant economic, ecological and socially constructive solutions concerning the sane management of our daily lives.

Such an approach also has the potential to catalyse a renaissance of meaningful relationships and cast a fresh light on shared creative endeavour – in the fields, on the streets and in the home. We will discover that there really are local solutions to global problems.

Julian Rose

August 1^st 2011

The global food economy, served and shaped via state and corporate control of the food chain, has resulted in unquantifiable levels of pollution, destruction and exploitation in every dimension of agriculture, from soil to seed, to plant, to animal and to man. In other words: our existence.

As we approach the second decade of the 21^st century, it is becoming abundantly clear that an entirely new vision, understanding and implementation is required in order for agriculture to truly serve its original purpose of feeding humanity (all peoples) with good quality, affordable and mostly local foods in ways that do not harm the environment.

In order to make this wholesale shift it is necessary to entirely step aside from State and corporate control of the food chain. No compromise is possible here. Maintaining and re establishing the genuine independence of farmers throughout the world is a prerequisite for our survival as sentient, healthy human beings.

Non participation in the corporately controlled global market place must, in order to be effective, be accompanied by the widespread implementation of localised, quality food production and consumption practices. Practices that bring into close proximity the food grower and the food consumer; at the same time – by-passing entirely, the corporate multiple chains that profit by keeping them separate. This is the only way that genuine accessibility of optimum condition foods and medicinal plants can be ensured for billions of people throughout the World.

Continuing to adhere to the present corporate and state controlled food and farming regimes means that:

• Farmer’s time honoured right to save their seeds and to cultivate, distribute and trade the produce resulting from these seeds will continue to be subverted, curtailed and stolen.
• People’s right to perpetuate the biodiversity of locally adapted native plants, herbs and animals will be denied.
• People’s rights to gain lawful access to unused or barren land for the purpose of growing food for their own consumption in ways that do not harm the environment will be blocked.
• People’s time honoured right to carry on the daily operations of good farming practice unhindered by state and corporate power structures, will be denied.

It is the obligation of head’s of state to consult the people, in advance, about any new laws or alterations of the current law and any political questions concerning agriculture.

“Farming for the People with the People” therefore calls for all farmers, growers and sympathetic citizens, to take back control over their destinies and to join together to free our agricultural practices from the corporate treadmill of destruction and despair to which they now are tied.

At the same time, we call upon the Polish government, and all national governments, to act NOW on the demands of the vast majority of their citizens to:

• Ban all forms of genetic engineering in agriculture, horticulture, silviculture and fisheries.
• Withdraw all financial support for factory farming regimes that dehumanise agriculture and debase the animal kingdom.
• Prohibit, without exception, any and all patenting of plants, animals, their traits and genes, as well as patents on breeding methods. Thereby making it unlawful to attempt to exercise control over biodiversity.

Every Country should have the right to protect its food sovereignty.

We call for a people led and people owned renaissance of agriculture. One which will liberate the creativity and ingenuity of man and draw inspiration from the time honoured peasant and family farming practices that still form the foundation of self sufficient, sustainable and ecological agricultural production throughout the world.

Please feel free to use and adopt in your Country!

This document was ratified on the occasion of the 10^th anniversary of the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside (ICPPC) www.icppc.pl

during the seminar “Food Sovereignty, Self Sufficiency and the Family Farm”

November 20/21 2010.

The days of the Polish love affair with America may soon be coming to an end. The hegemonic ambitions of US geopolitics are causing Washington to actively seek new avenues to exploit, both militarily and through corporate buy-outs of national assets in Eastern Europe. In Poland’s case, a high percentage of those national assets have already been sold off to pay debts incurred by reliance on huge loans packaged by the International Monetary Fund.

The latest US’s gifts to Poland do not come in pretty parcels, nor are they likely to be as innocuous as the worn out F1 11 fighter planes sold to the Polish air force a few years ago. Poles, already softened-up by the Coca Cola company, Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonalds – three corporate giants offering poison dressed up as something edible – are now being counted on not to offer any serious resistance to the next phase of attack. However, resistance is exactly what is needed. To find out why.. read on.

If corporate America gets its way and the Polish government gets its rewards – Poland will host, firstly: genetically modified food crops that permanently contaminate the natural food chain and turn once biodiverse fields into sterile monocultures. Secondly: corporate shale gas extraction (called ‘Fraking’) which pumps highly toxic chemicals into underground rock strata (shale) at high pressure thereby creating fissures which release natural gas. Then there’s the small matter of permanent US missile silos and army bases to be established in as yet undisclosed sites in the Polish countryside.

MISSILES

The Warsaw Voice of March 7 2011 had this to say:

“As was announced by our two presidents in December, we plan to establish a new permanent U.S. Air detachment in Poland, build missile defences in Poland, and as agreed at the NATO summit, develop a contingency plan for the region, Clinton told journalists at a joint briefing with Minister Sikorski ahead of their talks. Russia has been long opposed to the project, saying it could destroy the strategic balance of forces in Europe.”

The U.S. has bombed 21 Countries since World War II and has killed or displaced millions of innocent citizens in the process. The U.S. military/administration is perhaps the planet’s most infamous modern day ‘war criminal’ with an ever lengthening list of crimes against humanity to its name. England marches just a few steps behind.

