The truth really is much stranger than fiction, especially when it comes to the open and admitted future plans of major biotechnology companies. One such case involves a biotech company known as ProdiGene, the officials from which actually faced jail time back in 2002 for contaminating the traditional food supply with ‘biopharmaceutical’ crops that were growing pharmaceuticals and vaccine components associated with AIDS, diabetes, and diarrhea.
Contaminating 500,000 bushels of soy with their biopharmaceutical corn that contained pharmaceutical and vaccine components associated with deadly diseases, the company was slapped with a minor $500,000 fine by the USDA (the same government organization that gives Monsanto’s crops special speed approval and ignores the company’s blatant disregard for its regulations). As it turns out, the pharmaceutical crops were actually mixed in with traditional crops and unknowing farmers had already been planted for human consumption. The USDA claims, however, that the crops were confiscated.
After receiving the fine and some press coverage on the subject, ProdiGene decided not to apologize but to expand their mission. The company, in combination with estimates by Dow AgroSciences, stated that they sought to reach $200 billion in biopharmaceutical crops within 10 years (as of 2004). Furthermore, they estimated that 10% of the corn in the United States will be biopharmaceutical in nature.
In other words, it could contain hidden nano-scale vaccinations, antibiotics, anti-depressants, or any form of pharmaceutical drug. One California based company has even created a spermicidal corn to be used as a mass contraceptive. In an AlterNet piece covering the issue entitled ‘Spermicidal Breakfast Cereal’, author Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero asks:
What would happen if contraceptive corn or antibiotic wheat accidentally made it to the supermarket? Nobody knows, but that isn’t stopping agribusiness from pursuing these crops.
Vaccines, Drugs, Sterilizations to be Fused into Nation’s Dinner?
The existence of such technology brings the fight against GMOs to an entirely new level. Outside of the known effects such as recent links to tumors, DNA damage, and other complications, GMO crops on your dinner table could soon contain pharmaceutical drugs like statins in an effort of ‘mass medicating’ the public. Such an effort would likely be used in conjunction with others to fight against those who choose to opt out of vaccinations, delivering the vaccine through the food supply.
It may sound absurd, and it is, but is not a new notion. Researchers previously designed a method in which mosquitoes could be ‘flying vaccine carriers’ to inject large numbers of individuals with vaccinations without their knowledge of consent. As one spokesman for a major ecology organization explained:
“One single mistake from a biotechnology company and we’ll be having someone else’s prescription medicine for breakfast in our cereal,” explained Larry Bohlen from Friends of the Earth, an international ecology organization.
The information ties in with the recent news revealing that Monsanto now owns a monumental ‘gene silencing’ technology for pharmaceutical use in humans. The king biotechnology company even forged a recent alliance with Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. to get the initiative started. After all, Monsanto would not lose an opportunity to conquer a large portion of the massive $200 billion biopharmaceutical crop market.
Other corporations are looking to get a chunk too, with the molecularfarming.com website acting a hub for farmers willing to lease their land for biopharmaceutical experiments across the globe. Touting a net worth of $80 billion in the coming years, investors are continually looking to get their hands on biopharmaceutical growing operations to churn out drug-containing GMO crops for mass consumption — and mass profits. So far, they’ve garnered contracts as far as Zimbabwe to continue their operations.
Just like regular GMOs, DDT, and cigarettes, experts are concerned that the real effects of biopharmaceutical growth may not be recognized until decades later.
“What will have to happen before the Department of Agriculture takes seriously the fact that millions of people almost ended up consuming experimental drugs and chemicals?” asks Brandon Keim, of the Council for Responsible Genetics in reference to the ProdiGene scandal. “A few sensational deaths? Maybe an increase in debilitating disorders which will only be noticeable some decades later, when it’s already too late?”
If the public grows more aware of GMO dangers with the grassroots support and potential passing of Prop 37, however, biopharmaceutical farms may never see mainstream success.
“Currently — as most of us know — TSA agents briefly examine government ID and boarding passes as each passenger presents their documents at a checkpoint at the end of a security line. Thom Patterson writes at CNN that under a 2008 Apple patent application that was approved in July and filed under the working title “iTravel,” a traveler’s phone would automatically send electronic identification to a TSA agent as soon as the traveler got in line and as each traveler waits in line. TSA agents would examine the electronic ID at an electronic viewing station. Next, at the X-ray stations, a traveler’s phone would confirm to security agents that the traveler’s ID had already been checked. Apple’s patent calls for the placement of special kiosks (PDF) around the airport which will automatically exchange data with your phone via a close range wireless technology called near field communication (NFC). Throughout the process, the phone photo could be displayed on a screen for comparison with the traveler. Facial recognition software could be included in the process. Several experts say a key question that must be answered is: How would you prove that the phone is yours? To get around this problem, future phones or electronic ID may require some form of biometric security function including photo, fingerprint and photo retinal scan comparisons. Of course, there is still a ways to go. If consumers, airlines, airports and the TSA don’t embrace the NFC kiosks, experts say it’s unlikely Apple’s vision would become reality. ‘First you would have to sell industry on Apple’s idea. Then you’d have to sell it to travel consumers,’ says Neil Hughes of Apple Insider. ‘It’s a chicken-and-egg problem.'”
One year before Mitt Romney began working on the Bain & Company project to rebuild “Monsanto” and cast their new image and focus on agriculture biotechnology, Congress passed a bill banning PCB (polychlorinated biphenyl), an odorless, tasteless, clear liquid known to cause cancer that was the “bread and butter” of Monsanto’s profits. Monsanto was already branded and plagued with the label of having created the “Agent Orange” contaminated dioxins used in Vietnam. Now Monsanto would need a big save, financially and reputation-wise, so they could fool the public with their new image and a new “frontier,” while secretly polluting and genetically modifying American agriculture with the new faceless poison known as Roundup.
Romney knew his first job at Bain was to propel an evil company that was on the brink of failure. He knew Monsanto’s previous reputation and about all the litigation. Romney also knew he would be rewarded financially in the biggest way if he could pull the whole thing off, and he did. Romney changed Monsanto’s image over the years, from a scandal ridden chemical giant to a seemingly “prestigious” Agri-business firm. (http://dprogram.net)
Fresh out of Harvard in 1977, Romney basically lead Monsanto down an unethical but highly lucrative path, helping sweep the PCB and dioxin scandals under the rug, since that negative public perception was crippling the company. Romney and Bain recommended to Monsanto that they focus the business on genetically engineered crops and RoundUp, the massively profitable weed killer. Monsanto finished developing and patenting the glyphosate molecule and has marketed Roundup ever since. (http://naturalsociety.com)
But it wasn’t a “pretty” road to this infamous success for Romney. Monsanto was still bombarded with an onslaught of litigation throughout Romney’s years at Bain, including a $180 million settlement covering the claims of over 50,000 troops that got cancer from hiking over and through Agent Orange in the burned up jungles of Vietnam. Agent Orange is on record to have contaminated a total of 10 million Vietnamese and American people, including children and babies. This was by far the largest chemical warfare operation in human history up until now, when Monsanto’s RoundUp laced GMO vegetables like corn and soy have begun a cancer inducing genocide which could easily surpass the damage done in the Vietnam jungles just 50 years ago. (http://naturalsociety.com)
Romney would later use his Monsanto “payback money” and power to become the “private equity king,” mowing down companies and robbing workers of their retirement savings. (http://dprogram.net) This is how Romney created jobs back then, and GMO is how he will create jobs and promote disease if he wins the presidency of the United States. Big Pharma, of course, is behind it all, because when people eat GM vegetables and get cancer, Big Pharma and the chemo scam make billions, if not trillions.
Romney has already chosen his biotech partners in crime
One of Mitt’s advisory co-chairs was a key speaker at the ‘Biotechnology Industry Organization‘ and said, “It is vital for the United States and other countries to support science-based standards and systems that will bring agricultural biotechnology products to the market to meet this demand.” It’s not hard to guess who will make up Romney’s cabinet if he wins. But the most disappointing part of the upcoming election isn’t the fact that Mitt Romney, the “Savior of Monsanto” is running for president, it’s the fact that Obama already supports GMO and has the former vice president of Monsanto running the FDA right now. America has everyone believing they have a choice, voting between good and bad, or good and not so good, but really, the choice is that you can vote yes for Obama GMO or yes for Romney GMO. President Obama and Mitt Romney both support human beings eating RoundUp pesticide regularly and without any labeling on the foods. Just to let you know. There’s definitely a “War on Cancer” in effect, but it’s a war to promote cancer, to make sure more people eat CANCER-CAUSING AGENTS, ones that are made by the same company that created the AGENT ORANGE nightmare. (http://www.naturalnews.com)
No matter what the TWO PARTY SYSTEM says, they support GMO
Back in 2008, Obama promised his supporters he would be on their side when it comes to knowing what they are eating, and in a campaign speech he stated, “We’ll let folks know whether their food has been genetically modified because Americans should know what they’re buying.”(http://spreadlibertynews.com)
Today, Monsanto (the seed police) and similar unethical chemical giants loom over ALL FARMERS AND ALL FOOD, and a global cancer epidemic is imminent. Monsanto survived its near collapse thanks to Mitt Romney, and Monsanto thrives today thanks to George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Soon, if enough Supreme Court Justices side with the biotech industry, the U.S. government will have complete reign over the food industry. (http://www.naturalnews.com/034847_Michael_Taylor_Monsanto_FDA.html)
Question: Why doesn’t either candidate for president mention nutrition at all? Shouldn’t we be praising Nutritional Science like we do NASA? Is the GMO shame too heavy? When the next bailout comes, will Monsanto get a big cut? After all, their lobbyists are like a “Super PAC” of ONE PERCENTERS. If only we could see how much their offshore accounts inflate after elections. Make no mistake, the current handful of “running” politicians want GMO to rule over all farms in the United States.
Don’t give in; you can set the precedent in November!
You have real choices. You can eat only organic food. You can write your “anti-GMO” congressmen like Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul, who support efforts to not only label GM food, but ban it altogether. You can help end this hostile takeover of the food supply. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J_YvtbSSqg) We, the organic people, can win this “election,” and the precedent can be set in California in November, and then eventually all over the United States. (http://www.naturalnews.com)
Vietnam may have been the largest chemical warfare operation in human history, but at least this time the people have a choice, because instead of being drafted and hiking through the toxic “cancer machine” in a war, humans can simply educate themselves about contaminated dioxins in genetically modified foods and not eat them. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfFSS1vLcXA&feature=related)
When we see photographs of rats grossly deformed by massive tumors after eating genetically engineered corn laced with Roundup, it’s not good news for Monsanto.
People understand instantly in looking at those pathetic rats that organic food is not a niche market or a expensive luxury, but a life or death issue, because the rats were fed corn that is part of the American diet.
All the studies that were required but bypassed before GMOs were unleashed into the food chain seem compressed into this one devastating study by CRIIGEN.
The Monsanto lies are exposed. People must avoid GMOs at all costs and eat organic food if they are to survive.
But Monsanto has been assiduously preparing for this day of public realization, corrupting the FDA (Monsanto VP Michael Taylor is charge of “food safety” and ensuring it through armed raids against organic farmers, organic coops, and mothers’ organic buying clubs!), the USDA (which has funded development of a corn to sterilize humans), the EPA (which is going after hay on an inland ranch as a pollutant under the Clean Water Act, while ignoring serious oil spills into major rivers), and any other agencies standing in the way of getting its death-causing products released as quickly as possible into the environment.
One can see their not very subtle desperation to shut down all questions about their GMOs in the bill proposed in India, that would set up a biotech regulatory authority and laws to imprison anyone who even dared to bring up the issue of the safety of GMOs (including in vaccines, which now contain GMOs with news equally dire). The Indian bill has been called “unconstitutional, unethical, unscientific,” which is practically a nickname for Monsanto at this point.
But however outrageous the efforts to force GMOs onto India, they are small potatoes compared to what Monsanto and the biotech industry have done behind the scenes in the US where they have arranged for Homeland Security to define organic food – the only safe food – as a bio-security threat. They are clearly not happy about the unpatented, free for the taking, biodiversity people are working to save – open pollinated seeds and crops, as well as heritage animals raised on small farms.
As is Monsanto’s modus operandi, reality has been turned on its head, such that GMO seeds and only crops raised on giant mono-culture GMO farms and sprayed with deadly pesticides, and only animals trapped in animal prisons (CAFOs – controlled animal feeding operations) where they are fed on GMOs with pesticides, antibiotics, and hormones, have now been defined as “normal” and what actually is normal (and safe) has been defined as a threat.
Stanford has HUGE stakes in bioterrorism preparedness that includes homeland security funding, as well as having a seat on the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Biotechnology Activities. Stanford also has an entire department that concentrates on agricultural biosecurity. An important goal of the network – which is funded by the Homeland Security Act – is to coordinate diagnostic and scientific expertise in agricultural production and security in regard to agricultural pests and pathogens that could be used in bio-terrorism.
To that end, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has taken the position that organic farming, such as free-ranging chickens and cows and non-GM seeds that you can’t ‘control’ are potential biosecurity threats. USDA has even begun putting, in writing, directives on how they want organic farming “contained” – which resembles turning organic farms into nothing more than factory farms.17 (Source)
Basically, what is owned by the biotech/industrial food system and killing people is “good” and what is from nature, healing, and free to humanity, has been redefined as a biologic threat, and potentially as bioterrorism. This should come as no surprise, really, given the takeover of the US government by Monsanto and the parallel redefinition of patriotic Americans as terrorists, too. The more positive something is, the more Orwellian its redefinition as dangerous. An identical thing has occurred with vaccines in which those asking for vaccine safety are treated by corporate media and the government as threats to the health of the country, at just the same time that studies and government documents are showing without a doubt that the vaccines are causing diseases.
Thus we have a huge government and corporate push for flu vaccines, while it is confirmed that the flu vaccine increases the risk of serious pandemic flu illness. And that leaves off that the the H1N1 is inside the flu vaccine, and kills fetuses.
Medicine, not just food, is an organic issue as well. Vaccines are filled now with GMOs, and also contain heavy metals, viruses, other toxins. We look at the poor tumor-swollen rats being held aloft and see in an instant that GMOs and poisons are deadly, and that organic food is the only way to go.
And we are now starting to understand that vaccines come from those same GMO and pesticide companies, contain GMOs and toxins, and are also killing people. The vaccine experiment parallels the GMO experiment – it’s massive, involuntary, and damaging children. And there, too, there is an effort to ban natural supplements as dangerous, and Homeland Security is set to force vaccines on the country if a “pandemic emergency” is declared (not proven). This vaccine attack on normal human DNA parallels the potential DHS bioterrorism attack on organic food.
