The Age of Eco-Surrealism – Richard Neville blog 6/19/08

Inconvenient Truths: Get Ready to Rethink What It Means to Be Green – Metafilter 6/13/08

Well: Boosting Health With Local Food – NYTimes 6/6/08

How to Know if Your Water Is Safe to Drink – Alternet 6/4/08

Broken Agriculture: It will take more than gardening to fix our food system – Counterpunch 5/31/08

Biotech giants demand a high price for saving the planet – Independent, UK 6/8/08

A word to the water-wise - Common Dreams 7/6/08

Michael Pollan on What's Wrong with Environmentalism - Alternet 7/8/08

Why Our Food Waste May Be Our Greatest Asset - Alternet 7/17/08

How We Can Save Our Country's Water - Alternet 7/16/08

Appalachian Residents Have Found the Antidote to Coal - Alternet 7/9/08

"Change Your World" Encourages Alternatives to Car – Treehugger 6/25/08

CORPORATE DESTRUCTION OF ENVIRONMENT AND HUMAN HEALTH

Old McDonald had a pharm – Salon 6/11/08

Paxil Babies: The Dangers of Antidepressants  - Alternet 6/6/08

Sweeting Corn Syrup's Public Image – Center for Media and Democracy 6/23/08

Research Shows Disinfectant Wipes Spread Superbugs in Hospitals - Natural News 7/6/08

Will the Toxic Sludge Industry Be Held Accountable for Human Health Risks?  - Alternet 6/1/08

Boeing, Dow Chemical fined 926 million over nuclear pollution – AFP via Raw Story 6/3/08

GM Sugar: Another threat from Monsanto - Politicook 5/28/08

Low Sperm Counts and Deformed Penises: The Chemical Industry Has a Hold on Your Reproductive Future – Alternet 6/26/08

Genetically modified mosquitoes may combat malaria (AP)  - Yahoo 6/19/08

This Land Is Their Land: How the Rich Confiscate Natural Beauty from the Public – Alternet 6/17/08 

Video: Chemical Dumbing Down of America – YouTube, 10 minutes

Zapped! How Irradiation Is Threatening Our Food System – Alternet 6/13/08

Small Town Overthrows Corporate Giant for Control of Water – Alternet 6/5/08

Chemical law has global impact – Raw Story 6/12/08

“Europe this month rolled out new restrictions on makers of chemicals linked to cancer and other health problems, changes that are forcing U.S. industries to find new ways to produce a wide range of everyday products”

The Organic Consumers Association hosts a press conference to announce results of a new study of natural and organic body care products. Sadly many brands are using petroleum and contain 1,4 Dioxane a known cause of cancer. – YouTube, 7 minutes

Another nuclear leak in France - Raw Story 7/18/08

Contaminated US site faces 'catastrophic' nuclear leak - New Scientist 7/14/08

Four homebuilders to pay $4.3M to settle pollution case – USA Today 6/11/08

EXCERPT:  “Four of the nation's largest homebuilders have agreed to pay $4.3 million in fines for failing to control runoff at construction sites in 34 states and the District of Columbia.  Centex agreed to pay $1.49 million, KB Home $1.19 million, Pulte Homes $877,000, and MDC Holdings' Richmond American Homes $795,000, the government said in a statement…In February, the agency fined Home Depot Inc. $1.3 million to resolve alleged violations at 30 construction sites for its big box stores in 28 states. But the largest settlement to date was with Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which in May 2004 agreed to pay $3.1 million for violations at construction sites across the country.”

Fresh scent may hold toxic secrets - Seattle Post Intelligencer 7/23/08

"The scented fabric sheet makes your shirts and socks smell flowery fresh and clean. That plug-in air freshener fills your home with inviting fragrances of apple and cinnamon or a country garden.  But those common household items are potentially exposing your family and friends to dangerous chemicals, a University of Washington study has found.... For Steinemann's research, published Wednesday in Environmental Impact Assessment Review, she selected a top-selling item from six categories of products: dryer sheets, fabric softeners, detergents, and solid, spray and plug-in air fresheners.

Then she contracted with a lab to test the air around the items to identify the chemicals people could be breathing.  Ten of the 100 volatile organic compounds identified qualified under federal rules as toxic or hazardous, and three of those -- 1,4-dioxane, acetaldehyde and chloromethane -- are "hazardous air pollutants" considered unsafe to breathe at any concentration, according to the study.

The labels gave no indication that the irritating and potentially dangerous chemicals were present, so Steinemann checked the product's Material Safety Data Sheets. These technical documents provide ingredient information for the safety of workers and emergency responders. They, too, disclosed little detail, mostly citing ingredients such as "essential oils" and "organic perfume."

"It's a reasonable expectation to think that laundry products and air fresheners would be free of chemicals that can cause cancer," said Erika Schreder, a staff scientist with the Washington Toxics Coalition.  "But as this UW study shows, it's disturbingly easy to find toxic chemicals in everyday products like these because companies don't have to say what's in their products."

ELECTRO-MAGNETIC RADIATION & CELL PHONES

Cancer center director issues warning on cell phone risks - AP/Yahoo 7/24/08

"The warning from Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, is contrary to numerous studies that don't find a link between cancer and cell phone use, and a public lack of worry by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Herberman is basing his alarm on early unpublished data. He says it takes too long to get answers from science and he believes people should take action now — especially when it comes to children. "Really at the heart of my concern is that we shouldn't wait for a definitive study to come out, but err on the side of being safe rather than sorry later," Herberman said."

EMF, EMR, Our Brains and the Weather - What's the link?  - Natural News 7/8/08

Frequent Mobile Phone Use Boosts Tumor Risk by 50 Percent - Natural News 7/13/08

Are mobile phones wiping out our bees? - Independent, UK 4/15/07

Well: How Much Radiation Does Your Phone Emit? – NYTimes 6/11/08

CLIMATE CHANGE / GLOBAL WARMING

UN Publishes Satellite Atlas of Africa's Changing Environment – Treehugger 6/10/08

Two peer-reviewed scientific papers debunck CO2 myth - PrisonPlanet 7/16/08

EXCERPT: "Three top scientists have once again contradicted the claim that a “consensus” exists about man-made global warming with research that indicates CO2 emissions actually cool the atmosphere, in addition to another peer-reviewed paper that documents how the IPCC overstated CO2’s effect on temperature by as much as 2000 per cent.

Professor George Chilingar and Leonid Khilyuk of the University of Southern California, and Oleg Sorokhtin of the Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences have released a study that they claim completely contradicts the link between CO2 and global temperature increases.

“The writers investigated the effect of CO2 emission on the temperature of atmosphere. Computations based on the adiabatic theory of greenhouse effect show that increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere results in cooling rather than warming of the Earth’s atmosphere,” states the preamble to the paper."

Under-estimating extinction - Guardian, UK 7/2/08

'We're toast' without action on warming says NASA scientist (AP) – Yahoo 6/23/08

Sea Level Fluctuations Played a Crucial Role in Planet's Mass Extinctions – Treehugger 6/18/08

Diet is something closely related to our health. If our body fails to get all the essential nutrients, then it suffers from malnutrition. Malnourished person is more susceptible to diseases. Lack of balanced diet also leads to eating disorders like Anorexia, Bulimia and compulsive eating.