FRAKING

To understand the environmental implications of ‘Fraking’ please see film GASLAND http://www.wykop.pl/link/708253/zagrozenie-wynikajace-z-wydobycia-gazu-lupkowego/

It appears that Prime Minister Tusk has already opened up the Polish countryside to US corporate exploitation via a deal that will allow leading US petroleum companies into the Country to drill for natural gas in the substantial fields that lie under much of the Polish countryside. Warnings are already being voiced that this will place severe strain on national water reserves and road infrastructures due to the vast volumes of water that are required to be transported to and from the drilling sites.

The water that is extracted as part of this process, is polluted with the chemicals that have been used to force open the shale rock and millions of litres of such water has to be dumped somewhere..

In the US, where Fraking is already prolific, the chemicals used in this process are now threatening underground drinking water reserves across millions of hectares of land and thousands of communities. Hundreds of households have been horrified to find gas coming out of their kitchen taps along with poisoned drinking water. The film (above) shows that when a match is put to this supply it catches fire instantly.

Fraking has all the hallmarks of yet another ruthless exploitation of nature for highly questionable goals. But its not too late to stop this as the French have already successfully done. Please urgently add your support to ‘Stop Fraking’ by writing to the Minister of the Environment and demanding a stop to this highly destructive process.

GMO

Genetically Modified Organisms are seen by the current US administration as an essential component of its global export earnings. To this end US corporations like Monsanto plc are State supported so as to extend their GM plant and animal breeding programmes into all areas of the world. Poland is now on the receiving end of this drive to modify and patent the global seed and animal breeding chain and to thereby consign nature’s designs to history.

In spite of the fact that we now know that GM animal feed causes infertility in rodents and that the Roundup Ready herbicides that are an indispensable part of the GM package cause placental damage in pregnant mothers – the Polish government consistently refuses to ban GM seeds and animal feeds.

Government ministers prefer to avert their eyes – even when genetically modified maize pollen has cross contaminated large areas of organic maize in Spain when the distance between these two crops was far beyond the supposed ‘safe levels’. Nine European Countries – including France and Germany – have already banned GM crops. They have found the evidence against them irrefutable.

Given that these facts are well known and well documented, the Polish government’s refusal to ban GMO is beginning to look like criminal negligence.

President Obama flies into Poland on May 27. No doubt his mission will include firming up the Polish government’s support for troops, missiles, wars, GMOs, Fraking and other such unwelcome objectives.

So don’t dream about any favours coming from the United States. You may find out that the dream isn’t a dream at all, but a cleverly packaged nightmare. It will be too late by then.

Just say “Enough!” And say it now.

Julian Rose (May 2011)

Unfortunately, it is still a relatively small percentage of individual who take the trouble to cultivate a discerning view about what they eat and how their food is grown; and it is this more than anything else which allows factory farming and agrichemically dominated conglomerates to retain their stranglehold over around 90% of the western world’s food chain. We have been indoctrinated to believe that human, animal and environmental health are somehow ‘luxuries’ that must take second place to the continued rape of planetary resources for the maintenance of the essentially moribund ‘growth at all costs’ economic model so blindly adhered to by those who exercise the levers of power.

The UK has been a leading exponent of this materialistically driven ethos ever since the industrial revolution burst into the rolling fields and meadows of our erstwhile ‘green and pleasant land’. The agricultural policy setters who once resided within the hallowed walls of Westminster have long since departed to be replaced by European Union technocrats, large agribusiness concerns and pharmaceutical cartels.

There is no ‘agricultural policy’. Just pressure groups vying for the dominant market position and manipulating government to support their agendas.

So, here in the UK, we see the need to show a profit turning once reasonably managed family farms into competing businesses, each vying with the other to become megasized production units of the sort that dominate the mid-west of North America. Permission to build dairy units for anything between 3,000 to 8,000 cows have been presented to planning authorities in Lincolnshire with the expectation of approval and the chance to become market leaders in the mass production of milk and dairy products for the leading supermarket chains. Fortunately, the applications have been turned down on environmental grounds – but this doesn’t mean the threat will not rise again.

The average size of a UK dairy herd today is approximately 70 cows. Thirty years ago it was 25 and all the cows had names. The scale and factory style technology proposed for these megadairies would mean that cows would join commercially indoor pigs and chickens as nothing more than units on a conveyor belt designed to extract the maximum amount of milk from the cheapest available high protein diet. A diet that will be laced with antibiotics and composed of genetically modified soya, maize and quite possibly nanotech feed components as supplementary ingredients. In the UK we think it’s clever to copy America and apply Ford motor company principles to the management of sentient livestock. However the implications are quite horrific to anyone who has a serious interest in the animals in their care.

Corporate UK is not alone in ignoring the basic rules of good husbandry and human and environmental health. All across Europe, the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union continues to promote efficient factory farming as the way forward. Exponents, faced by a swelling tide of consumer resistance, turn time and again to the mantra that “we must be able to feed the world.. By 2050 there will be 9 billion people on our planet, and only by exploiting the most advanced technologies will we be able to provide them all with adequate amounts of food”. There is a shocking degree of duplicity and arrogance in this propaganda which is continuously rolled out by GM corporations, governmental bodies and pseudo scientists in equal degree. It needs to be challenged head-on because it has nothing to do with benevolent concern for the human race and everything to do with maintaining profit driven industrial agriculture’s domination of the food chain.