In both cases, Homeland Security would be acting for Monsanto and the pharmaceutical industry, force-contaminating crops and animals and getting rid of those with normal DNA, and force-contaminating people with GMO-vaccines, destroying normal DNA and threatening everyone’s lives. In both cases, any bio-threat can be manufactured and then military and DHS can roll out to give Monsanto and the pharmaceutical industry absolute power over seeds, crops, animals, and human bodies. This biotech military take over would leave us with deadly non-food and at the mercy of any vaccine they come up with, but would be publicized as saving the country from bioterrorism and disease.
Monsanto needs military power to carry on with GMOs because its lies are being countered almost instantly now. Three photos of sick, deformed rats tell the truth. And while DHS and military may have been woven into a biotech plan to spray organic crops with Agent Orange and mass destroy organic animals as they are already doing in Michigan, or to force toxic GMO-vaccines onto the country, organic has won the truth when it comes to food, and the evidence for organic approach to health – not taking vaccines is a health move similar to not using pesticides) – is in as well.
In the UK, Freedom of Information Act has revealed that the government has known for 30 years that the vaccines don’t work and cause diseases and has done all they can to hide that fact from the public. In the US, the government has been illegally withholding FOIA documents on vaccines for over 7 years. And now the Obama administration, the same one seeking permanent detention of Americans and that has refused act against those officials committing acts of torture, is seeking to change FOIA to create a new category beyond declaring documents secret but would allow it to declare some FOIA documents “non-existent.”
The FOIA documents the CDC is withholding, and Obama is warping reality to keep hidden, are sought by a doctor with an autistic child. The documents concern what the CDC has known about the true impact of mercury in vaccines. That is about autism. Can we hold up three photos of broken children so people recognize the danger of GMOs in vaccines, too? Or should we hold up the dead bodies of infants killed by the DPT vaccine schedule (at two, four and six months) which is tightly correlated with SIDS’ deaths? Even in the 1970s, the DPT vaccine, which was said by the scientist regulating it to be”the dirtiest substance ever put in the human body.” [Start at 2:40 seconds into the video.) The “miracle of vaccines” is that their lethality has been hidden for so long.
Thanks to the CRIIGEN study, it’s patently obvious now that GMOs and Roundup threaten human life. Full stop. Yet Homeland Security, acting on behalf of Monsanto, has bioterrorism laws in place to rub out organic food and animals as a biosecurity threat.
Thanks to FOIAs in the UK, we know without question that the UK and US government have known for 30 years that vaccines don’t work, and are a biologic threat to children’s lives. Full stop. Yet DHS and military ready to force unknown and untested vaccines on the entire country that could potentially be lethal.
In a way, one might even feel badly for the biotech/pharmaceutical industry because defining organic food and farm animals as bio-threats is insane, and their last ditch effort to win control over everything.
They lied about the 1918 “flu” to hide how many they killed with aspirin, and Monsanto was involved there as well. They lied about WMDs to get oil. They lied about fluoride being safe. They lied about bailouts.
They have concocted massive scare stories of to hide the truth – they themselves are terrorists and bio-terrorists seeking control of all living organisms. It’s just all too crazy to be sustained.
Most Americans now see 9/11 as an inside job, with its terror used to put in place totalitarian laws. The scapegoat, Muslims, didn’t do it.
Vaccines don’t work, are causing diseases, destroying children’s minds, and paralyzing and even killing them. Scapegoated parents, aware enough not to vaccinate their own children, didn’t do it.
The world now sees GMOs as a biologic threat to existence. The new (laughable) scapegoat, organic, didn’t do it.
When Homeland Security is working for Monsanto, with elaborate plans to “subdue” organic food and animals, the whole terrorism/bioterrorism apparatus is out on the table as a scam.
Book Description Publication Date: May 12, 2009
For the faction controlling the Pentagon, the military industry, and the oil industry, the Cold War never ended. They engineered an incredible plan to grab total control of the planet, of land, sea, air, space, outer space and cyberspace. Continuing ‘below the radar,’ they created a global network of military bases and conflicts to advance the long-term goal of Full Spectrum Dominance. Methods included control of propaganda, use of NGOs for regime change, Color Revolutions to advance NATO eastwards, and a vast array of psychological and economic warfare techniques. They even used ‘save the gorilla’ organizations in Africa to secretly run arms in to create wars for raw materials. It was all part of a Revolution in Military Affairs, as they termed it. The events of September 11, 2001 would allow an American President to declare a worldwide War on Terror, on an enemy who was everywhere, and nowhere. 9/11 justified the Patriot Act, the very act that destroyed Americans’ Constitutional freedoms in the name of security. This book gives a disturbing look at the strategy of Full Spectrum Dominance, at what is behind a strategy that could lead us into a horrific nuclear war in the very near future, and at the very least, to a world at continuous war. Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of… by William F. Engdahl
4.3 out of 5 stars (28)
$16.47 A Century of War: : Anglo-American Oil Poli… by F. William Engdahl
5.0 out of 5 stars (1)
$24.95 Gods of Money: Wall Street and the Death of... by F. William Engdahl
5.0 out of 5 stars (1)
$21.33 They Own It All (Including You)!: By Means o… by Ronald MacDonald
4.8 out of 5 stars (38)
$14.96 Next
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Editorial Reviews About the Author
F. William Engdahl is author of the international best-selling book on oil and geopolitics, A Century of War: Anglo-American Politics and the New World Order. He is a widely discussed analyst of current political and economic developments whose articles have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines and well-known international websites. His book, ‘Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda Behind Genetic Manipulation,’ deals with agribusiness and the attempt to control world food supply and thereby populations. He may be reached at his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net –This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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Product Details
Paperback: 268 pages
Publisher: Third Millennium Press (May 12, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0979560861
ISBN-13: 978-0979560866
Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,109,639 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
5.0 out of 5 stars Urgent and Essential Reading, June 21, 2009
By Margot L. White “M. Lachlan White”
(REAL NAME) This review is from: Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order (Paperback)
FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE is a rare and essential book — one that orients readers quickly and deeply to the world we live in, and how we arrived here. William Engdahl presents the historical background of policy making and decision analysis that explains how the United States arrived at its present “mission” in the world. The value of Engdahl’s brilliant book is not only that it familiarizes American readers with a history that is not usually revealed to us, but it also guides us through the many overt and covert tactics employed by the US for regime change– primarily via the Pentagon and its nefarious weapons contractors, but also through various think tanks and foundations with innocuous names disingenuously referring to “democracy” and “freedom.” The “full spectrum” of tactics and deceptions and tricks — both violent and non-violent — is revealed here. Needless to say, this book falls within the honorable tradition of political histories that blow the cover off America’s much vaunted pretense and propaganda about serving the cause of “freedom” and “democracy” around the world! It is the only book available today that covers ALL of this, with ample quotations and documents from the architects of US policies, in just 250 well written pages. FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE is unique in presenting the evolution of CIA tactics, ranging from its crude “coups” of yesteryear (as in Iran and Guatemala) to its current — and perhaps more insidious — use of “non-violent” electronically manipulated technological “crowd control” via cell phones and (as is currently evident on the streets of Tehran) Twitter. If Americans are woefully ignorant of the full range and dangerous extremes of American violence around the world, of American interventions into and manipulations of other countries’ elections and environments and economics, then there is no longer any excuse for such ignorance. FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE is a “must read.” To understand pipeline politics, the critical importance of Eurasia to US defense contractors, read this book. To understand how and why America has become such a rapacious and violent empire with bases all over the world and tens of thousands of agents provocateurs doing its dirty work from Tibet to Tehran, manipulating elections, staging phony “revolutions” to surround Russia with hostile Made-in-USA regimes, propping up American-trained puppets or fomenting chaos from Myanmar to Congo and from Ukraine to Iran — read this book! Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading, June 1, 2009
By Lori “The Rogue Reader Mom” (Arizona) This review is from: Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order (Paperback)
F W Engdahl has succeeded again at the difficult task of explaining the complexities of how our world really works and how we got to this frightful point in world affairs.
An exacting researcher, Mr. Engdahl, with his latest book, has taken on the task of sorting out the USA’s real intentions as it pertains to the rest of the world. In connecting the dots he takes us on a journey of clarity and comprehension regarding the aggressive path our nation is on as it builds the American Empire.
To follow Mr. Engdahl’s logical explanations of why we do what we do to the rest of the world is to come to the realization that the US may not be the ‘good guys’ we think we are and the rest of the world may have plenty of reasons to be wary of the US.
A sobering examination of our real past and current policies towards Russia, China, Europe, the Middle East and the rest of world community, ‘full spectrum dominance’, as the Pentagon calls it, is a strong-arm policy of control over the rest of the world that is leading us down a disastrous path towards a possible world war. We can’t solve our world’s problems until we properly identify them. Mr. Engdahl has done that in superb fashion.
5.0 out of 5 stars A book everyone needs to read!, July 1, 2009
By William Fetty “Kamakazi” (Sweden)
(REAL NAME) This review is from: Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order (Paperback)
Engdahl’s books are at the very top of my list of books I recommend to people who want to know what is happening geopolitically in the world, but more importantly WHY things are happening!
Engdahl, though an academic scholar and very well educated with years of experince has once again written a book that anyone can understand and which reads like a great documentary film, much due to the fact that Engdahl is also a journalist, historian and economic researcher!
Full Spectrum Dominance picks up where his first book on the subject “A Century Of War:Anglo-American oil politics and the new world order” ends.
Engdahl once again leads us through the matrix of anglo-american foreign policy and their century old agenda of literal world domination through brute force and covert non-violent means. The evil and criminal actions of the anglo-american empire throughout the 20th century which has now spilled over in to the new millenium are presented in great detail and just like Engdahls previous books makes for a page turner. Once again I cannot recommend this book enough! Read it!
As well as thanking God for his success, CEO Chris Hyman is a Pentecostal Christian who has released a gospel album in America and fasts every Tuesday. Coincidentally he was in the World Trade Centre on 9/11 on the 47th floor addressing shareholders.
Serco run navy patrol boats for the ADF, as well as search and salvage operations through their partnership with P&O which form Maritime Defence Services.
Serco run two Australian Jails already, Acacia in WA and Borallon in Queensland
They’re one of the biggest companies In the UK for running electronic tagging of offenders under house arrest or parole.
Serco are in one of the two favoured bid consortiums for the new Sydney metro rail line.
Here are some amazing corporate videos from Serco, we fully recommend both if you’re a fan of Verhoeven-esque corporate propaganda. You can watch the video here:
Serco Group plc is a British government services company based in Hook, North Hampshire in the United Kingdom. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. Among its operations are public and private transport and traffic control, aviation, military and nuclear weapons contracts, detention centres and prisons, and schools.
Serco was founded in 1929 as a United Kingdom division of the Radio Corporation of America and initially provided services to the cinema industry.[3] It changed its name to Serco in 1987[3] and has been a London Stock Exchange listed company since 1988.[3]
On 29 December 2008, Serco completed its acquisition of SI International.[4]
Operations
The Guardian has called Serco “probably the biggest company you’ve never heard of”.[5]
Serco operates in various sectors:
Home Affairs: Serco operates the National Border Targeting Centre for the UK Border Agency and provides the Carrier Gateway – the interface between carriers and the Agency.[6]
Detention: Serco supplies electronic tagging devices for offenders and asylum seekers.[22] In Britain, Serco runs four prisons, a Young Offenders Institution and a Secure Training Centre.[23] It also operates two Immigration Removal Centres.[24][25] Serco is also responsible for the contracted-out court escort services in the south-east area (formerly a role undertaken by HM Prison Service).[26] In addition, Serco runs partly privatised Hünfeld Prison in Hesse, Germany.[27] In Australia Serco runs Acacia Prison in Western Australia[28] and Borallon Correctional Facility in Queensland[29] as well as the national contract for immigration detention centres, including Christmas Island and the Villawood detention centre in Sydney.[30][31] In Auckland, New Zealand Serco runs the Mt Eden remand prison[32] and in March 2012 was awarded the contract to build an operate a 960 bed prison at Wiri.[33]
Aviation: Serco provides air traffic control services at international airports in the United Arab Emirates[42] and at some smaller airports in the USA and Canada.[43][44] Since 2004 Serco have also had £5m a year from the US government to manage airports in Iraq.[45] Serco also operate Scatsta Airport on Shetland.[46] In June 2010 Serco signed a £4million contract to operate all air traffic control services for Coventry Airport.[47]
Education: Serco holds a 10 year contract with Bradford City Council to manage and operate the local education authority,[53] providing education support services to the City’s schools, and similarly manages and operates Walsall[54] and Stoke-on-Trent local education authorities.[55] Serco is one of Ofsted‘s three Regional Inspection Service Providers, responsible for school inspections in the English Midlands.[56] Serco is also the provider of a Student information system, Facility, used in schools and colleges in several countries.[57]
Drivers’ licensing: Serco, through a purpose-made division Serco DES, holds a 10 year, $114 million contract with the Province of Ontario to operate the province’s DriveTest driver examination centres. These tests include vision, road, and knowledge tests for all persons seeking to become a licensed automobile driver in the province.[43]
Serco publishes a magazine, Ethos Journal, to stimulate thought and provoke reaction to the big issues shaping the world of public services. Ethos is aimed at public sector leaders, politicians, academics and policy specialists debating the future of public services today.[62]
Serco operates waste collection services for local councils.[63]
Serco operates in Continental Europe, the Middle East, the Asia Pacific region and North America, but the majority of its turnover still comes from the UK.
One of the most nausea-inducing qualities of “pink slime” (a.k.a. disinfected leftover beef trimmings, a.k.a. the contents of your fast food hamburger patty) is the fact that it’s doused with ammonia. But as it turns out, that’s not as uncommon as you might like to think.According to the University of Michigan Risk Science Center, a burger patty made with pink slime contains 0.02 grams of ammonia per 100 grams of meat — but bleu cheese contains almost seven times as much.
Here are 10 foods with more ammonia than your slimy, slimy burger:
Cheese. Oh my god, cheese is like an ammonia warehouse. Domestic bleu cheese topped the list with 0.138 grams of ammonia per 100 grams, but cheddar (0.11), beer cheese (0.092), American cheese (0.081), and a couple types I’ve never heard of all ranked.
Salami, 0.11 grams of ammonia per 100 grams.
Peanut butter, 0.049 grams per 100.
Mayonnaise, 0.041 grams per 100.
Ketchup, 0.035.
Gelatin, 0.034.
Onions, 0.027.
Potato chips, 0.024, though I imagine the brand and flavor would matter.
Brewer’s yeast, 0.022.
Margarine, 0.021
Now, to be fair this is based on a 1973 paper, so the ammonia content in some of these foods may have changed. But on the other hand, in 1973 the ammonia content in a burger patty was half what it is today. So those changes might not have been for the better.
