Think Before You Ink: Tattoos May Cause Cancer !

I don't know about you, but I've never gotten a tattoo and after reading this study I am glad I avoided them. If you've gotten a tattoo, or thought about it, chances are high that you weighed the artistic and social aspects of it far more than the health aspects. In fact, you may not even e aware that there is a health aspect to receiving a tattoo -- other than the inherent risks of infection, allergic reaction or disease transmission if equipment is not properly sterilized.

Research is increasingly showing, however, that there might be health risks involved, especially if your tattoo design has large areas of black ink, as the ink itself may be toxic.! I've heard it said that ''tattoo ink is quite nonreactive histologically, despite the frequent use of different pigments of unknown purity and identity by tattoo artists.'' However, University of Bradford researchers using an atomic-force microscope (AFM) that allows them to examine skin with tattoos at the nano-level have found evidence that suggests otherwise. In a preliminary study (the first to use an AFM), the researchers found that the tattoo process remodels collagen (your body's main connective tissue).

Further, nanoparticles from tattoo ink were found to exist in both the collagenous network of the skin as well as around blood vessels. This suggests that the ink particles are leaving the surface of your skin and traveling elsewhere in your body, where they could potentially enter organs, glands and other tissues. This is problematic because tattoo inks are largely unregulated and known to contain-cancer causing compounds. The researchers believe the issue could become a significant public health concern given the rise in tattooing in the last decade.


The researchers released a press statement saying: ''We need to do more work, but there is no question that these substances can be toxic. It takes a long time for the multi-step nature of cancer to show its face and we don't think we should wait to see if there is anything wrong with these ingredients. We also feel, since nanoparticles are ultramicroscopic in size, thereby making them able to readily penetrate your skin and travel to underlying blood vessels and into your bloodstream. Our evidence suggests that some nanoparticles may induce toxic effects in your brain and cause nerve damage.''

In 2011, a study in The British Journal of Dermatology revealed that nanoparticles are indeed found in tattoo inks, with BLACK pigments containing the smallest particles (WHITE pigments had the largest particles and COLOURED pigments were in between. With the exception of the white pigments, the study noted that ''the vast majority of the tested tattoo inks contained significant amounts of these nanoparticles. The Black pigments were almost pure nanoparticles. It looks like the Black-ink in tattoos may be the riskiest and is most often linked to the potential of adverse health effects like inflammation and DNA damage.''

I have read that black inks are usually based on soot and many contain hazardous polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), (a Class 1 carcinogen according to the International Agency of Research on Cancer). Part of PAHs stay lifelong in the skin, absorb UV radiation which then can generate deleterious singlet oxygen inside the dermis layer. The Friends of the Earth - a global network of grassroots groups - is among those now calling for proper regulation of tattoo inks amidst the new findings that they may contribute to cancer.


The Way I See It.....until further research is completed it may be wise to ''think before you ink.''  I'm typically a major advocate of technology, but I have mixed feeling about the use of nanotechnology, particularly when it comes to exposing your body to these complex molecules for non-essential purposes like tattoos. If harnessed properly, however, nanotechnology has the potential to make major strides in conventional medicine and other areas like environmental remediation and sustainable energy.


Contrary to older toxicology risk models, less is more; by reducing a particle's size the technology has now made that substance capable of evading the body's natural defences more easily, i.e. passing through pores in the skin or mucous membranes, evading immune and detoxification mechanisms that evolved millions of years before the nanotech era we're in.  Interestingly, there is a growing sub-culture of ''Tattoo Regreters'' with many people, mostly women, who feel their body art had come by way of peer pressure, personal baggage and/or a growing obsession that needed to be relegated to past history. At least tattoo removal procedures are getting easier if not less painful.

Attack on Complementary Medicine ''Undermines Safety'' !

Justin Norrie, Editor, of  The Conversation, an independent news website writes.........

Cutting complementary (alternative) medicine courses from universities would dilute the quality of the education available and threaten safe practice but have no impact on demand for it, according to academics writing in the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA). In an emphatic response to recent comments by Friends of Science in Medicine (FSM), a body, I mentioned my previous posting, that is committed to stemming the spread of ''pseudoscience'' in medicine, the authors accuse some of the medical orthodoxy of trying to stifle divergent views. Just like the global warmists not listening to the deniers and getting egg on their faces.

