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hmm maybe I slightly overreacted on hearing this initially, this seems to be old legislation, not new legislation...

Some 98 per cent of vegetable varieties have disappeared over the past century and regulations are hastening the decline, according to an organic charity.

Garden Organic, which is dedicated to researching and promoting organic gardening, said 95 per cent of the vegetables eaten come from just 20 species of plants.

Remaining traditional species from Britain and abroad are facing extinction due to European Union regulations that ban the sale of seeds unless the variety is registered on a national or EU list.

Garden Organic said the loss of species threatened the diversity and of our food. Relying on a few species also threatened the security of supplies
...


telegraph article

I recently heard somewhere about new legislation in the UK to ban sales of certain varieties of organic vegetable etc. seeds in other than small qtys... I searched online but couldnt find anything, does anyone know anything about this?

TIA

woah that is quite incredible if its real!

:roll:

N.B. tried to post url for this article but kept getting error when posting...
it is:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ho ... 25802.html

Civil liberties groups raise alarm over extension of surveillance without warrant

By Nigel Morris, Deputy Political Editor
Monday, 5 January 2009

Police have been given the power to hack into personal computers without a court warrant. The Home Office is facing anger and the threat of a legal challenge after granting permission. Ministers are also drawing up plans to allow police across the EU to collect information from computers in Britain.

The moves will fuel claims that the Government is presiding over a steady extension of the "surveillance society" threatening personal privacy.

Hacking â€" known as "remote searching" â€" has been quietly adopted by police across Britain following the development of technology to access computers' contents at a distance. Police say it is vital for tracking cyber-criminals and paedophiles and is used sparingly but civil liberties groups fear it is about to be vastly expanded.

Remote searching can be achieved by sending an email containing a virus to a suspect's computer which then transmits information about email contents and web-browsing habits to a distant surveillance team.

Alternatively, "key-logging" devices can be inserted into a computer that relay details of each key hit by its owner. Detectives can also monitor the contents of a suspect's computer hard-drive via a wireless network.

Computer hacking has to be approved by a chief constable, who must be satisfied the action is proportionate to the crime being investigated.

Last month European ministers agreed in principle to allow police to carry out remote searches of suspects' computers across the EU.

Details of the proposal are still being developed by the Home Office and other EU ministries, but critics last night warned it would usher in a vast expansion of police hacking operations.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights campaign group Liberty, said such a vast expansion of police powers should be regulated by a new Act of Parliament and that police should be forced to apply to a court for a warrant to hack into computers.

She said: "This is no different from breaking down someone's door, rifling through their paperwork and seizing their computer hard drive."

Ms Chakrabarti said the organisation believed it had strong grounds to challenge the practice both under British and European law.

Dominic Grieve, the shadow Home Secretary, said: "The exercise of such intrusive powers raises serious privacy issues. The Government must explain how they would work in practice and what safeguards will be in place."

A spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said police carried out 194 hacking operations in 2007-08 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, including 133 in private homes, 37 in offices and 24 in hotel rooms.

The spokesman said such surveillance was regulated under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.

"The police service in the United Kingdom will aggressively pursue serious and organised criminality, including where that takes the modern forms of hi-tech crime," he added.

The Government faces criticism over the erosion of civil liberties on a series of fronts. It is working on plans for a giant "big brother" database holding information about every phone call, email and internet visit made by everyone in the United Kingdom.

The first Britons will receive biometric identity cards at the end of the year, paving the way to the world's largest identity register. Genetic details of more than four million people are on the DNA national database, the highest proportion of any Western country. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Britain's policy of retaining samples from people never convicted of a crime â€" including children â€" breaches human rights.

http://www.rawcuisine.co.uk/whats-happe ... mentarius/

http://www.anhcampaign.org/campaigns/codex/

Will this legislation affect ethnobotanical suppliers? Or are they exempt as selling herbs not for medicinal use/as ethnobotanical specimens?


We Become Silent

Does anyone know of a wholesale source of roasted/black loose yerba mate? I can only find bulk suppliers of the green unroasted variety...

TIA,
-A

[Fruiting bodies develop and mature in the main channel, constantly submerged, near aquatic vegetation, and where observed fruiting over 11 weeks]

Apparently this species seems to live permanently underwater...