If we focus our attention to the affluent western nations, we find many people suffering from illness due to over nutrition. Obesity is the directly linked disease due to over nutrition. But it indirectly raises blood pressure, blood sugar, leads to heart ailments and predisposes to arthritis and back aches.

Over the years there has been an alarming increase in diseases such as Arthritis, Diabetes, Hypertension, Heart disease, Stroke, Depression, Schizophrenia and Cancer. This is a Red signal for us to adopt a healthy dietary habit. Dietary habits are the outcome of cultural and individual dietary choices. But these may or may not give proper nutrition to the body of an individual..

In developed and industrialized countries people have developed a taste for 'junk' and processed food. Junk food is the creation of modern food science. It includes additives like Aspartame (sweetener), Benzoates (preservative), BHA,BHT (antidetoxidants), MSG (flavoring agents), Nitrates or Nitrites (preservative),Parabens & Sulfites(preservative), which are all hazardous to human health. Junk food has high fat content which leads to high cholesterol level. Cholestrol and salt set off BP, Stroke and Heart disease in a chain. Excessive salt can affect function of kidneys too. So a healthy diet plan says no to junk food.

On the other hand researchers are designing genetically engineered plants which contain adequate amount of all nutrients to prevent malnutrition in third world countries. These are called genetically modified organisms (GMO), e.g. Genetically modified strain of rice called 'Golden rice' has high content of Beta-Carotene and Iron to meet Vitamin A deficiency which leads to blindness.

Change in Dietary habits is important for healthy living. Eating our daily diet that includes adequate amounts of bread, cereals, grain, rice, vegetables, fruit and limits high fat food can promote health and reduce risk of developing certain chronic diseases e.g. Asthma is believed to be caused by contaminants and pollutants. But there is a link between disease and diet. Consumption of vegetables and fruits as Grapes, Orange, Tomato and Apple defend from wheeze and Nasal Allergies. Vitamin A, C, E and Phytosterols reduce airway stress. Calcium and Magnesium from milk, cheese, fish and nuts help reduce Asthma risk. Selenium protects from respiratory diseases. Omega- 3 and Omega- 6- fatty acids reduce inflammation and irritation in air passage.

According to the estimates given by World Health organization (WHO), 80% of cardiovascular disease, 90% of type II Diabetes and 30% of all cancers could be prevented by a healthy diet, adequate amount of physical exercise and by stopping smoking. Based on these estimates it is quite important to change ones diet plan from unhealthy eating to a more appropriate balanced diet. One should try to follow the dietary recommendations produced by public health agencies. These include- dietary allowance (known as RDIs or RDAs), dietary goals and dietary guidelines. Moreover the food guide pyramid given by USDA is of great help in following up the balanced diet plan.

Case study
A study investigated the behavior of breast cancer patients and their attitudes to dietary changes and the need of dietary advice during their disease.. A questionnaire was given to a total of 123 subjects. Results: The majority, 65%, were attending the clinic for treatment, 35% for follow-up. Ninety-seven patients (86%) consumed a normal Finnish diet, six (5.3%) were vegetarians and 10 (8.1%) vegetarians consuming fish and chicken occasionally. Eleven patients (8.9%) considered diet a factor contributing to their breast cancer and 38 (31.9%) had changed their dietary habits after the diagnosis of breast cancer. The main reason for change in diet was the desire to be cured of cancer (52.9% of those patients who had changed their dietary habits), in 11.8% to alleviate the symptoms of nausea and 11.8% were advised by health care professionals. The main changes reported included a reduction in the consumption of animal fat, sugar and red meat and increased consumption of fruit, berries and vegetables. Forty-nine patients (39.8%) used vitamin and mineral supplements and 27 (21.9%) consumed dietary supplements including natural products and probiotics. (European journal of clinical nutrition  (Eur. j. clin. nutr.)  ISSN 0954-3007 ).

In the above case it was the 'fear factor' that led people to change their dietary habit and adopt a natural healthy diet without much of fuss. But generally people continue consuming harmful junk foods even when knowing their detrimental health effects. One reason is that they don't believe the information, because they probably haven't seen enough evidence. The most likely reason is that they feel that they cannot break the pattern of behavior in their life e.g. It is difficult to give up soft drinks for some person who has been consuming them for years. Although it is known that it might be a catalyst in causing osteoporosis and impair calcification of bones in children.

So far so good, but deciding what is good and what is bad is not easy as it seems. Knowing different types of foods which are good for health is not enough. The idea is not just to gain knowledge but to apply it in the right manner. Because there's nothing such as a perfect diet. A so called 'balanced diet' may differ from person to person depending upon culture, climate, age, body constitution, medical history etc.

Based on research it can be concluded that changing dietary habit along with physical activity can in a way give new life to an individual. Not only it could lower down the risk of chronic diseases but also opens a gateway for healthy living. Implementing a balanced diet plan as recommended by USDA and including GMOs  can lead to an escape from the ill effects of over and under nutrition. Lastly it can be said 'A balanced diet leads to healthy living' therefore people need to be more aware of their diet plan and should make an effort to change their eating patterns.

If you need a custom essay, research paper, term paper, thesis, dissertation or speech of high quality written by professional academic writers - feel free to ORDER YOUR PAPER NOW.

FLINT, Michigan -- The grandkids won't munch Froot Loops anymore when they come to visit Mark Fisher and Kathleen Kirby.

"They'll be getting organic oatmeal here," said Kirby, a retired English teacher from the Flint School District.

The Flint couple are among those calling for a national consumer boycott against Battle Creek-based Kellogg Co., the world's leading cereal maker, in an effort to block the use of genetically engineered (GE) sugar beets in products ranging from candy and breakfast cereal to bread.

The Internet-based boycott is spreading mostly through Web sites dedicated to organic foods and natural health.

"Kellogg isn't the only one. It's just the one we're going after," said Kirby. "If we can't stop this, there's going to be a domino effect. Pretty soon all processed foods will have genetically altered sugar and we won't be able to tell because it isn't on the label."

Other local people are involved besides Kirby and Fisher.

"If you just boycott Froot Loops without explaining why, you may have a mutiny on your hands. But kids actually change faster than adults," said fellow boycotter Brenda McCumons of Lapeer, a registered nurse.

"Once they hear the 'why' and find out the foods good for them actually taste good, they don't have trouble giving up the junk."

Industry officials discount the alarm bells sounded by the health activists and say critics overlook the advantages of GE crops.

About half of Michigan's sugar beet crop planted this spring is the new "Roundup Ready" genetically engineered variety, said Jim Byrum, president of the Michigan Agri-Business Association.

read more of the article:

http://www.mlive.com/flintjournal/index.ssf/2008/07/saying_no_to_fruit_loops_flint.html

"The Future of Food" is a documentary which deals with the so called "Gene Revolution" and the dangers related with the production of genetically engineered foods, not only in the scientific context, but also from a legal point of view (keyword: patent). The content of this documentary appears partially in the latest documentary film about the subject, "The World according to Monsanto", but it is lighter to watch than the latter one and uses a somewhat different approach to the subject.

