Vanishings and High Strangeness at Africa’s Cursed Mountain

~hehe ALL OVER this Planet (&off) people just go ...puff ?

• http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/01/vanishings-and-high-strangeness-at-africas-cursed-mountain/
•  January 4, 2017
•  Brent Swancer

 

The wild, untamed expanses of the African continent are no stranger to dark mysteries. It is a land steeped in them, from strange beasts, to natural mysteries, to mysterious tribes, to all manner of high strangeness. Here amongst the vast natural beauty also loom mysterious places that have defied human understanding for millennia; locations cloaked in shadow and often sinister tales, myths, and unexplained phenomena. One such place is an enigmatic, ominous mountain in the remote reaches of Zimbabwe. It is a place heavily pervaded with myth, legend, and bizarre mysteries, as well as among its various strangeness imbued with the disturbing habit of not allowing some to leave, seemingly vanishing them from the face of the earth, earning it the nickname “The Mountain That Swallows People.” It is a place that has become just as notorious for mysterious vanishings in the region as the more famous Bermuda Triangle, and just as permeated with the unknown.
Located within the breathtakingly scenic wilderness north of Zimbabwe’s Eastern Highlands is Nyanga National Park, one of the oldest and largest national parks in the country. Here is a land of rolling green hills, moorland, and lightly wooded expanses, inhabited by a wide range of unique animals and through which meander quaint streams and roaring rivers, and the park is home to Zimbabwe’s highest waterfall, Mutarazi Falls. The breathtaking scenery and plentitude of wildlife have made the park one of Zimbabwe’s premiere tourist attractions, and sitting at the center of all of this natural splendor to dominate the surrounding landscape is the majestic Mount Nyangani. At 2,592 m (8,504 ft.) high, it is the highest point in Zibabwe, and its plateau of moorland, steep drops, and seemingly eternally mist capped peak give it a rather imposing, mysterious appearance, and it is also known for dramatic weather changes at a moment’s notice, which all makes it perhaps not a surprise that legends have orbited it for centuries.

Nyanga National Park

In local tradition, Mount Nyangani is inhabited by powerful ancestral spirits and is a sacred place. It is also said to be the haunt of evil or vindictive spirits and all manner of supernatural entities and creatures. The mountain has long been feared by the people of the region, a place to be approached with caution, and there are numerous rules that according to lore must be followed when venturing there. One is not to approach or enter sacred locations upon the mountain, for it is said to do so will result in becoming hopelessly lost and unable to leave, doomed to aimlessly wander the mountain unless the angered spirits responsible are appeased somehow. It is also said that if one comes across a colorful snake, a pot with no fire, or a brick of gold it is the spirits tricking you, and that you had better ignore them and quickly move on. The same mischievous spirits are said to enjoy pushing people from steep ledges, with varied advice on ways to avoid their wrath, such as refraining from urinating on the mountain, avoiding profanity, and by all means abstaining from any sort of sexual activity. It is also recommended not to wear red clothing, as this apparently greatly upsets the spirits. Even if one plans to follow these set rules, visitors are strongly implored to seek permission from the village elders of the area before embarking.
These are the dark rumors and legends that have been whispered about among local tribes since time unremembered, but if the phenomena associated with this place are anything to go on, there is something more at work here than just pure folklore. Visitors and locals who have come to the mysterious mountain have experienced a wide range of strangeness. It is said that compasses and electrical equipment will sometimes go haywire or break down entirely here, and that sometimes photos taken here will not develop properly. The weather is reported as almost having a malevolent mind of its own, with gusts of wind seeming to roar in at the most inopportune times and thick fogs or mists that materialize out of nowhere to follow hikers around as if stalking them. There are also numerous reports of visitors becoming dazed, confused, or disoriented for no apparent reason, with even experienced hikers familiar with the area at times becoming hopelessly lost, as well as sudden bouts of profound dizziness or nausea that pass as abruptly as they come. Other various weirdness are unidentifiable sounds, strange lights, and animals that seem to watch and follow visitors around, as well as trees that are twisted into the visage of human faces and talk or whisper, or streams that suddenly turn a blood red in color.
Even the area surrounding the mountain is saturated with spooky lore telling of magical locations and strange beasts. For instance, two dams that were under construction in the areas called Osborne and Gokwe were reportedly plagued with setbacks and troubles due to what the locals claimed was the work of mermaids angered by the desecration of their river. In addition to numerous freak construction accidents, equipment malfunctions, and foul weather dogging the workers at every turn, there were purportedly some construction workers who went missing without a trace to never be found. Things got so tense with the deeply frightened crews, many of whom said they had seen the creatures themselves, that a large portion of the workers refused to go back to work until tribal elders came in to perform special rituals to appease the rampaging mermaids.