A strong retort was given by Stephen Myers, a Professor of Complementary Medicine at southern Cross University and co-authors in warning that there is ''a great danger for the public if complementary medicine practice is allowed to develop outside mainstream education. It would definitely undermine safe practice and critical appraisal.'' Among the co-authors was Dr Kerryn Phelps, former President of the AMA and Adjunct Professor at the School of Public Health in the University of Sydney. She added, ''Science sets out to rigorously eliminate bias, not assert it. The FSM's arguments are highly emotive and, while having a gloss of superficial reasonableness, they do not stand up to critical review.''



Dr  Stephan  Myers

Professor Myers said that alternative medicine was a broad field that could not be described with generalisations. It was important, he added, to distinguish the major professional and university-based disciplines of traditional Chinese medicine, Chiropractic, Osteopathy and Naturopathy from ''fringe practices, and the actions of rogue or unqualified practitioners.'' Two ''comprehensive reviews'' of complementary medicine practice and training in Australia over the past 15 years had both supported the movement of Chinese medicine and Naturopathy and Western herbal medicine into a university setting, ''just as earlier reviews had done for chiropractic and osteopathy.''  Professor Myers firmly added that, ''It is not melodramatic to point out that if the Friends of Science in Medicine were to succeed in their stated aims, they would achieve a dystopia -- a medical 1984  where only one way of knowing the body in health and illness is permitted in public discourse.''

But John Dwyer, the condescending president of FSM and Emeritus Professor at the University of New South Wales said that his fundamentalist organisation strongly supports research into currently alternative approaches to see if they are credible and there is sufficient evidence to warrant  science dollars being used to settle the question whether these supposed treatments are effective or not. He said, ''No amount of dogmatic pronouncement and assertions uttered by individuals who have invented various treatments, often centuries ago, and who are still blindly followed to this day, despite of scientific discovery and advancement in medicine should go unexamined.'' (I ask you, where has this douse bag been the last 50 years? Sorry John the examinations have been done)

The Way I See It.....the FSM's views exceed the boundaries of reasoned debate and risk compromising the values that the FSM claims to support. While there was now an extensive evidence base for complementary therapies, the concept of evidence-based allopathic medicine was highly contested within Western medicine itself.  Professor of Medicine at Monash University, Paul Komesaroff, writing in the MJA, said ''It is not appropriate for doctors or scientists with a particular view of medicine to impose those views on the whole community. It is important that those who seek to be friends of science do not inadvertently become its enemies. We call on the members of FSM to revise their tactics and instead support open, respectful dialogue in the great spirit and tradition of science itself.

UPDATE:  Last week, a study published in the Medical Journal of Australia by researches from the University of Melbourne provided the best picture yet of the most common conditions treated by chiropractors and suggests most chiropractic treatments and consultations undertaken in the country are EVIDENCE BASED! The study was the first of its kind in the world and provided the most detailed information yet published on chiropractic practice. I think now Dr Dwyer and his Whores of Big Pharma should leave the stage and fade away.

Immigration or Colonisation By Stealth ?

BRISBANE AIRPORT :  (This was overheard by a patient of mine, last week, standing at the luggage carrousel next to a little old lady and a woman in a burqa ).

Old lady turning to Muslim woman:  ''Excuse me dear, I mean no offence, but isn't it hot under that burqa?''
Muslim woman (abruptly):  ''Believe me.....you'll soon be finding out what it's like wearing a burqa.''
Old lady:  "Well, my dear at my age I'm sure I won't be around to see it. If not. I'll make sure I have two bullets....one for you then one for me!''   That shut her up!

Different Styles of Muslim Dress

There you have it, my warnings over the three and half years of blog postings mentioning the world-wide Islamist underground agenda of Stealth Jihad are well founded. Again, the question is why we in Australia have allowed in people who in sentiment and even clothing declare themselves not of this society. I just returned from a professional seminar in Sydney's CBD and heard that hundreds of Muslims attended a community meeting in western Sydney and they were warned that they should refuse to co-operate with Australian government and its associated agencies, including Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) and federal police.

The annual conference of Hizb ut-Tahrir heard speakers say the federal government had a covert plan to marginalize and suppress activist and traditional Islam under the guise of engagement and fostering harmony with moderates in the community. ASIO says more moderate leaders have helped keep down tensions, especially over Syria. We are thankfully past the low point when Muslim groups elected as Grand Mufti of Australia the extremist Taj el-Din al-Hilali, who hailed the September 11 attacks as ''God's work against oppressors.'' Unfortunately, this Sheik still preaches at Lakemba Mosque - Australia's biggest - and he has young radical preachers now whip up potentially lethal resentments, particularly when Australian soldiers are fighting jihadists overseas or when the police arrest them at home.

