(CARBON) FOOTPRINTS

Last night I dreamed a dream.

I was walking along the beach with My Lord. Across the dark sky flashed all the scenes from my life, for each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand; I asked The Lord “Why do I see two sets of footprints?”

The Lord said to me “Those are your very own personal carbon footprints, and despite your efforts they are still over twice the global average

Our journey continued on and when the last scene of my life flashed before me I looked back at the many footprints in the sand, but noticed that at times there were only one set. I realized that this occurred at the very lowest and saddest times of my life. This bothered me greatly and I questioned The Lord about my dilemma.

"Lord” I said, “You told me, when I decided to follow you, that you would be with me and talk with me all the way, but I'm aware that during the most troublesome and problematical times of my life I must surely have been alone. I just don't understand it, why it was that when I needed you most you left me?" But why are there only one set of footprints?

He whispered, "My son, my precious child, I love you and will never leave you, never, ever, during your trials and testing’s. When you saw only one set of footprints, it was then that I arranged for your central heating oil delivery order to be mislaid, your electricity to fail, your car to break down, your flight cancelled or your passport lost."

I was shocked at this and tried to remonstrate with The Lord.

The Lord looked with sadness at the sea gently lapping on the sands and said to me “Well I had to try and do something, this sandy beach was supposed to be a fertile valley”.

Murdoch – News International / News Corporation – World-Wide Lies, Deceit and The Bottom Line.

I have witnessed the Murdoch Media at far to close quarters, the way it expertly wraps lies in half truths and damages lives, so when the facts about the way it works finally emerged I cheered, and when Murdoch said to an MP committee that ‘this is the humblest day of my life’ my heartfelt hope was that it would not be. The video here shows just one aspect of the Murdoch Empire’s influence... but it certainly does not stop there... please, please read on!

Recent revelations have at last uncovered the extent of the Murdoch media's corruption in the UK. His staff hacked the phones of thousands, including grieving widows and murdered schoolgirls. They stole a Prime Minister's bank information, paid huge sums to police officers, and staged a cover up, which included James Murdoch authorizing hush money to victims.

But Murdoch is a global problem, famous for dictating editorial positions to his papers. He has corrupted and controlled democracies by pushing politicians to back his ideas on war, torture and a host of other planetary ills, and destroying careers with smear campaigns unless they do his bidding, or to be more accurate, blackmail.

In the US, he helped elect George W. Bush and now appears to have many Republican presidential candidates on his payroll. His Fox News Network lied to promote the war in Iraq, pushed resentment of Muslims and immigrants and promoted the right-wing tea party. Not only this, he has worked non-stop to block urgent global action on climate change.

Now Murdoch’s political friends, who used to listen avidly and seemingly obey his every word, have dumped him. In the UK his ex CEO Rebekah Brooks faces criminal charges and two of London's most senior police officers, Sir Paul Stephenson and Assistant Commissioner John Yates have resigned and now it is reported that there are US and Australian investigations into the Murdoch News Corp empires.

Since becoming the UK’s Prime Minister sixteen months ago, David Cameron had 26 meetings with Murdoch’s executives. PM Cameron, against the advice of his deputy prime minister, also employed former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as his communications director. Coulson, who has been at the centre of the hacking probe, was arrested on July 8.

Rebekah Brooks, who resigned as CEO over the escalating scandal, is the only person Mr Cameron has invited twice to Chequers, a privilege not extended even to the most senior members of his Cabinet.

Fox News is owned by The Murdoch Empire; see the below and read on!



The Mail on Sunday recently suggested that previous UK PM Tony Blair will face scathing criticism of his role in the launch of the Iraq war when the report of the inquiry under Sir John Chilcot is published in the autumn. The Observer newspaper reported that the terms of an oil deal struck between BP and the Baghdad government would provide the company and its Chinese partner with a 'stranglehold' over the Iraqi economy. Secret documents referred to by the Observer reveal that BP and the Chinese National Petroleum Company have been guaranteed full payment at an agreed price for the oil they extract from Iraq's richest oil field at Rumaila. The oil field - about 20 miles from the Kuwait border - is about half as big as the entire North Sea and accounts for more than 40% of Iraqi oil production. Oil, in turn, provides 95% of the country's export earnings. If extraction from the field is curtailed - because of quotas imposed by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, for example - the Iraqi government will pay the partnership for the 'lost' production. Similarly, if natural disaster, terrorist attack, or any of a series of other possible developments, disrupts production for more than 90 days, the administration will compensate the partnership for the 'loss'.

