Manufactured Famine - Snatching Food from the Mouths of the Poor!

A new wave of food colonialism manufactures famine in Africa and Asia

By George Monbiot
The Guardian, August 26 2008

In his book Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis tells the story of the famines that sucked the guts out of India in the 1870s. The hunger began when a drought, caused by El Nino, killed the crops on the Deccan plateau. As starvation bit, the viceroy, Lord Lytton, oversaw the export to England of a record 6.4 million hundredweight of wheat. While Lytton lived in imperial splendor and commissioned, among other extravagances, “the most colossal and expensive meal in world history,” between 12 and 29 million people died.[1] Only Stalin manufactured a comparable hunger.

Now a new Lord Lytton is seeking to engineer another brutal food grab. As Tony Blair’s favoured courtier, Peter Mandelson often created the impression that he would do anything to please his master. Today he is the European trade commissioner. From his sumptuous offices in Brussels and Strasbourg, he hopes to impose a treaty which will permit Europe to snatch food from the mouths of some of the world’s poorest people.

Seventy per cent of the protein eaten by the people of Senegal comes from fish.[2] Traditionally cheaper than other animal products, it sustains a population which ranks close to the bottom of the human development index. One in six of the working population is employed in the fishing industry; some two-thirds of these workers are women.[3] Over the past three decades, their means of subsistence has started to collapse as other nations have plundered Senegal’s stocks.

The European Union has two big fish problems. One is that, partly as a result of its failure to manage them properly, its own fisheries can no longer meet European demand. The other is that its governments won’t confront their fishing lobbies and decommission all the surplus boats. The EU has tried to solve both problems by sending its fishermen to West Africa. Since 1979 it has struck agreements with the government of Senegal, granting our fleets access to its waters. As a result, Senegal’s marine ecosystem has started to go the same way as ours. Between 1994 and 2005, the weight of fish taken from the country’s waters fell from 95,000 tons to 45,000 tons. Muscled out by European trawlers, the indigenous fishery is crumpling: the number of boats run by local people has fallen by 48% since 1997.[4]

In a recent report on this pillage, ActionAid shows that fishing families which once ate three times a day are now eating only once or twice. As the price of fish rises, their customers also go hungry. The same thing has happened in all the west African countries with which the EU has maintained fisheries agreements.[5,6] In return for wretched amounts of foreign exchange, their primary source of protein has been looted.

The government of Senegal knows this, and in 2006 it refused to renew its fishing agreement with the EU. But European fishermen — mostly from Spain and France — have found ways round the ban. They have been registering their boats as Senegalese, buying up quotas from local fishermen and transferring catches at sea from local boats. These practices mean that they can continue to take the country’s fish, and have no obligation to land them in Senegal. Their profits are kept on ice until the catch arrives in Europe.

Mandelson’s office is trying to negotiate economic partnership agreements with African countries. They were supposed to have been concluded by the end of last year, but many countries, including Senegal, have refused to sign. The agreements insist that European companies have the right both to establish themselves freely on African soil, and to receive national treatment. This means that the host country is not allowed to discriminate between its own businesses and European companies. Senegal would be forbidden to ensure that its fish are used to sustain its own industry and to feed its own people. The dodges used by European trawlers would be legalized.

The UN’s Economic Commission for Africa has described the EU’s negotiations as “not sufficiently inclusive.” They suffer from a “lack of transparency” and from the African countries’ lack of capacity to handle the legal complexities.[7] ActionAid shows that Mandelson’s office has ignored these problems, raised the pressure on reluctant countries and “moved ahead in the negotiations at a pace much faster than the [African nations] could handle.” If these agreements are forced on West Africa, Lord Mandelson will be responsible for another imperial famine.

This is one instance of the food colonialism which is again coming to govern the relations between rich counties and poor. As global food supplies tighten, rich consumers are pushed into competition with the hungry. Last week the environmental group WWF published a report on the UK’s indirect consumption of water, purchased in the form of food.[8] We buy much of our rice and cotton, for example, from the Indus Valley, which contains most of Pakistan’s best farmland. To meet the demand for exports, the valley’s aquifers are being pumped out faster than they can be recharged. At the same time, rain and snow in the Himalayan headwaters have decreased, probably as a result of climate change. In some places, salt and other crop poisons are being drawn through the diminishing water table, knocking out farmland for good. The crops we buy are, for the most part, freely traded, but the unaccounted costs all accrue to Pakistan.