In addition to all of this, Mount Nyangani is perhaps most known for its mysterious disappearances, and for as long as there have been people in the region it has been said to swallow up hapless travelers. Although it is unknown just how many people have actually vanished into thin air on Mount Nyangani, there are many fairly modern cases of disappearances here that have remained unsolved. A rash of such disappearances occurred here in the 1980s. In 1981, the two young teenage daughters of a former government official named Tichaendepi Masaya vanished without a trace on the mountain, and a massive air and ground search turned up not a single shred of evidence of what had become of them. Their disappearance remains a complete mystery. A few years later there was the mysterious vanishing of a 12-year-old schoolboy named Robert Ackhurst, who wandered off from a group on a school field trip and seems to have completely stepped of the face of the earth. Robert’s teacher was purportedly so upset that he had lost a child under his care that he committed suicide the following year. The 80s would see at least three more inexplicable disappearances on the mountain, and in all of the cases no trace of the victims has ever been found.
More recently and well-covered is the case of 31-year-old Zayd Dada, who was a Zimbabwean tourist of Indian descent. On January 4, 2014, Dada went on a hike up the mountain with his wife and another couple in the early morning hours and he would never return. Allegedly when the group got about halfway up the mountain Dada wandered off for a moment to see the scenery as the others rested, tired out by their exhausting hike. When Dada did not return the remaining hikers searched for him but could find him nowhere, prompting them to notify authorities. An extensive search was launched involving the Zimbabwe National Army, the Air force of Zimbabwe, and the Zimbabwe Republic Police, as well as numerous mountain climbers, professional trackers, and volunteers, who swept the landscape using advanced technology such as 3D satellite maps and infrared scanners. Every possible route up the mountain was painstakingly searched to no avail, and the story made national news in Zimbabwe at the time. Even after the official search found no sign of the missing hiker, the grief-stricken family distributed a plentitude of flyers in several different languages across the region. So desperate were the friends and family of Dada to find him that they even sought council from local tribal chieftains, who arranged traditional rituals to appease the spirits of the mountain, but this too proved to be futile.
Perhaps even stranger than those who have vanished without a trace on the mysterious Mount Nyangani are those who have disappeared only to reappear later with decidedly bizarre stories to tell. One such account concerns a senior government official who went missing on the mountain in the early 1980s while out on an excursion with two companions. The group was missing for a total of 4 days, during which time search operations were unable to find any trace of them. During this time, the group later claimed that they had wandered aimlessly in a confused state, and that they did not feel tired, dehydrated or hungry at all the entire time. They also reported that they had seen searchers looking for them but that they themselves had seemed to be invisible, neither seen nor heard when they called out to their would be rescuers.

