Thread: GM Foods is HOW they are doing it to us MUST READ

http://www.genet-info.org/genet/2004/Sep/msg00024.html

Gene-manipulated Seeds: Are We losing Our Food Security Too?

Washington and London are united not only on policy in Iraq. Tony Blair and George W. Bush also agree that the world should be saturated with gene-manipulated (GM) or genetically-engineered crops and seeds. Its advocates, including major chemical giants Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont and Bayer, claim that GM crops are the answer to world hunger, and promise food security to growing populations. Astonishing enough, the claims are made in the absence of almost any serious independent scientific long- term study of the effects of GM crops on animal or human organisms. If the spread of GM crops continues at the current pace, within perhaps seven to eight years, the essential food supply of mankind will pass to the corporate control of perhaps three to four giant multinationals. Such power over life and death has never before in history been so concentrated in so few hands. Most shocking is that such a profound policy change is being advanced with almost complete absence of truly independent scientific study, or analysis of long-term possible negative effects of genetically modified foods, sometimes called GMO's, on either humans or animals. Since April 18, 2004 the EU, under heavy pressure from Washington, has permitted gene-manipulated foods to be sold inside the EU for the first time since a ban was imposed in 1998. The new rule appears to be a control of GM products, as it imposes labelling, somewhat like that warning on cigarettes, that a product contains a certain percent GM substance. The EU Agriculture Commissioner, Franz Fischler, an open fan of GM food, hails it as "farmers' right to choose." However, with this step, the EU moratorium on GM plants has now been effectively destroyed. And the world's second largest economic region now faces loss of its own control over the most vital commodity--its own food supply. In June 2003, immediately following the US occupation of Baghdad, President George W. Bush launched an offensive against the EU moratorium on GM products. Bush blamed the EU for starving Africa by its ban, and threatened to go to the WTO to challenge the EU moratorium. "For the sake of a continent threatened by famine," Bush then declared, "I urge European nations to end their opposition to biotechnology." Bush's urgency about lifting Europe's ban on GM products arguably had little to do with stopping starvation in Africa however. It had very much to do with future control of the world food supply by a power whose military already has developed the most awesome dominance of any military in history, and whose financial and economic weight dominates the world economy. If Washington and its corporate backers succeed in their GM push, it will be to the worse for mankind. How so? In late January the EU Commission approved sale of canned GM Maize by the Swiss biotech firm, Syngenta, allowing it to sell the food as corn-on- the-cob in EU shops and restaurants. The EU argues that the new rules on GM labelling make it safe to approve such foods. The same day the Belgian government said it was planning to approve a variety of GM oilseed or raps, for cultivation. In march, the EU Commission announced it was about to approve planting of an allegedly herbicide-resistant maize, NK603, owned by Monsanto, the world's largest owner of GM plant patents. At the same time Swiss giant, Syngenta, applied to German officials to begin trials of GM wheat crops in Thuringia. If the US experience is a guide, within a few short years, the entire EU agriculture production from Poland to Hungary to Germany and France, will be dominated by GM crops. The Polish Parliament, under pressure from Monsanto and the US agribusiness GM lobby, recently opened the country to wide use of GM crops in one of the richest growing soils in Europe. The EU Commission has opened Pandora's Box with its decisions to allow consumers a "choice." Brussels European Food Safety Authority is reviewing applications from Monsanto and Syngenta for GM maize cultivation and feed use. No independent research Most shocking is the near total absence of fundamental independent research on the possible effects on humans and animals of introducing GM substances into the food chain, as the floodgates are opened for changes which could potentially alter the way we live and even who lives. British Minister for Environment, Michael Meacher, was fired from his cabinet post by Tony Blair in June 2003. The reason, according to British sources, was Meacher's refusal to back untested use of GM plants. Meacher, after leaving the Cabinet, accused the Blair government of "rushing to desired conclusions which cannot be scientifically supported." The UK Soil Association backed Meacher's charge, stating, "The decision whether or not to allow the commercial growing of GM crops is a momentous one, potentially one of the most far-reaching that any government has had to take in terms of environment and public health." The Soil Association went on to warn, "The only human GM trial so far found that GM DNA transferred to bacteria in the human gut, while animal trials have seen a doubling of death rates among chickens fed GM feed and the development of gut lesions in rats eating GM potatoes and tomatoes." What they did not state was evidence as well that Britain's BSE or mad- cow scare a few years ago may well have been the result of feeding cattle GM feed.1 In August 1998, the world's leading GM research expert, Hungarian-born scientist, Dr. Arpad Pustzai, was fired from his job at the UK Rowett Institute research center. His career was ruined and he was blacklisted from finding further work. His crime was that he had the courage to go public with alarming research findings in a British ITV television interview. Pustzai revealed that his research on laboratory rats showed rats fed GM potatoes suffered stunted growth and immune system damage. Pusztai stated his data showed that the diet of GM potatoes led to smaller livers, hearts and even affected brain size. His research was embargoed, his research team disbanded and he was forbidden to talk with his colleagues about his former work. Pustzai, an eminent scientist with more than 35 years published professional research, later found he was fired on the intervention of British Prime Minister Blair. It seems that then-President Bill Clinton phoned Blair, after himself being alerted by Monsanto of the danger were the Pustzai research to gain worldwide attention. At the time Monsanto, a US chemicals firm famous for the deadly Agent Orange used in Vietnam, produced 91% of the world's GM seed. Clinton had reportedly been the one to convince Blair of the benefits of promoting GM foods as a major new field for UK industry.2 One year later, in the Scientific Conference of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements in 1999, delegates from 60 countries called on governments to ban use of GM food, citing possible threats to human health and risk to rights of choice for farmers. Dr. Michael Fox, a specialist in bioethics from Washington, cited evidence that with GM crops, foreign DNA can enter the human body; GM organisms can produce unanticipated toxins or allergens; that gene transfer can occur between transgenic plants