Now we learn that Middle Eastern countries, led by Saudi Arabia, are securing their future food supplies by trying to buy land in poorer nations. The Financial Times reports that Saudi Arabia wants to set up a series of farms abroad, each of which could exceed 100,000 hectares. Their produce would not be traded: it would be shipped directly to the owners. The FT, which usually agitates for the sale of everything, frets over “the nightmare scenario of crops being transported out of fortified farms as hungry locals look on.” Through “secretive bilateral agreements,” the paper reports, “the investors hope to be able to bypass any potential trade restriction that the host country might impose during a crisis.”[9]

Both Ethiopia and Sudan have offered the oil states hundreds of thousands of hectares.[10,11] This is easy for the corrupt governments of these countries: in Ethiopia the state claims to own most of the land; in Sudan an envelope passed across the right desk magically transforms other people’s property into foreign exchange.[12] But 5.6 million Sudanese and 10 million Ethiopians are currently in need of food aid. The deals their governments propose can only exacerbate such famines.

None of this is to suggest that the poor nations should not sell food to the rich. To escape from famine, countries must enhance their purchasing power. This often means selling farm products, and increasing their value by processing them locally. But there is nothing fair about the deals I have described. Where once they used gunboats and sepoys, the rich nations now use chequebooks and lawyers to seize food from the hungry. The scramble for resources has begun, but — in the short term at any rate — we will hardly notice. The rich world’s governments will protect themselves from the political cost of shortages, even if it means that other people must starve.

2012: The End of the World?

2012 - Speculation and Theories involving the year 2012 - Eschatology and End Times Beliefs - 2012 The End? - An examination of the Mayans


The ancient peoples of Mesoamerica were of a vast interconnected empire, filled with rich art, education and destruction. The Maya were one of these tribes. Other than archaeological intrigue why are these people so studied? Their written language was based on pictographs, much like the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Mayan culture was like most other native cultures.

The Maya had an understanding of mathematics and understood the value of zero long before its discovery in the Eastern parts of the world. Their understanding of numbers and astronomy gave us the Mayan calendars of the Long and Short Counts. So why does this calendar attract so much attention now? The Mayan calendar ends on the Gregorian calendar date of December 21, 2012, which most people believe is the total end of civilization, as we know it, while others believe it is simply a change of enlightenment in this current time. Many theories have sprung up about this end date, ranging from the laughable, to the religious, to the scientific.

There are actually three Mayan calendar systems, the 365-day Solar year, the 260-day Ritual year, and the 5,128 years of the World Time calendar. The Haab or Solar year was broken down into an 18 month plus five days cycle. 18 months of 20 days and the 5 soulless days which were thought to be of ill omen, kind of like 5 days of Friday the 13th. The Tzolkin (zol-KEEN) or Sacred Round was the 260-day ritual calendar was broken down by days, not months. This religious calendar was the basis on how the people, singly and collectively, went on with their day-to-day lives according to destiny.

August 11, 3.114 B.C. when the world began in, long count to Gregorian translation. This beginning date was reached by finding a point in future time (December 21 2012) and counting backwards, as theories go, which gives us a 5,126 year span, not including year zero. This is still one year off if year zero is included. The Mayan World calendar is a series of 5,128 years per span. What is the extra year? Were translations wrong somehow, it is quite possible.

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So what is supposed to happen on this magical date of December 21, 2012?

One theory suggests that a Magnetic Field shift will occur around this time, that the calendar was based on pole shifts, which have occurred repetitively throughout the Earths history. The Maya, understanding the time periods between these shifts created their Long count calendar around them and come up with the final date for the next pole shift. But how would they know what to look for to expect another shift? How much time was supposed to pass between these shifts and how did they know it? Was there record passed down to them from long ago recounting a time when there was a prior pole shift so that mathematics could be used to predict the next one to come? Or did the ancients study a form of dendrochronology the study of climate changes by looking at tree rings. Others suggest a much more mythical or religious approach. December 21, 2012 is also the Winter Solstice, and provides us with a view that will not be seen again in any of our lifetimes. The Sun will conjunct the intersection of the Milky Way in the ecliptic, giving us view of the Sacred Tree as called by the Maya, giving us view of the Tree of Life. Both of these scenarios are quite possible, one scientific explanation, and one religious. What we still do not know, and probably will not know is what will happen after this end date until it actually occurs. A new dawn of enlightenment would be a step towards progression, in that mankind would become more aware of their surroundings and the impact that they have on the Earth as well as a higher intelligence and consciousness and a better mindset for helping their fellow man. Perhaps this is the end, when Mother Nature finally decides to shrug off the oppressiveness that has been created by the children and start anew. We may just end up living through another doomsday prophecy, going to work or school as usual, looking back on the prophecies and laughing them off. Peter may have cried wolf too often for our cynical minds.

