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Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear

The World According to Monsanto: A toxic tour
Susan Walker

French journalist Marie-Monique Robin takes a scattershot approach in her exposé of Monsanto, an American multinational chemical and biotechnology company responsible for some of the most toxic and environmentally damaging products ever sold.

Monsanto's list of accomplishments includes production of Agent Orange, PCBs, recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone and genetically modified crops such as Roundup Ready soybeans that, far from being a boon to farmers around the world, threaten their livelihood and undermine biodiversity.

Robin might have taken on any one of Monsanto's monstrous activities and made a compelling documentary, but instead she attacks on all fronts, opening one avenue of investigation after another, but never thoroughly exploring any one of them.

Her investigating tool is Google, and watching her scroll through highlighted entries and documents hardly makes for fascinating footage.

Monsanto was founded in St. Louis, Mo., in 1901 and became the largest chemical company of the 20th century. Among its most disastrous products were PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), used as insulating fluids and fire retardants.

Production of PCBs were banned in the 1970s, but in the little town of Anniston, Ala. where, unbeknownst to its inhabitants, Monsanto was permitted to dump the chemicals, their deadly effects are still felt.

Robin interviews a local man whose brother died of PCB-related cancer and shoots a poisonous-looking run-off before moving on to the next topic.

Robin traces the history of Monsanto's political influence in establishing the principle of "substantial equivalent" that allowed the company to market genetically modified agricultural products without approval from the Food and Drug Administration.

One of her interviewees, author and activist Jeremy Rifkin, talks about how "we were trying to say these things should be considered food additives." They weren't. In a 1987 film clip, then vice-president George Bush is seen touring a Monsanto bioengineering lab. Should Monsanto encounter any difficulties in winning approvals for its products, he tells his hosts, they can "call me. We're in the de-reg business."

Nothing was to get in the way of the United States becoming a world leader in biotechnology. Against the lame imagery of a revolving door, the film documents the passage of numerous Monsanto executives back and forth between the corporation and U.S. regulating agencies.

The documentary visits scientists in Britain and Canada who mysteriously lose their jobs after making findings injurious to Monsanto. The company is shown to have falsified scientific findings.

A trip back in time takes us to Agent Orange, used in the Vietnam War, and said to have contaminated three million people: Monsanto studies showed that its principal ingredient, dioxin, was not a human carcinogen.

On a global tour to reveal Monsanto's takeover of agriculture in countries such as Mexico, Paraguay and India, Robin shows how the company can bankrupt farmers with their patented seeds and accuse them of stealing when transgenic crops show up in their fields.

A food activist in India says of the company, "They want to own life." In Paraguay, the Roundup Ready soybeans are taking over the fields and herbicide is sprayed everywhere, killing ducks and harming children.

In 2007, Monsanto employed 18,000 workers in 50 countries. This film is not the first time the company has been accused of destroying ecosystems, causing disease and doing end-runs around scientists and governments. A Monsanto spokesperson is heard on a recording denying Robin an interview.

Now that The World According to Monsanto, which aired on European television this year, is available in English, it might reach the American public. But the likelihood is that this company will continue to do what it has always done: exactly what it wants.

DECONSTRUCTING DINNER

And on the eighth day the Lord did proclaim...if it guzzleth let it be driven.

banksy

Funk the system

Banksy

Fascism Lives

INDEPTH: THE BILDERBERG GROUP
Informal forum or global conspiracy?
CBC News Online | June 13, 2006

The seed was planted by one man - Joseph Retinger, who left Poland for Britain in 1911 and spent the next three decades working as a political adviser. After the Second World War, he became a leading advocate of the unification of Europe - at least the western part of the continent.

Retinger was alarmed by the growing influence of Soviet-style communism and a rising tide of anti-Americanism in Western Europe. In 1952, he persuaded Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands and Belgian Prime Minister Paul Van Zeeland to help him organize an international conference. Prominent business people and politicians from several European countries and the United States would be invited. The goal: To provide a forum where influential people could meet and talk about ways that help promote understanding on both sides of the Atlantic - and prevent future wars.

They met at the Hotel de Bilderberg near Arnhem in the Netherlands for two days in May. The conference was deemed such a success that the group pledged to make it an annual event. They adopted the location of their first meeting place as the name of their new group.

The idea was to create an informal network of influential people who could consult each other privately and confidentially. They could focus on what their countries had in common and bounce ideas off each other that could make life better for everyone.