All the serious evidence points to the opposite conclusion: it is only by nurturing small to medium sized mixed family farms that practise environmentally benign and humane land management systems that communities all over the world will be able to feed themselves and countries develop acceptable levels of food sovereignty / food security. The carefully researched and widely acclaimed IAASTD report of 2006/7 laid to rest the spurious claims that only genetically modified, nanotech and hydroponically raised crops – produced on vast monocultural prairies and endless rows of soil-less glass laboratories – can be relied upon to provide our daily nourishment. We need to remind ourselves that the 400 international scientists who composed the report came down firmly on the side of the small and medium sized mixed family farm coupled to localised distribution patterns as the best bet for feeding the swelling numbers expected on this planet.

There are many daunting challenges facing even the most thoughtful farmers and gardeners today. Not least the extraordinary plight of our honey bees.

As bees throughout Europe and North America continue to succumb to what is termed ‘colony collapse disorder’ the starkest warning yet of the plight of our food production systems stands apocalyptically before us. Over the past decades bees have been developed along similar lines as livestock and seeds: they have been hybridized to produce maximum volumes at the lowest possible cost. The great majority have their own version of factory farms to contend with. Their sanitized hives sprayed with powerful insecticide chemicals, their diet reduced to that which can be foraged from monocultural plantations and prairies of oilseed crops, themselves subjected to high doses of herbicides, insecticides and fungicides. Their hives transported hither and thither over miles of motorways that link pollination demanding commercial fruit and vegetable farms. All this further compounded by the addition of copious volumes of refined white sugar to their honey factory hives.

Attempts to nail one predominant cause of the mass die-offs are currently focussing on a particularly insidious insecticide widely sprayed on crops typically foraged by commercial honey bees. Germany has moved to ban this BASF product and environmental organisations in other countries are following suit. However, genetically modified organisms are also possible culprits – then what about atmospheric aerosol spraying, mobile phone masts and associated electro magnetic microwaves? Governments are failing to act with any sense of urgency in this dramatic situation. They remain broadly resistant to the warnings, not daring to offend their paymasters and political allies. And here lies the rub: how can we ever change the rules of the game if those in charge of the rule book have little or no desire to count the costs of industrial agriculture? Furthermore, time and again we see our political figureheads adopting the solution that offers the best financial return and the least prospect of threat to their cosy power base.

In Poland, where I work with Jadwiga Lopata at the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside, the farming community is just realising what it means to seek to gain advantage from the CAP subsidies on offer to EU member states. Under the current subsidy scheme payments are made on a per hectare basis throughout Europe: the largest farms are best rewarded and the smallest farms get the crumbs. Such a system could only have been devised by power cartels and technocrats intent on preserving the distorted status quo. How this translates on the ground for Poland, Romania and other Eastern European newcomers is into intense pressure on small farms of 2 to say 15 hectares – of which there are 1.5 million in Poland – to remain solvent in the face of skewed market forces that highlight the financial advantage of being big and brutal.

Foreign corporations have moved into Poland and bought up large tracts of ex-co-operative government land thereby guaranteeing themselves comfortable subsidy-based profits even if next to no food production takes place on their newly acquired assets. The best of such land becomes the venue for intensive agrichemically supported arable cropping that quickly drains the soil of its natural fertility and undercuts the market value of produce from smaller farmers still utilising traditional rotations and unable to benefit from the vast economies of scale enjoyed by their competitors. It is the Tescos of this world who are the main beneficiaries of this patently biased EU subsidy regime. They can acquire hundreds of tons of produce from single specialised farm units that will use all the chemical tricks of the trade to ensure that their cereals, potatoes, cabbages, fruits and livestock conform to the exact specification that the supermarkets demand and can be supplied at prices so low that only very large volumes ensure financial viability. It is these farms/ farmers who are most eagerly targeted by Monsanto, Cargill, Dupont, Pioneer, BASF, Bayer et al. It does not require a hard sell to get many of them to sign up to lobby for GM crops and seeds and to insist on the spurious notion that GM animal feeds comprising largely genetically modified soya and maize should be the staple diet of their mass production animal factories and the vast intensive indoor pig units that operate under the aegis of transnational giants like Smithfield and Danish Crown.

So bad is the food quality of products emanating from such animal and cereal concentration camps that I would hesitate to call it ‘food’. So depleted of vitamins and energy and so lacking in flavour are the majority of products emerging from these enterprises (let’s not call them ‘farms’) that they can only be successfully marketed by utilising the skilful propaganda tactics and virtually bottomless advertising budgets transnational corporate food distributors have at their disposal. Products which are essentially worthless in terms of their nutritional value can be made to look like wonderful fresh foods that every modern housewife must surely want on her family table. Given the right marketing regime and peak time television airspace, almost anything is possible.

Through successfully manipulating these powers, the combined forces of the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank, the European Union, agrichemical conglomerates and big pharma have pretty much stitched up the food chain from farm to fork throughout the so-called developed world. Now the only option for those unwilling to sell their souls and degrade their soils is to either try to operate beneath the radar or start another ball game on another pitch, and try to attract enough discerning citizens to support their efforts to ensure their survival. There are many signs that seem to show such a resistance movement is under way, albeit sporadically, in many parts of the UK and on the continent of Europe.