and bacteria, "the ecological consequences of which can be catastrophic." He also reported that milk from cows injected with a GM substance, r-BGH, creates an increased insulin-like growth implicated in human breast cancer. Fox called for a worldwide moratorium on GM spread until adequate scientific risk assessments could be done. In March 2004, a report was released in the United States of tests by two independent laboratories who tested non-GM seeds, which make up the traditional seed supply for maize, soya and oilseed rape, the three most important animal feed sources. They found, according to a report in the UK Independent, that fully 67% of all conventional crops--corn, soya, rape oilseeds--had been contaminated with genetically modified material through wind, pollination and other causes. The study said farmers unwittingly planted billions of GM seeds a year believing they have normal or non-GM seed. This came only 8 years after GM crops were introduced in US farming. The report warned there could be "serious risks to health" if GM drugs or GM industrial chemicals from the next generation of GM products find their way into the human food chain. In one well-publicized incident, genes from Starlink (Bayer AG), a GM crop approved only for animals, planted in only 0.4% of all US maize, showed up in food across the United States including in tacos from Taco Bell. The tacos contained insecticide proteins not digestable by humans. GM seed pollution is at the heart of the GM issue. Once the door is open to any planting of GM seeds in a region, all seeds in that region are vulnerable to contamination, whether by wind carry or bees or other insects. There are little controls on large grain trading firms like Cargill or ADM, many of whom have been suspected of deliberately mixing GM with non-GM seeds. That contamination, or genetic pollution factor alone will spell the end of bio-farming, as well as of conventional agriculture within a few years at most as US experience shows. In another silenced study, Dr. Terje Traavik, director of the Norwegian Institute for Gene Ecology, found alarming evidence of GM effects. In the case of BT-Maize from US seed producer, Dekalb, evidence suggested that during pollination, the GM (maize) corn triggered disease in Philippine people living near the GM field. A virus used in making most GM foods, CaMV, was found intact in rat tissues three days after it had been mixed into a single meal, and was also confirmed in human cells. Most alarming, GM pox viruses recombined with natural viruses to create new hybrid viruses with unpredictable and potentially dangerous characteristics. Traavik urged immediate further investigation of the alarming findings. He said his research, "raises additional concerns that GM foods might encourage genetic instability and mutation, accidental expression of allergens or toxins from non-target genes, and even activation of dormant viruses ... We must investigate whether Bt-crops contribute to the unexplained rise of allergies." He was greeted with stony silence in major western media. A three-year UK government study, originally done under the supervision of Michael Meacher, and published in October 2003, showed that farmland wildlife is harmed more severely by the extra-powerful herbicides used by GM crops than even by conventional chemical herbicides. One argument used by Monsanto and the GM lobby to silence green critics of GM seeds, is the allegation they require less chemical herbicides. The UK biotech industry denied the report was important, and the Blair government approved "limited" GM use. The Meacher study also found that GM crops had been engineered to be herbicide tolerant and unaffected by even the strongest deadly chemical weed-killers like Monsanto's Roundup, a chemical so strong it kills everything in conventional crop fields including the crops, bees and butterflies.3 The Meacher UK study lasted 3 years, cost millions of euros, and found a 500% decrease in flora, a 25% fall in butterflies and fewer seeds in oilseed rape fields. The Blair government buried the results, and approved limited GM use this year. Fraudulent GM cost-benefit claims The spread of GM seeds to American farmers was made on the basis of fraudulent promises of major productivity gains and significantly lower chemical pesticide use. Reality does not support this; in fact the opposite seems the case. In 2001 Dr Charles Benbrook presented results of analysis of the economics of Bt Maize (corn). He found that over three years US farmers paid large price premiums for GM seeds and ended with a net loss of $92 million or $1.31 per acre from it. Benbrook also found that the "planting of 550 million acres of GE corn, soybeans and cotton in the United States since 1996 has increased pesticide use by about 50 million pounds." So-called 'herbicide tolerant' crops, which require far more use of special herbicides than normal plants, have been specially GM developed to insure that farmers who grow the GM corn or other crops are forced to buy the GM herbicide from the same company, such as Monsanto's Roundup.4 GM seeds were promoted aggressively to desperate US farmers in the late 1990's on promises of big profits and higher yields, and less weed problems. As of 2002, more than 70% of all US soybeans were GM plants, over 61% of all cotton and 25% of all corn. Supermarket products from Ovaltine to baby foods from Nestle, to McDonald's burgers contained GM food. An Iowa State University study by Michael Duffy showed that HT-Soya, a GM crop, lost $8.87 per acre compared with normal soya. In 2001 the Canadian government Biotechnology Advisory Committee stated, "...there is no publicly available survey or data on how individual farmers have benefited from adoption of GM crops in Canada." Another hidden cost to farmers for GM seeds is what Monsanto and others term a "technology fee." Monsanto charges an added "technology fee" on top of the already high seed price on the argument farmers will get the benefit of the GM technology. Including the fees, GM seeds typically cost farmers 24-40% more than non-GM seeds. For GM maize, costs run anywhere from 30% to 90% higher. In addition, when buying the seed, the farmer is forced to sign a "technology agreement" with Monsanto the supplier, legally forbidding the farmer from saving any seed for the next harvest. If he cheats, he risks legal action. According to a report by Food First Institute for Food and Development Policy in California, GM seeds "may be responsible for a string of crop failures." They report that herbicide-tolerant plants and weeds have emerged in the United States, and that glyphosate-tolerant weeds there are plaguing GM cotton and soya fields. Atrazine, one of the most toxic herbicides, has to be used with glufosinate-tolerant maize. More alarming, Bt proteins, used in about 25% of all GM crops worldwide, have been found harmful to a range of non-target insects, and many scientists have warned against releasing Bt crops for human use. Increasingly, large pharmaceutical companies are using GM crops to produce drugs, including cytokines, which is known to suppress the human immune system, induce sickness and central nervous system toxicity, according to FoodFirst. GM plants have also been documented to have produced interferon alpha, reported to cause dementia, and a viral sequence such as the 'spike' protein gene of the