The group decided that it would invite 100 of the most powerful people in Europe and North America every year to meet behind closed doors at a different five-star resort. The group stresses secrecy: What's said at a Bilderberg conference stays at a Bilderberg conference. The organization says that encourages members to talk frankly, without the worry that what they say will wind up in the news.

An Ottawa police officer directs the driver of a limousine outside a hotel where members of the Bilderberg Group will be meeting, June 8, 2006. (Tom Hanson/Canadian Press)

Several high-profile journalists have been invited over the years - again, on the understanding that they must not report on the proceedings. Break the rule and you're not invited back.

Skeptics argue that the secrecy means Bilderberg members can spend their private time hatching plans to control the world politically and economically, ensuring that the rich and powerful maintain their grip on the levers of power while the rest of the population is enslaved to keep the economic machinery running. Bilderbergers, some have argued, have withheld cancer cures so as not to anger the global pharmaceutical industry. They've also kept technology out of the public domain that would allow cars to travel 75 kilometres on a litre of gas. Big Oil, apparently, would not approve.

The group has assembled at least three times in Canada, most recently June 8 to 11 this year at the Brookstreet Hotel in the Ottawa suburb of Kanata. According to a Bilderberg news release, prominent Canadians invited to the 2006 conference included former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna, Paul Desmarais, CEO of Power Corporation, Gordon Nixon, president and CEO of the Royal Bank of Canada, and Heather Reisman, chair and CEO of Indigo Books.

They got to mingle with the likes of Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi, former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger, Richard Holbrooke, key American negotiator for 1995 Bosnian peace accords, Richard Perle, senior foreign policy adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, retired banker David Rockefeller, and Johann Koss, Norwegian Olympian and president of the Right to Play organization.

The news release also said some of the topics on the agenda of the Kanata meeting would be energy, Iran, terrorism and European-American relations. There were no news conferences or communiqués as the meeting wound up.

James Tucker - an American libertarian and journalist - has been a critic of the Bilderberg group for decades.

"When meeting last year in Rottach-Egern, Germany, Bilderberg called for dramatic increases in the price of oil. Oil prices started climbing immediately from $40 a barrel to $70," Tucker wrote in the days before the 2006 meeting.

Tucker says the group has used its meetings to organize wars and the overthrow of "unfriendly" leaders. It has also been accused of identifying politicians who are friendly to big business and backing their runs for power. Former U.S. president Bill Clinton spoke at a Bilderberg conference a year before his election victory, as did British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The current chairman, Belgian politician and businessman Etienne Davignon, says the steering committee that organizes the annual get-togethers is excellent at spotting talent.

Former prime ministers Paul Martin, Jean Chretien and Pierre Trudeau also made Bilderberg appearances.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper took in the group's 2003 meeting in Versailles, France, while he was Opposition leader. But Tucker says the Bilderbergers are not pleased with Harper. It's because of Kyoto. The Bilderberg group, Tucker says, is behind the Kyoto Protocol. They're the ones who pushed it. Like they pushed NAFTA and the World Trade Organization - and "turned NATO into the UN's standing army. It's a step," Tucker writes, "on the road to creating world government."

The Global Crisis: Food, Water and Fuel. Three Fundamental Necessities of Life in Jeopardy

"Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people." Henry Kissinger


"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." George Orwell

The Mackenzie Institute

The Lessons of History

August, 1998

1. Nobody learns from history.
What experience and history teach is this - that people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on the principles deduced from it.
- G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of History

2. Human motivations never change while our worldviews and expressions often do.
Please witness the two following ways of saying the same thing: the first from a traditional Navaho war chant, and the second an unofficial slogan from the US Army Rangers:
First: Hi! Ni! I am the man of flint! That's me! Four lightnings zigzag from me and return.
Second: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil, for I am the meanest m*****f***er in it.

3. Problems don't always have solutions.
My only solution for the problem of habitual accidents and, so far, nobody has asked me for my solution, is to stay in bed all day. Even then, there is always the chance that you will fall out.
- Robert Benchley, Chips off the old Benchley

4. Violence either solves problems or changes them.
That war is an evil is something that we all know, and it would be pointless to go on cataloguing all the disadvantages involved in it. No one is forced to go to war by ignorance, nor, if he thinks he will gain by it, is he kept out of it by fear. The fact is that one side thinks that the profits to be won outweigh the risks to be incurred, and the other side is ready to face this rather than accept an immediate loss.
- Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

5. What goes around, comes around.
Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so unto them: for this is the law and the prophets.
- Matthew 7:12 (King James Version)

6. Trouble slides in on an exponential curve.
Go sir, gallop, and don't forget that the world was made in six days. You can ask me for anything you like, except time.
- Napoleon Bonaparte