The peasant support group La Via Campesina which claims a membership of some 40 million peasant farmers mostly in South America, has set up also in Spain and France. The organisation has its European office in Brussels and promotes food sovereignty and respect for the role of small farmers in maintaining the biodiversity of traditional European foods and ecologies and indigenous non-hybrid seeds. Carlo Petrini’s Slow Food movement has now spread around the world and is encouraging peasants to hold-on to their artisan skills in the face of the sterilisation and globalisation of once vibrant, living indigenous foods. In France, Les Faucheurs (the Reapers) have succeeded in blocking any further attempts to cultivate the GM maize MON 810 and have managed to infiltrate a number of commercial and government laboratories working on GM seed research projects. Public pressure in almost all of mainland Europe remains firmly against GM food and farming. Five Countries have managed to outright ban MON 810 GM maize. And opinion polls continue to indicate a 70% figure of those saying ‘No to GMO’.

However this has not stopped the European Commission from trying to foist responsibility for decisions of whether or not to accept GM plantings of those varieties already accepted for cultivation in Europe (mainly maize and now a potato for starch) on individual member states. The European Parliament’s committee for Agriculture and the Rural Economy is pressing ahead with proposals to ensure that each member state sets its own specific ‘co-existence’ rules, thus backing the WTO’s demand of freedom of choice of farmers to plant GM crops if they wish. ‘Co-existence’ is a classic Trojan Horse. It allows GM crops to be planted next to conventional and organic crops with only a 30 metre intervening strip of land acting as a barrier – thereby virtually ensuring cross-contamination and the demise of a largely GM free Europe. Meanwhile, waiting in the wings, are some 500 patent applications for so called ‘climate ready’ GM seeds and plants. These seeds are designed to operate in conditions of drought and flood and to displace altogether the traditional seeds that are saved and planted by

the great majority of small farmers and gardeners the world over.

On 21 January 2011, 20,000 protesters congregated in Berlin to expose the Angela Merkel government’s continued support for GM crops and corporate control of the food chain. Under the banner ‘We have had enough!’ they demanded a return to small-scale, localised and ecological food and farming practices and genuine food autonomy at the grass roots level. The protest was timed to coincide with a high-level meeting on global agricultural policies attended by Pascal Lamy, the head of the World Trade Organisation.

The International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside demonstrated solidarity with this protest by initiating ‘Support the Traditional Countryside’ actions in 90 venues throughout Poland, attracting much interest and support. The Polish government is trying to play to both corporate and social interests at the same time. It continues to sell off state agricultural land to the highest foreign bidders while claiming to be protecting the interests of its own farming communities. On GM issues, it has failed to take any decisive action for fear of upsetting the EU to whom it is increasingly kowtowing and whose Presidency it takes over in July.

I cannot do justice to the numerous self-autonomous ecological initiatives that have come to our attention over the past year or so. As corporate attempts to take total control of the food chain appear to be tightening their grip, so too does the awareness of this threat appear to be growing. There is no doubt that the battle lines are being drawn. The Codex Alimentarus stick wielded by the World Trade Organisation and seemlessly passed on by the European Commission is attempting to crush the right of family farmers the world over to produce and sell the products of their own farms unless they conform to ever more draconian and increasingly arbitrary sanitary and hygiene measures. Even seed saving and redistribution is now heavily restricted, with large fines threatened for anyone daring to make commercial use of any seeds not on the super hybrid official EU ‘seed list’. Compliance to such demands bankrupts most traditional family farming enterprises and ensures the placement of such farms on the market where hungry corporate predators are ready to swoop in and sweep them up, setting in motion the factory farming regimes that are tied in with the leading supermarket chains of North America and Europe.

On my own farm in the UK (Hardwick) I have set in motion a scheme to let local people grow their own food on a 2.5 acre site previously rented out as a horse paddock. We have 25 families already well-installed on subdivisions of the field and another 6 acres is being allocated to 2 small holding initiatives. I believe that this marks a turning point and possible watershed for a radically new direction for the procurement of high quality, fresh, seasonal and local food. It marks the start of ‘Farming for the People with the People’ (see ‘Manifesto for 21^st Century Food and Farming’, ICPPC Anniversary, November 2010, http://icppc.pl/eng/index.php?id=498) as the only way forward for all those determined not to become slaves to a systematically robotic, coldly inhuman and exploitative global cartel that will stop at nothing to achieve its ambitions of exerting total control of the food chain, thereby imposing a form of dietary genocide on the population of this planet.

If you want to ensure you are not a victim of this Orwellian nightmare – now is the time to make the change.

Julian Rose

Julian Rose is author of ‘Changing Course for Life – local Solutions to Global Problems’ New European publications www.changingcourseforlife.info

Location: Sheepdrove Organic Farm Eco-conference Centre, Lambourne, Berkshire – near Junction 14 of the M4 motorway, transport provided from Didcot Parkway train station.

Sir Julian Rose was invited to speak as a pioneering organic farmer, raw milk and GMO activist and author of Changing Course for Life

An early satellite image, when scrutinized carefully, revealed a shark. Partially curled in on itself, as if suddenly caught in a diving turn, emergent in a vast plume of oil gushing up from the murky depths of the Gulf of Mexico.

Ah, I thought, prowler, predator, hunter and always with a glint in the eye – for gain.

The dark oil, depicted as a shark, relentlessly devouring the ocean’s wealth of a million sparkling, twisting, gliding sea-born forms. Some even not yet named, like plants in still unchartered jungles,

expunged by dark oil that feeds the crushing boot of “progress”. A polished boot, that clomps its brainless path through once enchanted lands and leaves behind a wasteland of broken dreams.