In an address entitled Forging an Independent Path for the Community, speaker Wassim Doureihi   told the 600-strong audience gathered in that hall that many Muslims had been cowed by the federal government and its agencies into abandoning traditional and activist Islam. He added that those imams and other Muslim community leaders who co-operated with the government lent legitimacy to what Mr Doureihi claimed was Canberra's campaign against Muslims at home and abroad.  ''They sit at the table with those who are waging war against Muslims,'' he said....knowing full well that Muslims are waging war with the West as often as they can. Most Australians would say, ''Go home if you don't like it here and take your non-assimilation with you!''


Wassim Doureihi in Sydney

Just last week, ASIO's report to Parliament exploded some sweet lies we've been told about our immigration program. Here's one: immigration brings only good things, like falafel. Here's another: there's still only a ''tiny, unrepresentative minority'' of Muslim extremists here, A ''handful''. HANDFUL?  Check the ASIO report: ''This year ASIO....investigated several hundred mostly Australia-based individuals who are advocates of a violent Islamist ideology. In fact, we already have 20 Muslims jailed for terrorism-related offences and we fear more may come as there has been an increase in Australians travelling overseas to participate in terrorist training or engage in foreign disputes, like Syria. The concern is the likelihood of radicalised Australians returning home with an increased commitment and capability to pursue violent acts on our shores.''

When five Muslims were jailed in Sydney for a terrorist plot to attack a local Army base, 30 Muslim ''community leaders'' and imams signed a statement at the Lakemba Mosque, claiming ''the reason for the arrests and convictions is that these young men expressed opinions that contradict Australia's foreign policy towards majority Muslim countries.'' There seems to be a huge amount of denial in Western Sydney. ASIO's report didn't cover other evidence that a significant minority of some Muslim groups have struggled to integrate. For instance, those of Lebanese descent have high rates of unemployment, welfare dependency and imprisonment, and high rates of bikie gang membership. Add this danger sign: Of the 18 terrorist groups banned in Australia, 17 are Islamist. Even the exception, the Stalinist PKK, is from the Middle East. 

The Way I See It.....our immigration policies have been incredibly reckless, thanks to politicians more concerned with seeming good than achieving security for Aussie citizens. We have been bringing in more than 10,000 refugee a year from Muslim lands - especially ones in which jihadism is worst. Many have little English and few skills. Not surprisingly, just 9% of Afgan adults find work here even five years after arriving. Yet, just last month, the Abbott Government said it would accept another 500 refugees from Syria's war between jihadists and the Assad regime. Few would be any better equipped to integrate than were the refugees we took in from Lebanon's civil war and who formed a community (ghetto) which now makes up a quarter of our Muslim population - but which has produced nearly two thirds of those charged with terrorism offences.

The ethnic link is so pronounced that Australia's immigration laws needs revision. The mandatory deportation of gang members, both foreign and domestic is being pushed by the Queensland government that's aimed at stemming the flow of Middle Eastern and Pacific Islander recruits into gangs. There should be no argument about this. An immigration system which leaves Australians in more danger from being robbed, bashed, shot or otherwise menaced is not just a failure but a betrayal. Besides...there are just so many falafels Aussies can eat.

 

The Very Radical Racist Background of Michelle Obama !

I did some background checking into Michelle Obama and her links with socialists, communists and other ranking radicals that wish nothing more than to destroy the United States as it is, and create a brand new United States! I've exposed three of Barack Obama's socialist mentors (31August - 3 September, 2012) that infected him with a distaste for the American society as a whole. This may sound shocking but it is true. Some of the words spoken by Michelle and her husband have come directly from that radical book entitled Rules for Radicals by Saul D. Alinsky. I have exposed Alinsky's background in a previous posting  (OBAMA: Lucifer is My Homeboy! - 13 September, 2012) Check it out.

Since it is hard to find her high school history, I'll start with Michelle LaVaughn Robinson's college days....and what days they turned out to be. In a February, 2008 interview with Newsweek, Michelle Obama revealed that she got into Princeton, not on the strength of her grades, which she admits were unexceptional, but thanks to her brother Craig,  star athlete and gifted student who preceded her to the university. As a ''legacy'' candidate and a beneficiary of affirmative action, Michelle was granted an opportunity that others more accomplished were denied. She got her college education due to her brother and her ethnicity, not her excellence in academics.