It’s not totally clear whether you should be less freaked out by pink slime, or a hell of a lot more freaked out by everything else. But one thing is for certain: You may want to think twice about whether you’re going to eat that burger with mayo, onion, ketchup, and American cheese — or whether you’re just going to use it to clean your windows.
In January 2012, two controversial pieces of legislation were making their way through the US Congress. SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, and PIPA, the Protect Intellectual Property Act, were meant to crack down on the illegal sharing of digital media. The bills were drafted on request of the content industry, Hollywood studios and major record labels.
The online community rose up against the US government to speak out against SOPA, and the anti-online piracy bill was effectively killed off after the largest online protest in US history. But it was only one win in a long battle between US authorities and online users over internet regulation. SOPA and PIPA were just the latest in a long line of anti-piracy legislation US politicians have passed since the 1990s.
“One of the things we are seeing which is a by-product of the digital age is, frankly, it’s much easier to steal and to profit from the hard work of others,” says Michael O’Leary, the executive vice-president for global policy at the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).
The US government says it must be able to fight against piracy and cyber attacks. And that means imposing more restrictions online. But proposed legislation could seriously curb freedom of speech and privacy, threatening the internet as we know it.
Can and should the internet be controlled? Who gets that power? How far will the US government go to gain power over the web? And will this mean the end of a free and global internet?
Fault Lines looks at the fight for control of the web, life in the digital age and the threat to cyber freedom, asking if US authorities are increasingly trying to regulate user freedoms in the name of national and economic security.
It is time for the truth to be told about Susan G. Komen for the Cure. The organization is, flatly stated, engaged in fraud. Funded by drug companies and mammogram manufacturers, the organization preys upon women in order to grow its own financial power while feeding female victims into the conventional cancer industry grinder.
All across America, men and women participate in “run for the cure” events, raising tens of millions of dollars each year that go into the hands of Komen for the Cure. What these people don’t know is that much of that money is spent on “free” mammograms. Those mammograms, in turn, actually cause breast cancer because they subject women to high doses of ionizing radiation.
The Susan G. Komen scam, in essence, is to raise money that’s used to give women cancer and create a financial windfall for the very same companies that financially support Komen in the first place. “The Komen Foundation owns stock in General Electric, one of the largest makers of mammogram machines in the world. It also owns stock in several pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca,” reports Tony Isaacs at NaturalNews (http://www.naturalnews.com/027307_cancer_breast_ACS.html).
“DuPont, another huge chemical company and major polluter, supplies much of the film used in mammography machines. Both DuPont and GE aggressively promote mammography screening of women in their 40s, despite the risk of its contributing to breast cancer in that age group. And while biotech giant Monsanto sponsors Breast Cancer Awareness Month’s high profile event, the Race for the Cure, it continues to profit from the production of many known carcinogens.” (http://www.tbyil.com/breast-cancer-deception.htm)
Komen’s corporate partners include General Mills, Zumba Fitness, Walgreens, The Republic of Tea, REMAX, New Balance, American Airlines, Bank of America, Ford Motor Company, Dell and many more (http://ww5.komen.org/corporatepartners.aspx).
The bottom line? Komen deceives women while powerful corporations rake in the profits. This isn’t merely my own opinion. Two prominent doctors, in an article published in the British Medical Journal, have sharply condemned Komen for the Cure for lying about the “benefits” of mammograms.
Their names? Steven Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz, directors of the Center for Medicine and the Media at Dartmouth Medical School in Hanover, New Hampshire.
They join a growing number of other doctors and medical professionals who now see Komen for the Cure as afundraising fraud and are going public with detailed accusations against Komen’s deceptions.
In the recently published BMJ article, Woloshin and Schwartz accused Komen of lying in its promotional propaganda for the 2011 Breast Cancer Awareness Month. In advertising, Komen falsely claimed the 5-year survival rate when breast cancer is caught early is 98%, while only 23% when not “caught early.” This is how Komen tricks women into getting more mammograms which cause more cancer — by claiming “early detection saves lives.” But it’s not science; it’s pure propaganda. (See below.)
According to study authors Woloshin and Schwartz, Komen willfully ignored “a growing and increasingly accepted body of evidence [showing] that although screening may reduce a woman’s chance of dying from breast cancer by a small amount, it also causes major harms.”
Komen for the Cure is in the business of fear mongering. They want everyone to be scared out of their minds that breast cancer is going to strike down all the women in their life. And in order to deal with the fear, all you have to do is give more money to Komen.
It’s sort of like an old-school evangelical group that asks for donations and says you’ll be healed if you just “believe,” but instead of claiming to heal people with the power of faith, the Komen cult claims to heal women with the power of ionizing radiation.
With mammograms used to detect breast cancer tumors, that 10-year risk of dying from breast cancer moves ever so slightly downward to 0.46%.
In other words, the real risk reduction of dying from breast cancer by receiving mammograms is only 0.07% — seven women out of 10,000.
How mammograms kill women
Seven out of 10,000 is a far cry from the fear-mongering levels that Komen propagandizes. It’s not quite the cancer apocalypse that Komen makes it out to be, huh? And in the mean time, Woloshin and Schwartz explain that anywhere from 20% to 50% of women who receive mammograms for a decade of their lives will have at least one “false alarm.”
These false alarms often lead to women being treated with deadly chemotherapy cocktails. These expensive drugs enrich the very same drug companies that donate money to Komen for the Cure. This is all part of the cycle of fraud that exploits women’s bodies for profit, all while conducting this sick fraud with the message of “finding a cure,” emblazoned with pink ribbons. The magnitude of the deception in all this is pathological… even criminal.
“The Komen advertisement is deceptive in another way: it ignores the harms of screening,” say Woloshin and Schwartz. “Between 20% and 50% of women screened annually for a decade experience at least one false alarm requiring a biopsy. Most importantly, screening results in overdiagnosis. For every life saved by mammography, around two to 10 women are overdiagnosed. Women who are overdiagnosed cannot benefit from unnecessary chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery. All they do experience is harm,” they write.
That harm often comes in the form of unnecessary chemotherapy that poisons women but financially benefits the drug companies. Here’s another article on NaturalNews which also supports this conclusion: http://www.naturalnews.com/020829.html
“Women need much more than marketing slogans about screening,” wrote Woloshin and Schwartz. “They need — and deserve — the facts. The Komen advertisement campaign failed to provide the facts. Worse, it undermined decision making by misusing statistics to generate false hope about the benefit of mammography screening. That kind of behavior is not very charitable.”
The article goes on to emphasize that mammograms are a wash, offering no net benefit to women’s health:
The benefits and harms [of mammography] are so evenly balanced that the National Breast Cancer Coalition, a major US network of patient and professional organizations, “believes there is insufficient evidence to recommend for or against universal mammography in any age group of women.” (http://www.knowbreastcancer.org/controversies/mammography-screening/)
But instead of telling women the truth, Komen lies to women, vastly exaggerating the “benefits” of screening:
“Komen’s public advertising campaign gives women no sense that screening is a close call. Instead it simply tells women to be screened, overstates the benefit of mammography, and ignores harms altogether,” write Woloshin and Schwartz.
Komen has even fooled doctors
Beyond fooling the public, Komen’s insidious disinformation campaign has even fooled most doctors. As Woloshin and Schwartz described how doctors are tricked by the “improved survival” statistics which mislead people into thinking that screening saves lives:
“In a recent survey we conducted with colleagues from the Max Planck Institute, most US primary care doctors mistakenly interpreted improved survival as evidence that screening saves lives.”
(Wegwarth O, Schwartz L, Woloshin S, Gaissmeier W, Gigerenzer G. Do physicians understand cancer screening statistics? A national survey of primary care physicians in the United States. Ann Intern Med 2012;156:340-49.)
Obscene executive salaries
“Susan G. Komen for the Cure is a multimillion-dollar company with assets totaling over $390 million . Only 20.9% of these funds were reportedly used in the 2009-2010 fiscal year for research “for the cure,” writes Emily Michele at Alternet (http://www.alternet.org/story/154010/i_will_not_be_pinkwashed%3A_kome…)
She goes on to explain, “I don’t know about you, but I would never expect directors of a charitable “non-profit” organization to make more than most doctors, lawyers, or even politicians. Their CEO and president, Hala G. Moddelmog, made $531,924, plus $26,683 in change. That’s more than President Obama makes.”
Komen spends about 39% of its money on “public health education,” which is just another way to say “pinkwashing.” This money is used to catapult the Komen propaganda so that future fundraising events can raise even more money, much of which is paid to Komen’s fat cat executives as cushy salaries.
Just remember: When you run for the cure, a significant portion of the money you raise is going straight into the pockets of wealthy Komen executives. None of the money is actually being used to promote vitamin D or cancer prevention. “Detection,” after all, is not prevention. It’s just a way to push the cancer industry’s agenda of treating more women with toxic chemotherapy chemicals (and more ionizing radiation).
Komen’s activities are crimes against humanity — and blacks in particular
Susan G. Komen for the Cure isn’t just a dishonest, deceptive non-profit that exploits women for its own power and prestige; it also engaged in crimes against humanity. The use of deceptive statistics, lying propaganda, and false and misleading fundraising events push a machine of death and destruction that sacrifices the lives of women upon the altar of Big Pharma profits.
Notably, Komen usually targets black women, focusing their mobile mammogram trucks — “mobile cancer stations” — on low-income neighborhoods in cities like Detroit where breast cancer among African American women is far more common than in white neighborhoods. The result of all this is increased rates of breast cancer due to the mammography itself. This, in turn, results in statistics which are cited by Komen itself to spread fear and alarm over the disease, justifying their very existence.
It is, at every level, an insidious scam conducted at the cost of innocent human lives. Far from “finding a cure” for cancer, Komen spreads cancer, incites fear, lies to women and then cites the very cancer that it causes as justification for its existence.
Susan G. Komen is a danger to the American public. It functions as a recruitment branch of Big Pharma, ensnaring women with a seductive message of hope and inspiration while delivering suffering and death.
If you donate money to Komen, you are financially supporting this insidious, destructive non-profit monstrosity that destroys lives and brutalizes women. Women who undergo chemotherapy should be called, “chemically battered women,” and Komen promotes this abuse of women through its reliance on false and deceptive propaganda.
The solution to all this? Boycott Komen. Refuse to raise money for this harmful organization that exploits women. Inform your friends about pinkwashing. Share this article. Help stop the exploitation of women by Komen and its lying propaganda.
Looking for a real way to prevent breast cancer? Take more Vitamin D. Komen won’t educate women about vitamin D — (surprised?) — but here at NaturalNews, we have a powerfully informative infographic that tells the story:
Ok, I relent. Everyone wants to know why I left and answering individually isn’t scaling so here it is, laid out in its long form. Read a little (I get to the punch line in the 3rd paragraph) or read it all. But a warning in advance: there is no drama here, no tell-all, no former colleagues bashed and nothing more than you couldn’t already surmise from what’s happening in the press these days surrounding Google and its attitudes toward user privacy and software developers. This is simply a more personal telling.
It wasn’t an easy decision to leave Google. During my time there I became fairly passionate about the company. I keynoted four Google Developer Day events, two Google Test Automation Conferences and was a prolific contributor to the Google testing blog. Recruiters often asked me to help sell high priority candidates on the company. No one had to ask me twice to promote Google and no one was more surprised than me when I could no longer do so. In fact, my last three months working for Google was a whirlwind of desperation, trying in vain to get my passion back.
The Google I was passionate about was a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate. The Google I left was an advertising company with a single corporate-mandated focus.
Technically I suppose Google has always been an advertising company, but for the better part of the last three years, it didn’t feel like one. Google was an ad company only in the sense that a good TV show is an ad company: having great content attracts advertisers.
Under Eric Schmidt ads were always in the background. Google was run like an innovation factory, empowering employees to be entrepreneurial through founder’s awards, peer bonuses and 20% time. Our advertising revenue gave us the headroom to think, innovate and create. Forums like App Engine, Google Labs and open source served as staging grounds for our inventions. The fact that all this was paid for by a cash machine stuffed full of advertising loot was lost on most of us. Maybe the engineers who actually worked on ads felt it, but the rest of us were convinced that Google was a technology company first and foremost; a company that hired smart people and placed a big bet on their ability to innovate.
From this innovation machine came strategically important products like Gmail and Chrome, products that were the result of entrepreneurship at the lowest levels of the company. Of course, such runaway innovative spirit creates some duds, and Google has had their share of those, but Google has always known how to fail fast and learn from it.
In such an environment you don’t have to be part of some executive’s inner circle to succeed. You don’t have to get lucky and land on a sexy project to have a great career. Anyone with ideas or the skills to contribute could get involved. I had any number of opportunities to leave Google during this period, but it was hard to imagine a better place to work.
But that was then, as the saying goes, and this is now.
It turns out that there was one place where the Google innovation machine faltered and that one place mattered a lot: competing with Facebook. Informal efforts produced a couple of antisocial dogs in Wave and Buzz. Orkut never caught on outside Brazil. Like the proverbial hare confident enough in its lead to risk a brief nap, Google awoke from its social dreaming to find its front runner status in ads threatened.
Google could still put ads in front of more people than Facebook, but Facebook knows so much more about those people. Advertisers and publishers cherish this kind of personal information, so much so that they are willing to put the Facebook brand before their own. Exhibit A: www.facebook.com/nike, a company with the power and clout of Nike putting their own brand after Facebook’s? No company has ever done that for Google and Google took it personally.
Larry Page himself assumed command to right this wrong. Social became state-owned, a corporate mandate called Google+. It was an ominous name invoking the feeling that Google alone wasn’t enough. Search had to be social. Android had to be social. You Tube, once joyous in their independence, had to be … well, you get the point. Even worse was that innovation had to be social. Ideas that failed to put Google+ at the center of the universe were a distraction.
Suddenly, 20% meant half-assed. Google Labs was shut down. App Engine fees were raised. APIs that had been free for years were deprecated or provided for a fee. As the trappings of entrepreneurship were dismantled, derisive talk of the “old Google” and its feeble attempts at competing with Facebook surfaced to justify a “new Google” that promised “more wood behind fewer arrows.”
The days of old Google hiring smart people and empowering them to invent the future was gone. The new Google knew beyond doubt what the future should look like. Employees had gotten it wrong and corporate intervention would set it right again.
Officially, Google declared that “sharing is broken on the web” and nothing but the full force of our collective minds around Google+ could fix it. You have to admire a company willing to sacrifice sacred cows and rally its talent behind a threat to its business. Had Google been right, the effort would have been heroic and clearly many of us wanted to be part of that outcome. I bought into it. I worked on Google+ as a development director and shipped a bunch of code. But the world never changed; sharing never changed. It’s arguable that we made Facebook better, but all I had to show for it was higher review scores.
