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I’d love to hear the “international view” of this topic.  It’s about “GMO” food, and it’s a topic that I’ve been quite interested in lately.  (GMO) stands for “Genetically Modified Organisms”.   “Organisms” mean “living things”.  ”Genetically modified” means that the genes (genetics) have been changed (modified).  In this case, it’s essentially talking about fruits and vegetables that have been changed by scientists.

This is big business:  HUGE business.  There are several large multi-national corporations that are trying to change and control the food we eat.   They hire scientists to play around with the natural genes in plants and some animals.  They want to make fruit and vegetables that are bigger, more colourful, more difficult for insects to eat, better at growing in hot/cold weather…

That sounds great if that’s the whole story.  Unfortunately, it’s not even close!

The reason I started looking into this topic was because I was doing some research on the types of foods that will make me healthiest.  I want to change my diet to eat only the stuff that will make me look and feel the best, live the longest, and give me the most energy.

When I was researching this stuff, I saw a lot of information about how “big business” is controlling our food.  I sort of knew they were doing it, but I recently found out that it’s MUCH worse that I thought before.

There are many problems with GM food.  One of them is that the companies don’t test them for long enough before allowing the people to eat them.  They don’t really know if these foods are healthy or not for us in the long term.  They just “hope for the best” and only care about whether or not they are making money.  It’s much easier to grow and sell GM foods, and big business is ONLY about making money.

To be honest, I don’t really care if some companies are playing “mind games” with us and trying to get us to buy an iPhone instead of a Samsung; it’s just a phone.  What makes me sick, however, is the idea that they do this with everything, even the food we eat and the water we drink.

Another problem with GM food is that it’s horrible for local farmers.  These companies own the legal rights to their seeds and they force farmers to grow and sell these foods.  The farmers have no choice, because if they are growing a big field of rice or corn, they won’t have control if one little patented GM seed blows in the wind and onto their field.  If this happens (which ALWAYS happens) the big company can take the little farmer to court and say that the farmer is cheating by stealing their seeds.  This is even true if the farmer only has 0.01% GM food by accident.  It’s sick!

Many people are starting to “wake up” to the problem with GM foods, but these companies are so strong and tricky.  Just a couple weeks ago there was a big court battle about this topic.  Of course, the rich companies won…..  What happened was this:  One state in the USA wanted to force people who grew GM products to put a GM label (a sticker) on the food.  This was to let the people know what they were buying.  That seems totally reasonable right?  People should absolutely know if the food they are buying has been played around with by scientists or not.  But the court said that the GM companies DO NOT have to put labels on the food.  This is crazy, and this means that we don’t know if the food is GM food or not when we are shopping.

I watched a couple AWESOME documentaries about this topic.  They explain about the whole modern farming industry and what is going on by these insane companies.  They show what happens when mice eat these GM foods (It’s really scary and I hope this won’t happen to us later.  Many mice get sick or get cancers from the GM food).  They show how difficult life is for the farmers from all over the world.  They interview one Canadian farmer who took the company to the biggest court in Canada.  The company, Monsanto, tried to scare this farmer and this company does it to farmers all over the world.  I’ve shown my friends and family these documentaries and they all thought they were awesome.  I put BOTH full length documentaries here in the special VIP community for you guys to watch and discuss.

I’d love to know what you think or know about the topic of GM food.  What is the news saying about this in your country?  Do you believe it?  What do you think we can do to fight for healthy food?  Do your farmers have to grow this stuff?  Be careful.  I hope these large companies lose and they don’t control the world’s food.  ”Google this” and do some research on GM food in your country and please share with us.

I haven’t talked to you guys yet about a “conspiracy theory” but I’d love to.  I’ve been getting interested in these lately and I want to get your thoughts.  It’s interesting to talk about, get international opinions about, and also great for teaching new and useful English.

First of all, here is the correct pronunciation of the word “conspiracy”.  It’s pronounced like this:  ”conspeerasee”.

A “conspiracy theory” is basically a theory that is a complete contradiction to whatever the government and the media want the “stupid people” to believe.  There are many conspiracy theories, some are true, some are not true, but many are interesting to at least think about.  It’s always better to hear both sides of an argument and think for yourself.  It’s terrible to “take anyone’s word” for something.  If you “take someone’s word” for something, it just means you believe them without questioning them.

One example of a conspiracy theory is the many people wondering if astronauts from the USA “REALLY” landed on the moon in the 1960′s OR if they just “faked it”.  Some people believe it was definitely true, some people are suspicious and believe it was fake.  That type of thing gives you an idea of what a conspiracy theory means.