Unfortunately the online version of the film was taken offline, but the movie can be downloaded via torrent (see below). In the following interview with the film maker Deborah Garcia many aspects addressed in the movie are discussed.

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.637560&w=425&h=350&fv=docId%3D-8098965482866581381%26playerMode%26hl%3Den]

Download the documentary via torrent: alternative 1 [986MB], alternative 2 [528MB]

"The Future of Food" @ IMDb

"The Future of Food" @ Wikipedia

Official web presence

Related Docs @ "Critical Docs": The World According to Monsanto (2008); We Feed The World (2005); Our Daily Bread (2005)

Breaking: Eight Supers Switching to Hillary.

Is this for real? She is going to be back on the ballot?

Then I read another article. It is about the Clinton's and GMO food. It really struck a nerve with me. Not a good one either. For anyone who is even considering voting for Hillary, read this article first.

"Open Letter to Hillary Clinton" Uncovers the Politics of GMOs

By Alan Scherzagier

The Associated Press

PILOT GROVE, Mo. | Soybean farmer David Brumback calls himself a loyal customer of Monsanto Co. His product of choice: genetically engineered seeds resistant to pesticides and weed killers.

So when the biotech giant named Brumback and more than 100 other local farmers in a subpoena seeking five years of sales records, his first reaction was befuddlement. Then anger.

"With Monsanto, you're guilty until you're proven innocent," he said.

Across rural America, Monsanto is known for aggressive legal efforts to protect its patent. Farmers who save and replant the patented seeds in subsequent growing seasons quickly hear from the company's lawyers — and almost always lose, or settle out of court before trial.

Now Monsanto is raising the stakes against this so-called seed piracy with an unprecedented lawsuit against a farm co-op it accuses of aiding the illegal practice by cleaning seeds for use in future crops. That practice violates the contract between Monsanto and farmers which prohibits farmers from stockpiling seeds or selling second-generation seeds.

see entire story at the Kansas City Star:

http://www.kansascity.com/382/story/699820.html

Pioneer Hi-Bred, a Johnston-based unit of DuPont, launched Thursday what it is calling "a new generation" of soybean varieties designed to increase soybean yields by 40 percent during the next 10 years.

Pioneer president and DuPont vice president and general manager Paul Schickler said the new Y series soybeans, as Pioneer has named the 32 new seed varieties, will "deliver unprecedented productivity gains to North American soybean growers."

Pioneer intends to sell enough of the new seed from the Y series to cover about 9 million acres for the 2009 growing season.

A genetic comparison of older soybean varieties with newer ones ended up focusing on 100 genes as potential yield enhancers, he said.

By narrowing the genetic search to those 100 genes, Pioneer was able to match parent seed lines that resulted in more productive gene combinations, Soper said.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080711/BUSINESS/807110363/1029/business

I'm always reading about people eating less meat in order to reduce their carbon footprint. These people say that the most important thing you can do to help the environment is to go vegetarian.

For example, Kelly Freston wrote this article last year in the Huffington Post: Vegetarian is the New Prius:

Last month, the United Nations published a report on livestock and the environment with a stunning conclusion: "The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global." It turns out that raising animals for food is a primary cause of land degradation, air pollution, water shortage, water pollution, loss of biodiversity, and not least of all, global warming.

Seems logical. But is it really true?

I read a great article recently in the spring edition of Wise Traditions (the Weston A. Price Foundation quarterly journal). The article was written by Matthew J. Rales, who has a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Middlebury College in Vermont. He also recently completed an apprenticeship at Joel Salatin's grass-based Polyface Farm.

This article is so dense and so brilliantly constructed that I can't do it justice in one post. So I am going to do a series of posts discussing Matthew Rales' arguments against vegetarianism as pro-environment.

Let's start with the assertion that vegetarians make that rainforests are being destroyed by livestock.

"Make no mistake; rainforests are not cleared in any drastic measure by independent farmers who want to graze a few steers. They are cleared by United Nations-supported corporate giants under the guise of feeding the world and alleviating poverty -- all for the production of more of their patented seed."

"A recent article in Business Week reports that Brazil alone grows over 25 million acres of soybeans -- all of which are genetically engineered. The Wall Street Journal reports that Monsanto's stock has tripled in the last year due to Brazil's demand for Roundup Ready soybeans -- a genetically engineered plant that can withstand multiple, frequent applications of toxic herbicide."

"Our society has been conditioned to support a co-opted environmental movement in the name of a chemical-intensive vegetable bypass industry, at the tragic expense of good health to both man and environment via the qualities of grazing animals and their products -- meat and milk for people, manure for the soil -- none of which we can afford to lose."

Why are cows being blamed for the destruction of the rainforest? Farmers who raise cows on pasture do not buy soybeans. They do not buy corn. They feed their animals grass and hay.

Clearly, this argument made by the U.N. that raising animals for food is destroying the environment is fallacious. They are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Rales writes:

"The U.N. points its global finger not at bad management practices like feedlots and confinement dairies, but at the cows themselves; not at Monsanto, but at real farmers, who raise livestock in accordance with nature's principles -- on grass.

The U.N.'s accusations ought to be directed at chemical-intensive, industrial CAFO agriculture."

Back to Kelly Freston's article on the Huffington Post. The worst, most misleading part of her article are these two sentences:

Recent years have seen an explosion of environmentally-friendly vegetarian foods. Even chains like Ruby Tuesday, Johnny Rockets, and Burger King offer delicious veggie burgers and supermarket refrigerators are lined with heart-healthy creamy soymilk and tasty veggie deli slices.

Environmentally friendly? Burger King?

Let's take a look at what's in a BK Veggie Burger:

Vegetables (Mushrooms, Water Chestnuts, Onions, Carrots, Green Bell Peppers, Red Bell Peppers, Black Olives), Textured Vegetable Protein (Soy Protein Concentrate, Wheat Gluten, Water for Hydration), Egg Whites, Cooked Brown Rice (Water, Brown Rice), Rolled Oats, Corn Oil, Calcium Caseinate, Soy Sauce (Water, Soybeans, Salt, Wheat), Onion Powder, Corn Starch, Salt, Hydrolyzed Corn, Soy, and Wheat Protein, Yeast Extract, Natural Flavors from non-meat sources, Sugar,Soy Protein Isolate, Spices, Garlic Powder, Dextrose, Jalapeño Pepper Powder, Celery Extract.Contains: Soy, Wheat, Milk and Egg. This is NOT a vegan product. The patty is cooked in the microwave.

I bolded all the processed foods that are contained in that single patty.

With that amount of processing, there is a ton of energy that goes into making that patty. Not to mention all the energy and chemical fertilizers that went into growing all those vegetables and soybeans and oats and rice. Oh, and there are egg whites in there, too. So you have to factor in raising chickens and slaughtering them as well. Plus those chickens were fed corn and soybeans.

And where do you think the corn and soybeans come from that were used to make this BK Veggie Burger? Do you think they came from organic farms tended by environmentally-conscious sustainable farmers?

Not likely. They are most likely genetically modified soybeans from industrial farms.

And where a lot of those industrial farms located? Why, in South America. Where the rainforests used to be.