pig coronavirus, which is in the same family as the SARS virus which recently swept across Asia. Glufosinate ammonium and glyphosate are used with herbicide-tolerant transgenic or GM crops, in some 75% of all GM crops worldwide. Glufosinate ammonium is tied to neurological, respiratory and gastrointestinal toxicities and birth defects in humans and animals. Children born to users of glyphosate had heightened neuro-behavioral defects. Food First concludes, "The known effects of glufosinate and glyphosate are sufficiently serious for all further uses of the herbicides to be halted." Monsanto's Roundup herbicide has been found to cause cell dysfunction that may be linked to human cancers. But the most frightening danger of GM consumption is the inherent tendency of gene recombination and transfer, the main route to creating viruses and bacteria which cause epidemics. In 2001 an 'accidental' killer mouse virus was created in the course of an apparently innocent GM experiment.5 In February this year, Devinder Sharma, writing in the journal, BioSpectrum, reported alarming results of planting Monsanto Bt (GM) cotton. The Indian company, Mahyco-Monsanto, promoted the Bt cotton seeds claiming it had the built-in ability to kill pink bollworms, a major pest. Because of the claim, they were able to sell the GM seed at four times the existing seed price. In its first year of planting, the Bt cotton crop in India has failed, in some fields by 100%. In China, some 7 million hectares were planted with Bt cotton in 1999. Today, pesticide use has returned to earlier pre-1999 levels as the Bt cotton loses resistance to pests. GM cotton in China accounts for 50% of its entire cotton. This year, the Beijing government issued import certificates for several US gene technologies including five from Monsanto. More than 70% of China's soybean imports are GM. China is trying to develop its own GM rice and plant varieties, presumably hoping that might be safer. GM food as a US geo-strategic weapon The country which grows far the world's largest acreage of GM crops, the United States, allows GM agriculture to go ahead essentially unregulated. Owing to a 1992 Executive decision by then-President, George H.W. Bush, the US Government has ruled ever since that GM-altered seeds or crops are "substantially equivalent" to normal seeds or plants, and so, do not require any special testing! The term "substantially equivalent" was intended to be vague, giving GM companies full freedom in developing GM products. The ruling was entirely political, not scientific. Many of the US Food and Drug Administration scientists at the time disagreed. US courts have upheld the fact that GM foods are "unregulated." In other words, the most far-ranging alteration to the human food chain in history, with potential consequences unimaginable, is officially treated as if it were a new brand of toothpaste. Children's toys receive more regulatory control than GM foods. In short, GM foods have entered the diets of most Americans with no significant pre-market testing by the FDA or even the US Department of Agriculture. In fact the USDA holds many patents on GM seeds and stands to gain significant revenue from its worldwide sale. The 1992 decision not to regulate GM plants has been upheld by both Presidents Clinton and now by George W. Bush. The present Secretary of Agriculture, Ann Veneman, came from the board of directors of Calgene, a part of Monsanto, the world's largest GM seed producer. Veneman also sat on the powerful agriculture industry trade group, International Policy Council on Agriculture, with Monsanto, World Bank, Syngenta, Cargill, Nestle, Kraft, ADM and other power food multinationals. This group, IPC, defines all key policy issues in world agriculture trade. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld came from Chicago where his drugs company, G.D. Searle, was bought by Monsanto. Other members of the Bush Cabinet are in one or another way financially tied to the GM bio-industry lobby. At the very least, this indicates what a strategic priority GM food domination has assumed for Washington. At a time when US foreign policy under George Bush and Dick Cheney is guided by the looming crisis of oil depletion worldwide, and US efforts to control remaining oil and natural gas, the US push to spread GM seeds to the entire world food production assumes alarming dimension. There is an intimate link between the Washington government and the GM industry. A bio-imperialism? To counter the small number of truly independent research efforts, Monsanto and the biotech industry have funded their own partisan research, and aggressively slandered or attacked contrary studies. Monsanto and the USAID, the State Department agency which administers world food aid, along with the World Bank, finance the Kenya Agriculture Research Institute studies of Dr. Florence Wambugu. Her studies claim that GM crops could raise crop yields by 4-10 tons per hectare. Independent investigation by Aaron deGrassi of the Sussex Institute of Development Studies, revealed that the data used by Wambugu was fraudulent. "The transgenic sweet potato being used as the answer to Africa's food security was no improvement at all," Sharma charges. In April 2002, the respected British science journal, Nature, printed its first ever declaration that it had been "wrong," in printing a scientific paper. The paper was from University of California Berkeley scientists critical of GM, charging native Mexican maize had been contaminated by GM maize. Nature had come under enormous pressure from the GM industry. A media PR firm hired by Monsanto, Bivings Group, it later was revealed, ran the coordinated attack on Nature resulting in their repudiation of the research. Scientists at respected universities such as Berkeley, signed attacks of the Nature article. Some of the scientists were involved in a university GM research project that got $25 million from Monsanto.6 Given all the evidence, it is not beyond the pale to ask whether the Washington demand for worldwide use of GM crops and products is part of a more sinister agenda than mere corporate profit and greed of a few. In his historic and unexpected visit to West Africa in summer of 2003, President Bush offered food aid to several African countries. It had big strings tied to it. The US food aid was in the form of US-grown GM plants and seeds, not the traditional financial grant allowing the country to buy food on the market. Africans were told by USAID, the State Department agency in charge, either take GM or starve. The UN Food Program and the EU give food aid in financial grants allowing the country to buy locally or regionally. UK Chief Scientist, Prof. David King, called Bush Administration efforts to force GM foods on Africa, "a massive human experiment." When some African governments protested the US move, a US official replied, "beggars can't be choosers." The official USAID role is explicitly to promote GM crops as part of its food aid in developing or poor countries. Its own website boasts, "The principal beneficiary of America's foreign assistance programs has always been the United States. Close to 80% of USAID contracts and grants go directly to American firms. Foreign assistance programs have helped create major markets for agricultural goods..." USAID finances US corporations such as Monsanto to run GM research programs in