Any time you hear “911″ or “9 eleven” you are either hearing about the emergency police and fire phone number in the US and in Canada, OR you are hearing about what happened on September 11th, 2001.  That was a day that changed history.  I personally HATE the way the US reacted to this tragedy when the airplanes flew into the buildings in New York city.  I think they over reacted and made the world LESS safe, not more safe.  What do you think?

There are many conspiracy theories about what exactly happened on that day.  Many people believe it was a huge “cover up” by the government, which means that the government wanted to hide the truth and the real facts from the people.  No one really knows exactly what happened on that day or why it happened, but it’s important that people ask questions.  I’m not sure if the government is lying or not, but I do know that there are a lot of “unanswered questions”.

One of the unusual things that happened was the fact that the government claimed that they couldn’t find the black boxes in the airplanes.  In case you didn’t know, there is a “black box” in every major airplane.  This is basically a super protected box that has the audio or “sound recordings” of what happened during a flight.  These are important to investigate any plane crash to see EXACTLY what happened.  They make these “black boxes” almost “indestructible”, which means that they can not be destroyed.  They ALWAYS find the black boxes after a plane crash, but this time, they said they couldn’t find either of them.  That is TOO WEIRD to believe.  It certainly seems possible that there was something that happened on those flights that the government doesn’t want the public to know about.  Are they hiding them?  Why?  What exactly happened?

Also, there are stories of another building called “building 7″ that fell down with no plane hitting it.  Why did it fall down?  There are no good answers from this.  The government calls all this stuff “top secret”.  Also, on August 6th 2001, the government was warned that there would be attacks from airplanes, but they did nothing with this information to protect anyone.

It’s possible the government totally messed up and are super embarrassed so they want to hide the truth.  Some people believe that they even allowed these attacks to happen to have an ‘excuse’ to go to war with Iraq.  That was a TERRIBLE idea to go to another war, but with no 911 attacks, the government couldn’t get the public to agree with war.  If they used these attacks for an excuse to go to war and simply pretended that these attacks were done by “the bad guys” to convince the public, this is called a “false flag operation”.  That is when the government does something terrible to it’s own people while pretending it was an enemy who did it.  The reason to do a horrible ‘false flag operation’ is so that they can make more people believe that a war or some other retaliation is a good or sensible idea.

The truth is that I don’t really know what happened on that day; obviously.  But, I do know that there are some serious unanswered questions and it bothers me that the US government is hiding this info.  I’d love to know what happened.

I watched a very interesting documentary about this.  I think you’ll really like it and also learn some good information from it.

I got a free copy of it and I will include it for free in our awesome private community.  You can watch it there and discuss it with us in the private group.  It’s fun to watch, interesting, and great for learning English.  Looking forward to discussing it with you guys here.

Love to hear your comments.  What have you heard about this in your own country?  What do you think happened?  Do you have any questions about the vocab that I was explaining in the blog?  Is there any other English words you’d like to know that I didn’t explain?

Please feel free to write whatever you want.  I love reading what you guys have to say.  Please let me know any blog topic suggestions you might have…

Again, watch and discuss the 45 minute conspiracy documentary with us here.

This blog post is actually more of a discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of “Youtube” or “independent news” VS “mainstream news”

Mainstream news would be stuff like the news on TV, or major newspapers like the New York Times.  If it’s a big company making news, it’s “mainstream news”.  They have the advantage of having more money than independent bloggers or people making news on Youtube.  They can use all that money to send their staff to find out the real story.  They might (not always) be more attractive (if they are on TV) or talented at writing (If they write for a major newspaper).   Sounds like they should be a lot better right?  Well…

The problem with mainstream news is that it’s almost impossible to tell exactly how fake it is and how much BS they are feeding us.  Why would a major news organization want to make fake news if they can just tell the truth?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this question lately for some reason.  (I’m weird, I know.  You can say it.  Lol

Companies pay millions of dollars for advertising to the mainstream news companies.  So, even though the news organizations can theoretically write or say whatever they want, it’s the companies who are actually in control because they are paying the money.  They are not in direct control of the content, but they will take their advertising dollars to another place if they aren’t happy with the content of the news.

I read somewhere that climate change was hardly talked about at all last year by anyone in the mainstream media.  This is a perfect example of the power companies have with the advertising dollars.  Do you think that big oil companies will want to advertise on a news channel or newspaper that talks about how terrible oil is?  No way!  Do you think that Walmart will want to spend millions of USD on advertising to news channels that talk about how Walmart loves paying terrible wages to their workers and how they also try not to give them health insurance?  Obviously not.