Deep Horizon is the name they gave this fated rig. One of thousands, no doubt, drilling away at the ocean floor, puncturing her mantle and peppering her brittle skull with corkscrew holes. The Deep Horizon had a dubious destiny; to unleash upon the world images that just could break a spell. A spell that has for so long held man in a chloroform thrall to the oil fuelled march of our upwardly mobile consumer driven ‘civilisation’.

Suddenly, there it was on the computer screen, twenty four hours a day, for instant consumption. Not even any advert interruptions to lessen the brutal truth. There it was, a broken seabed pipe relentlessly spewing out its toxic brew, a black funnel of virgin oil rising to the once limpid surface , spreading its tentacles, smoothing the flecked advance of crested waves. Could this be the earth’s dark blood we were witnessing? The punctured artery of a living being? Could there be some subterranean heart beat pushing up through this open seabed wound?

Poor old Gulf, a sea already partially suffocated by thousands of tons of pig shit and cow slurry dumped every day from the vast animal concentration camps of middle America. Oh dear God, the multiplicated horror of these death camps that fuel every obese American’s lust for more … always more, more. The stunned carcasses of once sentient animals rolling off the conveyor belts of criminal corporations ever hungry for more, more, always more. The detritus of The American Dream, trucked, dumped and dispersed in these warm salty and fecund waters; birth place of the mighty Gulf Stream, warmer of our western European shores and mediator of extremes.

Are we not complicit in this foul act? Even as the vomiting broken well is capped and another disaster has sprung-up to take its place, we will not be able to completely expunge these dark images. We will not be able to turn away from a sense of lost innocence. The oil is still flowing, isn’t it? Trashing some other shore in some other land; blackening the wings of other gulls. But the cameras are not focussed there. Its easier ‘not to know’ about the arrogant disdain of corporate competitors each outdoing the other in the race for greater profits, greater power, greater control.

Its easier not to know, but we have seen – and we can’t now ‘not know’ that we are complicit.

We are all the unconscious sponsors of an oil well somewhere on this planet. The horror and sadness experienced through witnessing the day-in day-out destruction of a beautiful sea is not without cathartic response , but ours .. is mostly pasteurised. We are still on an umbilical chord to the filling station, the cling film rapped cucumbers, nitrate enriched foods, lap top computers, mobile phones, cheap children’s toys, TV sets … oil, oil, everywhere oil.

So when we witness the naked raw materials that fuel our plastic dependent worlds gushing from the bowels of the earth, we are witnessing a largish fragment of our own complicity in this disaster and, indeed, many other disasters that continue to overtake our planet Earth.

We are seeing into our own souls and finding, to our horror, that there’s a shark swimming around in there, covertly lusting after the ‘special bargain’ of the age of consumerism, a gleam in its slanting eye and a dead spot in its heart.

As the clouded Gulf Stream waters snake their way towards the British Isles and continent of Europe, they carry back to us the shattered legacy of our very own industrial revolution. It is, is it not, an inescapeable karmik retribution. Through the warm waters of the Gulf we are now taking delivery of past deeds and mighty misdemeanours. Our gang-rape of nature and the spoils of wealth are returning to haunt us and to leave their shadow on our shores.

We know we were there – as we know we are here. It was us all along who plundered the waving fields of corn to build the factories and the shopping malls of our bloated civilisation. It was we who hacked the coal face and perfected the tools of mass production and mass destruction.

And it is we who now look-on, aghast, at the results of our great work. Yes, even our climate has now succumbed. But let us not try to step aside from such truths. Let us turn full- around and confront this shark – within and without. Once we truly recognise that it is the shadow of our own hands that fall upon the face of this Earth, the shark will start to loose his power. The menace in his eye will start to dim. The flashing of his tail will cease to incite our fear.

Once upon a time, you see, it was out of these same deep waters that we were slowly taking form. Do you remember? We too were creatures of the sea and our ancient memories are still coated with a thin layer of salty water, you can smell it in our sweat. Water and memory became melded by time. So we, who are mostly water, cannot forget. We cannot forget! Are we now awakening to the recognition that our destinies are deeply entwined with the veins of this, our wounded planet? Do we not share each others pains and pleasures? Is it not right to now make a gesture of love to help heal this wounded being whom we have tortured long enough? Can we continue to avert our eyes and close our minds from our common fate?

This world is still our garden however sullied are its beds. Will you not apprehend the thief who would steal your roses? So how to turn away when the greater gardens’ fruits are pillaged?

It is time to admit to consciousness. To free the shark that binds our spirit to the old road of ‘progress’. The hypermarket highway to desolation row. Let him swim free. He cannot tear our limbs or crush our dreams once we know his game. Now that we see the face of our disease, we can act to throw off the mantle of attachment that renders us complicit to its spread.

No longer victims of this cruel pandemic, we can turn once more – this time more boldly – to heal those wounds so callously wrought on nature’s generous breast. To fiercely defend that which still offers up fresh nourishing fruits for body and soul. And yes, at the same time, to build anew ‘the arks.’ Arks which will, one day, carry us through the vortex of fire and into the Universe to Come.

Julian Rose, July 21^st 2010

Many of us have had our suspicions concerning the advent of unusual cloud formations and abnormal jet trails forming in the upper atmosphere over the past decade. I have personally witnessed hundreds of days of ‘engineered’ jet trails and clouds, both in the UK and in Poland. However, it has proved extremely difficult to obtain any information about this phenomena from official sources. When challenged, the normal answer is “nothing unusual is happening.”

