Day 15, May 1, 2008
We are here in Ottawa during a free day when nothing formally related to Codex happens. The Codex Committee on Food Labeling has concluded its work for this year and what happens next is that today, Thursday, is the day that the Codex Secretariat spends preparing a report which will reflect (supposedly) what happened at this meeting. This report will be available tomorrow at 8 AM for everyone to read and then, from 9 AM onwards, the fun starts.

Since the Secretariat has compiled all of the dialogs and proceedings, amendments and corrections (remember, this is a commission that will spend hours fighting over the insertion of a comma – literally) into a draft report, countries and organizations which take exception to what the report says or what it does not say, or how it says it, or the innuendos of the way something was written, or whatever, have the opportunity on Friday, May 2, to go over the report in deep detail. DEEP detail.

Usually, this is simply an exercise in pedantic “place holding” but when the issues are hot and there has been no consensus, despite the assurance by Chair that “I believe we have reached consensus” on the issue, this final session of each meeting gives the participants a final opportunity to play a round of psychological and legal chess by creating a document more to their liking than the discussions may have been or, sometimes, more in keeping with the reality than the report is!

I have spent the day feverishly trying to catch up on emails (I now have 5329 unopened emails in my private email box – none of them spam!) and other issues which require my attention (like laundry!) but have been ignored because of the pressure of events, including reading the huge amount of documentation produced at a Codex meeting. Late in the afternoon, with Canadian Springtime beckoning outside my window, General Bert and I walked over to the market area behind the Rideau Conference Center where the meetings are held each day. There, in a rebuilt market building I saw a group of magnificent hand painted silk blouses, jackets, scarves, etc., in all the colors I love. Alas, unlike the years when I had an income because I was the Medical Director of a successful drug-free medical practice the wonderful textiles were out of reach for me. In years past, I would certainly have bought some of these marvels to take with me. General Bert and I have given up our home, our practice, our income and our personal comfort to become warriors for that most precious of possessions, freedom, specifically, health freedom. And when we have a week like we had this week at this meeting, with real forward movement for a life and death issue like the mandatory labeling of GM food, it is clearly worth it. In case you did not catch it, you might want to take a look at the Press Release that the Natural Solutions Foundation issues about the heavy handed (and, in the end, unwittingly productive for our side) imperial behavior of the US. Here it is: http://www.prweb.com/releases/GM_Labeling/Codex/prweb909004.htm.

This atrocious attitude on the US’ part led to a strong determination of the African countries to develop their own requirements without waiting any longer for Codex to give it to them.

Once other countries start demanding mandatory labeling, we can, too, because our manufacturers will not want to have two labels, one for the US and one for the rest of the world, we will have a much better shot at getting our food labeled, too. Remember, this will be a BIG battle since the corporate friendly FDA has made it clear that they know consumers reject GM food (with good reason!) and will try to keep it from being labeled. That’s the situation now: it is illegal to label food with GM components!

The tide is turning and, if we ride it right, we can ride it in to a safe harbor where our food is clean, safe and labeled! But we have to start now. When the campaign begins, it is essential that we are not hundreds of thousands strong, but millions strong! You know that this is true for every one of our issues – no forced vaccinations, medical privacy, the right to truthful health claims backed by science, the right to know what our food contains and has been exposed to (e.g., pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, irradiation), the right to food that is clean and unadulterated, etc.) – the more of us there are, the more impact we have, not just in a linear motion, but an exponential one!

Therefore, I am asking each person reading this to take a few moments and send an email to your friends, neighbors, contacts, etc, and ask them to visit our website, www.HealthFreedomUSA.org and ask them if they will join the free, secure distribution list for the Health Freedom eAlerts by clicking on the orange tab on the upper right hand corner and filling in your information (http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=187).

And while we are on the topic, let’s talk about getting here and to the next place and the next one after that, having the resources to do this work and keep on doing it.

General Bert and I take no salary or compensation of any kind for the work we do. We devote our selves much more than full time to defending your freedom and ours. When there have been short falls, we have made them up so that our reserves, retirement funds, etc., have gone into this battle as well as our skills and capacities. And we have, in fact, built the largest health freedom organization in the world. More than that, we have created alliances inside the US and outside of it to bring about the structural, legislative, awareness and social changes which will defend those freedoms from the massive forces threatening them.

But that is expensive. Let me be frank: this meeting, at which we have been an important part of the forward motion (unintended by the US and its corporate and globalist allies, of course, was one which we would not have been able to attend for you if we had not received, pretty close to the last minute, a generous donation which covered our airfare. Well, a pledge, really, since we have not yet received the money, just the verbal assurance from people we trust that the money would be transferred to us soon enough so that we could pay for this trip. Since the donors are honorable people, we trusted them and bought our air tickets and booked our hotels on the basis of their pledge.

This constant worry about where the money is going to come from to keep your freedoms – and ours – protected diverts energy and time from the battle which needs to be waged. Many of you are generous supporters, giving what you can give and giving it more and more through a recurring donation. We appreciate your support enormously and it is the only reason that we can do what we are doing. The larger the list, the more effective we are at getting heard. And the larger the list, the more effective we are at raising the funds to make all of this possible. Very simple, very elegant, very real.