It is said that it was only when tribal leaders in the area made a desperate blood sacrifice to the mountain spirits that the missing official and his companions were miraculously found again, and although they had been gone for 4 days they themselves believed that they had been gone only a few hours. It was claimed at the time that they had been stuck in a sort of intermediary realm between realities, held their by the spirits of the mountain until they had been appeased, imprisoned in a kind of state of suspension or limbo called chimidza by the natives. Indeed, others who have gone missing on Mount Nyangani and come back alive have been reported as having been in sort of a trance-like state when found and unable to fully remember where they had been or what exactly had happened to them. Are these all cases of what I like to call the “almost vanished;” people who were in thrall to dark forces that sought to make them disappear but who somehow managed to escape their pull and come back with fantastical tales of weirdness?
Even more recently and just as weird is the case of a 20-year-old British tourist named Thomas Gaisford, who bravely went out to explore Mount Nyangani in November of 2014. A second-year university student, Gaisford had won an award called the Wallace Watson Award Lectures, which helps and funds students to make rugged treks to remote areas for study and has the objective of helping students to “gain a greater ability and self-confidence in handling physical and mental adversity and a better appreciation of other cultures and ways of life”. The adventurous young man embarked on a trip to the summit of the mountain alone, but was enthusiastic and optimistic about the ordeal. However, things would take a turn for the strange rather quickly.

Thomas Gaisford at Mount Nyangani

At around 3 PM, Gaisford claims that an unusually thick bank of fog descended from the mountain to fully engulf him. Disoriented and unable to find his way through the murky soup of fog that had surrounded him, Gaisford decided to set up camp and pitch a tent to wait out the strange weather, shortly after which an abrupt, heavy rain began to lash out at him. He would end up staying there overnight, and in the encroaching darkness he reported that he had been watched and circled by various animals, which had seemed to almost be keeping an eye on him or studying him. He followed the advice and warnings of local villagers who had told him to ignore any animals that were acting strangely, which they had said meant that they were not of this world, and he would later say of the whole bizarre and unsettling experience:

I prayed and slept there for 10 hours. Several scary snakes approached me. I never disturbed them. They came in numbers, but I stood still. Various animals frequented the place and I could see shining red eyes of several animals staring at me. My character was tested. I remained steadfast. I woke up the following morning after the fog had cleared. I climbed down before I proceeded to Leopard Rock on foot.

Was this the account of a man merely scared and alone on a mountain notorious for its unpredictable weather, perhaps with all of that sinister legend dancing around in the back of his mind to amplify the terror of the situation, or was there something more ominous and perhaps supernatural pulsing in the background? If Gaisford had not set up camp and waited out the mysterious fog ensconcing him would he too have become another one of the mountain’s victims, doomed to vanish off the face of the earth like the others? Gaisford himself had been skeptical about the spooky lore surrounding the mountain before his trek, as well as the warnings that locals and tribal elders had given him before setting out about the supernatural menaces lurking out there on the peak, but the strange ordeal made him think there may have been something to it. He would reflect on the experience, saying:

I had heard lots of strange stories about the mountain, but I never believed them. I tried to put that at the back of my mind. I never consulted traditional leaders before I embarked on the expedition, but I later realized that I should have done that. I am happy to be alive. There is more to experience. I have learnt a lot about Zimbabwe and about myself.

Mount Nyangani

What is going on at the seemingly cursed Mount Nyangani depends largely on who you ask. If you ask the tribes of the area they will spin fabulous yarns of angry wandering spirits, dark magic, and forbidding zones between dimensions that trap souls. Tribal elders have long warned that it is absolutely necessary to follow the rules of the mountain and to not anger the many roaming spirits that eternally guard it. According to the locals, the missing people are being held captive by the spirits of the mountain, and that if only they had followed the etiquette they would have been fine. They also claim that the only possibility of bringing these lost people back is through intense rituals to ask these spirits for forgiveness, and they have urged park officials to cooperate with enacting guidelines to follow the proper, scared methods and rituals of calming the spirits of the mountain. One local by the name of Sekuru Nhando recalled one of the searches and how it related to these rules thus:

The search was called off due to the heavy winds and what these people failed to read was that the helicopter was swayed by the winds to Hauna area, which is where one of my descendants lives. He was supposed to lead the rites. But when my medium tried to tell the search team, they didn’t heed her calls so I just left it like that. They are all alive and well. They angered the spirits but will be returned when proper channels are followed.

