FOR SALE: DDT

The last post on this site mentioned New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser's pitch to sell DDT to America; it got taken off the market because it was dangerous, and was killing the Bald Eagle.

So no surprise that a guest columnist in the same paper is pitching the same product.

He too does it on the back of bedbugs - saying that yes bedbugs are a problem, and the city may not be doing enough about it, but there are many more people suffering from malaria.

Oh how philanthropic it all seems! How the devil appears as an angel of light.

Years ago, when I lived in London, I was a member of ALMA - the Angola-London-Mozambique-Association. We would hear the likes of WHO worker Louis da Gama who spent lots of time in these countries, and unlike Paul Driessen, who writes of bedbugs and malaria today, da Gama did not want to sell billions of people tons of DDT.

If the pesticide companies were so in earnest to treat malaria, they would put money into production of other products. Selling DDT to people sucks. But there are people who well nukes, explosives, child pornography, and, yes, DDT.

The US has a law against it for good reasons. As it has laws against selling nukes, explosives and child pornography.

But getting back to bedbugs. Driessen asserts that they do not kill. Maybe not. After all, they travel from person to person sucking blood. And they are prone to mutate, mainly against pesticides. DDT might only make them stronger.

On bugoutter.com there has been complaint that the Post does not take note of people calling and emailing about a problem building in New York that has up to 2 million bedbugs - with one person collecting 3600 in three months. So let's not think the Post gives a damn about New Yorkers - it is now basically telling them to stop complaining there are worse things.

But what about the livelihood of millions of New Yorkers? If bedbugs don't kill, having no income does. Bedbugs kill the tourism industry, but Driessen does not seem intelligent enough to mention that. He does not have bedbugs, and I bet he does not use DDT either.

I invite him and the Post to look at the problem realistically, and go to the buildings New Yorkers are now calling the Ground Zero of bedbugs.

And of course, I invite them to do an article on hemp too, but that would take a miracle. The paper likes to sell other things that are harmful.

By the way, no surprise that the article under Driessen's was titled "The Building Case for Bombing Iran."

Someone's got to sell those nukes, explosives and child pornography, even if they are illegal many places....

And of course, a few tons of DDT.

HEMP FOR THE BIRDS

Today I take a break from the controversy brewing here in London and turn my attention to a very pleasant subject indeed, falconry. This is the sport, or some might say the art, of keeping a bird of prey and hunting with it. Part of this art is maintaining the environment - most falconers are also environmentalists, such as the ones who researched DDT in the '60s and made it illegal to use in many countries. Were it not for them, we might not have the Peregrine Falcon or the Bald Eagle in the US.

Birds of prey are of course carnivores, their niche in the system is keeping down rodents and avian pests, but hemp ties in to all this as well. Specifically, hemp has been used in raptor medicine for centuries, by both Mughal and Anglo-Indian practicioners - the former being Raja Rudradeva, of the latter, Col Phillott and Maj Ewing. A book published by the Eryr Press, which uses hemp paper in its titles, mentions all of these (pp. 44,121,128,130 of One Thousand Years of Falconry). Another book by the same press, Musings of an Afghan Falconer, makes further note on p. 210.

Perhaps more indirectly, hemp figures into their diet in that hemp is a favourite food of many prey species, such as pigeons, quail, partridge, finches, crows, etc. One finch is named after hemp - the Linnet, whose Latin name is Carduelis cannabinis. Hemp is rich in protein and GLAs, so not surprising that birds love it. In 1970, James Vance lameted the depletion of feral hemp from the landscape in North America because it was a loss to the hunting community. His article was titled "Marijuana is for the Birds" - but that may be misleading, as hemp is not marjuana; both are Cannabis sativa, but marijuana is only C. sativa whose leaves and buds contain a high percentage of THC. Most hemp does not, and it grows tall and thin rather than short and bushy. Any variety however is good for birds, it is not thought that they have cannabireceptors in their brains as do humans.

Another aspect of falconry into which hemp may figure is the ubiquitous hawking bag, most of which are made of cotton. For those browsing this site, they will see that I object to cotton as it is a monocrop which uses lots of pesticides and depletes the water supply. Hemp is a tough fibre and can easily replace cotton for our field gear. One also might mention that falconry can be used for avian pest control, US government literature on the subject estimates that one hawk can patrol 200 acres. For areas where birds pests such as Quelea quelea devestate fields and occasion the use of harmful chemical avicides, this is good news.