7. Never discount randomness.
A little neglect may breed great mischief... for want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for want of a horse the rider was lost.
- Benjamin Franklin, preface to The Courteous Reader

8. History doesn't repeat itself, it just looks that way.
Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can only see one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave.
- H.A.L. Fisher, History of Europe

9. Progress is not inevitable.
For civilization is not something inborn or imperishable: It must be acquired anew by every generation, and any serious interruption in its financing or its transmission may bring it to an end.
- Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage

10. Today's radical may be tomorrow's conservative.
What have we learned in the middle of the journey? In brief, that the radical future is an illusion and that the American present is worth defending; and that we were part of a destructive generation whose work is not over yet.
- Peter Collier and David Horowitz, Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the '60s

11. Judge intention by core interest and power bases, not by statements.
With affection beaming in one eye, and calculation shining out of the other. - Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit

12. Good doesn't always triumph.
O judgement! Thou art fled to brutish beasts / And men have lost their reason.
- William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar III, ii [110]

13. All politicians are crooked.
Politicians [are] a set of men who have interests aside from the interests of the people, and who, to say the most of them, are, taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from honest men. I say this with the greater freedom because, being a politician myself, none can regard it as personal.
- Abraham Lincoln, Speech, 1837

14. God does march on the side with the biggest battalions.
Whatever happens, we have got / The Maxim gun, and they have not.
- Hilaire Belloc, The Modern Traveller

15. It is a mistake to legislate people's behaviour.
Adam was but human - this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden.
- Mark Twain, The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson

16. Mother Nature is more dangerous than we are.
Since the beginning of history malaria has killed half of the men, women and children that have died on the planet. It has outperformed all wars, all famines and all other epidemics.
- Andrew Nikiforuk, The Fourth Horseman

17. Talent only appears when the circumstances are right.
When a rising generation of educated people does not have to worry about securing its livelihood, about choice of profession, when it does not feel obligated to become accountants or lawyers, and can risk becoming artists or philosophers, or founding new theatres, or writing poetry, because it knows it can always find the means for making a living, that period always witnesses a cultural explosion.
- Norman Cantor, The American Century

18. Keep governments on a lean diet - or else.
The Emperor's unnumerable officials kept an eye even upon the humblest citizen... staggering under his crushing burden of taxes, in a state which was practically bankrupt, the citizen of every class had now become a mere cog in the vast machinery of government. In so far as the ancient world was one of progress in civilization, its history ended with the accession of Diocletian.
- J.H. Breasted, Ancient Times

19. The main factors are out of our hands.
To discuss civilization is to discuss space, land and its contours, climate, vegetation, animal species and natural or other advantages. It is also to discuss what humanity has made of these basic conditions.
- Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilization

20. Never trust those who would hammer square pegs into round holes.
Anyone who had once learned to submit absolutely to a collective belief and to renounce his eternal right to freedom and the equally eternal duty of individual responsibility will persist in this attitude, and will be able to set out with the same credulity and the same lack of criticism in the reverse direction, if another and manifestly 'better' belief is foisted upon his alleged idealism.
- Carl G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self

21. Never attribute to cleverness that which is explainable by stupidity, serendipity and error.
The chapter of accidents is the longest chapter in the book.
- John Wilkes, attrib.

Methane rise points to wetlands

By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website

The Zeppelin station was among those showing a significant rise

Higher atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas methane noted last year are probably related to emissions from wetlands, especially around the Arctic.

Scientists have found indications that extra amounts of the gas in the Arctic region are of biological origin.

Global levels of methane had been roughly stable for almost a decade.

Rising levels in the Arctic could mean that some of the methane stored away in permafrost is being released, which would have major climatic implications.

The gas is about 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, though it survives for a shorter time in the atmosphere before being broken down by natural chemical processes.

Northern lights

Indications that methane levels might be rising after almost a decade of stability came last month, when the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) released a preliminary analysis of readings taken at monitoring stations worldwide.

Noaa suggested that 2007 had seen a global rise of about 0.5%.

Some stations around the Arctic showed rises of more than double that amount.

One is the station at Mount Zeppelin in Svalbard, north of Scandinavia.

In addition to the long-term monitoring carried out there by Norway and Sweden, a British team has recently started gathering samples and analysing them in a way that could reveal where the methane is coming from.

Methane produced by bacteria contains a high proportion of molecules with the lighter form (isotope) of carbon, carbon-12, rather than the heavier form, carbon-13.