This however, turns out to be very far from the truth, as we shall see from the evidence revealed in this paper. While I concentrate the majority of the article on just one recent example of professional research on this topic, there have, in practice, been hundreds of both official and unofficial documents exploring and exposing the military and civil aviation antics that are responsible for laying layer upon layer of toxic aerosol “chemtrails” in the sky above our heads on an almost daily basis for the last ten years.

These ‘events’ go unreported by mainstream media and governments remain silent. This collusion, prevents us, the general public, ever finding out that we are being subjected to a grand geoengineering experiment which has the effect of hobbling our health and severely disrupting the natural environment. Only by extensive use of the internet is it possible to unearth the facts and gain reasonable access to information about this vast and largely covert quasi-military operation in our sky’s.

We have the Belgium based Belfort Group to thank for bringing together more than seven years of research and fact finding on the activities that have become largely known as “Chemtrails.”

At an international symposium at Delft University of Technology in Ghent, 29 May 2010, the Belfort Group enlisted Dr Coen Vermeeren, a senior aeronautics engineer, to address this issue.

Dr Vermeeren took as the basis of his presentation, a 300 page scientific report entitled “Case Orange: Contrail Science, Its Impact on Climate and Weather Manipulation Programs Conducted by the United States and Its Allies.” (1)

In his talk Dr Vemeeren frankly admits to the existence of ‘persistent contrails’:

“We also know that chemtrails do exist because we do the spraying; for crops, for example, and we know that they have been spraying for military purposes. So ‘chemtrails’ is not new. We know about it.”

The Case Orange report reveals the existence of publicly available material that shows that various forms of geoengineering have been going on for “at least 60 years.” Early examples include ‘cloud seeding’ UK war operations in Germany in World War Two and in Vietnam during US attempts to dislodge the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam war. However, these pale into insignificance by comparison with the extensive nature of current activities.

Controversy over the detrimental effects of such activities on both the environment and man, led to ‘Environmental Modification’ (En Mod) weaponry being banned under the auspices of “The UN Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques” in 1987. It is not clear whether this ban was ever fully enforced. However, interest in En Mod soon gained prominence when ‘global warming’ warnings and accompanying environmental stress issues attracted global scientific interest.(2)

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The Case Orange report cites a number of US patents for the invention of a “Specific contrail generation apparatus for producing a powder contrail having maximum radiation scattering ability for a given weight of material. The seeding material consists of 85% metallic particles and 15% Colloidial Silica and Silica gel in order to produce a stable contrail that has a residence period of 1 up to 2 weeks.”

Then, in 2009, the publication of a report entitled “Modification of Cirrus Clouds to Reduce Global Warming” put the case for further geoengineering strategies (3). These all had the stated intent of

creating a layer of reflective cloud capable of bouncing back the sun’s rays to prevent unwanted terrestrial climate heating.

The report finds that The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change findings to be exactly the same as the Hughes Aircraft Patent 1991. Hughes was later bought by Raytheon, The US government’s private defence contractor. This is the same company that aquired the contract to build HAARP ‘The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program” in Gakona, Alaska.

HAARP is a large 180 antennae grid that projects powerful electro magnetic pulses to heat a specific point in the earth’s ionosphere. This has the effect of creating electromagnetic frequencies that can be bounced back to earth at desired locations, causing major disruption to weather and geophysical elements, even deep underground. Up to 3.6 billion watts can be generated by HAARP, heating the ionosphere to over 50,000 degrees and “lifting a 30 square kilometre area of the ionosphere, thereby changing localised pressure systems or even altering the route of jet streams.” (4)(5)

The Case Orange report cites evidence that Raytheon could develop the capacity to “Exercise a form of complete ‘weather control.’” A situation bearing a marked similarity to the Monsanto corporation’s stated ambition “to control the food chain.” It is noteworthy that there are currently more than 500 ‘climate ready’ genetically modified plant gene patents awaiting licensing approvals in Washington and Brussels. ‘Climate Ready’ GM seeds and plants are promised by their creators to be capable of producing a crop under both flood and drought conditions.

The human rights and environmental watchdog ‘ETC Group’ gives the following prognosis on atmospheric geoengineering developments: “The roll-out of ‘Plan B’( a reference to the use of geoengineering if other efforts to curtail emissions should be deemed ineffective) is being skilfully executed:

prominent high level panels sponsored by prestige groups, a spate of peer-reviewed articles in science journals and a line up of panicked politicians in northern countries, nodding nervously in agreement as scientists testify about the “need to research Plan B.”

Rady Ananda states (in the Global Research article cited at the end of this paper (6):

“Case Orange ties-in a 1996 report by top military personnel in the US entitled “Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025” (7) with details such as – government spraying schedules, chemical orders, correct nomenclature used in airline operation manuals and calls for goeengineering by economists – to support its notion of “heavy involvement of governments at top level in climate control projects.” Ananda continues: “Owning the Weather in 2025 provides a specific time line for the use of En Mod technologies in cooperation with the Weather Modification Association, a business-government group promoting the ‘beneficial’ (my italics) uses of environmental modification (8):

3/.

2000-2025 Use chemicals for atmospheric seeding by civilian (as well as military) aviation

2004 Create smart clouds through nanotechnology, with exponential increase from 2010

2005 Introduce carbon black dust

In 2007, The World Meteorological Organisation (of the United Nations) published a statement that included “Guidelines for Planning of Weather Modification Activities.” This document clearly

implicates the UN in plans to conduct aerosol spraying activities on a wide scale.