All right, okay, so maybe you can still be a vegetarian and save the planet. You just won't eat at Burger King. Maybe you'll just buy those faux deli meats like Freston recommends at the health food store. Like "Smart Bacon". After all, they are made from soybeans that are not genetically modified. So you're safe, right?

Not so fast. What's in Smart Bacon?

Water, soy protein isolate, wheat gluten, soybean oil, textured soy protein concentrate, textured wheat gluten, less than 2% of: natural smoke flavor, natural flavor (from vegetable sources), grill flavor (from sunflower oil), carrageenan, evaporated cane juice, paprika oleoresin (for flavor & color), potassium chloride, sesame oil, spice extractives, fermented rice flour, tapioca dextrin, citric acid, salt.

Again, I've bolded the processed foods. Any idea how much processing goes into some of these ingredients?

Take paprika oleoresin. I looked it up on Wikipedia:

Paprika oleoresin (also known as paprika extract) is an oil soluble extract from the fruits of Capsicum Annum Linn (Indian red chillies), and is primarily used as a colouring and/or flavouring in food products. It is composed of capsaicin, the main flavouring compound giving pungency in higher concentrations, and capsanthin and capsorubin, the main colouring compounds (among other carotenoids).[1]

Extraction is performed by percolation with a variety of solvents, primarily hexane, which are removed prior to use.[2]

Hexane? Where does hexane come from? Wikipedia?

Hexane is produced by the refining of crude oil.

Oh, okay, so Smart Bacon is made with hexane, a refined petroleum product. Gee whiz, how can that be good for the environment? I thought we were trying to reduce our dependency on oil.

So I guess Vegetarian is the New Prius, like Kelly Freston said, seeing how the Prius also requires gasoline.

But let's get back to that Smart Bacon. What else is in there? TSP -- textured soy protein. According to Wikipedia, this is how it's made:

TSP is made by forming a dough from high nitrogen solubility index (NSI) defatted soy flour with water in a screw-type extruder such as the Wenger and heating with or without steam. The dough is extruded through a die into various possible shapes; granules, flakes, chunks, goulash, steakettes (schnitzle), etc., and dried in an oven.

OK so you have to grow the soybeans then dry them then grind them into flour then defat (?) the flour by extruding it and then heat it with or without steam.

Hmm... not sure how much energy is involved in that process but I do now that anything extruded is made in a factory.

Here's a picture I found of a soy extruder:

You think that thing needs oil, too? Just like the Prius and the Smart Bacon? Or do you think it runs on solar power?

Anyone want to take a guess -- which has a lower impact on the environment: a grass-fed farmer selling meat at the farmer's market or extruded soy patties from a factory?

So who's destroying the rainforests? Who's using up the most energy to produce their foods?

Is it the small farmers raising grass-fed cows and those of us who support them by purchasing grass-fed meat and dairy products directly from the farmer?

Or is it multinational corporations like Monsanto and Burger King and Lightlife Foods (makers of Smart Bacon), and all the veggie-burger-eating vegetarians?

Wake up, folks. Just because you are avoiding meat does not mean you are avoiding factory farms.

If you really want to avoid factory farms, support your local farmer.

PS: We're having cheeseburgers tonight. Grass-fed beef from Organic Pastures Dairy up in Fresno -- where the cows are on pasture all year long.

Sources: Burger King, Lightlife Foods, Wise Traditions 2008, Huffington Post, Soy extruder machine

Monsanto patent fight ensnares Missouri farm town

Alan Scher Zagier | July 10, 2008

Soybean farmer David Brumback calls himself a loyal customer of Monsanto Co. His product of choice: genetically engineered seeds resistant to pesticides and weed killers.

So when the biotech giant named Brumback and more than 100 other local farmers in a subpoena seeking five years of sales records, his first reaction was befuddlement. Then anger.

"With Monsanto, you're guilty until you're proven innocent," he said.

Across rural America, Monsanto is known for aggressive legal efforts to protect its patent. Farmers who save and replant the patented seeds in subsequent growing seasons quickly hear from the company's lawyers — and almost always lose, or settle out of court before trial.

Now Monsanto is raising the stakes against this so-called seed piracy with an unprecedented lawsuit against a farm co-op it accuses of aiding the illegal practice by cleaning seeds for use in future crops. That practice violates the contract between Monsanto and farmers which prohibits farmers from stockpiling seeds or selling second-generation seeds.

The St. Louis-based company says it's merely protecting an investment that exceeds $2 million a day in overall research and development costs.

Lawyers for the Pilot Grove Cooperative Elevator Inc. in the central Missouri town, population 750, offer a more nefarious explanation: Monsanto wants to make an example of the co-op through tactics that reek of bullying and intimidation.

"Monsanto is doing its best to make this case so expensive to defend that the co-op will have no choice but to relent," attorney Steven Schwartz wrote in a court motion filed earlier this year. The company sought purchase records and depositions from 114 Pilot Grove customers.

"Its true motive is to gather information for future lawsuits against the co-op, its customers and other farm businesses around Pilot Grove."

Schwartz declined to discuss the ongoing case. So did several of the more than 20 co-op customers who have settled patent infringement complaints out of court. Those settlements include gag orders.

"It's a bad deal," said Pilot Grove farmer James Wessing. "According to Monsanto, nobody is supposed to know anything about it."

The company's enforcement strategy includes private investigators, video surveillance and a toll-free hot line provided for farmers and business owners to anonymously report violations to what farmers call the "seed police."

A Monsanto spokeswoman noted that farmers who use patented seeds such as its Roundup Ready soybean — so named because it resists the Monsanto herbicide Roundup — sign written agreements pledging not to save and replant seeds.

Of the roughly 250,000 farmers who buy such products annually, the company has sued about 120 customers over the past decade, spokeswoman Janice Person said.

She compared the seed contracts to DVD rental agreements that require customers to not copy movies for commercial use.

"It's an equitable playing field for all farmers to follow the same rules," she said.

Sometimes though, the company's zealous enforcement efforts ensnare innocent bystanders.

Gary Rinehart, a northern Missouri convenience store owner, said he was accosted in 2002 by a Monsanto private investigator who warned him not to fight the company. Only Rinehart doesn't own a farmer or sell seeds.

"It was a case of mistaken identity," he said.

Monsanto sued Rinehart in federal court before dropping its case. According to a statement on the company's Web site, a Monsanto investigator "saw unmarked, brown bagged seed delivered to a couple of fields" nearby. The actual offender was Rinehart's nephew, whom the company says planted saved seeds on Rinehart's land.

"There's nobody else in the world that can get away with what they've done," Rinehart said. "When you buy a loaf of bread, it's yours. You're done. It should be the same way with seeds."

Rinehart's sentiment underscores years of simmering resentment among farmers who say Monsanto's grip on the seed market has produced unreasonable demands regarding the use of its seeds.

Saving seeds for reuse in later planting seasons is how it was done since the earliest days of agriculture. But the U.S. Supreme Court in 1980 deemed seeds as products that could be patented, opening the door for Monsanto and other companies.