The Observer speculated that news of the arrangement will likely 'increase the prejudice of those who saw the UK's involvement in toppling Saddam as part of a "war for oil"' - a consideration which Tony Blair has always insisted played no part in his decision to support the drive towards invasion.

This raises the question of what Mr Blair and Mr Murdoch were talking about in the conversations we now know they held in the days leading up to the invasion on March 20, 2003, because Murdoch was, from the outset, blunt about his reasons for supporting the war. The reason was not to find weapons of mass destruction, or to overthrow a tyrant, but to secure economic interests through control of the flow and price of oil.

Just weeks before the invasion, Murdoch said that "The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax-cut in any country."

Mr Blair and Mr Murdoch had three conversations in the nine days before March 20. They spoke on March 11, immediately after Jacques Chirac had announced that France would veto any second UN resolution sanctioning invasion.

The next day, Murdoch’s Sun Newspaper proclaimed: 'Like a cheap tart who puts price before principle, money before honour, Jacques Chirac struts the streets of shame. The French President's vow to veto the second resolution ... puts him right in the gutter."

On March 13, as conflict over a second resolution intensified, the two men talked again. On March 14, The Sun returned to the theme: 'Charlatan Jacques Chirac is basking in cheap applause for his "Save Saddam" campaign - but his treachery will cost his people dear ... This grandstanding egomaniac has inflicted irreparable damage."

On the evening of March 19, as tanks prepared to cross the border, PM Blair and Murdoch talked again; as they did every single one of Mr Murdoch's 127 newspapers around the world, with a combined circulation more than 40 million, urged its readers to back the war, a war that has resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands so far and will result in the death of many, many more in the future. This is because more than 1,820 tons of radioactive nuclear waste (i.e. depleted uranium) has exploded in Iraq so far in the form of armour piercing rounds and bunker busters. 64 kg of uranium were used in the Hiroshima bomb so the U.S. Iraq Nuclear Holocaust represents far more than fourteen thousand Hiroshima's.

The nuclear waste the U.S. has exploded in the Middle East will continue killing for hundreds of years because that's how long these particles of radioactive dust will continue to blow around to be lodged in an individual’s lungs or be ingested.

No WMD's (Weapons of Mass Destruction) were found in Iraq, they were however imported to that country. Reported birth defects among Iraqi newborns are up 600% from before the war, the defects are typical of the kind produced by exposure to radioactive poisons.

The civilian population of Iraq were ‘liberated’, liberated for Murdoch’s desire for cheap oil, aided and abetted by the Western World’s addiction to oil, and at last, the truth is about to emerge!

Sources; the newspapers and media quoted and www.abovetopsecret.com

UK Farms In Crisis; Is it the same where you are?

We have been lucky to live in a farming area for some 34 years now; it once was a farming community but then the supermarkets with their values of the bottom line and sourcing from the cheapest producers from any part of the world closed down many local small farmers and growers. Growers’ in the UK could not compete with, for example tomatoes grown in Africa where the cost of labour and production is low even though the cost of shipping, and the carbon footprint, is high. Our two village market gardens closed down as the majority of our counties grocers shops, unable to compete with the supermarkets closed. One of the market garden owners committed suicide.

The same supermarket pressure has been applied over the last few years to our milk producers, and many are going out of business on a weekly basis. When Pam and I were at the recent South of England Show I took this picture of a milk producer's stall. The most important words read;

Supermarket price approx 85p per litre
Cost of production approx 29p per litre
Farmer paid approx 25p per litre
Outcome 3-4p loss on every litre of milk produced. Thousands of British farms going out of business every year.

The supermarkets focus on buying at the cheapest price and then selling at the highest possible margin. Forget their claims of ‘giving you more’ or even ‘every little helps’ just look at their end of financial year profits to see where their focus really is.

What has happened to the UK farming industry is the equivalent of “selling the family silver”, when the time comes, and it will come soon, that we need the UK’s farmers they will no longer be there... then what?

How the European Food Safety Authority got GM 100% wrong!

In 2007 the EFSA said that ““A large number of experimental studies with livestock have shown that recombinant DNA fragments or proteins derived from GM plants have not been detected in tissues, fluids or edible products of farm animals such as broilers, cattle, pigs or quails.” This was subsequently adopted as the official advice of the UK’s Food Standards Agency in “Transfer of GM material from feed”

GUESS WHAT?