As it turned out, sharing was not broken. Sharing was working fine and dandy, Google just wasn’t part of it. People were sharing all around us and seemed quite happy. A user exodus from Facebook never materialized. I couldn’t even get my own teenage daughter to look at Google+ twice, “social isn’t a product,” she told me after I gave her a demo, “social is people and the people are on Facebook.” Google was the rich kid who, after having discovered he wasn’t invited to the party, built his own party in retaliation. The fact that no one came to Google’s party became the elephant in the room.
Google+ and me, we were simply never meant to be. Truth is I’ve never been much on advertising. I don’t click on ads. When Gmail displays ads based on things I type into my email message it creeps me out. I don’t want my search results to contain the rants of Google+ posters (or Facebook’s or Twitter’s for that matter). When I search for “London pub walks” I want better than the sponsored suggestion to “Buy a London pub walk at Wal-Mart.”
The old Google made a fortune on ads because they had good content. It was like TV used to be: make the best show and you get the most ad revenue from commercials. The new Google seems more focused on the commercials themselves.
Perhaps Google is right. Perhaps the future lies in learning as much about people’s personal lives as possible. Perhaps Google is a better judge of when I should call my mom and that my life would be better if I shopped that Nordstrom sale. Perhaps if they nag me enough about all that open time on my calendar I’ll work out more often. Perhaps if they offer an ad for a divorce lawyer because I am writing an email about my 14 year old son breaking up with his girlfriend I’ll appreciate that ad enough to end my own marriage. Or perhaps I’ll figure all this stuff out on my own.
The old Google was a great place to work. The new one?
“The policy set for GE alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other GE crops as well. True coexistence is a must.” – Whole Foods Market, Jan. 21, 2011
In the wake of a 12-year battle to keep Monsanto’s Genetically Engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation’s 25,000 organic farms and ranches, America’s organic consumers and producers are facing betrayal. A self-appointed cabal of the Organic Elite, spearheaded by Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, andStonyfield Farm, has decided it’s time to surrender to Monsanto. Top executives from these companies have publicly admitted that they no longer oppose the mass commercialization of GE crops, such as Monsanto’s controversial Roundup Ready alfalfa, and are prepared to sit down and cut a deal for “coexistence” with Monsanto and USDA biotech cheerleader Tom Vilsack.
In a cleverly worded, but profoundly misleading email sent to its customers last week, Whole Foods Market, while proclaiming their support for organics and “seed purity,” gave the green light to USDA bureaucrats to approve the “conditional deregulation” of Monsanto’s genetically engineered, herbicide-resistant alfalfa. Beyond the regulatory euphemism of “conditional deregulation,” this means that WFM and their colleagues are willing to go along with the massive planting of a chemical and energy-intensive GE perennial crop, alfalfa; guaranteed to spread its mutant genes and seeds across the nation; guaranteed to contaminate the alfalfa fed to organic animals; guaranteed to lead to massive poisoning of farm workers and destruction of the essential soil food web by the toxic herbicide, Roundup; and guaranteed to produce Roundup-resistant superweeds that will require even more deadly herbicides such as 2,4 D to be sprayed on millions of acres of alfalfa across the U.S.
In exchange for allowing Monsanto’s premeditated pollution of the alfalfa gene pool, WFM wants “compensation.” In exchange for a new assault on farmworkers and rural communities (a recent large-scale Swedish study found that spraying Roundup doubles farm workers’ and rural residents’ risk of getting cancer), WFM expects the pro-biotech USDA to begin to regulate rather than cheerlead for Monsanto. In payment for a new broad spectrum attack on the soil’s crucial ability to provide nutrition for food crops and to sequester dangerous greenhouse gases (recent studies show that Roundup devastates essential soil microorganisms that provide plant nutrition and sequester climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases), WFM wants the Biotech Bully of St. Louis to agree to pay “compensation” (i.e. hush money) to farmers “for any losses related to the contamination of his crop.”
In its email of Jan. 21, 2011 WFM calls for “public oversight by the USDA rather than reliance on the biotechnology industry,” even though WFM knows full well that federal regulations on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) do not require pre-market safety testing, nor labeling; and that even federal judges have repeatedly ruled that so-called government “oversight” of Frankencrops such as Monsanto’s sugar beets and alfalfa is basically a farce. At the end of its email, WFM admits that its surrender to Monsanto is permanent: “The policy set for GE alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other GE crops as well True coexistence is a must.”
Why Is Organic Inc. Surrendering?
According to informed sources, the CEOs of WFM and Stonyfield are personal friends of former Iowa governor, now USDA Secretary, Tom Vilsack, and in fact made financial contributions to Vilsack’s previous electoral campaigns. Vilsack was hailed as “Governor of the Year” in 2001 by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, and traveled in a Monsanto corporate jet on the campaign trail. Perhaps even more fundamental to Organic Inc.’s abject surrender is the fact that the organic elite has become more and more isolated from the concerns and passions of organic consumers and locavores.
The Organic Inc. CEOs are tired of activist pressure, boycotts, and petitions. Several of them have told me this to my face. They apparently believe that the battle against GMOs has been lost, and that it’s time to reach for the consolation prize. The consolation prize they seek is a so-called “coexistence” between the biotech Behemoth and the organic community that will lull the public to sleep and greenwash the unpleasant fact that Monsanto’s unlabeled and unregulated genetically engineered crops are now spreading their toxic genes on 1/3 of U.S. (and 1/10 of global) crop land.
WFM and most of the largest organic companies have deliberately separated themselves from anti-GMO efforts and cut off all funding to campaigns working to label or ban GMOs. The so-called Non-GMO Project, funded by Whole Foods and giant wholesaler United Natural Foods (UNFI) is basically a greenwashing effort (although the 100% organic companies involved in this project seem to be operating in good faith) to show that certified organic foods are basically free from GMOs (we already know this since GMOs are banned in organic production), while failing to focus on so-called “natural” foods, which constitute most of WFM and UNFI’s sales and are routinely contaminated with GMOs.
From their “business as usual” perspective, successful lawsuits against GMOs filed by public interest groups such as the Center for Food Safety; or noisy attacks on Monsanto by groups like the Organic Consumers Association, create bad publicity, rattle their big customers such as Wal-Mart, Target, Kroger, Costco, Supervalu, Publix and Safeway; and remind consumers that organic crops and foods such as corn, soybeans, and canola are slowly but surely becoming contaminated by Monsanto’s GMOs.
Whole Foods’ Dirty Little Secret: Most of the So-Called “Natural” Processed Foods and Animal Products They Sell Are Contaminated with GMOs
The main reason, however, why Whole Foods is pleading for coexistence with Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, Syngenta, BASF and the rest of the biotech bullies, is that they desperately want the controversy surrounding genetically engineered foods and crops to go away. Why? Because they know, just as we do, that 2/3 of WFM’s $9 billion annual sales is derived from so-called “natural” processed foods and animal products that are contaminated with GMOs. We and our allies have tested their so-called “natural” products (no doubt WFM’s lab has too) containing non-organic corn and soy, and guess what: they’re all contaminated with GMOs, in contrast to their certified organic products, which are basically free of GMOs, or else contain barely detectable trace amounts.
Approximately 2/3 of the products sold by Whole Foods Market and their main distributor, United Natural Foods (UNFI) are not certified organic, but rather are conventional (chemical-intensive and GMO-tainted) foods and products disguised as “natural.”
Unprecedented wholesale and retail control of the organic marketplace by UNFI and Whole Foods, employing a business model of selling twice as much so-called “natural” food as certified organic food, coupled with the takeover of many organic companies by multinational food corporations such as Dean Foods, threatens the growth of the organic movement.
Covering Up GMO Contamination: Perpetrating “Natural” Fraud
Many well-meaning consumers are confused about the difference between conventional products marketed as “natural,” and those nutritionally/ environmentally superior and climate-friendly products that are “certified organic.”
Retail stores like WFM and wholesale distributors like UNFI have failed to educate their customers about the qualitative difference between natural and certified organic, conveniently glossing over the fact that nearly all of the processed “natural” foods and products they sell contain GMOs, or else come from a “natural” supply chain where animals are force-fed GMO grains in factory farms or Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs).
A troubling trend in organics today is the calculated shift on the part of certain large formerly organic brands from certified organic ingredients and products to so-called “natural” ingredients. With the exception of the “grass-fed and grass-finished” meat sector, most “natural” meat, dairy, and eggs are coming from animals reared on GMO grains and drugs, and confined, entirely, or for a good portion of their lives, in CAFOs.
Whole Foods and UNFI are maximizing their profits by selling quasi-natural products at premium organic prices. Organic consumers are increasingly left without certified organic choices while genuine organic farmers and ranchers continue to lose market share to “natural” imposters. It’s no wonder that less than 1% of American farmland is certified organic, while well-intentioned but misled consumers have boosted organic and “natural” purchases to $80 billion annually-approximately 12% of all grocery store sales.
The Solution: Truth-in-Labeling Will Enable Consumers to Drive So-Called “Natural” GMO and CAFO-Tainted Foods Off the Market
There can be no such thing as “coexistence” with a reckless industry that undermines public health, destroys biodiversity, damages the environment, tortures and poisons animals, destabilizes the climate, and economically devastates the world’s 1.5 billion seed-saving small farmers.
There is no such thing as coexistence between GMOs and organics in the European Union. Why? Because in the EU there are almost no GMO crops under cultivation, nor GM consumer food products on supermarket shelves. And why is this? Because under EU law, all foods containing GMOs or GMO ingredients must be labeled. Consumers have the freedom to choose or not to choose GMOs; while farmers, food processors, and retailers have (at least legally) the right to lace foods with GMOs, as long as they are safety-tested and labeled.
Of course the EU food industry understands that consumers, for the most part, do not want to purchase or consume GE foods. European farmers and food companies, even junk food purveyors like McDonald’s and Wal-Mart, understand quite well the concept expressed by a Monsanto executive when GMOs first came on the market: “If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it.”
The biotech industry and Organic Inc. are supremely conscious of the fact that North American consumers, like their European counterparts, are wary and suspicious of GMO foods. Even without a PhD, consumers understand you don’t want your food safety or environmental sustainability decisions to be made by out-of-control chemical companies like Monsanto, Dow, or Dupont – the same people who brought you toxic pesticides, Agent Orange, PCBs, and now global warming.
Industry leaders are acutely aware of the fact that every single industry or government poll over the last 16 years has shown that 85-95% of American consumers want mandatory labels on GMO foods. Why? So that we can avoid buying them. GMO foods have absolutely no benefits for consumers or the environment, only hazards. This is why Monsanto and their friends in the Bush, Clinton, and Obama administrations have prevented consumer GMO truth-in-labeling laws from getting a public discussion in Congress.
Although Congressman Dennis Kucinich (Democrat, Ohio) recently introduced a bill in Congress calling for mandatory labeling and safety testing for GMOs, don’t hold your breath for Congress to take a stand for truth-in-labeling and consumers’ right to know what’s in their food. Especially since the 2010 Supreme Court decision in the so-called Citizens United case gave big corporations and billionaires the right to spend unlimited amounts of money (and remain anonymous, as they do so) to buy media coverage and elections, our chances of passing federal GMO labeling laws against the wishes of Monsanto and Food Inc. are all but non-existent.
Perfectly dramatizing the “Revolving Door” between Monsanto and the Federal Government, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, formerly chief counsel for Monsanto, delivered one of the decisive votes in the Citizens United case, in effect giving Monsanto and other biotech bullies the right to buy the votes it needs in the U.S. Congress.
With big money controlling Congress and the media, we have little choice but to shift our focus and go local. We’ve got to concentrate our forces where our leverage and power lie, in the marketplace, at the retail level; pressuring retail food stores to voluntarily label their products; while on the legislative front we must organize a broad coalition to pass mandatory GMO (and CAFO) labeling laws, at the city, county, and state levels.
The Organic Consumers Association, joined by our consumer, farmer, environmental, and labor allies, has just launched a nationwide Truth-in-Labeling campaign to stop Monsanto and the Biotech Bullies from force-feeding unlabeled GMOs to animals and humans.
Utilizing scientific data, legal precedent, and consumer power the OCA and our local coalitions will educate and mobilize at the grassroots level to pressure giant supermarket chains (Wal-Mart, Kroger, Costco, Safeway, Supervalu, and Publix) and natural food retailers such as Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s to voluntarily implement “truth-in-labeling” practices for GMOs and CAFO products; while simultaneously organizing a critical mass to pass mandatory local and state truth-in-labeling ordinances – similar to labeling laws already in effect for country of origin, irradiated food, allergens, and carcinogens.
If local and state government bodies refuse to take action, wherever possible we must attempt to gather sufficient petition signatures and place these truth-in-labeling initiatives directly on the ballot in 2011 or 2012. If you’re interested in helping organize or coordinate a Millions Against Monsanto and Factory Farms Truth-in-Labeling campaign in your local community, sign up here:http://organicconsumers.org/oca-volunteer/
Many people have asked us why we endorsed the coexistence option rather than an outright ban on GE alfalfa. That was never an option in Washington! The USDA presented the industry with only two options that they were considering– deregulation and deregulation with restrictions. Given the pervasive planting of GE crops in the U.S. – 93% of soy, 86% of corn, 93% of cotton and 93% of canola seed planted were genetically engineered in the U.S. in 2010 – the option of an outright ban was not on the table. Whole Foods Market — along with the National Cooperative Grocers Association, the National Organic Coalition, the Organic Trade Association, and other companies and groups — endorsed the path of deregulation with restrictions, or coexistence, not because it was a perfect path, but because it was a path to create meaningful change right now in the regulating of genetically engineered foods and the protection of non-GE foods. (Read the full response.)
People say if farmers don’t want problems from Monsanto, just don’t buy their GMO seeds.
Not so simple. Where are farmers supposed to get normal seed these days? How are they supposed to avoid contamination of their fields from GM-crops? How are they supposed to stop Monsanto detectives from trespassing or Monsanto from using helicopters to fly over spying on them?
Monsanto contaminates the fields, trespasses onto the land taking samples and if they find any GMO plants growing there (or say they have), they then sue, saying they own the crop. It’s a way to make money since farmers can’t fight back and court and they settle because they have no choice.
And they have done and are doing a bucket load of things to keep farmers and everyone else from having any access at all to buying, collecting, and saving of NORMAL seeds.
1. They’ve bought up the seed companies across the Midwest.
2. They’ve written Monsanto seed laws and gotten legislators to put them through, that make cleaning, collecting and storing of seeds so onerous in terms of fees and paperwork and testing and tracking every variety and being subject to fines, that having normal seed becomes almost impossible (an NAIS approach to wiping out normal seeds). Does your state have such a seed law? Before they existed, farmers just collected the seeds and put them in sacks in the shed and used them the next year, sharing whatever they wished with friends and neighbors, selling some if they wanted. That’s been killed.