Perhaps a more rational explanation is that the very terrain invites disappearances. This is a place of sharp, spectacular weather changes and unusually thick mist build-up, which can endanger and disorient hikers. It can also conspire with the perilous terrain that features sharp drops, craggy, rocky footing, sudden steep gorges, and trails that become quickly overgrown and faint from the relentless encroachment of vegetation fueled by the constant rainfall here. All of these factors can spell trouble for even the most experienced hiker, and the slightest mishap can leave someone stranded or injured in foggy conditions, unable to find their way out or even worse plummeting down a steep cliff to their death. The conditions here can be so dangerous that there have been strong pushes for new safety rules and precautions for the many visitors that come to this majestic place each year, and some of these have taken effect. Currently, hikers wishing to explore the mountain are required to pay a 5$ an hour fee to be accompanied by an experienced guide, they must fully charge their cellphones before beginning their trek, and they must be equipped with a flashlight with fresh batteries. For its part, the government has been busy setting up new cellphone and radio towers in the vicinity and regularly clearing and marking the main, safer trails, with plans to construct trails that are fully paved.

Mount Nyangani

Whatever the causes behind it, Mount Nyangani remains a mysterious place that marries stunning natural beauty with ominous legends, strange phenomena, and sinister vanishings. It seems to be at once a real place endowed with beauty yet beyond time and almost beyond reality, existing in its own realm to look down into our world from its looming vantage point above the world of green sprawled out at its feet. This is a land traditionally deemed to be the habitat of spirits and strange creatures, full of ancient magic and modern intrigue. What mysteries and perils, natural or otherwise, hide up there in those mists? Indeed, what happened to those who ventured here only to never return? Were they the victims of the simple hazards of hiking in such a potentially deadly place, or did the mountain choose to keep them for itself? Whatever the real reasons, Mount Nyangani has remained true to its nickname and swallowed them all the same, and this place of mysteries old and new remains there surveying its domain, in a sense an inscrutable presence that may forever lie beyond our grasp to fully understand it.

Bizarre Vanishings and Mysteries of Pecos, New Mexico

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~hehe folks "something" ...has been go~in ON & STILL is go~in ...on ?

• http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/01/bizarre-vanishings-and-mysteries-of-pecos-new-mexico/
•  January 4, 2017
•  Brent Swancer

 

Some places seem to have a habit of drawing people in to never return. Whether it be the terrain itself or some other forces beyond our current understanding, there are places on this planet of ours that appear to be in a sense malevolent, hungry even, pulsing with an undercurrent of ill-defined but detectable dread. One such place is located in the U.S. state of New Mexico, which at first glance looks like a land of rugged beauty and pristine wilderness but which under this veneer has a darker aspect, and is the the location of strangeness and vanishings that defy explanation and continue to remain unsolved to this day.
Located in San Miguel County, New Mexico, of the United States, the village of Pecos lies just outside of the city of Santa Fe, and lies right in the center of some of the most scenic terrain in the state. The immediate vicinity holds the expansive Pecos Wilderness area, as well as the Santa Fe National Forest, featuring vast swaths of pristine wilderness just a stone’s throw from the Santa Fe metropolitan area, making the region a popular place for hiking, fishing, camping, and a variety of other outdoor activities. However, it seems that some of these weekend adventurers are destined to make this a one-way trip, swallowed by the area under often bizarre circumstances.