In a section of the Case Orange report dealing with ‘the bare necessities of geoengineering through cloud generation for the survival of the planet’ the authors state:

“Our investigation team comes to the conclusion that climate control programs, controlled by the military but approved by governments, are silently implemented in order to avoid the worst case scenario they obviously do not want. The two basic instruments are temperature control through the generation of artificial clouds and manipulation of the ionosphere through ionosphere heaters.

Both remain basically military combat systems with the option to go into the offensive if deemed necessary. However, since several ionospheric heaters are installed at various places around the globe, one can assume that there is wide cooperation between governments in order to reach climate targets by 2025: controlling the weather and the planet.” (my emphasis).

The spraying schemes seem to be organised in a logical pattern so that the whole of Europe is covered in a 3 day period. Coloured maps of Europe indicate when each regime is to take place.

In the report’s section entitled ‘Recommendations’ the authors state:

“Persistent chemtrails have a devastating impact on eco-systems on this planet and to quality of life in general.” The authors call for the full disclosure of the current En Mod activities to the public, as well as for all civil aviation laws to be abided by.

One encouraging piece of information is that, in response to policy interest in geoengineering as a means to climate control, the sub committee of the United Nations Convention of Biodiversity, proposed, in May 2010, a moratorium of geoengineering activities (9). This proposal will be heard at the Tenth Conference of Parties to the UN Convention of Biodiversity in Nagoya, Japan in October this year (2010).

The Case Orange report further states that the US permits open air testing of chemical and biological weapons – but not under the civil law mentioned earlier in this article. The authors paraphrase the permissive law thus: “The Secretary of Defense may conduct tests and experiments involving the use of chemical and biological agents on civilian populations.” It seems that ‘national security’ concerns can be used by the President to overrule environmental and public health considerations. Is the same true of Europe?

I have tried to provide a basic outline of the main evidence arising from the Case Orange report. It makes an important contribution to opening up otherwise secretive agendas that have no place in any self declared democracy. Other significant reports that can be found via a web search, include an important paper by Dr Ilya Perlingieri, entitled “The Consequences of Toxic Metals and Chemical Aerosols on Human health” (Global Research). Dr Perlingieri states:

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“Over the past decade, independent testing of Chemtrails around the county have shown a dangerous, extremely poisonous brew that includes: barium, nano-aluminium coated fibreglass (known as CHAFF), radioactive thorium, cadmium, chromium, nickel, dessicated blood, mold spores, yellow fungal mycotoxins, ethylene dibromide and polymer fibres. Barium can be compared

to the toxicity of arsenic (10) and is known to adversely effect the heart. Aluminium has a history

of damaging brain function.” I need hardly add that ethylene dibromide is a highly toxic agricultural pesticide.

In another report, Dr Hildegarde Staninger reports that “Exposure to aerial emissions of nano composite materials resulted in cholinesterase inhibition. (11). The chronic inhibition of this enzyme (that normally circulates in red blood corpuscles) caused by the spraying of these Chemtrail aerosols (for weather modification, but also for mosquito and other insect eradication) causes chronic poisoning. This exposure causes severe neurological disorders, including paralysis in humans.”

Now that we are party to this information we must to act on it. It is vital that we support the moratorium taking place in Japan this October. We must join together in calling for an immediate halt to this unprecedented form of covert genocide. Also, do write to your MP’s and tell them that these global activities are not ‘conspiracy theories’; and that they are taking place without consultation and without any attempt to warn of their likely repercussions.

JR, August 2010

Footnote:

I have drawn extensively upon a Global Research article by Rady Ananda of July 30^th 2010 entitled “Atmospheric Geoengineering: Weather Manipulation, Contrails and Chemtrails” in putting together this article.

References:

1. Dr Coen Vermeeren symposium speech, Delft University of Technology, 29 May 2010, http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/7299427 go 35 minutes in.

1. Catherine Brahic: “Top science body calls for geoengineering ‘plan B’, New Scientist, 1/9/2009
2. David L Mitchell and William Finnegan, “Modification of Cirrus Clouds to reduce global warming” Environmental Research Letters Vol 4. No 4, 30/10/2009. Subscription only: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/4/4/045102
3. ‘About HAARP’ from a paper by Belitsos, Radical Wisdom, 14/7/2010. http://radwisdom.com/2010/07/14/chemtrails-aerosols-madness-above-the-earth/
4. For further reading on HAARP see Prof. Michel Chossudovsky: “Owning The Weather” Global Research website.
5. Rady Ananda, “Atmospheric Geoengineering: Weather manipulation, Contrails and Chemtrails” 30/07/2010. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20369
6. Col Tamzy J.House, et al. “Weather as a Force Multiplier: “Owning the Weather in 2025”, Department of Defense U.S. Air Force, 17/06/1996. Publicly released August 1996. Reproduced at Federation of American Scientists: http://www.fas.org/spp/military/docops/usaf/2025/v3c15/v3c15-1.htm
7. Weather Modification Website: http://www.weathermodification.org/
8. Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice, “In-Depth Review of the Work on Biodiversity and Climate Change, Draft Recommendations, Convention on Biological Diversity, United Nationa Environmental Programme, UNEP/CBD/SBTTA/l.9, 15/05/2010. http://www.cbd.int/doc/meetings/sbstta/sbstta-14/in-session/sbstta-14-L-09-en.pdf
9. See Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA) http://www.pesticideinfo.org/Detail_Chemical.jsp?Rec_Id=PC41174
10. Sept. 7, 2009: www.hildegarde-staninger.com/exposureto-aerial-emissions-html (no longer available: see papers on Hildegarde Stanninger’s web site)

Research carried out in the UK some 15 years ago revealed that the average distance travelled by the food in a typical supermarket trolley is more than 3,000 kilometers. Most”fresh” produce is at least 4 days old and has passed through a number of processing and storage plants, involving subjection to very different temperature fluctuations, before getting onto the shelves. In the process, there is a loss of between 40 and 50% of the nutritional value of these foods.

