Top of the food chain

They used to grow food in Kansas,
Now they want to grow it on the Moon
And eat it raw
- Bob Dylan

Bite me: Tetsuo: The Iron Man


Dateline, Lubbock:

A toxic chemical used in rocket fuel was found in virtually every sample taken in a new study of nursing mothers' milk, but researchers said it is too early to know whether the perchlorate levels are dangerous.
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Perchlorate has been linked to thyroid ailments, and is considered particularly dangerous to children. It has been found in drinking water supplies in 35 states and also in vegetables. While the chemical occurs naturally, the National Academy of Sciences has said most of the contamination is from its use in rocket fuels, fireworks and explosives.

Contamination is especially widespread in California because of the many current and former defense and space program sites in the state.

It's always so discouraging to take bad news in stride. But I'd read last year of high levels of rocket fuel in California lettuce, so that it's now found in virtually every sample of mothers' milk is only natural. Is that the word I'm looking for?

Male bass are producing eggs in the headwaters of the Potomac. I guess it's true, that swimming in a broth of pharmaceuticals, household detergents and "personal-care products" can really mess your shit up. But who'd have thought? "It was not something we were really looking for," said a fish pathologist, whom we might have expected to be looking for it. (That a large, global decline in human sperm count is a fact, that more boys are not dropping their testicles and more men are growing breasts: are those things our pathologists are looking for?)

All my life, I've harboured High Arctic escape fantasies. Give me some seal-skin mukluks, a warm parka and broadband, and I'd feel happy and safe, watching iceburgs traverse my Mosquito Coast. But now, "alarming levels of PCBs, DDT, mercury and other toxic chemical pollutants that originate in the south" are impairing Innu children:

Meanwhile, the recent discovery of hermaphrodite polar bear cubs in Svalbard, Norway, has heightened concern that the chemicals may also be disrupting hormonal development. For his part, Ootoovak says he’s aware of the poisonous additives in maktaaq [raw Narwhal meat], but shrugs at the potential consequences. "You worry about it, but there’s nothing you can do," he says. A piece of maktaaq no larger than a sugar cube contains more than Health Canada’s maximum recommended intake of PCBs for an entire week.

But many local residents, like hunter and guide Lameck Kadloo, 34, will consume 10 times that much in a single day. It’s an unhappy fact that the more these communities adhere to their traditional way of life, the more potentially harmful pollutants they expose themselves and their children to. Kadloo’s three young children all eat maktaaq as a regular part of their diets. "It’s part of our tradition," he says. "We can’t give it up just like that. We have to eat what the land gives us."

So to where do the Innu fantasize escape?

Have you ever seen the film Tetsuo? You're living it. No cinema does dread like the Japanese. Maybe that's the peculiar insight granted a post-apocalyptic culture. "Revolving around the transformation of people into grotesque hybrids of flesh and metal...." And maybe that's how we're to survive in the world we're making, by ignorance and design: by becoming our toxins. All hail the new flesh.

Or perhaps our destiny rides, instead, with the likes of the 100 Vietnamese who are fighting that future by suing more than 30 firms, including Dow Chemical and Montsanto, for Agent Orange compensation. ("...one pupil writes with a pencil held between his toes, another cannot close her smiling mouth properly and the oldest of them, Tran Thi Hoan, wheels herself in and out as her legs have no calves.") And perhaps the next generation of Serbs, Afghans and Iraqis, conceived in the dust of Depleted Uranium, will pin down their poisoners until they're forced to spit out the words "Never again."

Because it can't go on like this, if we want to go on calling ourselves human.


By the way, Richard Dolan, author of UFOs and the National Security State, shares his thoughts here on Peter Jennings' "Spinning and Deceiving" the other night:

It is ludicrous to think that ABC’s leadership just decided to "do" a special like this. When dealing with the powerful media – which George Orwell today would certainly describe as our Ministry of Truth – one must assume there is a political (and in this case national security) goal. This is, after all, a critical national security topic. Major media is in bed with our national security apparatus. This ain’t your great-grandpa’s U.S. of A., sonny. It’s become more like the old Soviet Union. Indeed, we have to watch ABC in the same way that the people who used to be called "Sovietologists" analyzed official Soviet public statements. "What does so-and-so really mean by that? What is the significance of this person’s presence or absence at an official function?" As Tass was to the Soviet elite – the primary mouthpiece and propaganda instrument – so are the major networks of today, including ABC, to America’s power elite.

Thus, we might ask, was ABC attempting to "prepare the public?" Or, instead, some form of spin control?
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Spin, spin, and more spin.

I do confess to wonder, however, why now? ABC could have left this issue alone. By broaching it at all, even in this tightly controlled manner, there is the possibility that more people will become interested to know more.

According to the Merlin Project, we're right on schedule.