The Pecos Wilderness

One of the more well-known mysterious disappearances associated with the area is that of 61-year-old Mel “Melvin” Nadel. A successful business man who owned a gym, and in very good shape for his age, Mel lived with his wife and teenage daughter in an affluent residential area south of Santa Fe called El Dorado. On Sept 6, 2009, Mel decided to go off on a hunting trip with two others, his brother-in-law and his friend Joe Muniz, into the wilderness of Elk Mountain, just north of Pecos, New Mexico and not far from Santa Fe. The group drove in along a logging road and set up camp right along the lane and discussed their plans for the trip. At around 4:30 PM, Mel’s two companions went off along a trail deeper into the forest to hunt while he decided to build a hunting blind closer to camp.
The two other hunters returned to the camp at around 7 PM but Mel was nowhere to be seen. A quick search of the camp and the area around it turned up no sign of him, and his jeep was parked right where it had been. The men called out into the woods but there was no answer, and after several hours passed with no sign of their companion, they began to worry that he had gotten lost. They honked the horns of the vehicles and even fired off their weapons in an effort to help the possibly lost Mel find his way back, but it came to nothing and authorities were notified. It was assumed that if he was lost he would probably get through the ordeal, as the area was not particularly remote, with the city lights of Santa Fe glittering in the fairly near distance, he had been adequately dressed for the weather and terrain, and he was well-armed with a bow, hunting knife, and firearm, which had all gone missing with him.
The following day, with still no sign of Mel Nadel, a search was launched of the area, which grew in scope until it became one of the largest in New Mexico history, involving hundreds of people, all terrain vehicles, scent dogs, and aircraft, and some strange clues were found. Dogs were able to locate Mel’s footprints and scent trail, which led out to around 100 yards from the camp along a path until they just suddenly stopped. When the dogs reached the end of the tracks, they reportedly became confused and unable to pick up the scent again. In the spot where the footprints and scent abruptly ended there was no sign of a struggle or wild animal attack, no torn clothing, no blood, no vehicle or animal tracks, no nothing, just those taunting footprints that just stopped in their tracks. It was as if Mel Nadel had simply stepped off the face of the earth into oblivion.

Mel Nadel

Baffled authorities could make no sense of it, and they began to form theories as to what may have happened. One was that Mel had carefully backtracked and then fled to go off and start a new life, but why would he do that? By all accounts Mel was a happy family man and successful business man who did not owe money to anyone and had no known enemies. Monitoring of Mel’s bank accounts showed that they were untouched, with no money ever withdrawn in the wake of his vanishing. Another theory was that he had been attacked and dragged off by some wild animal, but there was absolutely no evidence of this. Both the trail and the camp itself were pristine, with no sign at all of any kind of struggle or violence and no animal tracks anywhere in the vicinity. More far-out, unofficial ideas that have been brought up in the years since the vanishing are that he was abducted by aliens or had somehow stepped through an inter-dimensional portal. To this day Mel Nadel has never been found and his strange disappearance remains a perplexing mystery.
Another weird vanishing in the Pecos area is that of 71-year-old Emma Tresp, who was originally from North Little Rock, Arkansas. On August 31, 1998, the very healthy and active Tresp left her daughter’s home in Stillwater, Oklahoma to begin a road trip to Pecos in order to join a retreat at the Benedictine Monastery there, where she had been several times before and which was a familiar route for her. Her drive took her to out over the horizon and into the annals of mysterious vanishings. Although she had planned to be at the monastery in the late afternoon or early evening Emma never arrived, and on September 6 Emma’s car was located by a hunter abandoned along a stretch of Pecos County Service Road 63A, also locally known rather ominously as Camino Del Diablo, or “The Devil’s Road.” Emma Tresp was finally reported missing on September 8.