Africa. A former Monsanto official is USAID consultant on use of GM in food aid. Recently USAID granted $100 million for a 10-year program, "Collaborative Agriculture Biotechnology Initiative or CABIO, to "help developing countries access and manage the tools of modern biotechnology." To help this along, USAID has pressured numerous developing governments in Africa and elsewhere to pass national laws on "intellectual property rights (IPR's)." Given the fact that GM companies like Monsanto and Syngenta are filing patents on GM maize, rice, soya and other natural crops, the day is approaching where a Kenyan traditional farmer or Indian peasant must pay a "technology fee" to plant rice or corn grown by their ancestors for thousands of years simply because a DNA gene has been altered. The WTO is in charge of enforcing these IPR's. Washington has the largest weight in WTO. USAID also funds the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri- biotech Applications (ISAAA). The ISAAA promotes GM crops for the developing world, from Africa to Asia and Latin America, including GM bananas, sweet potatoes, maize and papaya. ISAAA is funded by USAID together with Monsanto, Bayer AG, Syngenta, Cargill, Dow AgroSciences, and the US Department of Agriculture. Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe recently refused GM food aid. In Malawi, the IMF demanded the government sell its emergency grain reserves to pay its debts. Then, with a famine that could have been prevented, USAID demanded Malawi accept GM food aid. The South African government, on US pressure, approved $18 million for research on GM maize. Developing country farmers increasingly will be forced to go to Monsanto and other US and multinational companies to buy seeds each year, and special GM pesticides. The next likely step is likely to be introduction of the controversial "terminator seed" technology once the markets are dependent on GM crops. In 1999 Monsanto caved in to massive public pressure and announced it was not going to commercialize its Terminator Seed technology. The name is a deliberate reference to the Hollywood movies made by the California Governor. Terminator or GURT seeds, use GM engineering to ensure that any GM seeds replanted by a farmer are sterile, courtesy of a built-in GM sterilizer. Monsanto argued it was part of its protection of its "intellectual property rights." With Terminator seeds, a farmer cannot use a part of his seeds for the next harvest. He is totally dependent on Monsanto or his corporate seed source, and whatever price they decide to name. The vital right of a farmer to save and replant seeds will be gone. He will be a modern-era serf to seed company giants like Monsanto and Syngenta. In April 2003, Monsanto scientists published a paper praising Terminator technology benefits. The technology will take an estimated four years more to be ready for commercial introduction. At that point, with the largest growing areas of Africa, Asia, Europe and North and South America dominated by GM crops, the potential for Monsanto, Cargill and a handful of US-led agri-giants to "play God" with the human race becomes real and concrete. In May 2003, Monsanto won a surprising decision before the European Patent Office in Munich. After a 9 year legal battle, the company was given monopoly rights, European Patent no. 301,749, to "all forms of genetically engineered soybean varieties and seeds, regardless of the genes used." The patent has been attacked worldwide as immoral and illegitimate. In 2001 91% of all GM seeds in the world were from Monsanto. Syngenta holds the most patents on rice, including basmati rice grown for more than 2,500 years. Kissinger's NSSM200 and the GM revolution It is but a short leap of the mind to imagine the temptation for some leading policy circles in the Anglo-American establishment to impose Malthusian population reduction using their power over GM crops. This is especially credible in the face of growing shortage of vital energy such as oil and natural gas. In 1974 US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, proposed a Presidential security policy memorandum, NSSM 200, titled, "Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for US Security and Overseas Interests." NSSM200, which was made policy by President Ford in 1975, made population control and birth reduction official US foreign policy. It stated, "World population growth is widely recognized within the (US) Government as a current danger of the highest magnitude calling for urgent measures." The USAID, CIA, Agriculture Department and Defense Departments were all involved in formulation of the Kissinger policy. NSSM200 was officially revoked as US policy in face of heavy Vatican pressure, at least as open policy. But it continues to this day unofficially, as US foreign policy, imposed via third agencies, such as the IMF and World Bank, and their "conditionalities" for emergency financial aid. In an April 2002 article in Australia's The Age, Nobel Prize microbiologist, Sir Macfarlane Burnet, advocated biological warfare as a form of population control. Is the proliferation of GM seeds for every vital crop a part of such a strategy? For the sake of the human race we should make certain it is not.7 Current Concerns - The monthly journal for independent thought, ethical standards and moral responsibility. No 4, 2004, P.O. Box 223, CH-8044 Zurich, Phone +41-1-350 65 50, Email: editors@currentconcerns.ch 1 "Brussels clears GM maize to 'Please US' by Andrew Osborn, UK Guardian, January 29, 2004. "Meacher attacks GM crops," in BBC News, 18 February 2003. news.bbc.co.uk. 2 "Soil Association backs Meacher's stance on GM crops," press release, 23 June 2003, www.soilassociation.org. "World's top GE researcher was fired and persecuted by White House & Blair," by Andrew Rowell, The Daily Mail, July 7 2003. www.organiconsumers.org. 3 "Revealed: Shocking new dangers of GM crops," by Geoffrey Lean, Independent, 7 March 2004. "Proven: Environmental dangers that may halt GM revolution," by Michael McCarthy, Independent, 17 October, 2003. "New health dangers of genetically modified foods (and vaccines) discovered," by Institute for Responsible Technology, February 24, 2004 on www.organicconsumers.org. "Dangers of GE foods & crops," Dr. Michael W. Fox, Humane Society of the United States, www.hsus.org or www.organicconsumers.org. 4 "Farmer Income: seeds of doubt" by Norfolk Genetic Information Network, 24 October 2002. members.tripod.com. or www.non-gm-farmers.com. 5 "The case for a GM-free sustainable world," by Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy. Available on www.foodfirst.org. 6 DevinderSharma, "GM crops: If it can't work, fake it" in BioSpectrum, February 2004. in www.organicconsumers.org. "Monsanto's World Wide Web of Deceit," in The Big Issue, no. 484, 15-21 April 2002. reprinted in ngin.tripod.com. 7 "USAID and GM Food Aid," in Norfolk Genetic Information Network, 8 October 2002. Terminator details in "Broken Promise? Monsanto Promotes Terminator Seed Technology," ETC Group, 23 April 2003. Press release: www.etcgroup.org. and "Patently Wrong!" May 7, 2003, www.etcgroup.org. on Monsanto's success in a Munich Patent Court to win patent monopoly rights to all forms of GM soybeans and seeds regardless of genes used. "World Population Control: US Strategy and UN Policy Program," in www.fathersforlife.org.

