Welcome to the current edition of i2P (Information to Pharmacists) E-Magazine dated Monday 25 July 2016.
Since our last edition the entire world seems to have gone mad and in certain countries like America, it is a very unsafe place to live in.
People are also feeling powerless as global corporations buy their way into power.
The UK rebelled against this with their BREXIT revolution, an action that may temporarily stall some economic growth but ultimately returns decision-making back to the people.
And this process has been growing steadily in Australia, and the voter revolt that occurred in our recent election has opened up the opportunity to take back power to the people.
Hence the complex Senate which the newly formed Coalition government has to navigate as they do not have a mandate for anything!
The other jolt that Australia experienced since our last edition involved China warning Australia to stay out of the political debate surrounding ownership of some strategic and oil-rich islands in the South China Sea.
China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei all have competing claims on these islands.
China has backed its expansive claims with island-building and naval patrols. The US says it does not take sides in territorial disputes, but has sent military ships and planes near disputed islands, calling them “freedom of navigation” operations to ensure access to key shipping and air routes – and Australia is participating in these exercises.
Both sides have accused each other of “militarising” the South China Sea.
There are fears that the area is becoming a flashpoint, with potentially serious global and local consequences for Australia.
Australia will have to feel its way carefully.
On the one hand China is one of Australia’s largest trading partners, and on the other hand Australia is signatory with the US in a range of defence treaties.
So hang in there for the ride, but it may also present opportunities for Australia to break free from US government influence which is seeming to become more corrupt by the day.
The following commentary was sent by someone involved in shining a light on Big Agriculture in the US. You will not find this type of news in mainstream media.
Big Agriculture in the US has become an extreme health hazard, no matter which view you take, and if Australia signs up to the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement we are inviting similar interests to take control of Australia’s economy and its direction.
Read the commentary to understand the effects of losing control in just one major area – food production.
“Here’s your mid-summer culinary directive from Congress and the White House: Shut up and eat your Frankenfoods.
Don’t worry about mutant genes, pesticide residues, and a growing list of horrors in your food. Don’t worry about your health, your children’s health, global warming or the health of the environment.
Just put your trust in America’s industrial food system and in Monsanto’s minions—the indentured scientists, politicians, regulatory agencies and members of the mass media who all toe the line for the biotech industry.
In case some of us didn’t notice, given our mounting daily dose of insults and injustices, the federal government, aided and abetted by the Organic Trade Association (now known as the Organic Traitors Association), just slapped you and millions of other health and environmentally concerned consumers in the mouth. Ignoring the protests of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and the entire grassroots food movement, ignoring 22 years of consumer pressure, multiple state ballot initiatives and “Right-to-Know” legislative efforts, the infamous DARK Act (Deny Americans the Right to Know) is about to be enshrined in federal law by President O’Bummer.
On July 14, the House of Representatives voted 306-117 to kill Vermont’s popular mandatory GMO food labeling law, which had already begun to force major junk food and beverage giants (Pepsi, Frito-Lay, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Nestlé, Campbell’s, Dannon, Smuckers, Starbucks) to label their GMO-tainted products nationwide. As soon as President Obama signs the DARK Act, (or simply lets it go into effect by not vetoing it) states will no longer have the right to mandate labeling of genetically engineered foods.
The 90 percent of consumers who want to know what they’re eating can now look forward, on a permanent basis, to what amounts to no labeling.
What we will get, if anything, in a few years will be bogus Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) trade-marked QR smart codes or 1-800 numbers on processed food packages that will serve to keep consumers in the dark about Frankenfoods and their omnipresent toxins, while pretending to provide so-called “disclosure.”
Passage of the Roberts-Stabenow bill, popularly known as the DARK Act, confirms what most consumers knew or suspected all along: we live in an authoritarian state, ruled by the “1%”, the corporate elite.
This is not a democracy.
The overwhelming majority of elected public officials and bureaucrats don’t give a damn about what you think or want. Short-term profits and out-of-control campaign donations literally trump public health, environmental, justice and climate concerns. Congress and the White House, Republicans and Democrats alike, are little more than “yes men and women” for their big donors, in this case multi-billion-dollar food corporations, grocery and restaurant chains, Monsanto and the rest of corporate agribusiness.
Money trumps all. That’s why activists from the Organic Consumers Association last week threw several thousand dollars in small bills from the visitors’ balcony onto the U.S. Senate floor, just moments before the passage of the DARK Act. They shouted below to a room of startled Senators, “Here’s Monsanto’s money, come and get it.” After “money bombing” the U.S. Senate, OCA Political Director Alexis Baden-Mayer and three other activists were arrested by the Capitol police.
A CSPAN live video camera caught much of the action.
The big question for the food movement, and in fact for all of global civil society, is: What’s next?
