The Trouble with TED

From Celia Farber, at “The Truth Barrier”:

“Now TED has made a very bad mistake, gone too far, as the arrogant always do.

This has caused a revolutionary fervor to seize the comments section at the marginalized Bad Children’s corner they have assigned the Sheldrake and Hancock video clips to on their site, as TED founder Chris Anderson tries to excuse himself to a distant destination  where he can’t respond to Hancock’s clear questions, while holding up a Wikipedia page as an attempted shield.

What is being fought here? Who are the opponents? What do they stand for?

I’ve been immersed in this war for a long time–it spans so many fields of science, from AIDS to Vaccines to Global Warming to Nutrition, Health, to Paranormal studies, parapsychology, Quantum Physics and beyond.  The bullies, calling themselves “skeptics,” have had one singular weapon which has been impossible to counter, as it is designed not to be answerable, namely pure relentless mockery. Reputation destruction. Wikipedia bullying. Charges of “pseudo-science,” and “woo,” to anything at all that doesn’t conform exactly to a fiercely reductionist, materialist, market driven and frankly misogynist approach to “Science.” Anything that slows booming global bio-tech and pharmacological progressivism is “denialism” and “woo,” and any scientist who steps out of line, no matter how esteemed, how decorated or respected, is thrown into the garbage compactor.

U.S. Embracing a Raw Milk Future

From David E. Gumpert, on the Complete Patient blog:

“Last month, while visiting at a small ag and liberal arts school in upstate New York to give a talk, I got to tour its well-run conventional dairy of more than 300 cows (and a 50,000-gallon bulk tank—pictured at left). It serves as an on-campus training facility for students at the school, the State University of New York in Cobbleskill.

I also got to meet with a dairy professor.  I didn’t expect a lot of encouraging words, given the school’s focus on conventional dairying, and how I predicted in my talk at the school ongoing upheaval in the food world, symbolized by the raw milk revolution. 

Why Aussie man gives his kids raw milk

From Mark Whittaker in the Sydney Morning Herald:

“I didn’t start drinking raw (unpasteurised) milk and feeding it to my kids as an act of civil disobedience. We moved to the country. We started a garden and raised chickens. We bought a Jersey cow named Jezebel because it seemed like the sort of thing you did chasing the bucolic dream.

Just like all the many nonagenarian dairy farmers in my family tree had done – and just like the Queen of England reportedly still does – we drank raw milk. It tasted great. Getting Jezebel in to milk was always interesting: my head nestled into her flank; the “squirt squirt” of milk in pail; flicking out the odd fly or fleck of who-knew-what in the milk; cursing her when she kicked the bucket.

Mainstream Media Blackout on Sheep-napping Preliminary Inquiry Granted

Early on in his 2006 raw milk case, Michael Schmidt quoted his then-lawyer Clayton Ruby as saying that cases like his are won and lost in the court of public opinion. No doubt the same dynamic is at work in this case. However, this time prosecution lawyers are a little more clued in as to the danger which public opinion represents for their cause, and they are determined to nip it in the bud. Now as to why the judge would so readily go along with it, that’s another matter.

David Gumpert predicts that attempts at suppressing this story will only fuel the public’s desire to know what is forbidden, and thus their strategem will be doomed to fail big-time. If ever a story had the makings for going viral, this one certainly does.

From Facebook:

Facebook posts seem to be all the coverage that this news blackout is getting in the Canadian media.

American food rights blogger David Gumpert is stepping in to the fray with both feet, in his latest post on what’s reported (on Facebook) as being a “Mainstream Media publication ban” on the case:

From his “The Complete Patient” blog:

“With a prosecutor upset about disclosures on this blog about the scrapie-related sheep-napping case, a Canadian judge earlier today took the extraordinary step of imposing a news blackout on the case.

The effect of the blackout was immediate: The National Post, a major Canadian publication, immediately took down an article published Friday about how a sheep identified by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency as a carrier of scrapie may well have come from the U.S., and not from Montana Jones’ herd of rare Shropshire sheep. If that is the case, then her sheep were likely destroyed as part of a charade to shift blame, and the charges against her and Michael Schmidt are a sham as well….”

Read more on The Complete Patient.

Publication Ban Sideshow Monday in Lindsay court for Schmidt, Jones, CFIA

Supporters of the defendants are being encouraged to come out to Monday’s court date at 9:30 am, Monday March 2, 2015 as the Crown argues why a publication ban would serve the public interest in this case. At least that’s what we imagine they might argue. Lindsay court is at 44 Kent St. in Lindsay, ON.

Montana Jones, Karen Selick, Michael Schmidt. Photo via theccf.ca

From theccf.ca:

“The preliminary inquiry in this matter started as scheduled on February 17, 2015. It was supposed to run on 10 consecutive court days, with an additional week at the end of April.

But on the second day of the prelim, lawyer Shawn Buckley was suddenly handed another 104 pages of documents that had never been disclosed previously by the prosecutor Damien Frost. Mr. Buckley had sent Mr. Frost a lengthy list of the documents he required approximately two years earlier, but Mr. Frost’s client, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA)—for reasons known only to themselves—had failed to provide these important papers. Over the next two days, additional disclosure was handed to Mr. Buckley, bringing the total for the week to 382 pages.