ELECTION IS OVER

Yes. Its over and the results have surprised the pundits and the novice alike. It was only a day earlier that friends were predicting NDP to get 60 seats and me telling them that's unlikely, but they might get 50.

As it turned out, the Liberals got 50. We were also predicting the Greens to get three of four seats. They got just one. Vicki Huntington got re-elected as the only independent voice of BC, from Delta south.

So, what did the Langley Gang do? They watched the unfolding drama on a television at Princess B&B, the abode of the Martin family. No GMO Wally had contested in the election on the Green party ticket from Langley riding.

The picture above shows most of the gang, except for Anu, who clicked the picture. The Victory sign is not because Wally won - he did not win. The gang is upbeat because, some day, we shall win.

We just gotta take care of our health, not die soon, and generally hang around 'til we win in a future election. And in order stay healthy and live long, well, you gotta eat organic, avoid chemicals and pesticides, and follow Wally Martin's wardrobe style and wear a NO-GMO T-shirt time to time.
He is selling them in case you cannot find one, for some ten bucks or so. Living long and healthy has never been this economical before.

A FOLLOW UP TALK WITH

DR. BHARGAVA

After listening to Dr. Thierry Vrain talking about the bad science of GMO, I had gotten an initiation on how the genome's function was way more complex than the backdated ideas of the biotech firms that create the GMO organisms.

But, having been initiated into it, my appetite for the subject had grown. I needed to understand the fragility of the technique used to create transgene organisms, possible side effects of such endeavors and ways to test them.

Dr. Thierry Vrain was not close at hand. Nobody was. But, I tried to call Dr. Pushpa Bhargava, the most noted biologist and Genetic Engineering expert in India. And he was available, and willing to talk. Dr. Bhargava, along with another English scientist, were jointly credited for coining the term Genetic Engineering, back in the early 1970s. Unknown to each other, they had independently published articles on the topic, and used the term Genetic Engineering, for the first time in that context.

And Dr. Bhargava was patient and did provide many of the answers I sought. I learned that the gene sequences with their coding region, along with other genetic support material, marker genes and so on, are all contained in what is called Gene Cassettes, and how it usually fragments with pieces going everywhere and causing substantial damage and alteration to the receiving genome.

Etc etc etc. I recorded the conversation with his permission, and am editing it now and intend to put it up in due course on my blog site.
Dr. Bhargava is 85 years old, and yet his mind, and his grasp of the subject, is as sharp and ever, partly because he is still attached to his work, in contact with colleagues and scientists around the world on this topic and he still goes to his lab, where analysis of genetic material is still done on a daily basis.

The Rodeo and country fair is upon us this weekend, and Jas Singh of God's Little Acre Farm has a very large stall at the entrance of the fair. And anti-GMO folks for Surrey will have a table at the Kids Zone within that stall.

And so, there is a plan by Phil Harrison, to use that table for passing brochures, literature, and material, to visitors to the Rodeo. The kids would come to play at the kids zone, and Phil is hoping that the parents would drop by, get to know a bit about the GMO menace, and hopefully carry that knowledge home and eventually join the body of citizens who would act upon labelling, and banishing, GMO from Surrey, and their lives. It's a long drawn plan, but Phil is up to it. And Jas Singh, who is going to be some sort of a star attraction at the Cloverdale Rodeo, has managed to get us, the No-GMO folks, a table.

The Rodeo organizers were reportedly reluctant to get activists into the premises, but after back and forth between the parties, the table is in.
Phil and Teresa and others are going to be in the parade, walking behind Jas Singh's tractor trailer, passing leaflets and material about GMO.

I should be walking ahead of them facing back, filming it.