If Congress is bought and sold, if we can’t change federal public policy, if states’ rights and local rights are being steadily pre-empted, then how can we change our toxic, out-of-control food system, not to mention our toxic suicide economy and the rotten political system as a whole?
The answer of course is to build grassroots power.
Millions of us must channel our anger into actions designed to take back control of our health and our food, and our society. We must hit the Establishment where it hurts, in the bottom line. Boycott contaminated foods and other consumer products, and give your support (“buycott”) to organic and grass-fed producers and brands. Stop buying or consuming junk foods, and all heavily processed, GMO, factory farmed and chemical foods.
Take action today and everyday. Put your wallet back in your pocket unless the grocery store label or the restaurant menu says “organic,” “grass-fed,” or “GMO-free.” Learn or re-learn how to cook at home from scratch. Invite your friends over and plan how everyone can become part of the Revolution, a Revolution that we desperately need if we are going to survive and thrive.
Food policies and politics go hand-in-hand. Conscious consumers need to both change our consumer buying habits and stop supporting corrupt politicians. The U.S. currently is led, or rather misled, by a corporate-dominated corps of 500,000 elected and appointed public officials at the federal, state and local levels. Ninety percent of these so-called “public officials” are looking out for their cushy jobs and careers, by looking after the profits of corporations and special interests, instead of working for the public good. These handmaidens of the Elite need to be thrown out of office.
The Food Revolution will never really happen, unless we join forces with the U.S. (and global) grassroots as part of a larger Political Revolution.
It’s time to drive GMOs and the toxic pesticides, fertilizers, antibiotics, and growth hormones, off the market, for good.
It’s time to take down not just GMOs, but the entire out-of-control system of factory farms, industrial agriculture and junk food.
It’s time to mobilize public consciousness and market pressure so we can transform our entire degenerate chemical- and energy-intensive industrial food and farming system, which is pumping out billions of tons of climate-disruptive greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and destroying soils, biodiversity and the climate, into a regenerative and organic system that can restore biodiversity and revitalize public health, animal health the environment, rural communities and the body politic, while drawing down billions of tons of excess CO2 from the atmosphere and safely sequestering this carbon in the soil and forests, where it belongs.”
And unless Australians become more aware and fight for their country and protect its freedoms, our health system will collapse under all the new diseases inflicted through the indiscriminate use of chemicals everywhere.
In this edition we have drawn attention to the type of pharmacy practice infrastructure that would be the epicentre for the birth of a new paradigm pharmacy. An infrastructure design that would be needed to provide a business model that would not only survive- but thrive.
Read: For Future Growth & Stability – Add an Advisory Board
Mouhamad Zoghbi is back with us again and he highlights for us the real cost of maintaining a balanced pharmacy staff, and why staff represent both a cost if not managed correctly, or a profitable investment with good management.
Read: The Hidden Costs of Pharmacy Staff Turnover
Education systems and their method of incorporation into pharmacy practice will need to be relevant to the workplace and delivered as close as possible to the workplace.
Costs will need to be managed at an economical level.
It is looking like there will be more self-reliance and less reliance on marketing groups if this objective is to be achieved.
Read: STEM Education and Thoughts for an Advisory Board
Contemporary community pharmacy in the US is more likely to be a multi-group conglomerate and not fully supportive of patient needs.
That personal element is being ground out through low wages and uncomfortable conditions of employment.
Daniel Hussar is an academic pharmacist who comments regularly on the state of US pharmacy.
It is a format that has advantage in price, but little else.
Read: The Pharmacist Advocate – Happenings in a Global Pharmacy on its way to you!
Gerald Quigley is back with some thoughts on patient care and asthma.
He provides solution that are integrated – and this is the position that truly represents the training of a pharmacist.
And pharmacy patients want more of it despite the vocal critics “ratbag” element that shout “no evidence!” without evidence for their own irrationality.
Neither do they have their own patients.
Read: Asthma Perceptions
It also seems that some of the “ratbag” elements have infiltrated that revered organisation, our ABC radio and television organisation.
A high degree of bias has infiltrated the evidence basis for what will be reported on and presented.
One Catalyst presenter has been suspended, and Judy Wilyman, our writer for vaccine policy, is discriminated against for providing evidence.
Read: To the ABC Complaints Department
And we complete our offering for this edition by publishing a range of media releases from pharmacy leadership organisations:
PGA – PGA Media Release – Self Managing Chronic Pain
ASMI – ASMI Media Releases – 1. ASMI Congratulates Minister Ley 2. World Self Medication Industry Assembly
We hope you enjoy our current offering and please do not hesitate to provide feedback or comment in the panel provided at the foot of each page.
Neil Johnston,
Editor
i2P E-Magazine
Monday July 25 2016