I think 2007 is probably down to wetland emissions Ed Dlugokencky, Noaa

"Anything where bacteria form methane, you get depletion in C-13 because methanogens (the bacteria) preferentially use C-12," said Rebecca Fisher from Royal Holloway, University of London, who has been running the Svalbard experiments.

"The results we have so far imply a predominantly biogenic source," she told BBC News.

The researchers also match methane levels with wind direction, so they can see where the gas is being produced. This analysis also implies a source in the Arctic regions, rather than one further afield such as the additional output from Asia's rapid industrialisation.

Warm and wet

Ed Dlugokencky, the scientist at Noaa's Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) who collates and analyses data from atmospheric monitoring stations, agrees that the 2007 rise has a biological cause.

"We're pretty sure it's not biomass burning; and I think 2007 is probably down to wetland emissions," he said.

"In boreal regions it was warmer and wetter than usual, and microbes there produce methane faster at higher temperatures."

Dr Dlugokencky also suggested that the drastic reduction in summer sea ice around the Arctic between 2006 and 2007 could have increased release of methane from seawater into the atmosphere.

Companies are looking to exploit the energy in methane hydrates

A further possibility is that the gas is being released in increasing amounts from permafrost as temperatures rise.

Researchers will be keeping a close eye on this year's data which will indicate whether 2007 was just a blip or the beginning of a sustained rise.

Methane concentrations had been more or less stable since about 1999 following years of rapid increases, with industrial reform in the former Soviet bloc, changes to rice farming methods and the capture of methane from landfill sites all contributing to the levelling off.

In the recent past, concentrations have risen during El Nino events, whereas the world is currently amid the opposite climatic pattern, La Nina.

Solid evidence

An upturn in methane concentrations emissions could have significant implications for the Earth's climatic future.

A sustained release from Arctic regions or tropical wetlands could drive a feedback mechanism, whereby higher temperatures liberate more of the greenhouse gas which in turn forces temperatures still higher.

A particularly pertinent question is whether methane is being released from hydrates on the ocean floor.

These solids are formed from water and methane under high pressure, and may begin to give off methane as water temperatures rise.

The amount of the gas held in oceanic hydrates is thought to be larger than the Earth's remaining reserves of natural gas.

In collaboration with other British institutions, Dr Fisher's team will begin work this summer sampling water near hydrate deposits to look for indications of gas emerging.

Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

Vast cracks appear in Arctic ice

Dramatic evidence of the break-up of the Arctic ice-cap has emerged from research during an expedition by the Canadian military.
By David Shukman
Environment correspondent, BBC News

BBC

Q&A: Rising world food prices

The price of wheat, rice and maize have nearly doubled in the past year - and they are not the only foodstuffs trading at a high price on the international commodity market.

Things have got so bad that aid agencies are having to rethink their programmes.

BBC News looks at why prices are rising and what can be done about it.

What is going on?

Prices are increasing sharply for some of the most basic foodstuffs traded on international commodity markets.

The price of wheat has doubled in less than a year, while other staples such as corn, maize and soya are trading at well above their 1990s averages.

Rice and coffee prices are running at 10-year highs, and in some countries, prices for milk and meat have more than doubled.

Why are we seeing these increases now?

It could be the breakdown of the "Goldilocks era" for global commodities - a period stretching back more than 30 years, during which the price of basic foodstuffs has been neither too high nor too low, but remained relatively constant.

For most of this period, the cost of staples such as wheat, corn and soya has actually fallen in real terms.

And food buffer stocks are at all-time lows as countries saw no need to accumulate them.

But it seems this long period of stability is coming to an end. Most commentators believe we are on the cusp of a new era of volatility and rising prices which will last for some time to come.

Who are the winners and losers?

The main losers are poor people who live in cities in developing countries, who are facing higher prices for imported food on low incomes.

Food riots from Haiti to Indonesia are causing increasing political instability.

The World Bank says that the high price of food could lead to developing countries missing international poverty targets.

The main gainers are farmers in rich and emerging market nations like the US, Brazil, Argentina, Canada and Australia, who are getting record prices for their harvests.

Some poor farmers are also benefiting from higher prices.

What are the main causes?

The first reason why prices are rising is growth in the world's population, which is expected to top nine billion by the middle of the century.

That is an incredible number of mouths to feed and will put pressure on a range of resources, including land, water and oil, as well as food supply.

But lurking behind the headline figures for population is an even more significant factor pushing up prices, and that's the economic miracle driving emerging economies such China and India.

To put it bluntly, rich people eat more than poor people, and all this economic growth is generating a whole new tier of middle-class consumers who buy more meat and processed food.