SOU faculty and staff have discovered gilled mushrooms (as in mushroom gills, not fish gills!) growing underwater in the clear, cold, flowing waters of the Rogue River. This has never before been documented. Anywhere! The initial discovery was made by Robert Coffan, Adjunct Professor of Hydrology in the Environmental Studies Department. However, it was the collaborative efforts of his colleagues in the Biology Department, Darlene Southworth and Jonathan Frank, that verified its uniqueness. The research team has submitted a manuscript, which is currently under editorial review, to a scientific journal called Mycologia. Here is the manuscript abstract...

Abstract: Psathyrella aquatica is a new species of Basidiomycota with true gills that has been observed fruiting underwater in the clear, cold, flowing waters of the upper Rogue River in Oregon. Fruiting bodies develop and mature in the main channel, constantly submerged, near aquatic vegetation, and where observed fruiting over 11 weeks. ITS sequence data place this fungus in the genus Psathyrella. These appear to be truly underwater mushrooms and not mushrooms fruiting on wood recently washed into the river. Substrates include water-logged wood, gravel, and silty river bed. Water constrains spore dispersal. Spores were observed as wedge-shaped rafts released into a gas pocket under the cap. Underwater gills and ballistospores indicate a recent adaptation to the stream environment. This particular river habitat combines the characteristics of spring-fed flows, clear, cold, aerated water with woody debris in shallow depths on a fine volcanic substrate. The presence of nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria near fruiting body attachment sites suggests a source of nitrogen in an otherwise clear stream. This observations adds to the biodiversity of stream fungi that degrade woody substrates. This is a new habitat for gilled mushrooms.

grrrr mindless thugs

maybe having to fall in line w/EU regulations? apparently they're gonna  ban weed in NL sometime in the next few yrs as well...

Just in case anyone didn't see this...



A new species of mushroom, dubbed Psathyrella aquatic, has been discovered in the upper Rogue River. Biologists believe this is the first gilled mushroom to be found living underwater in the world. The bubbles on the top of the mushroom are caused by an unknown gas...




SHADY COVE â€" Hydrologist Robert Coffan knew he was looking at something very unusual in the knee-deep summer waters of the upper Rogue River.

Here were gilled mushrooms, swaying in the main current of the clear, cold river in early July through late September.

"But since gilled mushrooms DO NOT live and grow underwater, I was real nervous" about approaching a mycological expert, admitted the adjunct professor at Southern Oregon University.

Indeed, Darlene Southworth, a retired SOU biology professor, was plenty skeptical when he broached the subject. Although she was impressed by underwater photographs taken by Coffan, she wanted to see the evidence firsthand.

Not only did she witness the mushrooms found by Coffan, but she discovered others during an August visit to a stretch of the north fork of the river within a few miles of Woodruff Bridge in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest.

"There are no known gilled mushrooms living underwater," Southworth explained. "And this is not a slime mold or anything like that. These are regular gilled mushrooms.

"We believe this is a new species," she concluded of the mushrooms that are typically about 10 centimeters tall with caps that are about 2 centimeters wide.

The find was unveiled Monday night at the November meeting of the Upper Rogue Watershed Association, for whom Coffan had prepared a water assessment last year.

Dubbed Psathyrella aquatic, the mushroom is being introduced to the broader scientific community in a 14-page paper submitted Nov. 9 to the science journal Mycologia. The paper was written by Coffan in collaboration with Southworth and Jonathan Frank, a laboratory technician at SOU.

Coffan credits Southworth, who now conducts research under a National Science Foundation grant at the university, for focusing on mycorrhizal fungi, and Frank for the paper and much of the research in determining the mushroom's uniqueness.

Up at Oregon State University, Matt Trappe, a doctoral candidate in forest mycology, says Coffan has found a unique mushroom. He and his father, Jim Trappe, a retired U.S. Forest Service mycologist who now teaches in OSU's botany and plant pathology department, were consulted on the find.

"As far as we've determined, this is a first in Oregon as well as a first in the world," Matt Trappe said of gilled mushrooms living in water. "We're not aware of anything at all like this in mycology where the reproductive mushroom structure appears to be perennially underwater.

"If this evolved in Oregon, what are the odds it can be found in streams and rivers around the world?" he asked. "This raises all kinds of questions about spore disbursement and evolution."