A 2007 study by the Center for Food Safety showed that Monsanto had collected between $107 million and $186 million in patent infringement settlements before and after trial. The largest judgment, against a North Carolina farmer, topped $3.05 million.

A Tennessee farmer was sentenced to eight months in prison after he was caught lying about a truckload of cotton seed he hid for a friend. And a Canadian canola grower was sued even after the company acknowledged that the patented seeds merely drifted onto his land or fell off trucks headed to grain elevators.

"It's unacceptable that Monsanto is going after farmers," said Bill Freese, a science policy analyst for the Washington-based watchdog. "And it's even worse when they broaden it to an entire cooperative."

Schwartz, the co-op's attorney, said in a court filing that the Pilot Grove business is being targeted for "inducing farmers to infringe (the patent) by cleaning their soybeans."

Monsanto's pursuit of patent claims against individual farmers has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, which in January let stand without comment two lower court rulings that found a Mississippi farmer responsible for $375,000 in damages for reusing Roundup Ready soybean seeds.

"Now working inside America's "shadow" spy industry, George Tenet, Richard Armitage, Cofer Black and others are cashing in big on Iraq and the war on terror."

10 tough questions on oil and gas prices – Nieman Watchdog 5/5/08

US Congress protects record oil company profits – AP/Newsday 6/11/08

Richmond, California could be the first US city to decide to stand up to the Chevron oil company and impose a cap on its plans for further expansion.  - Alternet 7/8/08

Hunt Oil and the Bush Admin: A Timeline of Correspondence - TPMuckraker 7/2/08

Obama Camp closely tied to Ethanol Industry - NYTimes 6/23/08

Ralph Nader on Barack Obama: "It is Quite Clear He is a Corporate Candidate from A to Z" - audio, video or transcript Democracy Now 6/18/08

2 minute Video: Big Oil Fuels the 'Straight Talk Express' - TheRealMcCain.com

UK Channel 4's 46minute documentary on Coca-Cola - via Polaris Institute 12/4/07

KBR driver caught with child porn, fired, rehired, and caught with more child porn – Think Progress 5/7/08

California files suit against Avalon 'Natural' Products and Whole Foods - TransWorld News 7/7/08

EXCERPTS: "the Attorney General of California has filed a major lawsuit against body care household-cleaning product companies whose products recently tested highest for the carcinogenic contaminant 1,4-Dioxane....The suit, California v. Avalon Natural Products (manufacturer of the Alba brand), also names Whole Foods Market California (manufacturer of the Whole Foods 365 brand), Beaumont Products (manufacturer of the Citrus Magic brand), and Nutribiotic."

U.S. Arms Dealer Tests Legal Bounds in Middle East Arms Bazaar - Wired 7/3/08

Jeremy Scahill: Blackwater is Still in Charge, Deadly, Above the Law and Out of Control - Alternet 6/19/08

Major tech companies joining forces to create massive patent shell company - EnGadget 7/1/08

Monsanto has to Accept Full Responsibility for Genetic Contamination - Global Research 7/3/08

GM Foods: The U.S. Fights Mandatory Labeling in An Untested Human Experiment - Natural News 6/30/08

Sick patients used as human guinea pigs in GM foods experiment - Natural News 4/3/07

Meet the Nuclear Power Lobby - PR Watch 7/1/08

Judge finds Wal-Mart violated Minnesota labour laws - Reuters 7/1/08

"A Washington Post story Tuesday reported that there are over 900 whistle-blower cases in limbo at the Department of Justice that allege government contractors and drug companies have defrauded taxpayers out of billions of dollars.There have been 300-400 new cases brought each year since 2001 but the branch of the Justice department assigned to investigate them has only been able to get through approximately 100 per year." - via BuzzFlash 7/2/08

How much does corporate fraud cost you? - CNet 6/30/08

"The Corporate Fraud Task Force claims more than 1,300 corporate fraud convictions since its inception less than six years ago. That includes more than 200 CEOs and presidents, 50 CFOs, and 120 vice presidents. That's a lot of fraud."

Tesla to supply Mercedes-Benz with lithium-ion batteries? - EnGadget 6/30/08

Tesla promises all-electric car for under $30k in under four years - EnGadget 6/30/08

VW's 660 lb, 235mpg car set for limited 2010 production, for approximately $32-48,000 - Wired 7/3/08

Der Spiegel reporting that German telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom tracked journalists' movements using mobile phone data. And the company may have hired ex-Stasi spies to help. 5/30/08

CORPORATIONS & ENVIRONMENT

Video: Is "Clean Coal" Causing Blood Cancer? - CoalIsDirty

"In a single year, a rate of fewer than one in 100,000 Americans contract a rare form of blood cancer. In Pennsylvania coal country, the rate is nearly five times higher. Many suspect "clean" coal is the cause."

Biodiversity: Privatisation Making Seeds Themselves Infertile - IPS 5/22/08

Pesticides: Germany bans chemicals linked to honeybee devastation - Guardian UK 5/23/08

U.S. rice farmers want class action against Bayer - Reuters 5/23/08

Groundbreaking Lawsuit Accuses Big Oil of Conspiracy to Deceive Public About Climate Change - Democracy Now! 7/3/08

Put oil firm chiefs on trial, says leading climate change scientist – Guardian, UK 6/23/08

EXCERPT: “James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.  Hansen will use the symbolically charged 20th anniversary of his groundbreaking speech (pdf) to the US Congress - in which he was among the first to sound the alarm over the reality of global warming - to argue that radical steps need to be taken immediately if the "perfect storm" of irreversible climate change is not to become inevitable.”

“Speaking before Congress again, he will accuse the chief executive officers of companies such as ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy of being fully aware of the disinformation about climate change they are spreading. In an interview with the Guardian he said: "When you are in that kind of position, as the CEO of one the primary players who have been putting out misinformation even via organisations that affect what gets into school textbooks, then I think that's a crime."  He is also considering personally targeting members of Congress who have a poor track record on climate change in the coming November elections. He will campaign to have several of them unseated.”

Here's a great list of references and abstracts that highlight some of the body of knowledge surrounding allergens and transgenic crops.

Interestingly, this blog (I guess its more of a meta-aggregator than blog per se) is run by a local microbiology lecturer, David Tribe, from Melbourne University. He's website, GMO Pundit, has been running for close to 3 years, and has amassed a huge archive of searchable GMO titbits.

By F. William Engdahl 
Global Research, July 10, 2008

 
A secret study by the World Bank, which reportedly has not been made public on pressure from the Bush Administration, concludes that bio-fuel cultivation in especially the USA and EU are directly responsible for the current explosion in grain and food prices worldwide. The US Government at the recent Rome UN Food Summit claimed that "only 3% of food prices" were due to bio-fuels. The World Bank secret report says that at least 75% of the recent price rises are due to land being removed from agriculture—mainly maize in North America and rapeseed and corn in the EU—in order to grow crops to be burned for vehicle fuel. The World Bank study confirms what we wrote more than a year ago about the madness of bio-fuels. It fits the agenda described in the 1970’s by Henry Kissinger, namely, ‘If you control the food you control the people.’