In Illinois, which has such a seed law, Madigan, the Speaker of the House, his staff is Monsanto lobbyists.
3. Monsanto is pushing anti-democracy laws (Vilsack’s brainchild, actually) that remove community’ control over their own counties so farmers and citizens can’t block the planting of GMO crops even if they can contaminate other crops. So if you don’t want a GM-crop that grows industrial chemicals or drugs or a rice growing with human DNA in it, in your area and mixing with your crops, tough luck.
Check the map of just where the Monsanto/Vilsack laws are and see if your state is still a democracy or is Monsanto’s. A farmer in Illinois told me he heard that Bush had pushed through some regulation that made this true in every state. People need to check on that.
4. For sure there are Monsanto regulations buried in the FDA right now that make a farmer’s seed cleaning equipment illegal (another way to leave nothing but GM-seeds) because it’s now considered a “source of seed contamination.” Farmer can still seed clean but the equipment now has to be certified and a farmer said it would require a million to a million and half dollar building and equipment … for EACH line of seed. Seed storage facilities are also listed (another million?) and harvesting and transport equipment. And manure. Something that can contaminate seed. Notice that chemical fertilizers and pesticides are not mentioned.
You could eat manure and be okay (a little grossed out but okay). Try that with pesticides and fertilizers. Indian farmers have. Their top choice for how to commit suicide to escape the debt they have been left in is to drink Monsanto pesticides.
5. Monsanto is picking off seed cleaners across the Midwest. In Pilot Grove, Missouri, in Indiana (Maurice Parr), and now in southern Illinois (Steve Hixon). And they are using US marshals and state troopers and county police to show up in three cars to serve the poor farmers who had used Hixon as their seed cleaner, telling them that he or their neighbors turned them in, so across that 6 county areas, no one talking to neighbors and people are living in fear and those farming communities are falling apart from the suspicion Monsanto sowed. Hixon’s office got broken into and he thinks someone put a GPS tracking device on his equipment and that’s how Monsanto found between 200-400 customers in very scattered and remote areas, and threatened them all and destroyed his business within 2 days.
So, after demanding that seed cleaners somehow be able to tell one seed from another (or be sued to kingdom come) or corrupting legislatures to put in laws about labeling of seeds that are so onerous no one can cope with them, what is Monsanto’s attitude about labeling their own stuff? You guessed it – they’re out there pushing laws against ANY labeling of their own GM-food and animals and of any exports to other countries. Why?
I just heard that some seed dealers urge farmers to buy the seed under the seed dealer’s name, telling the farmers it helps the dealer get a discount on seed to buy a lot under their own name. Then Monsanto sues the poor farmer for buying their seed without a contract and extorts huge sums from them.
Here’s a youtube video that is worth your time. Vandana Shiva is one of the leading anti-Monsanto people in the world. In this video, she says (and this video is old), Monsanto had sued 1500 farmers whose fields had simply been contaminated by GM-crops. Listen to all the ways Monsanto goes after farmers.
Do you know the story of Gandhi in India and how the British had salt laws that taxed salt? The British claimed it as theirs. Gandhi had what was called a Salt Satyagraha, in which people were asked to break the laws and march to the sea and collect the salt without paying the British. A kind of Boston tea party, I guess.
Thousands of people marched 240 miles to the ocean where the British were waiting. As people moved forward to collect the salt, the British soldiers clubbed them but the people kept coming. The non-violent protest exposed the British behavior, which was so revolting to the world that it helped end British control in India.
Vandana Shiva has started a Seed Satyagraha – nonviolent non-cooperation around seed laws – has gotten millions of farmers to sign a pledge to break those laws.
American farmers and cattlemen might appreciate what Gandhi fought for and what Shiva is bringing back and how much it is about what we are all so angry about – loss of basic freedoms. [The highlighting is mine.]
The Seed Satyagraha is the name for the nonviolent, noncooperative movement that Dr. Shiva has organized to stand against seed monopolies. According to Dr. Shiva, the name was inspired by Gandhi’s famous walk to the Dandi Beach, where he picked up salt and said, “You can’t monopolize this which we need for life.” But it’s not just the noncooperation aspect of the movement that is influenced by Gandhi. The creative side saving seeds, trading seeds, farming without corporate dependence–without their chemicals, without their seed.
” All this is talked about in the language that Gandhi left us as a legacy. We work with three key concepts.”
” (One) Swadeshi…which means the capacity to do your own thing–produce your own food, produce your own goods….”
“(Two) Swaraj–to govern yourself. And we fight on three fronts–water, food, and seed. JalSwaraj is water independence–water freedom and water sovereignty. Anna Swaraj is food freedom, food sovereignty. And Bija Swaraj is seed freedom and seed sovereignty. Swa means self–that which rises from the self and is very, very much a deep notion of freedom.
“I believe that these concepts, which are deep, deep, deep in Indian civilization, Gandhi resurrected them to fight for freedom. They are very important for today’s world because so far what we’ve had is centralized state rule, giving way now to centralized corporate control, and we need a third alternate. That third alternate is, in part, citizens being able to tell their state, ‘This is what your function is. This is what your obligations are,’ and being able to have their states act on corporations to say, ‘This is something you cannot do.’”
” (Three) Satyagraha, non-cooperation, basically saying, ‘We will do our thing and any law that tries to say that (our freedom) is illegal… we will have to not cooperate with it. We will defend our freedoms to have access to water, access to seed, access to food, access to medicine.’”
SAINT LOUIS, Mo. — Boeing is getting “very close to having what we’d say is a very capable design” to pitch for the Navy’s Unmanned Carrier-launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) program, Chris Chadwick, president of the company’s military aircraft division told DT at Boeing’s Saint Louis, Mo., facilities yesterday. While he wouldn’t reveal much about the company’s UCLASS design, he did say that it definitely isn’t “a warmed-over X-45.”
The X-45, which has evolved into the Phantom Ray, was Boeing’s unsuccessful bid for the Navy’s Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle Demonstrator (UCAS-D) program that is using Northrop Grumman’s X-47B to test out how to conduct carrier ops with a large, stealthy UAV.
UCLASS is the Navy’s effort to field a fighter-size, stealthy drone capable of flying long distances to spy on and attack enemies by 2018. The Sea service considers it a follow-on effort to the UCAS-D program.
A couple months ago, we showed you the drawing of a mysterious aircraft (shown above) depicting what Boeing officials said was merely a concept image for UCLASS, not a final design, and that the company was still evaluating a half dozen or so different designs that it could pitch for the effort.
Chadwick said he isn’t concerned about Northrop having an advantage over Boeing in the UCLASS program, saying that all competitors into the contest will have access to the information learned from the UCAS-D program.
Northrop is likely to offer a version of its X-47B for the UCLASS contest while General Atomics is offering a version of its Predator C Avenger, called the Sea Avenger, that’s equipped to handle the strains of catapult launches and arrested landings as well as the salty sea air and Lockheed is apparently going to bid with a yet-to-be revealed design.
The US government has for the first time signed off on a large-scale experiment involving genetically modified crops, which will lead to biotech big shot Monsanto introducing an engineered corn seed across America from South Dakota to Texas.
The Monsanto Corporation has been given the go-ahead to test out a man-made corn variant that they claim can thrive in dry, unfavorable conditions. With much of the American south and southwest experiencing abnormally arid conditions, the freak-seed could revitalize a chunk of the nation’s agriculture.
More likely, however, is that a success will mean revitalization in terms of Monsanto’s profits and not much more.
The government has agreed to let Monsanto test out the biotech crop on farms owned by the company from the state of South Dakota down through Texas to see if the seed stands to be commercially viable; if so, it is expected to be made available for purchase in 2013. With America’s small-time agriculturists in danger — and already largely threatened by industry giant Monsanto — a success for the seed could see yet more farmers finding themselves unable to compete and forced to throw in the towel.
Monsanto has in recent years attracted criticism for questionable legal practices after it has introduced lawsuits against small-time farmers for the unauthorized use of genetically-modified crops patented by the corporation. In many instances, it is believed that the smaller farms in question only ended up with Monsanto seeds due to wind, rodents and other forces of nature bringing the crops across corporate farms and onto their own terrain. Unable to compete against Monsanto in court, however, the company has time-and-time-again bought out its competition and, as a result, made great strides as of late in terms of monopolizing the seed biz.
Last month Jim Gerritsen, president of the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, issued a statement saying he and others were serious about saving farms from being forced to close due to corporate muscling. “Monsanto’s threats and abuse of family farmers stops here,” said Gerritsen. “Monsanto’s genetic contamination of organic seed and organic crops ends now. Americans have the right to choice in the marketplace — to decide what kind of food they will feed their families — and we are taking this action on their behalf to protect that right to choose.”
Around 300,000 organic farmers are currently awaiting a court decision to see if a US District Court will hear a lawsuit against Monsanto that, if successful, will keep the company from continuing to sue small-time agriculturists. Between 1997 and 2010, Monsanto tackled 144 organic farms with lawsuits and investigated roughly 500 plantations annually during that span with their so-called “seed police.” Gerritsen and others want to see to it that Monsanto can’t do that anymore, but if they are denied a day in court and the new corn crop prevails, it could soon be the final curtain call for many of America’s independent farmers.
Governmental approval of the modified crop marks the first time that the US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has okayed a product that has been genetically engineered to resist a weather condition such as a drought, rather than a pest or herbicide. Acting on concerns that Washington has been overly encouraging to Monsanto as they force farms into foreclosure, US-based non-profit group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility went after the White House recently for ignoring Freedom of Information Act requests. Members of PEER suspect that if they can come into possession of certain correspondence, they can link the Obama administration to key lobbyists for Monsanto.
Protesters with the Occupy Wall Street movement in the region Monsanto plans to test its new seed are holding a conference this weekend in St. Louis, dubbed Occupy Midwest. Members of the group say they intend on waging a demonstration against Monsanto, which has offices in the area.
Careless mistake reveals subversion of Windows by NSA?
A CARELESS mistake by Microsoft programmers has revealed that special access codes prepared by the US National Security Agency have been secretly built into Windows. The NSA access system is built into every version of the Windows operating system now in use, except early releases of Windows 95 (and its predecessors). The discovery comes close on the heels of the revelations earlier this year that another US software giant, Lotus, had built an NSA “help information” trapdoor into its Notes system, and that security functions on other software systems had been deliberately crippled.
The first discovery of the new NSA access system was made two years ago by British researcher Dr Nicko van Someren. But it was only a few weeks ago when a second researcher rediscovered the access system. With it, he found the evidence linking it to NSA.
After a study published last year labeled viewers of Fox News as grossly misinformed, the researchers who conducted the poll have expanded their work and now confirm, again, that the network’s audience might want to consider changing the channel.
Researchers at Fairleigh Dickinson University conducted a study last year that yielded some inarguably unsurprising information about Fox News’ viewership. At the time, researchers concluded that, based off of a study that sampled residents of New Jersey, people that only watch Fox News are less informed on current events than people that don’t watch cable news at all. Now only months later, the school’s researchers have published their finding of a similar study that calls on a sample of participants from coast-to-coast and, according to the results, confirm that their earlier report wasn’t a fluke.
According to the latest study, Americans who watch only Fox News to learn about current events are indeed less informed than most everyone else.
The report reveals that, on average, American’s are able to correctly answer 1.8 out of 4 questions on international news and 1.6 of 5 questions when quizzed on domestic issues. For those that disregard the television for taking in daily newscasts, they averaged 1.22 answers correctly.
Fox viewers, of course, were a different story.
“[S]omeone who watched only Fox News would be expected to answer just 1.04 domestic questions correctly – a figure which is significantly worse than if they had reported watching no media at all,” reveals the study.
“On the other hand, if they listened only to NPR, they would be expected to answer 1.51 questions correctly; viewers of Sunday morning talk shows fare similarly well. And people watching only The Daily Show with Jon Stewart could answer about 1.42 questions correctly.”
In last year’s New Jersey-centric study, the same researchers revealed that “people who watch Fox News are 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew their government” and “6-points less likely to know that Syrians have not yet overthrown their government” compared to those who watch no news.
“Because of the controls for partisanship, we know these results are not just driven by Republicans or other groups being more likely to watch Fox News. Rather, the results show us that there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at all,” Fairleigh Dickinson Professor Dan Cassino explained in an accompanying statement at the time back in November.
By broadening the study, though, can the university conclude that people that get theire news from Comedy Central are more informed that Fox viewers? The short — and for now, seemingly indisputable answer — is yes.
On March 15, over 1,500 beekeepers and anti-GMO protesters marched through the streets of Warsaw, depositing thousands of dead bees on the steps of the Ministry of Agriculture in protest of genetically modified foods and their pesticides which are together largely responsible for the killing off of bees, butterflies, moths and other beneficial pollinators in great numbers.
Later that day the Minister of Agriculture, Marek Sawicki, announced plans to ban MON810, which has already produced millions of hectares of pesticide resistant “superweeds” in the US.
The Polish Beekeepers Association organized the protest, joining forces with International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside (ICPPC) and the Coalition for a GMO Free Poland. Targeting Monsanto’s MON810 GM corn in particular, they also called for a complete ban on all genetically engineered crops as well as the pesticides found to be most damaging to the environment (and particularly to bees).
In 2008, the Polish Parliament banned GM feed, including both the planting and importing of GM crops. “Despite this progressive step,” reports Food Travels, “the European Commission has refused to accept regional bans on GMOs, keeping Polish farmers, producers, and activists on the offensive.”
Regardless, says the ICPPC, “None of the nine European Union countries that have already prohibited MON 810 did so by asking the permission of the EU.”
There was a great variety of attire as beekeepers dressed in their work bee suits and masks and ran their hive smoke guns as they marched, many wore yellow jackets with the famous Einstein quote, and many more original signs, props, and costumes. Go here for more photos.
The ICPPC is asking Polish residents to write Minister of Agriculture Marek Sawicki, demanding that he implement an immediate moratorium on GM crops, without waiting for EU approval.
This video provides the facts about psychotropic drugs and the huge profits they create for the pharmaceutical industry. These drugs are not safe and have not been on the market long enough to provide sufficient long term studies regarding their effects. These drugs do cause addiction, however most “doctors” would call this dependence because you do not have to take an increasing dose over time. They are completely fine with you being addicted to the same amount of any given drug on a daily basis. Over half of the people that commit suicide in the United States are prescribed to psychotropic drugs. (Ex: Paxil (Paroxetine), Zoloft (Sertraline), Prozac, Wellbutrin (Bupropion), Effexor, Seroquil, Ultram (Tramadol), etc.)
