Elliott –

I “heard” over on a thread at Democratic Underground that the brands of frozen vegetables touted as “organic” are, more often than not, labeled “Product of China.”

Gives ya a warm fuzzy, don’t it?

[They mentioned two chains of “whole foods”-type stores which carry these products — the names of the chains escape me because we don’t have those stores where we live, but if you or anyone else here names a “health-food”-type grocery store chain, I’ll probably recognize it…]

Loo Hoo @ 125

Mrs. K8 @ 93

Elliott –

The “consumer” has no rights. None. Zero.

Nor do the cattle farmers who WANT to sell meat (for instance, beef) with a label showing how their animals have been tested (for instance, for mad cow disease).

This is supposed to be “free enterprise.”

The people pushing this kind of stark raving lunacy are, in essence, daring the public to storm the Bastille.

They can’t sell any food that people won’t buy.

You’re right!

In the EU, GMO labelling is compulsory.

EU consumers hate the shit, and won’t buy it.

In the US, consumers hate the shit – and have to pay extra just to avoid it.

Monsanto officials on a revolving door FDA assignment – under Clinton – decreed that GMO food is functionally equivalent to normal food, so no labelling required.

Hi Mrs K8!

I hope the tendons soothe and all the other burdens ease and leave you.

And I hope we both can stop paying extra just to know where the hell breakfast came from.

You want to know where you food comes from? So do I.

So do 80 percent of Americans….which is just about every funtionally literate person in the nation.

In 2002, the Farm Bill said we all had the right to know whee our food came from.

Woo-hoo!

Hey – we care about what we eat – and Congress and Big Ag care about us. Riiight?

Then Big Ag paid Congress so they could keep playing shell games with food origin.

Europe and most other industrialized nations require mandatory country of origin labels on food. Reacting to the long-standing concerns of their constituents, reflected in polls indicating that 80 percent of Americans want country of origin food labels, Congress finally incorporated such labels into the 2002 Farm Bill, supposedly to go into effect in September 2004.

Unfortunately, corporate agribusiness and supermarket chains bribed an ethically impaired Congress with millions of dollars in campaign contributions to block implementation of the labels.

As a result, Americans continue to buy billions of dollars of imported foods every year – in most cases without even knowing it.

[oca]

Bon appetit!

hehe … well Suzanne — he’s not someone you’ve seen here before but … he’s been around as they say

Big Dog?

(ducks)

btw folks, tomorrow we’ll be introducing a new poster here … and he’s already in FL getting ready to cover the Padilla trial …

we’ll do an intro mid day and his posts will start on Wednesday

Good! I’m looking forward to that coverage!
Thanks,
Bob in HI

The thinking parts of the brain just walked through the door of our evolutionary party.

The emotional parts brought the kegs – and stayed.

Our lizard brains are far closer to our “operating sytems” than are our thinking brains (like frontal and pre-fraontal cortex).

Thus, we are biologically primed to respond to an emotional message far more strongly than we would to a cognitive message.

I don’t justify the assholes – they are child abusers – but they acted in a matrix of fearfull messages.

Culture can (and in almost all of our lifetimes, has) put a check on biology.

Even now, it is not natural for humans to fear and hate each other – that takes lots of teaching.

Doing anything that doesn’t feel comfortable isn’t natural for us.

Without a steady diet of official and cultural messages telling us to fear (violence; economic decline; social inadequacy; all of the above) we forget fairly quickly.

[And we’re easily bored - so we require novel threats to keep us anxious.]

Americans who watch local/national TV news inaccurately perceive far higher crime rates than do non-viewers.

For the same reason, they are far more likely to perceive WMD’s.

The crazy frightened teachers were “planning” their respose to armed intruders.

Rare compared to school bus crashes; infinitesimal risk compared to that of domestic sexual/physical abuse.

But very much in the news.

I can support (ish) the above biology.

The following is speculation.

In the anxiety disorder OCD, patients experience “relief” of chronic anxiety by conducting sterotyped activities.

OK – I can support that, too.

As I think about the fearful teachers alone in the fearful night – possibly deprived of their fearful “news” program..

I can’t help wonder if their insane “drill” was an unconscious anxiety relief.

When you’re keyed up, doing something feels better than doing nothing (cit: surgeons in training and the LAPD’s recent picnic shoot.)

So taking action (even stupid action) felt better.

And on a very lamentable level…

the teachers’ siege allowed the students to feel the same fear the teachers felt.

This mechanism is commonly called projective identification. Normal in developing humans, projective identification is maladaptive in adults.

And really dangerous in anyone with authority.

None of this, of course, excuses the teachers’ actions.

Such a wealthy, safe nation.

So much fear.

I can’t help wondering if the shadow of America’s genocide walks among us today as our fear of attack from “outside”.

As the cruel Europeans from outside attacked Turtle Island….

We attack the dangerous lands “outside”

And fear their smallpox.

__________________________
__________________________

ccmask – appalling.

( but loved the link’s name. memories of crunchy frogs…)

Live in concert, Janis Joplin said “I don’t know why half the people are crying over here and the other half are crying over there. We need to get it together, man. If you have it today you’ve got to wear it today because tomorrow never comes.”

Wow. What a pure expression of “Joplinism” –living totally in the present. No one personified that as much as she did.

And that is so 1960s– the generation that lived under the mushroom cloud, fearing that tomorrow would never come. The Woodstock generation. I had almost forgotten about what it was like to live at that time.

Bob in HI

Elliott –

The “consumer” has no rights. None. Zero.

Nor do the cattle farmers who WANT to sell meat (for instance, beef) with a label showing how their animals have been tested (for instance, for mad cow disease).

This is supposed to be “free enterprise.”

The people pushing this kind of stark raving lunacy are, in essence, daring the public to storm the Bastille.

They can’t sell any food that people won’t buy.

Fern @ 106

It is live birds that spread the disease. The meat should be safe – at least as far as bird flu is concerned.

You’re right, I forgot about that.

How about the stuffing??