According to the London Guardian newspaper which has been given a copy of the suppressed report, the World Bank study was completed in April, well before the June Rome Food Summit, but was deliberately suppressed as "embarrassing to the position of the Bush Administration." The President of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, is a former top Bush Administration official. Washington is trying to use a crisis which its bio-fuel subsidies created, since a new Farm bill passed in 2005, to advance the spread of Genetically Manipulated Organisms such as GMO maize, soybeans, rice and other crops patented by Monsanto and other "gene giants."

Their strategy is to use the explosive rise in grain prices worldwide, a rise fuelled by hedge funds and troubled US and European banks and investment funds pouring billions of dollars into speculation that grain prices will continue to soar. In other words, the food "crisis" is a crisis of speculation in food futures. The planned EU and USA bio-fuel acreage quotas and the periodic droughts and floods in key growing regions such as the USA Midwest then provide backdrop for speculative price run-ups. But the main driver is that tens of millions of hectares of prime agriculture land in the world’s two largest food export regions—the USA and the EU-- are being permanently removed from food production in order to grow raw material to be burned for vehicle fuel.

The suppressed study

The World Bank study, the most detailed analysis of the global food crisis so far, concludes that bio-fuels have forced "food prices up by 75%." That is far more than previous estimates. That is a damning refutation of the politically-motivated US Department of Agriculture estimate that plant-derived fuels add only 3% to food prices. The report is expected to increase pressure on the European Union governments as well as Washington to change their present bio-fuel subsidy and support policies.

The report has been leaked just days before the important annual Group of 8 industrial nation leaders’ summit held in Hokkaido Japan. The food crisis will be a major topic there as pressure on governments grows to do something.

The World Bank report estimates that doubling and tripling of world food prices in the past three years have forced an added 100 million people below the poverty line. That has triggered food riots from Bangladesh to Egypt.

The report as well calculates that even the successive droughts in Australia and other major food regions have had only a "marginal" impact on food prices.

Within the EU, for example, as of April all vehicles in the UK must contain fuel with at least 2.5% bio-fuel. The EU has in place a target of mandatory 20% by 2020, a staggering amount.

George W. Bush has cynically claimed higher food prices are merely due to higher demand from India and China. The leaked World Bank study refutes that: "Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases."

"Without the increase in bio-fuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate," the World Bank report states. The basket of food prices examined in the study rose by 140% between 2002 and February 2008. Higher energy and fertiliser prices accounted for an increase of only 15%. Bio-fuels have been responsible for a 75% jump over that period..

The study demonstrates that production of bio-fuels has distorted food markets in three main ways. First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of US corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going to production of bio-diesel. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for bio-fuel production. Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher.

The real agenda behind the food crisis

The World Bank study is the first to include all three factors. What is missing from the World Bank study however is the longer-term geopolitical agenda behind the present global food and energy crises. As I document in great detail in my book, Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation, the long term agenda of powerful leading circles in the West, particularly represented in tax exempt private foundations such as the Rockefeller, Ford and Gates foundations and the private wealth behind them, is a long term agenda of population reduction, in the interests of the global economic and financial elites..

Food scarcity, higher prices for basic foods in developing countries as well as control of food seeds through patent and Terminator suicide seed sales by Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, Dow, BASF, Bayer and a few select agriculture chemical seed giants—the "horsemen of the GMO Apokalypse," have been developed to advance the agenda of massive depopulation of the developing world.

The policy goes back, as the book documents in detail, to the early years of the 20th Century when Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harriman, Gamble, H.G. Wells, Margaret Meade, and other wealthy circles backed the development of eugenics research.  The Rockefeller Foundation financed the eugenics and forced sterilization research at the Berlin Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (today's Max Planck Institute) until it became too politically hot in 1939.

After the end of the war, Rockefeller and others in the eugenics movement decided for political reasons to change the name of eugenics. The new name they chose was "genetics." GMO is a project, based on wrong science, financed with over $100 million of private money from the Rockefeller Foundation. The ultimate aim is for the first time in history to control life on the planet. As Henry Kissinger put in during the 1970’s food crisis, "control the food and you control the people."

In this light it is worth noting that as a solution to a crisis which it deliberately created by its massive government subsidies to farmers to grow bio-fuels instead of food, the Bush Administration made and continues to make a major pressure at the Rome Food Summit in early June and after, to open the doors to GMO as the alleged "solution" to world hunger.

On June 13, just after the Rome UN Food Summit, John Negroponte, US Deputy Secretary of State, stated, ""We therefore are strongly encouraging countries to remove barriers to the use of innovative plant and animal production technologies, including biotechnology," adding, "Biotechnology tools can help speed the development of crops with higher yields, higher nutrition value, better resistance to pests and diseases, and stronger food system resilience in the face of climate change." Washington and the GMO companies now use the more deceptive term, "biotechnology" instead of the controversial GMO term, in a linguistic ploy to overcome opposition.

Independent scientific studies and countless farmer reports have shown that long-term planting of GMO or bio-tech crops as the gene giants prefer to call it, far from giving higher crop yields, lowers the yields and development of resistant "super-weeds" usually mean more, not less Roundup or other GMO-paired chemical herbicides and pesticides are needed.. In short the glorious claims for GMO are marketing fraud.

According to highly informed reports, Washington had been told that Pope Benedict XVI would endorse the spread of GMO, something the Vatican until now has been strongly opposed to on moral and other grounds, as a solution to world hunger. At the last minute that endorsement did not happen for reasons only the Pope perhaps knows. Groups like Greenpeace and the London Independent newspaper in the days before the Rome UN summit reported interviews with senior Church figures stating that the policy reverse was expected.

There is strong circumstantial evidence that the entire Rome UN Summit was orchestrated by Washington, London’s Gordon Brown and other Malthusian governments in part to try to convince the Pope to reverse its policy on GMO. The Roman Catholic Church today stands as one of the most important moral barriers to widespread acceptance of GMO in many developing countries such as the Philippines and Latin America.

The leak of the World Bank report adds a dramatic new element into what is becoming one of the major political issues along with oil price manipulation.

----------------------

F. William Engdahl is a leading analyst of the New World Order, author of Seeds of Destruction, Global Research,2007 [see below], and the best-selling book on oil and geopolitics, A Century of War: Anglo-American Politics and the New World Order,’ His writings have been translated into more than a dozen languages. 

He may be contacted via his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.

The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author's copyright must be displayed.

© Copyright F. William Engdahl, Global Research, 2008

The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9547

Global Research, July 10, 2008

A secret study by the World Bank, which reportedly has not been made public on pressure from the Bush Administration, concludes that bio-fuel cultivation in especially the USA and EU are directly responsible for the current explosion in grain and food prices worldwide. The US Government at the recent Rome UN Food Summit claimed that "only 3% of food prices" were due to bio-fuels. The World Bank secret report says that at least 75% of the recent price rises are due to land being removed from agriculture—mainly maize in North America and rapeseed and corn in the EU—in order to grow crops to be burned for vehicle fuel. The World Bank study confirms what we wrote more than a year ago about the madness of bio-fuels. It fits the agenda described in the 1970’s by Henry Kissinger, namely, ‘If you control the food you control the people.’