It’s not enough that the biotech industry — led by multinational corporations such as Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta, BAS, and Dupont — is poisoning our food and our planet. It’s also poisoning young minds.
In a blatant attempt at brainwashing, the Council for Biotechnology Information(CBI) has widely circulated what it calls a Biotechnology Basics Activity Bookfor kids, to be used by “Agriculture and Science Teachers.” The book — calledLook Closer at Biotechnology — looks like a science workbook, but reads more like a fairy tale. Available on the council’s Web site, its colorful pages are full of friendly cartoon faces, puzzles, helpful hints for teachers — and a heavy dose of outright lies about the likely effects of genetic engineering on health, the environment, world hunger and the future of farming.
CBI’s lies are designed specifically for children, and intended for use in classrooms.
At a critical time in history when our planet is veering toward a meltdown, when our youth are suffering the health consequences (obesity, diabetes, allergies) of Big Ag and Food Inc.’s over-processed, fat-and sugar-laden, chemical-, and GMO-tainted foods, a time when we should be educating tomorrow’s adults about how to reverse climate change, how to create sustainable farming communities, how to promote better nutrition, the biotech industry’s propagandists are infiltrating classrooms with misinformation in the guise of “educational” materials.
Brainwashing children. It’s a new low, even for Monsanto.
You don’t have to read beyond the first page ofLook Closer at Biotechnology to realize that this is pure propaganda:
Hi Kids! Welcome to the Biotechnology Basics Activity Book. This is an activity book for young people like you about biotechnology — a really neat topic. Why is it such a neat topic? Because biotechnology is helping to improve the health of the Earth and the people who call it home. In this book, you will take a closer look at biotechnology. You will see that biotechnology is being used to figure out how to: 1) grow more food; 2) help the environment; and 3) grow more nutritious food that improves our health. As you work through the puzzles in this book, you will learn more about biotechnology and all of the wonderful ways it can help people live better lives in a healthier world. Have fun!
Before we take a closer look at the lies laid out in Look Closer at Biotechnology — lies that are repeated over and over again, the better to imprint them on young minds — let’s take a closer look at the book’s publisher. The Council for Biotechnology Information describes itself as “a non-profit 501(c)(6) organization that communicates science-based information about the benefits and safety of agricultural biotechnology and its contributions to sustainable development.”
According to the Internal Revenue Service, a 501(c)(6) organization is a “business league” devoted to the improvement of business conditions of one or more lines of business. The mission of a 501(c)(6) organization “must focus on the advancement of the conditions of a particular trade or the interests of the community.”
The bottom line is that CBI exists to advance the interests of the corporations that it was formed to promote — in this case, the biotech industry. While it purports to communicate “science-based information,” in fact, that’s not its mission at all. Its mission is to maximize the profits of Monsanto and the biotech industry.
Not surprisingly, CBI is funded largely by the biotech, chemical, pesticide, and seed industry giants: BASF, Bayer CropScience, Dow Agro Sciences, Dupont, Monsanto, and Syngenta.
There’s nothing new about corporations lying to the public. Corporations routinely lie to their employees. They lie in advertising. They lie in the lopsided so-called studies and research projects that they self-fund in order to guarantee the outcomes that support their often false, but self-serving premises. They buy off politicians, regulatory officials, scientists, and the media.
Although here we’re focusing on the biotech industry trying to brainwash our kids, CBI certainly does not limit its propaganda to just children. CBI recently contributed $375,000 to the Coalition Against the Costly Labeling Law — a Sacramento-based industry front group working to defeat the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act of 2012. If passed in November, this citizens’ ballot Initiative will require food manufacturers and retailers to label foods containing genetically engineered ingredients, as well as ban the routine industry practice of labeling or advertising GE-tainted foods as “natural” or “all natural.” CBI, the Farm Bureau, and the Grocery Manufacturers Association are campaigning furiously to preserve their “right” to keep consumers in the dark about whether their food has been genetically engineered or not, and to preserve their “right” to mislabel gene-altered foods as “natural.”
Clearly, the Council for Biotechnology Information has little or no regard for “science-based” information. But lies aimed directly at kids — under the guise of science education? In our schools?
Let’s take a closer look at the claims made in Look Closer at Biotechnology.
Lie #1: “Biotechnology is one method being used to help farmers grow more food.” (page 7)
This statement is patently false.
In 2009, in the wake of similar studies, the Union of Concerned Scientists examined the data on genetically engineered crops, including USDA statistics. Their report — Failure to Yield — was the first major effort to evaluate in detail the overall yields of GE crops after more than 20 years of research and 13 years of commercialization in the United States. According to the definitive UCS study, “GE has done little to increase overall crop yields.” A number of studies indicate in fact that GE soybeans, for example, actually produce lower yields than non-genetically engineered varieties.
Research conducted by the India research group, Navdanya, and reported in The GMO Emperor Has No Clothes turns up the same results:
Contrary to the claim of feeding the world, genetic engineering has not increased the yield of a single crop. Navdanya’s research in India has shown that contrary to Monsanto’s claim of Bt cotton yield of 1500 kg per acre, the reality is that the yield is an average of 400-500 kg per acre. Although Monsanto’s Indian advertising campaign reports a 50-percent increase in yields for its Bollgard cotton, a survey conducted by the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology found that the yields in all trial plots were lower than what the company promised. (Page 11).
The claim that GE crops increase agricultural yields is a blatant lie. Equally untrue is the industry’s claim that it is motivated by the desire to feed the hungry of the world. As the Union of Concerned Scientists points out: “For the most part, genetic engineering techniques are being applied to crops important to the industrialized world, not crops on which the world’s hungry depend.” Where does all the genetically engineered soy and corn — two of the largest GE crops — end up? In animal feed, processed junk foods — and school lunchrooms. Precious little goes to feed the hungry in impoverished regions.
One of the sub-arguments related to increasing yields is the biotech industry’s claim that GMO crops are more resistant to pests — hence more of the crops survive. In Look Closer at Biotechnology kids are told that agricultural biotechnology is a “precise way to make seeds with special qualities. These seeds will allow farmers to grow plants that are . . . more resistant to pests . . .” In fact widespread commercialization of herbicide-resistant and Bt-spliced GE crops has engendered a growing army of superweeds and superpests, oblivious to all but the most powerful and toxic pesticides.
What we should be teaching kids in science class is what scientists have been warning for years — that any attempt to increase resistance to pests through genetic engineering will ultimately fail. Insects — and diseases — will build up a tolerance over time, and evolve into stronger and stronger strains. That’s how nature works — and even Monsanto can’t fool Mother Nature. Organic agriculture, on the other hand, utilizing crop rotation, biodiversity, natural fertilizers, and beneficial insects, reduces crop loss from pests and weeds, without the collateral damage of toxic pesticides and fertilizers.
Recently, 22 leading scientists told the US Environmental Protection Agency that it should act with “a sense of urgency” to urge farmers to stop planting Monsanto’s genetically engineered Bt corn because it will no longer protect them from the corn rootworm. Bt corn is genetically engineered with bacterial DNA that produces an insecticide in every cell of the plant, aimed at preventing corn rootworm. Except that corn rootworms have now developed resistance to these GE mutants.
Just as scientists had predicted years ago, a new generation of insect larvae has evolved, and is eating away at the roots of Monsanto’s Bt corn — a crop farmers paid a high price for on Monsanto’s promise that they would never have to worry about corn rootworm again. Scientists are now warning of massive yield loss and surging corn costs if the EPA doesn’t act quickly to drastically reduce Bt crops’ acreage and ensure that Monsanto makes non-GMO varieties of corn available to farmers.
“Massive yield loss” doesn’t sound like “more food” — whether you’re 12 years old or 112.
What we should be telling kids is what responsible scientists and farmers — experts at the United Nations — have been saying all along: Eco-farming candouble food output. According to a UN study:
Eco-farming projects in 57 nations showed average crop yield gains of 80 percent by tapping natural methods for enhancing soil and protecting against pests.
Projects in 20 African countries resulted in a doubling of crop yields within three to 10 years.
Sound ecological farming can significantly boost production and in the long term be more effective than conventional farming.
Lie #2: “Biotechnology can help farmers and the environment in many ways.” (page 8)
Two lies for the price of one.
Biotechnology — specifically genetic engineering — helps neither farmers nor the environment, according to the majority of legitimate scientists and economists. In fact, the opposite is true. Genetic engineering of seeds has wreaked havoc on the environment and brought misery to hundreds of thousands of small farmers all over the world.
The majority of farmers in developing countries struggle to afford even the most basic requirements of seeds and fertilizers. Their survival depends on the age-old practice of selecting, saving and sharing seeds from one year to the next. When multinational corporations move into areas previously dominated by small farmers, they force those farmers to buy their patented seeds and fertilizers — under pretense of higher yields, and under threats of lawsuits if they save or share the seeds. Every year, they’re forced to buy more seeds and more chemicals from corporations — and when the promises of higher yields and higher incomes prove empty, farmers go bankrupt.
Compounding their corporate crimes, when Monsanto’s patented seeds contaminate the non-GMO crops of small farmers (because the seeds drift across property lines) Monsanto routinely sues farmers for growing their patented seeds illegally, even though the seeds were actually unwanted trespassers. Further, the company has ruined the livelihoods of small farmers by harassing them for illegally growing patented seeds, even in cases where no patented seeds have been grown, either knowingly or by accident.
As Monsanto and others have expanded worldwide, into India, China, Pakistan, and other countries, the effect on small farmers has been devastating. In India, for instance, after World Trade Organization policies forced the country in 1998 to open its seed sector to companies like Cargill, Monsanto and Syngenta, farmers quickly found themselves in debt to the biotech companies that forced them to buy corporate seeds and fertilizers and pesticides, destroying local economies. Hundreds of thousands of India’s cotton farmers have committed suicide.
And according to a Greenpeace report, poorer farmers in the Philippines were sold Monsanto’s Bt corn as a “practical and ecologically sustainable solution for poor corn farmers everywhere to increase their yields” only to find the opposite was true: Bt corn did not control pests and was “not ecologically sustainable.”
Which brings us to one more of the Council for Biotechnology Information’s lies to kids: That agricultural biotechnology is good for the environment.
Study after study, over more than a decade, has warned us of just the opposite. Even the pro-biotech USDA has admitted that GE crops use more pesticides, not less than non-GE varieties. Genetic engineering results in evermore pesticides being dumped into the environment, destroying soil and water, human and animal health, and threatening the biodiversity of the planet.
How about telling kids instead that numerous reports, including one from theGerman Beekeepers Association, have linked genetically engineered Bt corn to the widespread disappearance of bees, or what is now referred to as Colony Collapse Disorder? And while we’re at it, maybe we should remind kids of the Albert Einstein’s quote: “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”
Maybe we should also tell them that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s herbicide, Roundup, the most widely used herbicide in the world, kills Monarch butterflies, fish, and frogs, destroys soil fertility, and pollutes our waterways and drinking water.
The fact is, widespread use of Monsanto’s Roundup in all agricultural and urban areas of the United States is destroying the environment, pure and simple. US Geological Survey studies released this month show that Roundup is now commonly found in rain and rivers in agricultural areas in the Mississippi River watershed, where most applications are for weed control on GE corn, soybeans and cotton. Here’s the real truth, from an article published this past week: Monsanto’s Roundup is actually threatening the crop-yielding potential of the entire biosphere. According to the article, new research published in the journalCurrent Microbiology highlights the extent to which “glyphosate is altering, and in some cases destroying, the very microorganisms upon which the health of the soil, and — amazingly — the benefits of raw and fermented foods as a whole, depend.”
Lie #3: “Scientists are using biotechnology to grow foods that could help make people healthier.” (page 11)
This is the perhaps the most outrageous lie of all. Telling kids that GE foods are more nutritious is tantamount to telling them Hostess cupcakes and Coca-Cola are health foods.
Genetic engineering — of human food and food for animals that humans eat — has been linked to a host of diseases and health issues, including auto-immune disorders, liver and kidney damage, nutritional deficiencies, allergies, accelerated aging, infertility, and birth defects.
There’s a growing and alarming body of research indicating that GMO foods are unsafe, and absolutely no research whatsoever proving that they are safe. And yet the USDA and FDA continue to approve, and just this past month even agreed tospeed up approval of these crops that scientists and physicians increasingly link to poor health.
Instead of force-feeding kids lies in bogus activity books, how about having them read some truthful articles?
The studyBt Toxin Kills Human Kidney Cells says Bt toxins are not “inert” on human cells, and may indeed be toxic, causing kidney damage and allergies observed in farmers and factory workers handling Bt crops. The article supportsprevious studies done on rats, showing that animals fed on three strains of GE corn made by Monsanto suffered signs of organ damage after only three months.
It is abundantly clear that both GMOs made to be resistant to herbicides (aka “Roundup Ready”) and those made to produce insecticides have damaging impacts on the health of mammals who consume them, particularly in the liver and kidneys. We already know that from the trials of 90 days and less. In looking a little deeper into the info, we found a number of issues that point to a probable increased level of toxicity when these foods are consumed over the long term, including likely multi-generational effects.
Multi-generational effects. Eating GMO foods harms not only our health, and our kids’ health — but quite possibly their kids, too — even if we stop eating them today.
In a recent report to the United Nations General Assembly Human Rights Council by Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, Schutter outlines the case for sustainable agricultural practices (the antithesis of industrial agribusiness, with its GE crops and heavy reliance on chemical fertilizers and pesticides). He also addresses the links between health and malnutrition. In the report, Schutter shows why undernutrition, micronutrient deficiency and overnutrition are different dimensions of malnutrition that must be addressed together through a life-course approach. From the report’s summary:
Existing food systems have failed to address hunger, and at the same time encourage diets that are a source of overweight and obesity that cause even more deaths worldwide than does underweight. A transition towards sustainable diets will succeed only by supporting diverse farming systems that ensure that adequate diets are accessible to all, that simultaneously support the livelihoods of poor farmers and that are ecologically sustainable.
Corporate greed plus a complicit government have allowed for the rampant poisoning of our food and environment, and the demise of sustainable agriculture practices — practices sorely needed if we are going to feed the world’s population, and avoid a world health crisis. And we’ve exported the same misery and destruction to foreign countries far and wide.
Propaganda like the CBI’s Look Closer at Biotechnology has brainwashed many of our kids into thinking that the biotech industry has people — not profits — in its best interests. The book’s claims are laughable. But framing blatant lies as “science” for children in schools borders on criminal.
For parents and teachers out there, here’s an alternate lesson plan. Because world hunger is a concern, because saving our planet does matter, and because better health is a worthy and achievable goal, let’s ask our kids to think critically, instead of accepting at face value “information” attractively packaged by multinational corporations.