So why is she such an ungrateful radical racist woman? Let's take a look to see just what she was doing at Princeton while she was there and what types of people she had as her close friends. Some of Michelle's contacts were of the Marxist/socialist types. Charles Johnson wrote in 2012 that he remembers ''Michelle Obama attended and promoted a Black Solidarity event for guest lecturer Manning Marable, ( left ) who was professor of African-American Studies at Columbia University and according to sources, probably the best known black Marxist in the country.'' The event was the work of The Third World Center (TWC), a campus group whose board membership was exclusively reserved for only minorities. Michelle Robinson is listed as a junior member of the eleven members on the board.

We must now wonder, why did the people elect a man with a wife that has such a background, mixed with Marxism and Communism associations. Michelle Robinson's racial animosity of Caucasian people is exposed through her articles and statements from the time she was at Princeton. One can see this in her expressed ideas that the white population at Princeton were a bunch of ''racist'' individuals. The TWC governing board's obsession with race irrupted in an editorial in October, 1981. They took great offense to an op-ed titled ''Rebuilding Race Relations,'' calling the article ''racist, offensive and inaccurate'' for daring to question the group's true commitment on race relations. They wrote a scathing letter to the editor; ''The word RE-building implies that race relations once existed and, for some mysterious reason, fell apart. we, on the other hand, believe that race relations have never been at a satisfactory level. We cannot RE-build something that never existed in the first place.'' 

Michelle and Barack at a Marxist meeting

Princeton was getting more and more concerned about the self-segregation by black students and proposed reforms to counter it, including no longer permitting black students to all room together n one dorm and integrating black freshmen into the general student body. The TWC strenuously opposed all of these reforms, arguing that integration of non-white students would harm the ''support system'' available to them, especially blacks. Once again Michelle sent off another scathing letter stating, ''Don't hide behind excuses and reasons to integrate the college campus on our part. The bottom line is that white students on this campus are racist, but they may not realize it and minority strife would worsen.''  You can see that Michelle was actually biting the hand that fed her!

It looked like Michelle was in a group that found fault with anything that dealt with ethnicity. In 1983 she did more than make meetings and express her seemingly hate for whites, she went on with the TWC and made demands for minority only meetings. She would be up in arms to stop such meetings if they were to the exclusion of minorities. Yet it was fine, and even better, when she stood alongside a segregation policy that banned whites from any meetings held by the TWC! This is well noted in statements recorded in 1984; ''The TWC's board demands that non-white students should have the right to bar whites from their meetings on campus.'' The ban was frankly unnecessary, since whites were made to feel unwelcome at the meetings if they were invited at all.

The Way I See It.....Michelle Robinson (Obama) did not like the idea of all ethnicities working together, and would rather have them separate from each other. However, this is not what America had been working towards. It had been working, since the mid-1960s, towards having ethnic groups working together and not apart. This was so people could be together as one nation, as the Founding Fathers had proscribed and the efforts of the civil rights movement to bring to reality.

Yet it was Michelle that had stated that race relations at Princeton were deficient. However, it seems she was part of the problem. She sat on the board of the TWC to force Princeton to have separate meetings for minorities without any whites allowed. This attitude does not bring ethnicities together to discuss any sensitive issues they may have and therefore doesn't resolve problems. It would make them worse due to the distancing of those minorities from the white population. This would only breed suspicion amongst the white population at what the minorities were planning next to disrupt the running of the university. However, this was just the beginning for Michelle Robinson as she learned to use Saul Alinsky's works, a man she admired along with her husband Barack.

All Together Now: "LIAR, LIAR....Pants on Fire !''

It's disgusting to see how often Obama's ''useful idiots'' in the media defend his lying?  How many times did Barack Obama make that false claim about his signature legislation?  Time after time, before and after the law went into effect, the President and his aides have promised that people who liked their current health insurance would be able to keep it under the Affordable Care Act.

''If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period,'' Obama said in a speech to the American Medical Association on June 15, 2009. ''If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matte what.'' The president and his cronies have repeated variations on the pledge countless times. The thing is, he wasn't telling the truth; So imagine the surprise of many Americans last week when they received notices that their health insurance policies were being cancelled.