The Devil’s Road

An investigation found that the woman had last been seen alive at a service station in Santa Rosa, New Mexico on August 31, at 3PM, where she had filled her car with gas and was picked up on security footage. After that she had for some reason ended up on the rugged, rutted Devil’s Road, which leads off into unkept wilderness and was strange considering that it was certainly not the well-paved road that led to the monastery, and Emma should have known this as she was quite familiar with the area and had been there before. This led authorities to believe that she had somehow gotten confused and taken the wrong road, after which her car had gotten stuck in a rut, but it could not be ascertained just how she could have possibly mistaken the eroded, unforgiving terrain of the decrepit Devil’s Road for the immaculate paved lanes of Pecos Monastery Road. The Devil’s road starts off smooth enough, but quickly devolves into a mess of potholes, ditches, ruts, steep inclines, and overgrown portions, eventually ending at a crumbling old abandoned fire tower. Why would she have chosen this unforgiving route she did not know, and considering her car had apparently continued along this rough terrain for some time before becoming stuck, why would she have not turned back? Indeed, where had Emma herself gone off to?
When a search team was brought in, it was found that there were footprints from the missing woman circling around the car, but that none of them actually led off into the wilderness. Strangely, scent dogs that were brought in were unable to find a trail to follow off into the woods, and trackers could not figure out what direction she could have possibly headed off in. All evidence seemed to suggest that Emma had never left the immediate vicinity of her vehicle, yet she was not there. Within the car itself were found all of her belongings, including her suitcase, purse, a working, fully charged cellphone, and all of her cash. There was no note left behind and no foreign fingerprints or sign of any sort of struggle to be found. No one could figure out why the elderly woman would have set out from the vehicle without taking at least her phone and money, and without leaving any discernible trail behind.
Hundreds of trackers, law enforcement personnel, and volunteers scoured the area on foot, horseback, and using aircraft, and a hefty reward was offered for information on her whereabouts, but nothing was found. Indeed, not a single scrap or trace of the missing woman was turned up except those tracks around the car, and Emma Tresp has never been found. Theories of what happened to her include animal attacks, foul play, or her simply becoming confused or disoriented and wandering off, perhaps with every intention of coming right back, only to get lost or injured out in the forest, but there is no evidence of any of this. Of course there are also the ideas that she was abducted, by humans or otherwise (aliens), but again there is nothing to point to this. Another possibility is that she was chased down the road and this is why she had continued along it until getting trapped, but the questions of who would have been chasing her or where she had then gone remain unanswered. As State Police investigator David Martinez said of the weird mystery, “It’s like she vanished off the face of the Earth, there are no answers.” Eerily, and adding another dimension to the strangeness surrounding the case, is the fact that Emma Tresp vanished a mere 5 miles from where Mel Nadel had disappeared, and both remain missing.

Although these two cases are the most modern and well-known vanishings of the Pecos area, though which the Devil’s Road meanders, apparently the region has a rather sinister history of disappearances and strangeness. The native tribes of the area long believed the region to be inhabited by a wide range of evil spirits and supernatural creatures, such as a shapeshifting demon known as El Viveron, as well as giant snakes and shadowy specters, and it was a place they mostly avoided. Early European settlers also claimed that strange lights haunted the area and that people had a habit of vanishing off the face of the earth here, although it is impossible to know just how many. It is also worth noting that the Pecos area is often the the location of UFO reports, as well as sightings of mysterious dancing lights in the woods and sudden flashes of brilliant light that seem to have no obvious cause.
Are these disappearances the result of the rugged terrain of the area getting the better of some? Are they the result of could play, a serial killer, or people just wanting to disappear? Or is there some other mysterious force at work which lies at the bottom of these mysteries? Is this all inter dimensional portals, aliens, or is there perhaps something to the old Native tales? Is this a place imbued with forces we cannot comprehend? Whether the reasons are rational or mind boggling, the fact remains that these people have gone missing under bizarre circumstances that have baffled investigators and amateur sleuths for years and the only ones likely to ever know their fates are the victims themselves, and perhaps whatever lies out there with them.

 TAGS: Bizarre, modern mysteries, mysterious disappearances, mysterious places, UFOs, unexplained phenomena, unsolved crime, unsolved mystery, vanishing

THE GMO SCRAPBOOK: 2016 ENDS WITH BAD NEWS FOR IG FARBENSANTO

https://gizadeathstar.com/2017/01/gmo-scrapbook-2016-ends-bad-news-ig-farbensanto/