Don M. Huber, emeritus soil scientist of Purdue University puts it in terms everyone, kids included, can understand. Huber talks about a range of key factors involved in plant growth, including sunlight, water, temperature, genetics, and nutrients taken up from the soil. “Any change in any of these factors impacts all the factors,” he said. “No one element acts alone, but all are part of a system.” “When you change one thing,” he said, “everything else in the web of life changes in relationship.”
This is what we should be teaching the future stewards of our planet.
A vast global transportation network is required by the food industry in order to connect its numerous parts. These include suppliers, manufacturers, warehousing, retailers and the end consumers. There are also companies that add vitamins, minerals, and other necessary requirements during processing to make up for those lost during preparation. Wholesale markets for fresh food products have tended to decline in importance in OECD countries as well as in Latin America and some Asian countries as a result of the growth of supermarkets, which procure directly from farmers or through preferred suppliers, rather than going through markets.
The constant and uninterrupted flow of product from distribution centers to store locations is a critical link in food industry operations. Distribution centers run more efficiently, throughput can be increased, costs can be lowered, and manpower better utilized if the proper steps are taken when setting up a material handling system in a warehouse. [1]
Retail
With populations around the world concentrating in urban areas,[5] food buying is increasingly removed from all aspects of food production. This is a relatively recent development, having taken place mainly over the last 50 years. The supermarket is the defining retail element of the food industry, where tens of thousands of products are gathered in one location, in continuous, year-round supply. Restaurants, Cafes, Bakeries and Mobile trucks are also ways consumers can purchase food.
Food preparation is another area where change in recent decades has been dramatic. Today, two food industry sectors are in apparent competition for the retail food dollar. The grocery industry sells fresh and largely raw products for consumers to use as ingredients in home cooking. The food service industry by contrast offers prepared food, either as finished products, or as partially prepared components for final “assembly”.
Food industry technologies
Sophisticated technologies define modern food production. They include many areas. Agricultural machinery, originally led by the tractor, has practically eliminated human labor in many areas of production. Biotechnology is driving much change, in areas as diverse as agrochemicals, plant breeding and food processing. Many other areas of technology are also involved, to the point where it is hard to find an area that does not have a direct impact on the food industry. Computer technology is also a central force, with computer networks and specialized software providing the support infrastructure to allow global movement of the myriad components involved.
Marketing
As consumers grow increasingly removed from food production, the role of product creation, advertising, and publicity become the primary vehicles for information about food. With processed food as the dominant category, marketers have almost infinite possibilities in product creation.
Media & Marketing
A key tool for FMCG marketing managers targeting the supermarket industry includes national titles like The Grocer in the U.K., Checkout in Ireland, Progressive Grocer in the U.S., and Private Label Europe for the entire of the European Union.it
Snopes receives funding from an undisclosed source. The source is undisclosed because Snopes refuses to disclose that source. The Democratic Alliance, a funding channel for uber-Leftist (Marxist) Billionaires (George Soros etc.), direct funds to an “Internet Propaganda Arm” pushing these views. The Democratic Alliance has been reported to instruct Fundees to not disclose their funding source.
For the past few years www.snopes.com has positioned itself, or others have labeled it, as the ‘tell-all final word’ on any comment, claim and email. But for several years people tried to find out who exactly was behind snopes.com. It is run by a husband and wife team – that’s right, no big office of investigators and researchers, no team of lawyers. It’s just a mom-and-pop operation that began as a hobby. David and Barbara Mikkelson in the San Fernando Valley of California started the website about 13 years ago and they have no formal background or experience in investigative research.
The reason for the questions – or skepticisms – is a result of snopes.com claiming to have the bottom line facts to certain questions or issue when in fact they have been proven wrong. Also, there were criticisms the Mikkelsons were not really investigating and getting to the ‘true’ bottom of various issues.A few months ago, when my State Farm agent Bud Gregg in Mandeville hoisted a political sign referencing Barack Obama and made a big splash across the Internet, ‘supposedly’ the Mikkelson’s claim to have researched this issue before posting their findings on snopes.com. In their statement they claimed the corporate office of State Farm pressured Gregg into taking down the sign, when in fact nothing of the sort ‘ever’ took place. I personally contacted David Mikkelson (and he replied back to me) thinking he would want to get to the bottom of this and I gave him Bud Gregg’s contact phone numbers – and Bud was going to give him phone numbers to the big exec’s at State Farm in Illinois who would have been willing to speak with him about it. He never called Bud. In fact, I learned from Bud Gregg that no one from snopes.com ever contacted anyone with State Farm.
Yet, snopes.com issued a statement as the ‘final factual word’ on the issue as if they did all their homework and got to the bottom of things – not!Then it has been learned the Mikkelson’s are very Democratic (party) and extremely liberal. As we all now know from this presidential election, liberals have a purpose agenda to discredit anything that appears to be conservative. There has been much criticism lately over the Internet with people pointing out the Mikkelson’s liberalism revealing itself in their website findings. Gee, what a shock?
So, I say this now to everyone who goes to snopes.com to get what they think to be the bottom line fact ‘proceed with caution.’ Take what it says at face value and nothing more. Use it only to lead you to their references where you can link to and read the sources for yourself. Plus,you can always search a subject and do the research yourself.I have found this to be true also! Many videos of Obama I tried to verify on Snopes and they said they were False. Then they gave their liberal slant! I have suspected some problems with snopes for some time now, but I have only caught them in half-truths. If there is any subjectivity they do an immediate full left rudder.I have recently discovered that Snopes.com is owned by a flaming liberal and this man is in the tank for Obama. There are many things they have listed on their site as a hoax and yet you can go to You tube yourself and find the video of Obama actually saying these things. So you see, you cannot and should not trust Snopes.com, ever for anything that remotely resembles truth! I don’t even trust them to tell me if email chains are hoaxes anymore.
A few conservative speakers on MySpace told me about Snopes.com. A few months ago and I took it upon myself to do a little research to find out if it was true. Well, I found out for myself that it is true. Anyway just FYI please don’t use Snopes.com anymore for fact checking and make your friends aware of their political leanings as well. Many people still think Snopes.com is neutral and they can be trusted as factual. We need to make sure everyone is aware that that is a hoax in itself.
Thank you,
Alan Strong
Alan Strong CEO/Chairman
Commercial Programming Systems, Inc.
4400 Coldwater Canyon Ave. Suite
200 Studio City, CA. 91604-5039
Energy-intensive industrial farming practices that rely on toxic chemicals and genetically engineered crops are not just undermining public health–they’re destroying the planet. Here’s how:
#1 Generating Massive Greenhouse Gas Pollution (CO2, Methane, Nitrous Oxide) and Global Warming; While Promoting False Solutions Such as Industrial Biofuels, So-Called Drought-Resistant Crops, and Genetically Engineered Trees
Evaluations of corn grown for ethanol show that whatever reduction in emissions you get from burning corn instead of oil in the gas tank is more than offset by the fact that producing biofuel from corn requires as much fuel as it could replace.
Corn production, like the production of all of the crops (corn, cotton, canola, soy, and now, sugar beets and alfalfa) that Monsanto has so successfully industrialized through its business model of selling patented GMO seeds to increase the use of its pesticides, is very fossil fuel intensive.
But that’s just the beginning of Monsanto’s contribution to agriculture’s green house gas emissions. With ever-increasing acreage, where are all those GMO crops going? They’re being fed to animals, and when you look at emissions from factory farms, you’ll wish we burned them in the gas tank instead!
Added to the greenhouse gas emissions from crop production and factory farms is the pollution related to heavily processed food and the fact that food in the U.S. travels anywhere from 1500 to 3000 miles to reach your plate and must be either cooled or frozen in transit or storage. That’s fossil fuel intensive, too.
Before we total the life cycle contribution of Monsanto’s crops to greenhouse gas emissions, we have to take several steps back and acknowledge that clearing land to grow GMO crops for animal feed is the biggest driver of forest and wetland destruction, which generates 20% of all climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases.
All told, the production and processing of Monsanto’s GMO crops, from deforestation to fossil-fuel-based pesticides and fertilizers, polluting factory farms, and fuel-intensive food processing and distribution, is estimated to produce up to 51% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
#2 Polluting the Environment and the Soil-Food Web with Pesticides, Chemical Fertilizers, and Persistent Toxins, Including Dioxin
Industrial agriculture’s heavy reliance on pesticides and fertilizers is responsible for the release of many dangerous toxins into our environment, but since Monsanto first commercialized genetically engineered crops in the 1990s, we’ve been exposed to one more than any other. It’s common name is glyphosate, but Monsanto markets it as RoundUp and has created “RoundUp Ready” crops to promote it. RoundUp Ready crops are genetically engineered to withstand endless amounts of RoundUp. The success of Monsanto’s business model has made RoundUp the most-used pesticide in the history of the world.
The trouble is, RoundUp is very toxic. It’s known to cause cancer, birth defects and infertility. In fact, some scientists are now saying it’s more dangerous than DDT.
It only took about 15 years for the RoundUp Ready technology to begin to fail, with RoundUp-tolerant super-weeds springing up across the country and farmers having to resort to more and more toxic pesticides for weed control. The biotech industry says it has a solution: replace RoundUp Ready crops with a new type of GMO, “2,4-D Ready” crops.
As dangerous as RoundUp is turning out to be, the only thing worse would be 2,4-D replacing RoundUp’s as the most popular pesticide in the world. The use of 2,4-D releases dioxin. Dioxin is what has made Agent Orange, which contained 2,4-D, a source of horrific birth defects in Vietnam to this day. Genetically engineered 2,4-D-tolerant crops would be a disaster of untold proportions.
#3 Turning Farmland into Desert, Draining Aquifers and Wetlands
In the U.S., the soil’s capability to sequester carbon has been severely deteriorated due to the enormous increase in the use of nitrogen fertilizers, mostly to raise Monsanto’s genetically engineered crops for animal feed. The soil should be a sink for excess carbon but has lost about 50% of its organic matter, making it is less than half as effective as it used to be. Many of our most productive agricultural lands have been degraded or desertified because of industrial production.
Recent studies on the University of Illinois Morrow plots (the oldest continuously farmed experimental plots in the U.S.) have shown that since 1955, when synthetic nitrogen was first used, 40-190% too much nitrogen was applied, yet yields dropped and organic matter declined dramatically. These problems on the Morrow plots are writ large on millions of acres of agricultural soils that have been degraded by synthetic fertilizer all over this country.
Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer kills soil life, including earthworms and microorganisms. In addition to reduced yields, degraded and deadened soils produce less nutritious food.
Contrary to Monsanto’s marketing claims that their business is about “squeezing more out of a drop of water,” their genetically engineered crops are notoriously thirsty. It takes twice as much water to produce a pound of a RoundupReady crop soybean plant treated with RoundUp herbicide, as it does with a soybean plant that’s not treated with RoundUp.
#4 Poisoning Drinking Water, Acidifying the Oceans
Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is also responsible for the nitrate poisoning of two-thirds of the U.S. drinking water supply. Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is the major cause of the 405 oceanic dead zones around the world (including the Gulf of Mexico, the Chesapeake Bay, and the coasts of California and Oregon). Monsanto’s genetically engineered corn uses more fertilizer than any other crop.
#5 Chopping Down the Rainforests for Monoculture GMO Crops, Biofuels and Cattle Grazing
Clearing land to grow GMO crops for animal feed is the biggest driver of forest and wetland destruction, which generate 20% of all climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases. In Argentina and Brazil, Monsanto’s genetically engineered soy is the main cause of deforestation.
Argentina has one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world with an average of 0.8% of the forest cut down each year, against a global rate of 0.23%. During the period 2002-2006, 1,108,669 hectares of forest were lost. That is 277,000 hectares per year, equivalent to 760 hectares per day or 32 hectares per hour. The speed with which Córdoba’s forests are disappearing is unmatched worldwide, it even surpasses that of tropical forests in poor countries. This is a ecological tragedy for the primitive forests which shelter a biodiversity found nowhere else on the planet.
In Brazil, the soy output increased 7.2 percent in 2011, causing deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon to jump sixfold.
#6 Increasing the Cost of Food, While Reducing Nutrition and Biodiversity
The business press unabashedly links Monsanto’s profits to record-high global food prices and increases in the costs of farm inputs, especially Monsanto’s patented genetically engineered seeds. Monsanto’s profits go up as hunger increases and families lose their farms to insurmountable debt.
Nowhere has the connection between Monsanto’s fortunes and farmers’ misfortunes been so clear as in India where 200,000 farmers have committed suicide since 1997. For many Indian farmers growing Monsanto’s genetically engineered Bt cotton, suicide is their only means of escaping the debt they’ve accrued to obtain the seeds and pesticides.
Monsanto has made food and farming more expensive, while reducing the nutrition and variety of food available to the average consumer. The world’s farmers are increasingly growing more of fewer number of crops (especially Monsanto’s genetically engineered corn, cotton, soy, canola, sugar beets and alfalfa). The result is that we’re eating a lot more of these few genetically engineered crops, mostly in the form of animal products, oils & fats, and sugars. The most notorious genetically engineered ingredients are high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated vegetable oils, and processed meats.
The concentration of power in the hands of a few chemical companies like Monsanto and the industrial producers who can most easily afford their products, has resulted in a global food system dominated by two extremes: on one hand, a plenitude of industrially produced junk foods, on the other, regular food shortages and drastic price hikes. This leaves a billion people saddled with obesity and diet-related disease, even as more than a billion don’t know where their next meal is coming from.
#7 Spawning Pesticide-Resistant “Super” Bugs and Weeds, and Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria
Genetically engineered crops designed to produce insecticides or tolerate herbicides have proven a failure. Herbicide-resistant “superweeds” have increased farmers’ weed-control costs to $50/acre, as they battle weeds that can stand up to the most toxic chemicals ever invented, including RoundUp (glyphosate), 2,4-D, dicamba, atrazine, ALS inhibitors, PPO inhibitors, HPPD inhibitors and synthetic auxins. Monsanto’s Bt corn and cotton are being mowed down by resistant insectsfrom Iowa to India.
On farms raising animals for food, the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics has created a serious threat to the longevity and effectiveness of certain classes of antibiotics used to treat a host of human illnesses. Doctors concede that antimicrobial drug resistance due to use in animal feed has already cost thousands of lives. In 2006, the EU banned the use of antibiotics in water and feed, proving that raising livestock without drugs is possible.
Ban Monsanto’s RoundUp! Experts Say It’s Worse than DDT! Tell the EPA to Ban Glyphosate
Can You Imagine a World without Antibiotics? Tell the FDA to Protect Human Health and Regulate Antibiotics in Animal Feed
#8 Generating New and More Virulent Plant, Animal and Human Diseases
The following is a summary of a must-watch interview (Part 1, Part 2) that Dr. Joseph Mercola conducted with Dr. Don Huber.