New research from Canada has found a Bt toxin produced by GM insect resistant crops in the blood of women and clear evidence that it was passed to foetuses. The new study was carried out by a team at Sherbrooke University Hospital in Quebec and has been accepted for publication in the peer reviewed journal Reproductive Toxicology. The team took blood samples from 30 pregnant women prior to delivery, 30 samples from umbilical cords immediately after birth and samples from 39 non-pregnant women who were undergoing treatment. All the women were of a similar age and body mass index, and none worked with pesticides or lived with anyone who did. Pesticides used on GM herbicide tolerant (HT) crops were also detected.

The same Bt toxin as detected by the researchers is present in Mon810 maize, which has EU cultivation approval but is currently banned in France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Luxemburg and Greece.

The results show that the toxic Bt protein Cry1Ab was present in blood serum from all three sources (93% of pregnant women, 80% in umbilical blood and 67% of non-pregnant women). The researchers suggest that the most probable source of the toxin is GM food consumed as part of a normal diet in Canada, where GM presence in food is unlabelled. The Canadian scientists have not speculated on any health effects from the presence of Cry1Ab protein as this was beyond the scope of their study.

Safety concerns have been growing since the introduction of GM herbicide tolerant crops, including links to Parkinson’s disease and cancer in the case of glyphosate. Residues of these herbicides in food are infrequently monitored, and the maximum permitted residue levels for crops directly sprayed with glyphosate, such as GM HT crops, were raised over 200 times in the 1990s.

One of two GM crops approved for cultivation in the EU is genetically modified to produce the Cry1Ab toxin – the Bt maize Mon810 licensed to Monsanto and mainly grown in Spain. The other GM crop authorised for cultivation in the EU is the GM potato Amflora (grown on a very limited scale, 17 hectares in two countries in 2011), genetically modified to produce a starch used for non-food industries (not Bt toxin production), but the pulp would be fed to livestock in the food chain.

I always remember the tobacco industry’s comments regarding lung cancer that “doubt is our product”, the same applies to the GM industry, just ask yourself the question “why is it that no insurance company will insure GM?”

WATER – THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR IT

The 'River' Charante, France, August 2010.

As I write this I am looking out on our field that has received little rain over the past two months. I am in South east England where in April less than 10% of normal rainfall was recorded; it was the second successive very dry month here. Provisionally, it was the 6th driest April over England in a series from 1910, a sunny month across all of the UK, with amounts generally close to 150% of normal, making it the sunniest April in the series from 1929. Even in normal times, London actually receives less rainfall than Istanbul, but in April even that lower figure was exceeded.

Our field shed has solar panel powered lighting, as there is a substitute for mains electricity. In my garage I am working on a solar electric vehicle, as there is a substitute for oil; but there is no substitute for water...

Agriculture accounts for 70% of global water use, and farmers around the world are the first to suffer from lack of access to a usable long-term reliable supply. The 2010 Russian Drought caused an export ban on Russian wheat, while elsewhere in the world, floods caused crop destruction. China experienced droughts in some areas and floods in others, as did Australia. The May 2010 Tennessee floods were a 1000 year event. There was flooding in Central Europe, Pakistan, France, and Singapore, far too much water in some areas and nowhere near enough in others. Crops were wiped out by drought and crops were wiped out by flooding, and in response 2010/2011food prices rose and the worlds poorest suffered.

This is a problem now and not for the coming years, the world will run out of accessible water for agriculture long before the world will run out of oil. Unilever CEO Paul Polman was reported as saying that his company is concerned that the regions that produce its tomatoes, Greece, Spain and California “will have enough water in the coming decade to guarantee the harvest that will meet our business needs”.

Water is a marginal consideration to many Western governments; but very soon it will be a central issue, without water there is no life.

Jesus mentioned water often, 'living water' is fresh water, and Jesus was never without water. There is a lesson there for as all as we seemingly can only look on as the drought effected areas of the world get ever bigger, more and more are forced to leave their homes in search of life giving living water.

Germany Abandons Nuclear Power

The words on the Nuclear Power Plant chimney read "Nuclear power damages Germany."

According to a Reuters Report Germany is to phase out all nuclear power in the country before 2020.

At long last a major European Country has decided that the dead end (I chose my words carefully) that is Nuclear is to go.

Thank you Germany!!!

EU Funds Dangerous Nuclear Power Plants; could a Japanese Nuclear type of disaster happen in the EU?