If you've been following the GMO issue, or more precisely, what I've been calling "GMO geopolitics" over the last few years, then 2016 did not end on an "upbeat" note for Mon(ster)santo, or as I also like to call the GMO "agribusiness 'community'", IG Farbensanto. In fact, so many people sent me so many articles these past few days about GMO news that I decided to lump them all together in a kind of "GMO news grab bag" in this blog, because when one considers all these separate stories together, then a very interesting pattern emerges. Consider these stories: first, a recent study of GMO corn establishes that it is... well... garbage:

An integrated multi-omics analysis of the NK603 Roundup-tolerant GM maize reveals metabolism disturbances caused by the transformation process

China and the Butterfly Effect (Revolt against GMOs grows locality by locality)

Even the New York Times finally gets it (it took them long enough! but hey, nice of you guys to finally get with it after so many years) and points out the conflict of interest culture pervading government agencies with corporate lackeys:

New York Times confirms GMO industry ties at National Academies of Sciences

And the revolt spreads to Argentina and Italy:

Argentinian Federal Prosecutor Requests Ban on GMO Crops over Glyphosate Fears

Italy: Ban on Cultivation of Genetically Modified Organisms

And finally, Russia, which has banned GMOs, is proposing a labeling law for the entire Eurasian Economic Community:

Russia Proposes Clear GMO Labeling for Eurasian Economic Union

Normally, as regular readers here know, I tend to focus my commentary on one or at most two articles per blog, But there's something very intriguing going on here, something that I cannot help but indulge in a little of our trademark high octane speculation. First, note the dates of these stories, in order, from the first to the last linked articles above, are as follows:

1) Dec. 19, 2016 (the scientific study)

2) Dec. 27, 2016 (the F. William Engdahl article on the Chinese provincial ban)

3) Dec. 28, 2016 (the New York Times article)

4) Dec. 28, 2016 (the article about the Argentine Federal Prosecutor)

5) Dec. 26, 2016 (the Italian-EU GMO ban)

6) Dec. 27, 2016 (the Russian proposal for GMO labeling in the EEU)

In other words, yet another damning story about the "assured science" of GMO safety appeared, followed quickly by stories of GMO bans in China, Italy, Argentina, and a story about the Russian proposal for an EEU-wide GMO standardized labeling law, and a New York Times article about the double-standard culture of conflicts of interest between big government agencies and corporate science.

Now I'm far from suggesting that there's a direct causal relationship between all these stories. There isn't. But I do suggest that there is a contextual causal relationship between then, for the science - some of which we've attempted to cover on this website - behind GMO "safety" is anything but settled, and increasingly looks to be very dubious at best. What all these stories suggest is that the issue is "getting out there", no doubt in part because of the resolute opposition to GMOs by countries such as Russia, and the more quiet but questioning attitude of China and other countries. In the case of China, as Engdahl points out, the provincial ban is bucking the line being put out in Beijing, but there may be quiet economic considerations working behind the scenes, economic considerations that, in fact, dovetail perfectly with Beijing's long term silk road strategies:

On December 16, 2016, the Provincial Heilongjiang Legislature passed a total ban on the growing of Genetically Modified or GMO crops. The ban goes into effect on May 1, 2017, in some five months. Farmers in China’s Heilongjiang province, one of China’s top grain producing regions, will be prohibited from growing GMO crops, according to the provincial regulation just passed. According to the new law, the ban will be on growing of GMO corn, rice and soybeans. Further, illegal production and sales of GMO crops and supply of their seeds will also be prohibited, as will be illegal production, processing, sale and imports of edible GMO farm produce or edible farm products that contain GMO ingredients. Any GMO food can only be sold in a special zone, clearly indicated in stores as GMO food products, a variation on labelling.