BIRTH CONTROL IN TETNUS SHOTS!!!!!!

Seeds of Destruction:
The Geopolitics of GM Food
WILLIAM ENGDAHL / Current Concerns (Zurich) n.5, 6mar2005
In June 2003, President George W. Bush made the issue of lifting an 8-year European Union ban on genetically modified (GM) plants a matter of US national strategic priority. This came only days after the US occupation of Baghdad. The timing was not accidental. Since that time, EU resistance to GM plants has crumbled, as has that of Brazil, and other key agriculture producing nations. One year before, the future of GM crops was in doubt.
Now, some months and enormous pressure later, the strategists of GM food hegemony are on the verge of a control over the global human and animal food chain never held by any single nation or power.
The present debate over the nature of biotechnology and genetic modification of basic food such as maize or soybeans, misses the most essential point. The conversion of world agriculture by a small elite of biotech companies, most US-based, has little to do with corporate greed. It has very much to do with geopolitics and plans of some people to control world population growth over the coming decades.
The nature of American power projection in the world today rests on the development of key strategic advantages which no other combination of nations can challenge, what the Pentagon planners term, "full spectrum dominance." This includes global military dominance. It includes dominance of the world's limited, and rapidly depleting petroleum supplies. It includes control of the world's reserve currency, the dollar. And today it most definitely includes future control of world agriculture through control of GM patents and GM crops.
Before the end of the decade, if present trends continue, US global dominance will be based on control of the food supply of most of this planet, far more than military or even energy control. The geopolitical dimension of this prospect bears careful examination.A Rockefeller Trojan horse
The agency at the center of the GM controversy is the Rockefeller Foundation in New York. Over the past decade, this influential private foundation has spent more than $100 million in sponsoring research and development of GM crops to be deployed in world food production. They have specifically targeted key developing nations in their effort.
Their public statements suggest noble motives: "The Rockefeller Foundation is a global foundation with a mandate and a commitment to enrich and sustain the lives of the poor and excluded throughout the world," said foundation president, Gordon Conway, in a 1999 speech to the Monsanto Company, the world's largest producer of GM seeds and pesticides. Conway cites as justification for the GM revolution in agriculture the projections of an added 2 billion people in the world by 2020, amid a decline in existing agriculture yields, and increased degradation of soils and ecology. All indications suggest this is not the real reason GM plants are being promoted with a fervor.
Over the past 18 years, the Rockefeller Foundation has played a decisive role worldwide in spreading the acceptance of radical practices of genetic modification to countries and laboratories where a direct US Government research program would be greeted with greatest suspicion. The Rockefeller Foundation is, in effect, the Trojan Horse of GM proliferation.
It has gained entry in key countries in part by selecting key scientists from select developing countries to be educated and trained in the US or other industrial countries under foundation programs and auspices. It has done this by funding GM research and by using its influence in government and other agencies and NGO's. To date more than 400 leading scientists from the Philippines to Thailand to Kenya to China have been trained and cultivated by the foundation.
The Rockefeller Foundation has a murky past, since its creation in 1914 out of the Rockefeller family Standard Oil Trust fortune. Well before 1945, the foundation had been a leading funder of eugenics research, work made infamous by the Nazi race purity experiments. This included Rockefeller support to the American Eugenics Society and the Population Council. As the race breeding policies of the German Third Reich came to light after the war, Rockefeller strategists shifted profile to champion the causes of environment, resource scarcity and over-population. The policy remained one of global population reduction. (1).
Kissinger and NSSM 200
Since more than a quarter century, Rockefeller Foundation energy has been focused on biotechnology and genetic engineering research and promotion. This comes after decades of involvement in various population control schemes for the developing world. There is no contradiction.
In 1972 President Nixon named foundation board member, John D. Rockefeller III, to chair a Presidential Commission on "Population and the American Future." The same Rockefeller created the Population Council in 1952, and openly called for "zero population growth."
Rockefeller's Commission on Population and the American Future laid the foundation for Henry Kissinger's National Security memorandum, NSSM 200, of April 1974, which cited population growth in strategic, raw materials rich developing countries as a US national security concern of the highest priority.
During the 1970's, when Kissinger was National Security Council director as well as Secretary of State, food and oil emerged as strategic US national security commodities. Kissinger initiated the controversial "oil-for-food" strategy in which a food-deficient USSR imported vast sums of US grain and paid it with large export of Soviet oil for dollars. US domestic oil production, outside Alaska, had peaked in 1970 and began a steady decline. The US was becoming increasingly an oil import nation. National security became tied to security of cheap imported oil, and food was a weapon in the US security arsenal from that time on. Kissinger's Cabinet colleague, Agriculture Secretary, Earl Butz, reflected the Kissinger policy when he stated, "Hungry men listen only to those who have a piece of bread. Food is a tool. It is a weapon in the US negotiating kit." Kissinger was then chief negotiator.
In 1974, Kissinger submitted the NSSM 200 memorandum to President Nixon, naming population growth in key raw-materials rich developing countries as, a US "national security threat." Since that time, control of economic growth rates and population growth in key developing countries has been US national security priority.
Kissinger owed his political career since the late 1950's to his stint as a researcher for the Rockefeller family, and owed his rise to power to their backing. The Rockefeller family had been at the center of US oil and raw materials geopolitics since early in the 1900's, when the Standard Oil Trust was built. Kissinger was well aware of the importance of food and energy to US national interests.
With Kissinger's NSSM 200, Washington official policy was to impose restrictions on fast-growing developing countries, policies which would significantly cut population growth. In NSSM 200, Kissinger implied that famine might be an effective way to reduce population: "…large-scale famine of a kind not experienced for several decades - a kind the world thought had been permanently banished," was foreseeable, he wrote. He remarked that the US and other donor countries would not be likely to provide necessary food export to the afflicted regions.
In 1975, Kissinger's successor as National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft, later a Kissinger business partner, wrote, "United States leadership is essential to combat population growth, to implement the World Population Plan of Action and to advance United States security and overseas interests. The President endorses…NSSM 200…," Scowcroft added.