If you are already a supporter making a regular recurring donation, THANK YOU! If you are an occasional donor, thank you, as well, and won’t you consider making another donation today or turning your occasional donations into a recurring one. And if you are one of the folks who has not given your financial support, large or small, to the Natural Solutions Foundation, now is the time. Click here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/index.php?page_id=189) to make sure that the most powerful voice in health freedom, yours, is there to speak for you in effective and on-going ways!

I cannot think of many times in which such an effective battle for freedom has been waged by so few with so few resources with such high impact. Keep it going! Please! Donate generously. Oh, did I mention that all of your donations are tax deductible? They are! Act now for us all!

Day 16, May 2, 2008
Travel day today, but first I attended as much of the Report session of the CCFL as I could. The draft reports are distributed at 8 AM and then the discussion starts at 9 AM. This time, when the discussion of Agenda Item No. 5, Labeling of GM foods, began, there was blood on the floor. Although the rule is that no new information or discussion can take place and that this process is only to assure accuracy in the final report when there is a hotly contested area of debate, this is another fertile ground for getting things to read the way you want them to read.
The amount of backing and forthing, corrections and dissections this topic aroused was remarkable, just remarkable. There was a prolonged discussion in which the exact wording of a sentence about how the co-chairs of the Ghana Working Group on labeling of GM foods had presented their reports which went on for close to an hour. And it went on and on and on and on.
Finally, I had to leave because we had to catch a plane (I had allowed several hours extra to make sure that we would be present for the full report session, never imagining that it could possibly take as long as it did!). Three hours later, we learned from another delegate who also was leaving to make a plane that the discussion was still stuck on the same section!

Although this seems absurd, the reality is that it is very, very good news for our side.
After all, it means that people are not being bullied. Of course, the US was fighting for every comma, period, jot and tittle of territory it could find to make sure that the strength of the pro-GM labeling folks was mitigated. But our side was doing a good job of playing the same game to mitigate the US position to prevent labeling, as it does so effectively in the US.

More to follow!
Now we are flying to New York to take a plane very early in the morning to Panama. We will hook up with Ralph Fucetola, one of our trustees, and with Tyson Phillips, a member of our team, to fly to Panama for a meeting with people interested in becoming participants in the demonstration project there. If you are interested in that project, which is part of the Natural Solutions Foundation’s International Decade of Nutrition, visit www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org.

Day 17, May 3, 2008
We left JFK (New York) at 6:31 AM (which meant we had to be there at 4:30 AM – YUCK!) and arrived in Panama at about 10:35 AM. We took a taxi to the Country Inn and Suites Hotel and learned, to our pleasure, that our reservations were being honored. This has not always been the case here, I can tell you! So we took our bags up to the rooms and started planning for this week coming in which people will be gathering who are interested in the Santa Clara project.

After we got settled in, we met with our Panamanian lawyer and had a very good meeting lasting several hours in which we asked all of our unanswered questions and got knowledgeable and useful answers. We are very much encouraged about how this project can be put together from the legal and regulatory point of view.

This was a lunch meeting that went on for several hours so none of us were particularly hungry. But all of us were desperately tired and wound up wishing we were asleep long before we were!

We could not go to sleep, however, because we were in the midst of a very interesting meeting shortly after the first one ended. We met with an architect who is VERY concerned over organic and natural issues and is highly supportive of our project. She works for the Government and knows exactly whom we need to talk to and what we need to do. That is great news. Even better news is that she feels that the project as we see it is exactly in line with what the Panamanian Government wants to encourage and that we will not have any difficulty with setting it up from the regulatory point of view.

The Panamanian Government will conduct the Environmental Impact Statement we need and she suggested that we should work with Panamanian Universities to get a great deal of what we need done. We had not thought of that but were very grateful for her suggestions. We will certainly stay in touch with her! Good meeting. By the time it was over, though, all of us were moving through a fog of fatigue which we could barely see through. My bed was sweet to lie in!

Day 18, May 4, 2008

Tyson, General Bert, Ralph and I spent the entire day conferencing on Natural Solutions Foundation issues until Tyson suggested, wisely, that we needed a handbook for the people coming down for the Santa Clara Project. We realized that he was right and set to work to produce one. (Members of the NSF-Panama Forum can see it under “Files” in electronic format). We raced off to the nearest mall to get copies made and bound and got back just in time to meet with two of the people who had come to Panama for the gathering, had dinner with them and then raced back to do the Sunday Conference Call for the Santa Clara Project.

The ability to demonstrate and teach sustainable agriculture and to create a community around that agriculture is an important part of the concept of reclaiming the production of food and the Natural Solutions Foundation is proud to be creating this community as part of its health freedom work. Interested? Send an email to Ralph Fucetola at ralph.fucetola@usa.net with “PANAMA” as the subject line and ask for an invitation to the NSF-Panama Forum. We’ll send an invitation and you can join the discussion to become a part of this amazing project.

Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedomUSA.org
www.Organics4U.org