MONSANTO GETS A LITTLE HELP FROM THEIR FRIENDS IN THE EA

Readers of this site have at times been offended by my statement that watching David Miliband run DEFRA is like wathcing a paedophile run a kindergarden. Other readers have just been offended at the fact that DEFRA is such a failure. The July 2007 issue of The Ecologist reveals some facts about the related EA (Environment Agency) which back up my not so pleasant assertions.

Jon Huges and Pat Thomas write:

"The EA is within weeks of letting Monsanto escape its liability for knowingly dumping thousands of tonnes of cancer-causing chemicals - including all the ingredients of the DDT defoliant Agent Orange - in two quarries in Wales. Unless a claim and 'adversary action' is lodged with the US bankruptcy courts within around four weeks, the UK taxpayer faces picking up a bill for hundreds of millions of pounds to safeguard teh environment and public health. Yet for the past few months the Agency has stonewalled teh one remaining eyewitness to events as they unfolded in 1967 onwards, and who is prepared to speak out. This man, who now carries a panic button at all times, also has a dedicated police protection officer supervising protective devices installed at his house because of the threats he has received".

A comment I posted on their site listed the Parliament number of David Miliband, which is: 020 7219 3000. The more you complaing, the better service you get. If you let them do what they want, you are going to lose.

BIRDS, BEES, GM CROPS AND

COTTON PICKING FACTS

Two issues commonly discussed on this site are GM crops and bees, even if they are a bit peripheral to hemp. Both issues are also discussed in the Summer 2007 issue of Science in Society. Dr Mae Wan-Ho weighs in on both, along with notes on the birds, including the hempophilic sparrows. Katherine Hamnett talks about cotton pesticides.

Dr Ho, a physicist, discusses the universal harmony that molecules have with each other, and in turn, the harmony that organs in the same body will therefore also have. In an article titled "Quantum Jazz, the Tao of Biology", she talks about this phenomenon in the terms of the 'liquid crystalline continuum.'

Poetically she notes: "Quantum jazz is the music of the organism dancing life into being, with every single cell, every molecule and atom taking part, emitting light and sound with wavelengths of nanometres to metres in kilometres; spanning a musical range of 70 octaves, each improvising spontaneously and freely, yet keeping in tune and in step with the whole."

Wow! I wish my high school science courses were that inspiring. Maybe they make these classes boring so people do not later in life grasp the necessary science to challenge the large companies that are trying to run our lives. Dr Ho, along with Prof Joe Cummins, goes on to speak of GM crops, with a note on GM maize 59122 being found not safe. Opposite that in the magazine is another note on GM maize, this one about MON 863, which French scientists have found to be toxic...Zut alors, quel surpris.

As to bees, this is the issue in which the report about the mobile phones placed in hives in Landau proved that they cause bees to vacate the hives. Along with bees, she speaks of birds, two subjects to which I did pay attention to in my boring 8th grade science class. Of the aves she notes that mobile phones are causing breeding and reproduction failures, specifically in House Sparrows (Passer domesticus) and, somewhat appropriately, White Storks (Ciconia ciconia).

Hamnett picks on cotton, telling us that 3 million cases of pesticide poisoning are reported each year by WHO. I bet they forgot to mention that in the Dow Chemical and Monsanto shareholder reports. They might also have forgotten to mention the facts that 20-90 kg of pesticdes are used per hectare on cotton plantations in Uzbekistan, which has caused 90% of the land to be contaminated. DDT and lindane blow around the region, causing cancer to the inhabitants. 43 million tonnes of pesticide-laden dust. Central Asians have the highest incidence of throat cancer in the world.

Hamnett only briefly touches, however, on the fact that cotton depletes the water, and that the Aral Sea has lost most of its volume, which means that agriculture in the region is a mess, and that migrating birds do not show up. Hamnett then promotes her own brand of 'organic cotton' as if this were some kind of answer. "It's not about choosing something else, it's about choosing the right cotton." So it's OK to destroy other people's water if you are a fashion guru sticking an organic label on the stuff. What about hemp? Oh, that's hard work for people like her, she once wore a hemp outfit from hemp made in the UK, but decided it was easier to perpetrate the cotton industry and make lots of money. However, the article was illuminating from the point of view of all the pesticide problems that cotton occasions. Too bad, though, that she and so many other gurus do not care to point to the long run solution of hemp cultivation.