I looked in shock as first Japan was first hit by an earthquake of unimaginable proportions, then by a wall of water so high, wide and long that it wiped out all in its path, then as the weather changed and survivors sheltered from the bitter cold, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear power Plants, unable to function due to the damage, went critical. Now there is the threat of a deadly unseen radioactive cloud that could damage or destroy life.

As I write this there are some workers at the plant displaying breath taking courage by staying there and trying to contain the damage, accepting the fact that their lives are being offered up to save the lives of many others.

We in the West and in my case in the EU, (the UK) are told that this could not happen here as our standards are so high and we are not subject to the same geological problems as Japan. Yet, as Japan's nuclear disaster continues it has emerged that EU is funding a nuclear expansion programme in the Ukraine, despite real safety concerns, that will increase the export of energy to the main body of the EU.

The safety risks and concerns that surround the nuclear industry in the Ukraine that were there in the old Soviet era still remain.

In the EU, after the radiation leaks at the Japanese Fukushima plant, Germany is now to postpone the decision to extend the life of that country’s nuclear power plants, closing some of its older reactors down, while still funding the increase of nuclear power generation in the Ukraine.

It is the intention of the Ukraine Government to increase the number of nuclear power plants there from 12 to 22, and this work has been granted close to one billion Euros, jointly, from the EBRD, (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) and the EIB (European Investment Bank) with the funding supporting the 'Trans-European Energy Network projects' which will enable the Ukraine to export energy produced in that country to EU Member States.

There are however huge concerns regarding the safety of these plans, especially since the Ukraine Government is keen to increase the working life of its existing Soviet-era reactors from 30 to 45 years. This may well be a financial necessity as the Ukraine government does not have adequate facilities in order to decommission their radioactive waste. Fidanka Bacheva-McGrath, from the environmental watchdog Bankwatch who monitor the activities of The EU said: “Twenty-five years after Chernobyl it [the Ukraine] has not solved technically and financially the problem of management of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel. Furthermore, without enough resources to fulfil its utopian strategy of constructing 22 nuclear reactors by 2030, the government is now extending the life of existing nuclear blocks, which increases the risks of operational accidents”.

Part of the problem is the power of the EU Nuclear Lobby groups with their claim that Nuclear Power is low carbon and so part of a solution to Climate Change. The EU invests then in the Ukraine Nuclear Industry so as it can import ‘low priced’ and 'low carbon' energy into the EU.

The words of Fidanka Bacheva-McGrath sums the EU situation up perfectly. “Unfortunately it takes a disaster like the one in Japan for EU's decision-makers to acknowledge these risks. As the Chernobyl accident showed 25 years ago, the EU is vulnerable to the impacts of possible nuclear disasters in its immediate neighbourhood”.

See the full bankwatch report HERE

Whenever I read of the increasing number of nuclear plant accidents that we were told 'could never happen' I am reminded of the words of J. Robert Oppenheimer when the first nuclear weapon was unleashed upon Japan; "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds".

My thoughts and prayers are with those in Japan who now, after surviving earthquake and Tsunami face the ultimate nightmare of an uncontrollable and unseen nightmare created by mankind. Once the Nuclear Genie is out of the bottle it cannot be put back. The words we use to describe our species are Homo Sapiens; they mean 'wise man', I personally have my doubts.

SPAIN'S SOLAR POWER SUCCESS - 75% FROM RENEWABLE ENERGY

On January 6 the tradition in Spain is that children receive gifts from the three wise men. Forget Santa Claus, for children this is THE day! Unless they have behaved badly ... then... they are given coal.

So, on January 6th as Spanish children open their gifts and in many cases plugged them into the nearest electrical power point, coal was all but outlawed because on that day 75% of Spain's electricity was from renewable sources while coal reached a measly 4% of supply.

OK, on that day conditions must have been ideal for renewable energy production, but on any day last year Spain was producing renewable clean energy. Last year (2010) coal-fired power was lowered by 34% and gas-fired by 17%. Greenhouse gas emissions were cut by 20% and renewables are now providing jobs for nearly 100,000 people. To rub salt in the Nuclear/coal/gas lobby, Spain's renewables were the source of power for France, as for the very first time France was a net importer of Spanish electricity.

So, it can be done.

I write this from the UK, where the sun is not much in evidence at the moment but we do have exposed windy areas and an inexhaustable supply of tidal power... or does the above cartoon say it all?