According to the London Guardian newspaper which has been given a copy of the suppressed report, the World Bank study was completed in April, well before the June Rome Food Summit, but was deliberately suppressed as "embarrassing to the position of the Bush Administration." The President of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, is a former top Bush Administration official. Washington is trying to use a crisis which its bio-fuel subsidies created, since a new Farm bill passed in 2005, to advance the spread of Genetically Manipulated Organisms such as GMO maize, soybeans, rice and other crops patented by Monsanto and other "gene giants."

Their strategy is to use the explosive rise in grain prices worldwide, a rise fuelled by hedge funds and troubled US and European banks and investment funds pouring billions of dollars into speculation that grain prices will continue to soar. In other words, the food "crisis" is a crisis of speculation in food futures. The planned EU and USA bio-fuel acreage quotas and the periodic droughts and floods in key growing regions such as the USA Midwest then provide backdrop for speculative price run-ups. But the main driver is that tens of millions of hectares of prime agriculture land in the world’s two largest food export regions—the USA and the EU-- are being permanently removed from food production in order to grow raw material to be burned for vehicle fuel.

The suppressed study

The World Bank study, the most detailed analysis of the global food crisis so far, concludes that bio-fuels have forced "food prices up by 75%." That is far more than previous estimates. That is a damning refutation of the politically-motivated US Department of Agriculture estimate that plant-derived fuels add only 3% to food prices. The report is expected to increase pressure on the European Union governments as well as Washington to change their present bio-fuel subsidy and support policies.

The report has been leaked just days before the important annual Group of 8 industrial nation leaders’ summit held in Hokkaido Japan. The food crisis will be a major topic there as pressure on governments grows to do something.

The World Bank report estimates that doubling and tripling of world food prices in the past three years have forced an added 100 million people below the poverty line. That has triggered food riots from Bangladesh to Egypt.

The report as well calculates that even the successive droughts in Australia and other major food regions have had only a "marginal" impact on food prices.

Within the EU, for example, as of April all vehicles in the UK must contain fuel with at least 2.5% bio-fuel. The EU has in place a target of mandatory 20% by 2020, a staggering amount.

George W. Bush has cynically claimed higher food prices are merely due to higher demand from India and China. The leaked World Bank study refutes that: "Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases."

"Without the increase in bio-fuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate," the World Bank report states. The basket of food prices examined in the study rose by 140% between 2002 and February 2008. Higher energy and fertiliser prices accounted for an increase of only 15%. Bio-fuels have been responsible for a 75% jump over that period..

The study demonstrates that production of bio-fuels has distorted food markets in three main ways. First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of US corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going to production of bio-diesel. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for bio-fuel production. Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher.

The real agenda behind the food crisis

The World Bank study is the first to include all three factors. What is missing from the World Bank study however is the longer-term geopolitical agenda behind the present global food and energy crises. As I document in great detail in my book, Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation, the long term agenda of powerful leading circles in the West, particularly represented in tax exempt private foundations such as the Rockefeller, Ford and Gates foundations and the private wealth behind them, is a long term agenda of population reduction, in the interests of the global economic and financial elites..

Food scarcity, higher prices for basic foods in developing countries as well as control of food seeds through patent and Terminator suicide seed sales by Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, Dow, BASF, Bayer and a few select agriculture chemical seed giants—the "horsemen of the GMO Apokalypse," have been developed to advance the agenda of massive depopulation of the developing world.

The policy goes back, as the book documents in detail, to the early years of the 20th Century when Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harriman, Gamble, H.G. Wells, Margaret Meade, and other wealthy circles backed the development of eugenics research. The Rockefeller Foundation financed the eugenics and forced sterilization research at the Berlin Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (today's Max Planck Institute) until it became too politically hot in 1939.

After the end of the war, Rockefeller and others in the eugenics movement decided for political reasons to change the name of eugenics. The new name they chose was "genetics." GMO is a project, based on wrong science, financed with over $100 million of private money from the Rockefeller Foundation. The ultimate aim is for the first time in history to control life on the planet. As Henry Kissinger put in during the 1970’s food crisis, "control the food and you control the people."

In this light it is worth noting that as a solution to a crisis which it deliberately created by its massive government subsidies to farmers to grow bio-fuels instead of food, the Bush Administration made and continues to make a major pressure at the Rome Food Summit in early June and after, to open the doors to GMO as the alleged "solution" to world hunger.

On June 13, just after the Rome UN Food Summit, John Negroponte, US Deputy Secretary of State, stated, ""We therefore are strongly encouraging countries to remove barriers to the use of innovative plant and animal production technologies, including biotechnology," adding, "Biotechnology tools can help speed the development of crops with higher yields, higher nutrition value, better resistance to pests and diseases, and stronger food system resilience in the face of climate change." Washington and the GMO companies now use the more deceptive term, "biotechnology" instead of the controversial GMO term, in a linguistic ploy to overcome opposition.

Independent scientific studies and countless farmer reports have shown that long-term planting of GMO or bio-tech crops as the gene giants prefer to call it, far from giving higher crop yields, lowers the yields and development of resistant "super-weeds" usually mean more, not less Roundup or other GMO-paired chemical herbicides and pesticides are needed.. In short the glorious claims for GMO are marketing fraud.

According to highly informed reports, Washington had been told that Pope Benedict XVI would endorse the spread of GMO, something the Vatican until now has been strongly opposed to on moral and other grounds, as a solution to world hunger. At the last minute that endorsement did not happen for reasons only the Pope perhaps knows. Groups like Greenpeace and the London Independent newspaper in the days before the Rome UN summit reported interviews with senior Church figures stating that the policy reverse was expected.

There is strong circumstantial evidence that the entire Rome UN Summit was orchestrated by Washington, London’s Gordon Brown and other Malthusian governments in part to try to convince the Pope to reverse its policy on GMO. The Roman Catholic Church today stands as one of the most important moral barriers to widespread acceptance of GMO in many developing countries such as the Philippines and Latin America.

The leak of the World Bank report adds a dramatic new element into what is becoming one of the major political issues along with oil price manipulation.

----------------------

F. William Engdahl is a leading analyst of the New World Order, author of Seeds of Destruction, Global Research,2007 [see below], and the best-selling book on oil and geopolitics, A Century of War: Anglo-American Politics and the New World Order,’ His writings have been translated into more than a dozen languages.

He may be contacted via his website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.

The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified. The source and the author's copyright must be displayed.

© Copyright F. William Engdahl, Global Research, 2008

The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9547

What further complicates matters is that for many of us, the term 'liberal' is seen as a good thing since, in politics, we see it as promoting individual rights, equal opportunities and limited government. However, you will find many right-wing politicians who oppose liberal political policies but actually promote liberal economic policies.

Economic liberalism, such as neoliberalism, is a completely different ball game to political or social liberalism. First of all, the ‘neo’ simply refers to a new kind of liberalism, a revival of that seen back in the late 17^th century. The basis of neoliberal policies is that they promote privatisation and free trade between nations. Through privatisation, the control of the economy is transferred from the public to the private sector, enabling companies to grow in size and power. Free trade (or trade liberalisation) opposes government restrictions such as taxes, regulations and tariffs which are barriers to international trade; again giving more power to large, companies and rich nations. There is obviously a strong link between neoliberalism and globalisation.