„Sell by dates” are routinely altered in many chains, to keep fresh looking produce longer. Staff are paid very low rates and, in more than one known chain, have to wear nappies, as they are not given sufficient breaks to go to the toilet.

Huge power requirements are needed to maintain freezer and cold storage facilities, drawing heavilly on the national grid and thereby encouraging wasteful practices that increase already critical global warming patterns. They use excessive, non biodegradeable packaging and contribute significantly to Britain’s vast saturated rubbish tips.

Being able to buy “anything at any time” comes at a high price to our environment and farmers. The large supermarket chains buy their supplies from wherever it is produced at the lowest cost on the world market. Organic and conventional. This involves contracting large agrichemical oriented farms to mass produce “cheap” food. Because the price paid is very low, the farmer has to compensate by maximising production and minimising employment.

The result is the huge monocultural prairies that dominate US agriculture and have now established a significant foothold in Europe. These ‘food factories’ are entirely dependent upon chemical inputs: herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, nitrate fertilizers and increasingly, genetically modified seeds/plants. Their soils are so barren that they care incapable of producing any crops at all without heavy doses of agrichemicals.

The same applies to meat production. The great majority of farm animals, in order to be raised to strict supermarket specifications and time lines, are housed is vast sheds with very little room to move freely or express their natural physiological needs. Electric lighting is kept on night and day and most animals never see real daylight or indeed, the outside world. Pigs and chickens are routinely fed antibiotics in their heavilly processed and genetically modified feed, in order to speed up their rate of growth and prevent them from becoming sick. Inspite of this, mortality rates are high.

All chickens routinely have their beaks clipped in order to stop them pecking each other in the overcrowded cages in which they are raised. The feed of egg laying hens contains chemical colours to make the yolks look red. The farmer can choose from a wide variety of orange colourings.

When I kept hens (free range) I was sent a yolk „colour chart” by the manufacturers hoping I would buy their products!

Without these colours the yolks of hens kept in these conditions would be grey and conequently completely unacceptable. Hens require access to green foods (ie grass) to have naturally orange yolks. The hens that supply the supermarket chains never get outside. They live for an average of just 3 months before being culled and put on display on polystyrene dishes in supermarket chillers, as quick chill chicken dishes and dog/cat food. The same goes for birds specifically grown for meat: they are fed 24 hours a day on genetically modified maize and soya plus antibiotic growth promotors in vast indoor air controlled (no windows) sheds often containing upwards of 30,000 hens. They are slaughtered at an average age of 2.5 months, their under – formed leggs barely able to hold their exaggerated weight.

Pigs suffer in similar conditions as chickens. They are housed on concrete and metal slatted floors and in large artificially heated and lit sheds. They are fed on mostly antibiotic laced GM soya and the piglets are fattened and slaughtered in less than half the time of piglets raised on free range outdoor systems.

On average, dairy cattle are culled (slaughtered) after just 3 lactation cycles, because they cannot maintain the peak volumes of milk demanded by the supermarkets in their thirst for profit, beyond the age of 4/5 years. Many suffer severe mastitis inflamations of the udder and hoof rotting due to the unnatural conditions in which they are kept.

On my organic farm in the UK, my diary cattle averaged 14 years before they ceased commercial milk production. I then kept them on as nurse cows for raising calves.

Each large supermarket that gains planning permission acceptance leads to the subsequent loss of an average of 250 local jobs through the closure of local businesses (Rural Development Commission, 1992). Money which used to circulate in the local economy is lost to the global economy, thereby draining the community of its life blood.

Supermarkets and hypermarkets require special road structures to cater for their large transportation vehicles and equally large concreted delivery areas. They are major contributors to CO2 emmissions, largely because of their vast and power hungry refrigeration units, but also because they encourage families to use cars to get to them – instead of shopping locally.

Tesco’s profit margins increase every year – and are now regularly in the 3.5 billion pound area. The other large competing chains are not far behind. They are all leading exponents of a cetralised market economy and have no interest in supporting local communities or stocking local food, inspite of requests to do so from their customers. Their representatives often claim that they will take an interest in purchasing locally – to placate any critics – but in reality they source 98 percent of their produce wherever it can be purchased most cheaply and most easily on the national and world market: via farming ‘sweat shops’.

All in all supermarkets and hypermarkets are at the front line of contributors to a degraded food growing environment on a global scale; inhumane animal welfare practices and the undermining of the integrity of local communities.

Any community that wishes to encourage a robust local economy would be well advised to steer well clear of such marketing practices. Individuals should think three times before spending their money in support of such irresponsible and market dominating monoliths.

Julian Rose

2010