The way Monsanto’s RoundUp herbicide (glyphosate) kills weeds and plants is by compromising their defense mechanisms, making them very susceptible to soil borne organisms. It’s not a direct killer, but it has a debilitating effect on the weed’s immune system, much like the human disease AIDS.
Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready gene, which enables crops to withstand glyphosate, doesn’t solve the problem of a debilitated immune system, all it does is make it possible for the plant to survive and to accumulate more glyphosate. RoundUp Ready crops aren’t killed immediately by the soil diseases RoundUp makes them susceptible to, because they’ve been engineered with genes from a resistant bacteria, but they are still more likely to succumb to disease than plants that aren’t exposed to RoundUp.
Among these disease-causing pathogens are fusaria, which causes sudden death syndrome in soybeans and is a major disease-causing organism for most of our crops. In crops sprayed with RoundUp, we find an increase of up to 500 percent in root colonization by this fungus.
While glyphosate promotes the growth of more virulent pathogens, it also kills off beneficial bacteria that might keep such pathogens in check in the soil and in the guts of animals and humans that ingest the crop.
Scientists have discovered a brand new organism in genetically engineered animal feed, an organism that has since been linked to infertility and miscarriage in cattle, horses, pigs, sheep, and poultry. We can anticipate that, with such a broad spectrum of animal species, which is extremely unusual, that humans will face the same problem, and there has been an increasing frequency of miscarriage and a dramatic increase in infertility in humans in just the last eight to 10 years.
The organism was initially identified by veterinarians around 1998, about two years after the introduction of Roundup Ready soybeans, which is one of the staple feeds. The vets were puzzled by sudden high reproductive failure in animals. While sporadic at first, the phenomenon has continued to increase in severity. Dairies are reporting rates of spontaneous as high as 70 percent.
The cause-effect relationship between high reproductive failure and this new microbial entity has been established, but the research has not yet been published. The reason for the delay is because they really do not know what the organism is. It’s not a fungus. It’s not bacteria. It’s not a mycoplasma or a virus. It’s about the same size of a small virus; you have to magnify it 40,000 times.
When the veterinarians wanted to find the source for this new organism, they went to the feed. The first place where they found high concentrations was in the soybean meal. Since it has been found it in corn and in silage, only where there is a genetically engineered crop that has had glyphosate applied to it. The organism is also found in manure when the animals have been given feeds with high glyphosate residues. When that manure is applied to pastures and cattle graze on it, we also see high infertility rates there.
The organism is found in the placenta, in the fetus, and in the sperm. In the dairy industry, it sometimes takes twice as much semen to get a conception and as many as four to eight inseminations rather than the typical 1.2 to 1.5. One bull breeder had to pull 40 percent of his bulls out of service, because of fertility.
If we continue to douse our crops with ever increasing amounts of glyphosate, we will inevitably see the same effect on human health as we’re seeing in plants and animals.
Glyphosate gets inside the plant; it cannot be washed off. Once you eat it, it ends up in your gut, where 80 percent of your immune system resides. Glyphosate can wreak havoc with your health by upsetting the healthy ratio of good and bad stomach bacteria.
Because organically-farmed fields are not doused with glyphosate, organic fields still contain beneficial soil bacteria that actually hinder pathogens in and on the food from multiplying out of control. This may be yet another reason why organic foods are less prone to be contaminated with disease-causing pathogens than conventionally-grown foods.
Pathogens such as E. coli have a high tolerance for glyphosate compared to their natural biological controls. What this means is that it may not be the presence or absence of pathogens per se that determines the safety of our food supply, but rather the presence or absence of the natural control organisms, which are effectively destroyed by glyphosate. Salmonella, Clostridium, and a lot of these disease organisms are ubiquitous. They’re everywhere. Our health is dependent on keeping them in check. If we’re eliminating that check, we’re going to see an increase in Alzheimer’s, thyroid problems, autism, Parkinson’s — any disease that has a tie with either the endocrine system or nutrient availability.
Genetically engineered crops are supposed to be nutritionally equivalent to conventional foods, but they’re not. On the contrary, they’re nutritionally inferior due to glyphosate’s herbicidal mechanism, which blocks absorption of micronutrients. Genetically engineered crops contain about 50 percent less manganese and up to 70 percent less zinc. They also contain less copper, iron and magnesium, just to name a few. This affects the overall health of the plant, and its reproductive ability, and when you eat this nutritionally inferior food, you’re not getting the micronutrients your body needs for proper function either. Animal products are similarly affected when they’re from animals raised on genetically feed.
Studies of pet rats are exposing behavioral differences in animals given genetically engineered feed, as opposed to normal food. The non-GMO-fed rats are docile. They can be pulled out of their cages and patted just like a cat. But try and reach in to the cage where the rats are being fed the genetically engineered feed. The rats are irritated. They don’t get along together. They always go off into their own little world. They do backflips. They crawl up and run around the cage. They can’t get any peace, can’t settle down. That is very typical of what you’d see with autism.
Doctors working with autistic children are noting many correlations between the rats fed genetically modified feed and autistic children. When you look at the stomachs of the GMO-fed animals, they have all of the severe allergy responses, the inflammation and the reddening. The intestinal lining is deteriorating. The smell of the intestinal contents is very rank. The biology has been drastically changed. Doctors say that’s exactly what they’re seeing with autistic children.
Another effect of the new mystery organism associated with genetically engineered crops is premature aging. Research done in Iowa three years ago showed that prime beef from a two-year old cow had to be downgraded to that from a 10-year old cow.
Glyphosate can also disrupt a number of other biological systems, including liver function, blood function, and hormonal function. Glyphosate is a potent endocrine disruptor that can affect the endocrine system, thyroid function, and pituitary function.
TAKE ACTION
Ban Monsanto’s RoundUp! Experts Say It’s Worse than DDT! Tell the EPA to Ban Glyphosate
#9 Utilizing Wasteful Fossil Fuel-Intensive Practices and Encouraging the Expansion of Natural Gas Fracking and Tar Sands Extraction (Which Destroy Forests, Aquifers, and Farmland)
The industrialized food system is responsible for more than half of greenhouse gas emissions, making Big Ag one of Big Oil’s biggest customers. We could deprive the oil and gas industry of a significant amount of income by making the shift from polluting, fossil-fuel-intensive factory farms to carbon-sequestering organic and local agriculture.
Until we do make the shift, we need to acknowledge that the old adage “you are what you eat” applies to energy and the climate, as well as the body. It isn’t just Hummers that are pushing the expansion of natural gas fracking and tar sands extraction, it’s also Big Macs.
The worst thing about agriculture’s wasteful ways that the more fossil fuels we use to produce our food, the more farmland will be destroyed in the search for new sources of that fuel.
Natural gas fracking pumps many millions of gallons of hydrocarbons and volatile organic compounds, including known carcinogens and endocrine disruptors, into the ground during the drilling process, and into the air from evaporation tanks. Pollution of water, air and food from the gas drilling industry is exempt from federal pollution laws, including the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Clear Air Act, thanks to Dick Cheney’s 2005 Energy Policy Act and its ‘Halliburton Exemption.’
In upstate New York, the three million acres of superior grasslands which are currently unused are threatened by natural gas fracking. This is enough pasture land to raise local, grass-fed cattle to replace all the factory farmed beef sold in New York City.
The Keystone XL pipeline would carry toxic tar sands oil 1,700 miles from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. The pipeline would cross the massive Ogallala aquifer, which supplies drinking water in 8 US states, and irrigation for millions of acres of farmland. We’ve already seen the damage the thick tar sands oil laden with volatile compounds can do from spills in the Yellowstone River and the Kalamazoo River. The first Keystone pipeline, developed with state-of-the-art technology, has already spilled 12 times in its first year in operation.
#10 Stealing Money From the 99% to Give Huge Subsidies to the 1% Wealthiest, Most Chemical and Energy-Intensive Farms and Food Producers
The following is a summary of Donald Carr’s must-read article, “Why the 2012 Farm Bill is a Climate Bill.”
In the 2012 Farm Bill, Congress is poised to cut 7 million acres from the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). The CRP is administered through the U.S. Department of Agriculture and pays farmers to keep highly erodible land out of production.
Putting land into conservation programs leads to cleaner water, healthier soil, and robust wildlife habitat, and also plays a major role in fighting climate change. According to the USDA [PDF], one acre of protected land sequesters 1.66 metric tons of carbon every year, carbon that would otherwise end up in the atmosphere. The 7 million acres about to be cut from the CRP have been putting 11.6 million metric tons of carbon into the soil every year.
The Environmental Protection Agency says that this amount of carbon is equivalent to the annual emissions of 2 million passenger vehicles. All that stored carbon will be sent back into the atmosphere if those 7 million acres are plowed under to plant more genetically engineered corn for ethanol and livestock feed.
Meanwhile lavish government payments to highly profitable mega-farms continue, and farm state lawmakers and agribiz lobbyists are working toward newer programs that could increase taxpayers’ burden, along with agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Save the Planet From Monsanto! It’s not enough to stop eating genetically engineered food. If we want a liveable planet we’ve got to boycott all factory farmed food and make the Great Transition from energy and chemical-intensive agriculture to a re-localized and organic system of food and farming. The World According to Monsanto is a recipe for disaster. Monsanto and Big Ag contaminate every link in the food chain, threatening the very foundation of life: living nutrient-rich soil, clean water, resilient crops, healthy animals, stable climates, and diverse food sources. The good news is that agro-ecological and organic methods can reverse this threat and sustain food production for future generations, but we don’t have much time to turn things around.
Monsanto only cares about bee’s so they can figure out how to make them only pollinate Monsanto GMO crops. Whistle-blower testimony and supporting evidence will confirm that Monsanto seeks ultimate agricultural world domination through most incomprehensible and nefarious means. -Anonymous
Monsanto, the massive biotechnology company being blamed for contributing to the dwindling bee population, has bought up one of the leading bee collapse research organizations. Recently banned from Poland with one of the primary reasons being that the company’s genetically modified corn may be devastating the dying bee population, it is evident that Monsanto is under serious fire for their role in the downfall of the vital insects. It is therefore quite apparent why Monsanto bought one of the largest bee research firms on the planet.
It can be found in public company reports hosted on mainstream media that Monsanto scooped up the Beeologics firm back in September 2011. During this time the correlation between Monsanto’s GM crops and the bee decline was not explored in the mainstream, and in fact it was hardly touched upon until Polish officials addressed the serious concern amid the monumental ban. Owning a major organization that focuses heavily on the bee collapse and is recognized by the USDA for their mission statement of “restoring bee health and protecting the future of insect pollination” could be very advantageous for Monsanto.
In fact, Beelogics’ company information states that the primary goal of the firm is to study the very collapse disorder that is thought to be a result — at least in part — of Monsanto’s own creations. Their website states:
While its primary goal is to control the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV) infection crises, Beeologics’ mission is to become the guardian of bee health worldwide.
What’s more, Beelogics is recognized by the USDA, the USDA-ARS, the media, and ‘leading entomologists’ worldwide. The USDA, of course, has a great relationship with Monsanto. The government agency has gone to great lengths to ensure that Monsanto’s financial gains continue to soar, going as far as to give the company special speed approval for their newest genetically engineered seed varieties. It turns out that Monsanto was not getting quick enough approval for their crops, which have been linked to severe organ damage and other significant health concerns.
Steve Censky, chief executive officer of the American Soybean Association, states it quite plainly. It was a move to help Monsanto and other biotechnology giants squash competition and make profits. After all, who cares about public health?
“It is a concern from a competition standpoint,” Censky said in a telephone interview.
It appears that when Monsanto cannot answer for their environmental devastation, they buy up a company that may potentially be their ‘experts’ in denying any such link between their crops and the bee decline.
Despite overwhelming public support and support from a clear majority of Vermont’s Agriculture Committee, Vermont legislators are dragging their feet on a proposed GMO labeling bill. Why? Because Monsanto has threatened to sue the state if the bill passes.
The popular legislative bill requiring mandatory labels on genetically engineered food (H-722) is languishing in the Vermont House Agriculture Committee, with only four weeks left until the legislature adjourns for the year. Despite thousands of emails and calls from constituents who overwhelmingly support mandatory labeling, despite the fact that a majority (6 to 5) of Agriculture Committee members support passage of the measure, Vermont legislators are holding up the labeling bill and refusing to take a vote.
Instead, they’re calling for more public hearings on April 12, in the apparent hope that they can run out the clock until the legislative session ends in early May.
What happened to the formerly staunch legislative champions of Vermont’s “right to know” bill? They lost their nerve and abandoned their principles after Monsanto representative recently threatened a public official that the biotech giant would sue Vermont if they dared to pass the bill. Several legislators have rather unconvincingly argued that the Vermont public has a “low appetite” for any bills, even very popular bills like this one, that might end up in court. Others expressed concern about Vermont being the first state to pass a mandatory GMO labeling bill and then having to “go it alone” against Monsanto in court.
What it really comes down to this: Elected officials are abandoning the public interest and public will in the face of corporate intimidation.
Monsanto has used lawsuits or threats of lawsuits for 20 years to force unlabeled genetically engineered foods on the public, and to intimidate farmers into buying their genetically engineered seeds and hormones. When Vermont became the first state in the nation in 1994 to require mandatory labels on milk and dairy products derived from cows injected with the controversial genetically engineered Bovine Growth Hormone, Monsanto’s minions sued in Federal Court and won on a judge’s decision that dairy corporations have the first amendment “right” to remain silent on whether or not they are injecting their cows with rBGH – even though rBGH has been linked to severe health damage in cows and increased cancer risk for humans, and is banned in much of the industrialized world, including Europe and Canada.
Monsanto wields tremendous influence in Washington, DC and most state capitals. The company’s stranglehold over politicians and regulatory officials is what has prompted activists in California to bypass the legislature and collect 850,000 signatures to place a citizens’ Initiative on the ballot in November 2012. The 2012 California Right to Know Act will force mandatory labeling of GMOs and to ban the routine practice of labeling GMO-tainted food as “natural.”
All of Monsanto’s fear mongering and intimidation tactics were blatantly on display in the House Agriculture Committee hearings March 15-16.
During the hearings the Vermont legislature was deluged with calls, letters, and e-mails urging passage of a GMO labeling bill – more than on any other bill since the fight over Civil Unions in 1999-2000. The legislature heard from pro-labeling witnesses such as Dr. Michael Hansen, an expert on genetic engineering from the Consumers Union, who shredded industry claims that GMO’s are safe and that consumers don’t need to know if their food is contaminated with them.