Kissinger's NSSM 200 document, classified secret and not made public until 1989, took estimates of world population growth to the end of the century and beyond, and the impact on the need for food and raw materials, notably energy. "Growing populations will have a serious impact on the need for food especially in the poorest, fastest growing LDC's," Kissinger stated. "World needs for food rise by 2.5% or more a year at a time when readily available fertilizer and well-watered land is already largely being utilized. Therefore, additions to food production must come from higher yields," the Government memo declared. It was at this time that the Rockefeller Foundation also began large research in genetic engineering of plants, including rice, ostensibly to raise yields.
With NSSM 200, Washington made implementation of population control programs a pre-condition for US financial aid, even famine relief. Washington ensured that birth reduction was adopted as official policy by the IMF, World Bank and the UN. Beginning the mid-1970's all IMF and World Bank aid to developing target countries was tied to their willingness to accept population control policies dictated by Washington.
NSSM 200 explicitly listed 13 countries as "key countries" in which the US held a "special political and strategic interest." These were: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Thailand, Nigeria, Philippines, Turkey, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mexico, Brazil and Colombia. Their population growth was deemed especially worrisome to US national interests, according to Kissinger. Notably, every key country has been subjected to major social, economic and military upheaval since 1974. US food aid, even in famine, was withheld from countries refusing to adopt US-mandated birth control or population reduction policies. (2).
NSSM 200 continues as unofficial US Government policy to the present day, despite public Bush Administration concessions to Catholic Right to Life groups. In this, the role of the Rockefeller Foundation is central to Washington policy regarding genetic engineering in world agriculture, especially that in key developing nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Rockefeller's GM proliferation network
In 1971 the Rockefeller Foundation, together with the Ford Foundation and the World Bank, established the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), which runs 16 research centers around the world, most in developing countries, spending some $350 million annually. The focus of CGIAR is the spread of GM crops in the developing world.
CGIAR today operates under the umbrella of the World Bank, and has drawn 20 developing countries in as sponsors. World Bank aid is administered on the basis of a recipient agreeing to impose population control policies, the present form of NSSM 200, but with Washington officially in the background. Thus, the Rockefeller Foundation, World Bank, Monsanto and other agri-giants and the US Government, all meet under CGIAR auspices.
The CGIAR mission is to promote "sustainable agriculture for food security." To do this, CGIAR has used its funds and government influence to take control of one of the world's largest collections of plant genetic resources. CGIAR then makes the materials available to companies like Monsanto and Syngenta, "so that new gene combinations can be used to increase productivity, sustainably," as they state. In turn, CGIAR mobilizes biotechnology proliferation in developing countries. CGIAR trains the most promising national scientists and researchers in biotechnology, insuring that cadre of pro-GM national researchers will promote the spread of GM agriculture and biotechnology back home.
In addition to its role in establishing CGIAR, the Rockefeller Foundation has been a major donor to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications or ISAAA.
Every US President since George H.W. Bush in 1992, has made support of genetically engineered crops a matter of highest national priority. The example of US-AID backing for the Rockefeller Foundation's ISAAA is exemplary.
The ISAAA was originally founded with Rockefeller Brothers' Fund money for the sole purpose to "facilitate the delivery of proprietary biotechnologies from the corporate labs of the industrialized world into the food and farming systems of the South."
How this works becomes clear when the current financial sponsors of the ISAAA are known. In addition to the Rockefeller Foundation, sponsors include Monsanto (USA), Syngenta (Swiss), Dow AgroSciences (USA), Pioneer Hi-Bred (USA), Cargill (USA), Bayer CropScience (Germany), and a mysterious "Anonymous Donor "(USA), and US-AID of the State Department.
The argument of the institutions behind ISAAA is that the developing world is where a rising population makes growing food demand most acute, but where economic resources are least able to meet the needs. Hence, ISAAA enables the introduction of corporate GM technologies and crops from the industrial world into the South, acting as "honest brokers" in their words.
As the Kissinger NSSM 200 targeted 13 developing countries in 1974 for population reduction, the ISAAA targets 12 countries for introduction of GM crops. Six of these countries are the same as Kissinger listed in 1974: Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Egypt. In addition, ISAAA lists Malaysia, Vietnam, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Argentina and Costa Rica.
By their own admission, the ISAAA launches propaganda offensives to counter hostility to GM crops, and they train science elites from the target countries, often bringing them to USA or other leading GM research centers such as the Monsanto Life Sciences Research Center, to learn the world of GM elite research. Randy Hautea is head of the group's SEAsia Center in the Philippines, based in the center established by the Rockefeller Foundation's International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).
Hautea recently stated that his group has targeted Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam because, "they all have the political will to pursue and adopt biotechnology applications." What Hautea did not say was that introduction of GM seeds means introduction of costly GM pesticides and other policies which only global agribusiness companies are able to carry out.
Food production of target countries is being transformed into the global agribusiness market, not longer available for national food security. Hautea does not say how biotechnology brought in to, say, Indonesia or Malaysia by Syngenta or Monsanto, contributes to the benefit of small farmers, the heart of their food production. To date, in fact, there exists no proof of any benefit from GM crops for family farmers. In fact the opposite is the case. Farmers are often coerced or forced to buy Monsanto GM seeds or other GM seeds by their governments.
Through ISAAA and related networks of organizations, the Rockefeller Foundation is at the center of the worldwide actions of Monsanto, DuPont, Cargill and Dow Agri-sciences, Syngenta, Bayer AG and other major biotech giants, dominating the ongoing "new Green Revolution" as Rockefeller's Conway terms it. (3).
Spreading the GM control
The list of major GM plants today includes GM rice, soybeans, corn, oilseeds, and numerous other basic food crops. The Rockefeller Foundation has played a key fostering role in the development of most major new types.
More than 70% of all processed foods Americans consume comes today from GM products. Almost all the animal feed used to feed cattle, and other animals in the US and in major world markets today is GM feed, mainly soymeal and corn.