The reality is....right from the start, Obama's team knew this was a lie, but approved it!  One former senior administration official said that as the law was being crafted by the White House and lawmakers, some White House policy advisors objected to the breadth of Mr Obama's ''keep your plan'' promise. They were overruled by political aides, the former official said. Some aides believed that the (inadequate) grandfather clause was enough to make Obama's assurance true enough, but the White House clearly didn't want to confuse people with the full story of the disruptions that would occur under the law.

Now Obama is lying about the lying!  He says he said, Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really liked that plan, what we said was you can keep it if it hasn't changed since the law passed.''  Yeah...right. So it is so very useful to Obama to have a leftist paper like the New York Times spin for him, calling a lie something nicer. An editorial in their Sunday Review page entitled ''Insurance Policies Not Worth Keeping'' they wrote "Mr. Obama clearly misspoke when he said that by law insurers cannot continue to sell policies that don't provide the minimum benefits required as of next year.''  MISSPOKE? As in accidentally used the wrong words? The New York Times is a disgrace. It lies to defend a lie by a liar who now lies about it , too. Team Obama members, like Debbie Schulz, (above) came out publicly to also back up her boss's falsehood.

Former Massachusetts Gov Mitt Romney, on NBC's ''Meet the Press'' accused the president of ''fundamental dishonesty'' with his ObamaCare promise. ''He wasn't telling the truth and he, and now we, know it!  That fundamental dishonesty has really - has really put in peril the whole foundation o his second term,'' Romney said. "I think it is rotting it away. What has really undermined the president's credibility in the hearts of the American people is that he went out, as a centrepiece of ObamaCare over the last several years, saying time and time again that fundamental to his plan was the right people would have to keep their insurance, and he knew that was not the case.''

Romney added; Had the president been truthful and told the American people that millions would lose their insurance and millions more would see their premiums skyrocket...there would have been such a hue and cry against it, that it would not have passed. So Mr Obama turned deceitful.''
The White House quickly went on the defensive. They brought out Ezekiel Emanual, an architect of the Obama plan. He explained, ''You would expect at this stage of the game (?) after the initial shock wears off, that not a lot of people will sign up. People will put off buying until the end.'' The flawed debut of the health website, with delays, outages and software errors, is tarnishing Obama's legislative achievement and has complicated his second term agenda as his approval rating dropped.

Veteran Comedian Jackie Mason

Forty-seven percent of Americans (most likely the ones not on government handouts) said the government is doing a ''poor'' job of implementing the health law, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found. Thirty-seven percent say the law itself should be repealed. ''I think government is inherently inept, because they don't work on a profit motive,'' Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, said on the ''This Week'' program. ''I would say that there are fundamental things government can do. But government shouldn't take on new opportunities or new things to do when it's not managing what it has now.''  Comedian Jackie Mason, last week, said on a radio interview that ''this President of ours finds it easy to lie, and then when found out, he lies to cover the lie. He is a pathological liar and should be locked up in a sanatorium!''

The Way I See It.....the right way to deal with health care reform is not to have a one-size-fits-all plan that's imposed on all the states, but recognizing the differences between different states' populations, states should be able to craft their own plans to get all their citizens insured, and to make sure that the pre-existing conditions are covered. I think they are going to find, when it's all said and done, after all these states, getting away from Obama's socialist agenda, that are now laboratories of democracy get their chance to try their own plans and find the best path that'll end up with a nation that has taken a mandate approach. Romney's final word says ''Obama must work with Republicans if he's going to fix the mess that the ObamaCare rollout has become.''

UPDATE:  Obama's overall job rating has dropped to 41% since last December. A majority (53%) now disapproves of the way he is handling his job as president.

It's a Future Feast of Good News !