There are more questions than answers at this point, acknowledged Coffan, who originally discovered the water-dwelling gilled mushrooms in summer 2005. None of the mushrooms were found in slack water, he noted.

A DNA analysis at SOU's Bio Tech Center and a cross-check of references and experts, including mycologists at the University of Minnesota, determined the mushrooms belonged to the genus Psathyrella, Southworth said. Samples were sent to OSU and to San Francisco State University.

There are about 600 known species of Psathyrella, all terrestrial, she said.

"How do we identify them? We look at the morphology â€" the form, the shape and the DNA," she said.

It has a small bell-shaped cap, a thin stipe (stem) and gills underneath, she said. They examined the cells in the cap and made a spore print.

Researchers have ruled out the possibility the mushrooms were growing along the banks and were merely submerged by rising waters brought on by snowmelt.

The mushrooms were found in the spring-fed "base" flow of the river, Coffan said, noting that flow is consistent and keeps the mushrooms submerged.

The mushrooms tend to grow on submerged wood but can also be found growing in the gravel, Southworth said.

"These are growing in the same place for three months, " she said, adding they have been found as late as Sept. 21.

Although there are some known freshwater aquatic fungi, this is the only known gilled mushroom that grows underwater, she reiterated.

"We noticed there is a gas bubble underwater," she said. "When we pulled the mushroom out, we could hold it up for some seconds before the spore burst. But they would not be uniformly distributed. They would stick to the cap, to the stipe, to Jonathan's fingers."

They don't know what the gas is, she noted.

They are also intrigued by its three-month fruiting season.

"That's way long for mushrooms," she observed.

As for their edibility, Southworth figures the waterborne mushrooms are too small to warrant collecting for food.

However, several of the terrestrial Psathyrella are edible, although most have never been tested as a food source, according to her research.

"There is no reason it would go toxic," she observed of a member of the genus growing in water.

Meanwhile, Coffan, Southworth and Frank plan to return to the area to conduct further research to try to determine the extent of the mushroom's habitat. They also want to check out other streams in the region for evidence of the mushrooms.

"But it will be next summer before that is feasible," she said. "Right now we can describe this one river: It's aerated, cold, clear, steady flow. But we want to find out how the spores are dispersed."

"And we want to find out how unique the habitat is," Coffan said. "We have a whole new area to look for mushrooms now. It's mind-boggling."


By Paul Fattig
Mail Tribune
November 20, 2007

original artikle

[We havethe technological power,the engineering skills,to save our planet,to cure disease,to feed the hungry,to end war.But we lack the intellectual vision; the ability to change our minds.]

Take the analogy of 100 people stranded on an island. They have enough food and water for all to survive for 15 days max but the rescue ship will not come for 30 days. 50 could survive until the ship comes but not all 100. Should all die or should half be denied so the other half can live? Life involves some difficult choices at times.

I think the mathematics in this analogy are misrepresentative of the complexities of Life on Earth. We create our own future. As to who will survive, it will likely be those who are able to cooperate and build truly sustainable communities - whether this is on a local or more global scale would depend. Peasant farmers in Africa and other 'poor' regions may be at an advantage compared to ppl in industrialised countries when the energy deficit really starts to come home. Energy won't run out for a while - there is always the sun, if serious investment was put into solar tech. i'm sure energy problems could be easily solved. btw, what about cold fusion?

I totally agree the problem is one of unequal distribution and vested interests... if people started being more empathetic, hypercapitalist tendencies were tuned down and people were less greedy/selfish in general, i'm sure a truly symbiotic society could evolve.

...like Terence McKenna once said -

We have
the technological power,
the engineering skills,
to save our planet,
to cure disease,
to feed the hungry,
to end war.
But we lack the intellectual vision; the ability to change our minds.

hey, im no fan of mr. gates either... i was just using him as an example of a rich person who at least apparently donated some of their money to something supposedly beneficial; in contrast to the banking families.

He is putting his money into Africa and other third world nations instead of here where he made his money. He gives vaccines and food to the over populated people there. What happens when the food runs out? Who is going to feed all the kids they raise? It's like putting kerosene on a fire.

If over-population is a problem it is a global one, not just over 'there'... remember the current 'prosperity' and relative technological superiority of developed nations is partly due to circumstances resulting from historical (and ongoing) exploitation of other countries e.g. Africa.