Most Americans are ignorant of what they eat. The US government has refused to label food that contains GM inputs. A new EU food labelling law also does not require producers to identify animal products fed on GM feed, leaving consumers ignorant of what GM products they eat. In 2003, the total acreage planted to GM seeds worldwide was 167 million acres or 68 million hectares according to ISAAA data. This was a 15% rise in one year. The United States is the largest GM grower with 106 million acres of genetically modified soybeans, corn and cotton. Worldwide, 55% of all soybeans grown now are GM crops. Soymeal is one of the most essential and richest protein sources for animal and human consumption. Every bite of a McDonald's hamburger contains as much as 30% of GM soyameal.
Without even realizing, most people in North America, East Asia and Europe regularly eat products or animals fed from GM crops. What is most remarkable is the fact that farmers in North America, Australia, Argentina, and more recently after a long battle, in Brazil, have surrendered their control over seeds to a handful of multinational biotech giants who have a deliberate strategy to dominate and control the planting of basic food crops worldwide.
The terminator not dead
If emerging nations from China to India to Indonesia and beyond, were to manage to create a food self-sufficiency independent of reliance on US or OECD food suppliers, the ability of the United States to remain the dominant power would diminish, regardless of military might.
What better way to control the destiny of China, India, East Asia and the rest of the world than to establish permanent control over their ability to grow food? Enter Monsanto and the agriculture biotechnology cartel, who dominate GM crops globally. Just two years ago it seemed Monsanto might be headed into financial ruin. Today, it is on the verge of becoming the one of the single most powerful corporations in the world.
Interestingly, it was the direct intervention of the Rockefeller Foundation in October 1999, which was responsible for the widely-touted decision of Monsanto "not to commercialize" its 'terminator technology' for GM seeds. Monsanto president Robert Shapiro wrote to the Rockefeller Foundation that it would "shelve" or put on hold its "sterile seed" technology, formally called Genetic Use Restriction Technology (GURT). The Monsanto decision was a tactical ploy, taken on advice of Rockefeller's Conway, to defulse growing opposition to GM crops, especially in Europe. Monsanto's terminator seed technology, in which the US Department of Agriculture also holds part patent rights, has been called the ultimate weapon, the 'neutron bomb' of agriculture, rightly so.
Terminator seeds would solve a major problem for Monsanto and other GM giants in collecting seed fees in the developing world for patented GM seeds, something made possible a few years ago by GATT trade talks on patent rights.
Free trade in agriculture is today at the heart of the WTO. Under the treaty of the World Trade Organization, created by the GATT Uruguay trade round in the early 1990's, multinational corporations now have the right, enforced by WTO sanctions, to collect royalty payments for "intellectual property."
The Uruguay agreement, ratified by all GATT member countries under enormous US pressure, allows a corporation for the first time, to patent a specific plant variety, even though that plant sort might have been in the public domain in a country such as Pakistan or Peru for thousands of years. The WTO term is Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, TRIPs. Washington pushed the controversial TRIPs agreement through GATT, accusing developing countries of 'piracy' in not paying due royalties to multinationals, claiming US companies were losing hundreds on millions in unpaid fees for fertilizer and seeds or drugs. Mickey Kantor, US Trade Representative who negotiated the Uruguay Round talks, today sits on the board of Monsanto.
The TRIPs WTO agreement includes patent rights on GM plants. Under TRIPs the Swiss agri-tech company, Syngenta, holds control potentially of most of the rice in Pakistan, India and Asia. Monsanto dominates patents on soybeans, corn, cotton and other major crops. Their only problem is how to collect royalty payments from millions of small peasant farmers. Collecting patent payments for GM seeds in many developing countries is extremely difficult.
Not so, if terminator seeds are sold. Terminator technology, which Monsanto paid $1.6 billion to acquire, allows introduction of a 'suicide gene' into plants such as corn or cotton or soya or potentially, even wheat. A farmer using terminator seeds no longer will be able to share seeds with other farmers or plant his own in following years. He will be forced to turn to Monsanto each season to buy his existence, in the form of more suicide seeds, as well as the special herbicides Monsanto has developed to be used with it. The original developers of terminator technology, Delta & Pine Land Seed, which Monsanto bought in 1998, specifically noted that the rice and wheat markets of China, India, Pakistan and such major population countries was the target of terminator. The political implications of such a development are easy to imagine
The Rockefeller-Monsanto public relations maneuver "not to commercialize" terminator seeds was clearly designed to defuse growing opposition to proliferation of GM seeds, to buy time while allowing them to spread GM crops to the world's largest growing areas - North America, Argentina, Brazil and now, the EU. Once spread, it is simple to shift to terminator.
In February 2003, at a meeting of the International Seed Federation in Lyon France, Monsanto's Roger Krueger released a paper titled, "The Benefits of GURTs." It argued that terminator in fact would benefit poor farmers. Monsanto argues in a new ploy, that terminator would in fact hinder spread of unwanted GM genes to non-GM plants, promoting the same idea in new clothes as a "biosafety" tool. Clearly they believe opposition to terminator and GM is falling. Reports are that Monsanto would be ready to introduce commercial terminator or GURT seeds in 3-4 years.
Dual use and GM crops: Biowarfare?
The days are long past when the USDA represented the interests of America's family farmers. Today, US agri-business, dominated by a dozen or more giant international concerns, is the second most profitable industry next to pharmaceuticals, and has annual value of well over $800 billion. The USDA today is the organized lobby of agri-business giants, none more influential than Monsanto. Bush Administration official, Ann Veneman, USDA Secretary, is a former board member of a Monsanto company and, not surprisingly, a strong advocate of GM. Several other Bush officials have ties to Monsanto as well.
Terminator and related GM technologies in the hands of Monsanto and less than half-a-dozen corporations worldwide, backed by the USDA, Defense Department and State Department, could open the door to potential forms of biological warfare against entire populations not imagined before. A recent US Air Force study states that "biological weapons offer greater possibilities for use than do nuclear weapons."
Washington US-AID food assistance for Africa in recent months has been linked to willingness of a country to accept US GM crops. US assistance to combat AIDS in Africa has similar strings. GM has clearly become a strategic, geopolitical tool for Washington.