You'd think the greens, (watermelons are a more meaningful term), claiming to love nature, at least understood crops better than most of us. Yet they still keep freaking that we'll run out of food. First they feared we were breeding like rabbits and eating the planet bare. Paul Ehrlich, now professor of population studies at Stanford University, became the most famous eco-catastrophist with his 1968 best-seller, The Population Bomb. ''The battle to feed humanity is over,'' he declared. ''In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date, nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.'' (Read my post: Ehrlich: More Cock-ups then Cock Robin - Nov.4, 2011)

But then came the green revolution.  With better and smarter plant breeding, communications, transport, storage, irrigation and gene technology, the world's food supplies exploded. There is now no mass starvation outside war zones and closed dictatorships like North Korea. Once again, modern man - and woman - showed we could be masters of our fate if we trusted to reason, not fear. But then came the global warmists, who just could not let a good food scare go to waste.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for instance, warned in 2001 that global warming would ''adversely affect wheat and, more severely, rice production in India.'' Professor Ian Lowe, president of the Australia Conservation Foundation, warned last year; ''It will be less and less likely that we can feed the human population if climate change continues on its present trajectory.'' Stanford environmental scientist David Lobell claimed on 2008 ''the majority of the world's one billion poor depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, and agriculture is also most vulnerable to changes in climate.''

But GOOD NEWS, my quivering green alarmists! The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organisation's latest Crop Prospects and Food Situation report says cereal production jumped 7% this year. ''The increase would bring world cereal production to 2479 million tones, a new RECORD level.'' And this year's wheat output was ''the highest in history.'' While India expects a bumper rice crop and soybeans after last month's monsoon. The Consortium of Indian Farmers Associations is tipping a record year. Another green scare goes Bust!  Why do we fall for so many of them??

It seems like the leftist New York Times has ignored the U.N.'s good news and fallen for the warmist propaganda hook line and sinker with an article they published last weekend entitled Climate Change Seen Posing Risk to Food Supplies. The article went on to say that some scientists feel that climate change could potentially undermine crop production and drive up prices at a time when the demand for food is expected to soar. In an earlier assessment, the scientists concluded that rising temperatures will have some beneficial effects on crops, but now they say, globally, it will make it harder for crops to thrive - perhaps reducing production over all by as much as 2% each decade for the rest of the century, compared with what it would be without climate change. Do we trust their computer modelling this time??

The Arctic Ice Has Returned

These warnings come from a leaked draft of a report under development by a United Nations panel. A spokesman, Jonathan Lynn, stated, ''The document is not final and could change before it is released in March, next year.''  The New York Times further quoted him saying ''sweeping impacts from climate change are already occurring across the planet and that these are likely to intensify as human emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise.'' The Times stated the warning on the food supply is the sharpest in tone the panel ever issued. However, the claim about ''sweeping impacts from climate change...." is false, contradicted last month by the very IPCC that the Times cites as its source.  Of course there was no mention of the reality that the past 16 years showed miniscule warming and with a slight cooling trend in the last two years. The Arctic Ocean is full of ice and the Antarctic ice shelf has had the most snow build up in 20 years.

The Way I See It.....this news story on an unreleased IPCC report which isn't finalised, could change and isn't available for sceptical scientists and reporters to check. Parts of it have been released to a sympathetic news outlet. Smell a rat?  Now note further. In fact, this food scare is not at all ''the sharpest in tone'' from the IPCC. The IPCC has flogged this same tired scare for a long time, as I mentioned, since 2001. That prediction of 12 years ago has so far proved completely false. It was embarrassing enough for the IPCC in last month's released summary to admit there has been this dramatic slowdown in global warming that their climate models didn't predict.

My fact checking this weekend has more good food news thanks to the that 25% rise in carbon dioxide. India looks set for bumper harvests of winter crops such as wheat, chickpeas and rapeseed in the wake of a strong monsoon that has left the soil moist and topped up reservoirs. Global production of wheat and rice have all more than doubled since 1970 as global warming occurred. Corn production, the current flavour of the month for internet fear-mongering, has more than tripled since 1970. So, too, has global vegetable production as a whole. The whole idea that the picture of our natural world in turmoil as plants and animals colonize new areas to escape rising temperatures or become extinction sounds like a Cock Robin sequel.

The Free Fall of the Green Nazis !

As I have often warned....the far Left is actually closely related to the far Right. Both believe in sacrificing individuals to the collective. One example I've mentioned a couple of times, one as early as three years ago (Hitler was a Green Guru Too (He's Back!) 30 December, 2010).

The Nazis drew heavily on a romantic, anti-science, nature worshipping, communal and anti-capitalist movement that tied German identity to German forests. In fact, Professor Raymond Dominck notes in his book, The Environmental Movement in Germany, two-thirds of the members of Germany's main nature clubs joined the Nazi Party by 1939, compared with just 10% of all men. The Nazis also absorbed the German Youth Movement, the Wandervogel, which talked of our mystical relationship with Mother Earth.