The legislature acted after a broad survey of the provincial population in October revealed that more than 91% of the population objected to the cultivation of GMO crops. The official ban follows discovery this past September that some 10% of Heilongjiang soybean farmers were illegally planting smuggled GMO soybean seeds despite the fact that the Beijing national government still bans planting of GMO commercial crops, allowing so far only controlled research to be done on GMO “biotechnology.” The farmers had been told, wrongly, that GMO seeds would increase their harvest yields. Farmers found guilty of growing illegal GMO crops face a fine of up to 200,000 yuan or $31,480. In China, owing to a US-promoted loophole in ban on GMO, GMO soybeans as animal feed are allowed in China. Some 60% of all soybeans consumed in China is, as a result of that unfortunate loophole, today GMO. Monsanto and other Western GMO purveyors promote their GMO seeds at agriculture fairs and farmers can buy the seeds online, even though planting is illegal.

In August the giant Chinese state chemicals group, ChemChina made a staggering $43 billion bid to acquire the Swiss GMO seeds and agrochemicals group, Syngenta. Recently Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Prime Minister have given very positive statements about the potential of GMO and biotechnology to contribute to the push to make China a high-tech economic actor. The latest decision of the people and legislature in Heilongjiang sends a clear signal opposing that Beijing strategy.

The butterfly effect of the Heilongjiang ban on GMO crops will definitely affect future agriculture relations between China and neighboring Russia. Heilongjiang Province has the longest common border with Russia of any province, the two countries’ boundary demarcated by the Amur River. Earlier this year, the Russian Federation’s Duma approved, and President Putin signed a law banning all commercial cultivation of GMO crops in the Russian Federation. The Heilongjiang ban potentially can open up Sino-Russian grain trade on a GMO-free basis, creating new synergies.

And that I suspect, is the real pattern and story here, as countries increasingly wake up to the fact that the science of GMOs, of their safety and even of their long term productivity over ordinary "heirloom" seeds, is dubious at best and debatable at a minimum. To put my high octane speculation as nakedly as possible: these articles attest to the emergence in 2017 of my long-predicted "GMO geopolitics," which we may define as "a pattern of contrarian science, coupled with national or regional policy, to drive a revolt against American pro-GMO policy and the influence it has had on US foreign policy" (consider only the GMO story hovering in the background of the mess in The Ukraine). At a much deeper level, there is an epistemological and policy formation culture that we see emerging with this GMO geopolitics - a game Russia is playing with much greater facility than anyone else - and that is the formation of a global culture, based in science, informing provincial, national and regional policy. By this I mean that the contrarian science, that science opposed to, or questioning the corporate scientific studies of GMOs, need not prove its case in order to formulate policies; it need only call into question the opposite studies. Does one want, and should one, formulate global food (or any other) policy based on corporate science alone (as the USA did under the first Bush administration with respect to GMOs, and has continued to do more or less uninterruptedly since then), or should the attitude be more skeptical? In the wake of dubious and questionable science, and in consideration of unknown and potentially hazardous long-term implications of such new technologies, the answer of common sense would seem to be "err on the side of caution." The USA, by committing to a national domestic and foreign policy based on bad corporate science, in fact committed a long term strategic blunder, exposing itself on the world stage to charges of corporate favoritism, mercantilism, and punitive policy to the opposition. In effect, it itself birthed the "GMO geopolitics", and is reaping the whirlwind. The only thing that can stave off the effects of this GMO geopolitics is a serious reappraisal and refashioning of domestic policy regarding it. And that, in short, is what we may be witnessing slowly happening.

It's taken the rest of the world a long time to catch up, but the issue will not go away, and I strongly suspect that in 2017 we're going to see this GMO geopolitics become a template for expansions of this epistemological attitude to other areas as well - nuclear energy, the whole "climate change" meme, and so on - with similar effect. And again, the west will be the last on the bandwagon. I also suspect that we'll see detailed engagement between Russia and China (and perhaps India and Japan as well) on this issue, and a few joint declarations issued.

And one final note: observe that the scientific study takes direct aim at the notion of "substantial equivalence", the doctrine put forward by the GMO companies during the Bush administration to argue for a lax attitude from the FDA on GMOs... in other words, the science itself is now (finally) addressing the core "epistemological" and "ontological-taxonomical" concept put forward by the GMO companies.

And that really is a first. It's a bombard vs the masonry fortifications of that corporate science...