The FAO estimates that processed food now accounts for 80% of food and beverage sales.

What other factors are involved?

There is also the added environmental pressure all these extra people are loading onto the planet, as well as the impact of climate change.

Desertification is accelerating in China and sub-Saharan Africa, while more frequent flooding and changing patterns of rainfall are already beginning to have a significant impact on agricultural production.

And global warming has played a significant role in another driver of rising prices: the shift in agricultural production from food to biofuels.

Ethanol production is on course to account for some 30% of the US corn crop by 2010, dramatically curtailing the amount of land available for food crops and pushing up the price of corn flour on international commodity markets.

What can be done about it?

Many countries are subsidising the price of food, and the World Bank has called for targeted subsidies to help the poor.

And the UN's World Food Programme needs another $500m (£250m) to make up the gap in emergency food aid.

In the longer term, international aid agencies have called for more money to support food production in developing countries.

So far, only a small part of foreign aid goes to help farmers, but the World Bank says it will double its assistance to African agriculture to $800m

The food crisis is also likely to complicate the task of agreeing the next round of world trade talks, the Doha round, which is focused on agriculture.

Agencies like Oxfam also want protection for small farmers in developing countries and agricultural marketing boards against the demand of the rich countries that they fully open their markets.

How to End the Global Food Shortage

The world economy has run into a brick wall. Despite countless warnings in recent years about the need to address a looming hunger crisis in poor countries and a looming energy crisis worldwide, world leaders failed to think ahead. The result is a global food crisis. Wheat, corn and rice prices have more than doubled in the past two years, and oil prices have more than tripled since the start of 2004. These food-price increases combined with soaring energy costs will slow if not stop economic growth in many parts of the world and will even undermine political stability, as evidenced by the protest riots that have erupted in places like Haiti, Bangladesh and Burkina Faso. Practical solutions to these growing woes do exist, but we'll have to start thinking ahead and acting globally.

The crisis has its roots in four interlinked trends. The first is the chronically low productivity of farmers in the poorest countries, caused by their inability to pay for seeds, fertilizers and irrigation. The second is the misguided policy in the U.S. and Europe of subsidizing the diversion of food crops to produce biofuels like corn-based ethanol. The third is climate change; take the recent droughts in Australia and Europe, which cut the global production of grain in 2005 and '06. The fourth is the growing global demand for food and feed grains brought on by swelling populations and incomes. In short, rising demand has hit a limited supply, with the poor taking the hardest blow.

So, what should be done? Here are three steps to ease the current crisis and avert the potential for a global disaster. The first is to scale-up the dramatic success of Malawi, a famine-prone country in southern Africa, which three years ago established a special fund to help its farmers get fertilizer and high-yield seeds. Malawi's harvest doubled after just one year. An international fund based on the Malawi model would cost a mere $10 per person annually in the rich world, or $10 billion in all. Such a fund could fight hunger as effectively as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria is controlling those diseases.

Second, the U.S. and Europe should abandon their policies of subsidizing the conversion of food into biofuels. The U.S. government gives farmers a taxpayer-financed subsidy of 51¢ per gal. of ethanol to divert corn from the food and feed-grain supply. There may be a case for biofuels produced on lands that do not produce foods--tree crops (like palm oil), grasses and wood products--but there's no case for doling out subsidies to put the world's dinner into the gas tank.

Third, we urgently need to weatherproof the world's crops as soon and as effectively as possible. For a poor farmer, sometimes something as simple as a farm pond--which collects rainwater to be used for emergency irrigation in a dry spell--can make the difference between a bountiful crop and a famine. The world has already committed to establishing a Climate Adaptation Fund to help poor regions climate-proof vital economic activities such as food production and health care but has not yet acted upon the promise.

What is true for food will be true for energy, water and other increasingly scarce resources. We can combat these problems--as long as we act rapidly. New energy sources like solar thermal power and new energy-saving technologies like plug-in hybrid automobiles can be developed and mobilized within a few years. Environmentally sound fish-farming can relieve pressures on the oceans. The food crisis provides not only a warning but also an opportunity. We need to invest vastly more in sustainable development in order to achieve true global security and economic growth.

Jeffery Sachs

Club Of Rome: The Limits to Growth

Abstract established by Eduard Pestel. A Report to The Club of Rome (1972)

Conclusions are :

1. If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity.

2. It is possible to alter these growth trends and to establish a condition of ecological and economic stability that is sustainable far into the future. The state of global equilibrium could be designed so that the basic material needs of each person on earth are satisfied and each person has an equal opportunity to realize his individual human potential.