It was for the Wandervogel that the philosopher, mystic and poet Ludwig Klages ( right ) wrote his influential biocentric essay Man and Earth in 1913. In it, Klages warned of the growing extinction of species, the destruction of forests. the disruption of the ecosystem and subsequent food shortages and starvation. People were losing their relationship with nature, he warned. Heard all that recently? This essay by this notorious anti-Semite was republished in 1980 to mark the birth of the German Greens -- the party that inspired the creation of Australia's own Greens party. Its message is much as Hitler's own Mein Kampf : ''When people attempt to rebel against the iron logic of nature...their actions against nature will lead to their own downfall.''

After WWII, the Greens Party traces its origins to the student protest movement of the 1960s, the environmental movement in the 1970s and grew in stature and strength formalize their union in 1980. The basis was on Germany's pre-war relationship with the nature movement which then the focus was on the environmental protest to nuclear power, and the movement was also directed especially at German labour, business and politicians. They first won representation at the national level in 1983. With the unification of East Germany, they merged with the East German environmentalists, known as the Alliance 90 Party.  and from 1998 to 2005 it formed a coalition government with the Social Democratic Party (SPD). After the Fukushima disaster, as they made up 18.5% of the government, they convinced Angela Merkel to shutdown 8 of Germany's 16 nuclear power plants.

Before the recent mid-September elections the Greens ham-fistedly championed a ''vegetarian policy'' that resulted in the once-mighty German Greens in freefall. This dramatic fall in the polls has been blamed squarely on their ludicrous Veggie Day proposal, in which canteens would be obliged to offer only vegetarian food once a week, with Germans (among the most enthusiastic carnivores in Europe) encouraged to follow suit at home. ''Verruckt!" (crazy) was the comment in many newspapers. In an election campaign that was often described as dull and detached, critics seized on Veggie Day, making it one of the most talked about proposals from any party. It received almost as much airtime in pre-election debates as Syria and the Eurozone crisis combined. Opponents in the liberal Free Democratic party fired up barbeques in protest.

The election finished with the Greens only acquiring 8.4% of the vote, a staggering 10 points drop. The numbers make Green prospects of becoming the third strongest party in the next Bundestag less likely, causing hopes to fade on the left of a Green-Social Democrat coalition. The Greens' mistake? Manfred Gullner, one of Germany's foremost pollsters, put it down primarily to their decision to shift focus away from their core issues - the environment, woman's equality and peace - and to start dictating terms concerning social justice. ''That was a strategic mistake, because it doesn't belong to their founding ideas,'' he said. ''It's a topic that remains the preserve of the SPD .'' And Veggie Day? ''Just another foolish mistake among several,'' he told the foreign press.

Sigmar Gabriel (L) welcomes Merkel & Ronald Pofalla  (R)

The Greens have not been helped by the fact that they were instrumental shutting down nuclear power plants and allowing electricity bills to rise and the use of power becoming a luxury as a consequence. It has also fought an image problem over its tolerance of paedophilia, a 1980's shadow hanging over the party and their push for same-sex marriages. Also their reckless push for subsidies for wind and solar power before the other 8 nuclear plants get shut down and burdening the German people with a renewables-related surcharge of 20%.

The Way I See It.....within the Greens Party itself criticism is rife that the once-towering force of the ecological movement in Europe has failed to connect with the voters. Ruth Kastner, head of the Greens in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, has accused the party's leading candidates, Jurgn Trittin and Katrin Goring-Eckardt, of poor communication, bemoaning the fact that Veggie Day, more than any other Green policy, has left the party open to accusations of pushing for an ''ecological dictatorship.'' The Watermelon image comes to mind: GREEN on the outside, but oh so RED on the inside!

Fortunately German Chancellor Angela Merkel won the lection and is reinstated as the leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The conservative bloc, made up of the CDU and their Bavarian allies, the Christian Social Union (CSU), emerged as the strongest force in the September election but is still short of enough seats to rule alone. Leader of the SPD, Sigmar Gabriel, made it clear that his party may not come to ''the party'' to make a ''grand coalition''.  He said to a meeting of his party's Berlin branch, ''If we have good reasons, we can ultimately say no and accept new elections.'' The two sides want to wrap up negotiations by November 26, after which the SPD plans to allow its 472,000 members to vote on the deal. The result of the full-party vote is due December 15. If the deal goes through, the government could start work the next week.  Nobody will be missing the Greens.