Defenders of GM technology argue that no one in their right mind would consider such a drastic use of GM crops as to control entire areas of world food supply. "We're tempted to say that nobody in their right mind would ever use these things." Stanford biology professor Steven Block stated in another context. Block hastened to add, "But not everybody is in their right mind!" Block, a leading consultant to the US Government, went on to warn, "Any technology that can be used to insert genes into DNA can be used for either good or bad." Genetic engineering can create rice with enhanced vitamin A, but can just as well create seeds containing highly toxic bacteria. US researchers first did this in 1986. Genetic engineering of more toxic and harder to detect bioweapons was a major motivation for nations to call for a stronger convention on bioweapons.
The US Government's controversial drug eradication program in Colombia, since discontinued, would spray crops with deadly glyphosate. Glyphosate, under the patent name, Roundup, is the GM herbicide sold by Monsanto also for its GM plants. The Bush Administration has repeatedly refused to back a legally binding Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, arguing it needs the freedom to develop defense against biowarfare. Freedom can work both ways however.
Genetic manipulation opens the possibilities in the hands of a malevolent power, to unleash untold harm on the human species. Even were it to be the case that GM plants increase yields, which is not at all proven, this potential for control of the food supply of entire nations is too much power to give to any single corporation or government. Essential foods, like fresh water, are no ordinary commodities to be sold under rules of an imposed free market. They are basic human rights as the right to breathe. We should not tempt any government with the power that present GM strategists advocate over our food security.
References
1. B.K. Eakman, "The Cloning of the American Mind," gives information on Rockefeller Foundation funding of eugenics.
s. Jim Heron, "Population Politics and the Shambles of Africa in http://catholiceducation.org/articles/p ... c0005.html.
2. National Security Strategy Memorandum, NSSM 200, "Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests," National Security Council, April 24, 1974, Henry Kissinger, director, National Security Council. "The Over-population cabal" in Mindszenty Report, Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation, April 1999, www.mindszenty.org.report/1999/April1999.html .
3. "ISAAA in Asia promoting corporate profits in the name of the poor," October 2000, in www.grain.org/publications/reports/isaaa.html.
4. The Monsanto terminator seed plans are described in "Monsanto Breaks Promise to Abandon Terminator Technology," April 23, 2003, http://www.organicconsumers.org/monsant ... 042403.cfm. "Biological warfare against crops," by Simon Whitby, reviewed in www.rainbowbody.net/Ongwhehonwhe/plantwar.htm notes the US use of Roundup against crops in Colombia. "Biological warfare emerges as 21st Century threat," by Mark Schwartz in Stanford Report, January 11, 2001, details the warnings of Block, a member of the top-secret Government research group, Jason. The US Air Force has published on the subject, "Biological Weapons for Waging Economic Warfare," by Lt. Col. Robert Kadlec who speaks of "using biological warfare to attack livestock, crops or ecosystems." In www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicl ... chp10.html, also www.sunshine-project.org/bwintro/gebw.html.
source: http://www.currentconcerns.ch/archive/2 ... 040505.php 5mar2005
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Rockefeller Foundation funds vaccines with hidden birth-control hormones
The Rockefeller Foundation is among the funders of a WHO program in "reproductive health" which has developed a tetanus vaccine that allegedly contains hidden birth-control hormones.
According to a report from the Global Vaccine Institute, the WHO has overseen massive vaccination campaigns against tetanus in Nicaragua, Mexico and the Philippines since the early 1990's. Comite Pro Vida de Mexico, a Catholic organization, tested numerous vials of the vaccine and found them to contain human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG), a natural hormone needed to maintain a pregnancy. When combined with a tetanus toxoid carrier, it stimulates formation of antibodies against hCG, rendering a woman incapable of maintaining a pregnancy. Similar reports of vaccines laced with hCG hormones have come from the Philippines and Nicaragua.
The organization confirmed several other curious facts about the WHO vaccination programs. Tetanus vaccine was given only to women, between ages 15-45, not men or children. The presence of hCG is a clear contamination of the vaccine. It does not belong. With financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation, the World Bank, the Population Council, Ford Foundation, among others, the WHO has been working for 20 years to develop an anti-fertility vaccine using hCG with tetanus and other vaccines, according to scientific articles published on the effort by WHO. This has been documented by WHO and others, including the respected British medical journal, The Lancet, June 11, 1988, "Clinical Trials of a WHO Borth Control Vaccine."
To mid-1993 the WHO had spent a total of $365 million of such research funds on "reproductive health" including research on implanting hCG into tetanus vaccine. WHO has been unable to answer why women vaccinated were found with anti-hCG antibodies. They feebly replied it was "insignificant." The vaccine was produced by Connaught Laboratories Ltd of Canada and Intervex and CSL Laboratories of Australia.
Since the 1920's the Rockefeller Foundation has been among the leading sponsors of population reduction programs worldwide. If the reports of birth control vaccines are true, it is not difficult to suspect the Rockefeller Foundation is also among those planning to use genetically modified seeds technology as a potential means to control world population growth through future control of food supply.
http://www.mindfully.org/GE/2005/Geopol ... 6mar05.htm

Sickening!

Anyone with any sense and education realizes that we must maintain biodiversity, so that if a plant disease develops, it can't wipe out HUGE percentages of the world's food supply.

As for GM's...they haven't been tested enough, IMO.

JUST BECAUSE MAN CAN DO SOMETHING, DOESN'T MEAN WE SHOULD!

JUST BECAUSE MAN CAN DO SOMETHING, DOESN'T MEAN WE SHOULD!

Exactly right!

So I guess that means that even if I buy organic foods or grow my own there's no certainty it's not tainted too? And they thought the Noregians were crazy for buring a big seed supply in the side of a mountain to sustain life incase of a catastropic event were crazy.

I have never felt so attacked before. Friend and foe. This is just beyond comprehension and leave you no choice. Why not just blow you away? Guess they want to make sure they get ownership of all your property and land before you go. And the empire has it all.

crazybird.........give them time. They just haven't found the right opportunity yet........it'll be here before we know it.
What you always thought was so sacred.......our freedoms, our rights, our country, our borders...........hurts when you realize you don't have them after all, doesn't it? I know it does me. But it also makes me madder than an old wet hen...........so I start writing to Congressmen and Senators and telling them just how low I feel they are.