These neoliberal policies have had a profound effect on our global economies for the last 3 decades. If we could trust the corporations of rich nations to be ethical perhaps we wouldn’t be in such a desperate state; but the reality is that these companies are ruthless in their pursuit of money, destroying everything in their path. Neoliberal policies, supported by governments, have allowed trans-national companies to enter developing nations and force people off their land. These powerful companies also produce goods intensively on a mass scale which allows them to out-compete the locals and export goods around the world. All this has devastating impacts on the environment and human rights.

So how does this relate to the food crisis? A good example is that of soy in Latin America. In recent years, soy plantations have taken over. Companies from wealthy nations, assisted by these neoliberal policies, have muscled their way in, evicted people from their land and destroyed forests to make way for these plantations. This does not benefit the Latin American people because not only are their livelihoods and environments being destroyed but they do not even get to eat the soy – it is all exported to European countries and other rich nations, around 80-90% of which is fed to animals raised for meat and dairy. In Latin America, many of those who live near the plantations suffer from malnutrition. Most of the soy is genetically modified.

Many social justice and environmental organisations oppose the damaging policies of neoliberalism and promote the local and national production and consumption of food. Food sovereignty, the right of peoples and farmers to produce their own food in a way that suits them culturally, is the way forward. And that means no more destructive, intensive farming for export.

The problem here, at least for those who enjoy their cheap and regular supply of meat, is that the current meat industry relies on neoliberalism. If we stop the intensive, mass production of soy and grain in developing countries for export for animal feed in Europe, how are we going to feed all those animals in order to provide the meat we want? If we continue to maintain the current demand for meat, we continue to support neoliberalism, we continue to support the most unscrupulous and power-hungry companies in the world, like Cargill - and that means local people being forced from their land, conflicts, GM, pesticides that poison local people, deforestation, water pollution...

Just as the answer to the energy crisis is to reduce consumption as much as possible and use only sustainable sources of energy, the answer to the food crisis is the same; and that means we need to eat foods produced in an efficient, ethical and sustainable way. Go vegan.

RussiaToday

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev summed up the results of the G8 summit in Japan. He also commented on the installation of the U.S. anti-missile system in Europe and the importance of the G8 meeting for the global agenda.

see

G8 summit marked by impotence and division

Czech Republic and U.S. sign radar base agreement

GMO

Food

Global Warming

phi

1.6180339 : 1 : 0.61803402

1.6180339 / 0.61803402 = 2.6180337

2.6180337 / 4.2360673 = 0.61803402

It's A Small World After Monsanto Et Al: 3 Squares

In which i get a GM tomato, and Enclosure becomes personal.

Yep yep. All Hell Breaks Loose, in stop motion. America! Your clue: if you haven't drawn a line and chosen a target, you are already on the wrong side of the chalk with a red dot or two tracking your hat-holder. You look like shit, BTW. I thought this was going to be so much harder, but here we are.

Free Range Studios

FreeRangeStudios

Human-pig hybrid embryos given go ahead

Roger Highfield | July 1, 2008

A licence to create human-pig embryos to study heart disease has been issued by the fertility watchdog.

This marks the third animal-human hybrid embryo licence to be issued by Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and the first since the Commons voted in favour of this controversial research last month.

An HFEA spokesman said it had approved an application from the Clinical Sciences Research Institute, University of Warwick, for the creation of hybrid embryos. The centre has been offered a 12 month licence with effect from today, July 1.

The effort at the University of Warwick is led by Professor Justin St John. "This new license allows us to attempt to make human pig clones to produce embryonic stem cells," he said, where embryonic stem cells are able to turn into the 200 plus types in the body.

"We will take skin cells from patients who have a mutation for certain kinds of heart disease (cardiomyopathy, which makes the heart lose its pumping strength) and put them into pig eggs after their chromosomes have been removed. We will then make embryos so that we can attempt to derive embryonic stem cells which will allow us to study some of the molecular mechanisms associated with these heart diseases.

"Ultimately they will help us to understand where some of the problems associated with these diseases arise and they could also provide models for the pharmaceutical industry to test new drugs. We will effectively be creating and studying these diseases in a dish.

"But it's important to say that we're at the very early stages of this research and it will take a considerable amount of time. There is still a great deal to learn about these techniques and much of our early work will involve understanding how we can make the hybrid cloning process as efficient as possible."

The study is aimed at understanding the way power-producing structures in cells, called mitochondria, are passed from egg to embryo. In the hybrid, the mitochondria mostly come from the egg, initially making up around half of the DNA by weight, and the team will do experiments in order to ensure that the trace of human mitochondrial DNA takes over, not least because it is designed to work with human nuclear DNA.

"The key thing we are doing is trying to create stem cells without any animal DNA in them. So even though these hybrid embryos normally have a small percentage of animal DNA , we are hoping to create cells that would have human chromosomes and human mitochondrial DNA." The reason is that, as the team puts it, "mixing of these two diverse populations of mitochondria can be detrimental to cellular function."

Dr Evan Harris, Liberal Democrat science spokesman, commenting on the HFEA decision to issue a license to the University of Warwick to create hybrid embryos combining human skin cells with enucleated pig eggs, said: "This application is a further indication of the interest in this sort of research by UK scientists, the decision of the HFEA to issue a license following stringent checks demonstrates that it is considered both necessary and ethical."

"While this approval comes under the existing 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, both houses of Parliament have recently voted by large majorities to allow it into the future," said Prof Robin Lovell-Badge, of the MRC National Institute For Medical Research.

"It is good news that this license has been issued at a time when parliament has expressed overwhelming support for this research after an excellent public debate. I suspect other similar applications will follow and hopefully this research can now progress without the hype."

Teams in Newcastle and London are already creating hybrids. The former have already created hybrids with cow eggs to study the basics of how the use of genes changes in early development, the latter a range of species to generate stem cells from people with neurodegenerative disorders.

Olin täitsa meeldivalt üllatunud, nii põhimõtteliselt. Et sellise tädikese juures ei oskaks küll arvata, et ta selliseid asju teab.
Tänasin teda kenasti ja avaldasin arvamust, et Ukraina mais ehk veel ei ole väga GMO. Tädi noogutas kaasa, et jah, eks Ameerika oma on pigem see GMO. Ning et soja hulgas on ka väga palju GMO-d ja tema üldse ei meeldi, et selliseid asju tehakse.

Igal juhul ostsime oma maisi ära ja tädi ostis on kurgid ära.

You can also see from the article why genetic engineering is so poor at improving productivity. As it notes, "Yield in soybeans is controlled by many different genes working in combination". And while Monsanto is preparing to launch its new Roundup "RReady 2Yield"soybeans, there's nothing to indicate that the yield claims being made for RR2 owe anything to genetic engineering. The likelihood is that the parent lines were developed conventionally with the help of molecular marker technologies - so called Marker Assisted Selection (MAS)- and then the RR gene added to make them GM. That, of course, will not stop the claims that GM has created productivity claims!

EXTRACT: John Soper, senior research director for Pioneer, said the company used molecular marker technologies to find the genes that control yield in the soybean plant.

source: www.enn.com