So all private news stations and newspapers are corrupted by the people who pay them money.  It’s a huge problem and it leads to a very brainwashed society.

When I was growing up, I remember learning that government owned news networks are terrible because they always lie to make their own country look good and other countries look bad.  That is totally true, BUT, as I’ve grown up, I’ve also learned that news from private news companies is also a huge joke.  It’s almost impossible to get reliable news because there is so much bias in mainstream media.

Independent news shows on Youtube and people are blogging about the news are a lot better in the sense that they can say or write whatever they want because they don’t deal with advertisers directly, but the problem with them is that they don’t have the money to get the real information themselves.  If a blogger wants to write about a news story, they can’t send someone to the actual place the event is happening, they can only follow the mainstream news and then make their best guess from that.  It’s sick!

Hopefully this will change with “new media”, but it’s going to take some time.  BTW, “new media” is basically a term that describes the ways of getting information on the internet.  ”Youtube, Twitter, Blogging, etc”.  It’s in contrast to “traditional media” which is print newspapers, online newspapers, and TV news.

The news is different in every country, and it shapes our cultures and our understanding of the world.  I’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions on how you think the news is covered in your country, how you think it’s covered internationally, and what you think a possible solution is.  Do you even think it’s a big problem like I do?  Very curious to hear your thoughts on that below.

Add and I are also SUPER excited this week since the launch of our brand new private English community.  I’ve got a very strong feeling this is going to kick ass more than anything we’ve ever done, BY FAR.  Thanks to everyone who is in there already, and thanks especially for sharing your stories and helping to make it kick total ass.  Hope to see more of you in there… (It will be awesome; just sayin…)    :)

Looking forward to your comments as always guys!

Have a great day!

I was just having an email debate with some of my American friends.  To be honest, I don’t think there is a huge difference on this topic between the thinking of Canadians and Americans in general, but I personally certainly had a different opinion than many of my friends (although, I do understand their point of view)

Here’s what happened…..

There was a really important basketball game yesterday between the Miami Heat and the Indiana Pacers.  After the game, the media always interviews the players on TV.  One of the players was upset and said some “bad words”.  He wasn’t saying them directly to anyone, but he was definitely swearing when he was upset.  The player apologized later for saying the bad words.  The word that really got him into trouble was the word “homo”, which is a very negative term to describe a gay man.

He doesn’t hate gay people, just the word came out when he was angry, and he did say sorry after.

Then…..

The NBA fined him $75 000 USD.  To be honest, $75 000 is nothing for him, because the guy makes 12 million dollars a year, but still, he did have to pay this money.

The question is, “Should the player still have to pay money for saying a bad word and then apologizing?”

I personally think “NO”.  Not if it only happens once or twice.  Sometimes people say things they don’t mean when they are angry.  Then they apologize.  I don’t see the big deal if it’s not happening all the time.

Some people think it’s really terrible, and this player should pay this money for saying these words.  They think it’s very bad if some kids are watching TV at that time.  To be honest, I think I understand that point of view, but I just don’t really think it’s SO TERRIBLE if a kid hears a bad word.  They will hear these words anyway in life, and as a parent, you can just say “Those are bad words so you shouldn’t say them”.

I think the world is getting too “politically correct”.  People are too worried about saying the right thing all the time.  I think this worry makes for boring and fake people on TV.  No one can give an opinion any more without worrying about the consequences.  People are so scared to say something “bad” on TV that they “play it safe” and don’t share their real personalities, opinions, jokes, etc.  It’s like we’re forcing famous people to be like perfect little fake robots.

I hate it!  I think it’s foolish and it’s not helping society.  But I do realize that it is not a fact, but rather my opinion on the situation.  I’d love to hear your opinions below.

And I also want to point out something new and exciting.  Within the past 5 minutes, Add and I just opened up our new private English learning community.  We really hope you take a look and see if it’s right for you.  As of right now, Add and I are the only members, BUT this will grow fast and we will stop accepting members at some point.  It’s not for everyone.  If you think you might be interested, now is the time to try it out.  Looking forward to seeing you in the kick ass private community

We’ll talk to you on there.  Lot’s of awesome stuff to come on there.  Join up and see what it’s all about if it sounds interesting to you.  (I’m only about 99.9% sure you’ll love it)