What is the Mayan Calendar?

The Maya calendar is a system of complex and highly developed calendars created by the Maya Civilization of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. This series of calendars, includes a sacred 260-day calendar, called the Tzol'kin, a 365-day calendar called the Haab, and a 52-Haab cycle called the Calendar Round, which synchronised the Tzol'kin and Haab cycles.

The importance of time in the Maya culture

The Maya believed that time was cyclical instead of the western conception of linear time. This means that they thought that time repeated itself, so therefore, if they knew the past they could predict the future. By understanding time, they Maya could gain power over their world.

The Tzol’kin

The Tzol'kin calendar combines twenty day names with thirteen numbers to produce 260 unique days. It was used to determine the time of religious and ceremonial events and for divination.

Divination

The Maya believed that each day of the Tzol’kin had a character that influenced events. The Maya had a shaman-priest, whose name meant day keeper, that read the Tzol’kin to predict the future. When a child was born, the day keeper would interpret the Tzol’kin cycle to predict the baby’s destiny. For example, a child born on the day of Ak’abal was thought to be feminine, wealthy, verbally skillful, and possibly a liar, cheat or complainer. The birthday of Ak’abal was also thought to give the child the ability to communicate with the supernatural world, so he or she might become a priest shaman or a marriage spokesman. In the Maya highlands, babies were even named after the day they were born on.

Origin of the Tzol’kin

The exact origin of the Tzol’kin is not known, but there are several theories. One theory is that the calendar came from mathematical operations based on the numbers thirteen and twenty, which were important numbers to the Maya. The number twenty was the basis of the Maya counting system, taken from the number of human fingers and toes. (See Maya numerals). Thirteen symbolized the number of levels in the Upperworld where gods lived. The numbers multiplied together equal 260. Another theory is that the 260-day period came from the length of human pregnancy. It is postulated that midwives originally developed the calendar to predict babies’ expected birth dates.

The Haab

The Haab was the Maya solar calendar made up of eighteen months of twenty days each and a five day month at the end of the year known as Wayeb or Uayeb that was called "the nameless days." Victoria Bricker estimates that the Haab was first used around 550 B.C.E. with the starting point of the winter solstice. The Haab was the foundation of the agrarian calendar and the month names are based on the seasons and agricultural events. For example the thirteenth month, Mac, may refer to the end of the rainy season and the fourteenth month, Kankin, may refer to ripe crops in the fall.

Wayeb

The five nameless days at the end of the calendar called Wayeb were thought to be a dangerous time. Lynn Foster writes that, "During Wayeb, portals between the mortal realm and the Underworld dissolved. No boundaries prevented the ill-intending deities from causing disasters." To ward off these evil spirits, the Maya had customs and rituals they practiced during Wayeb. For example, people avoided leaving their houses or washing or combing their hair.

The long count calendar

There was also a Long Count calendar which started at [0.0.0.0.0] (with Maya record) on August 11, 3114 BC according to the "Goodman, Martinez-Hernandez, and Thompson" correlation (nicknamed "GMT"), the most widely accepted correlation between the Maya and Gregorian calendar. This cycle is 1,872,000 days in length, terminates on the Winter Solstice of (December 21) AD 2012 and is designated [13.0.0.0.0] or [0.0.0.0.0], since the Maya believed that time is somehow periodical. Another widely-used correlation, that of Lounsbury, correlates the start-day to August 13, 3114 BC and the terminal date to December 23, AD

The end of the world?

The turn of the great cycle is conjectured to have been of great significance to the Maya, but does not necessarily mark the end of the world. According to the Popol Vuh, a sacred book of the Maya, they were living in the fourth world. The Popal Vuh describes the first three worlds that the gods failed in making and the creation of the successful fourth world were men were placed. They Maya believed that the fourth world would end in catastrophe and the fifth and final world would be created that would signal the end of mankind.

The Venus cycle

Another important calendar for the Maya was the Venus cycle. The Maya were excellent astronomers, and could calculate the Venus cycle with only a two-hour margin of error. The Maya were able to achieve such accuracy by careful observation over many years. The Venus cycle was especially important because the Maya believed it was associated with war and used it to divine good times for coronations and war. Maya rulers planned for wars to begin when Venus rose. The Maya also tracked other planet’s movements such as Mars, Mercury, and Jupiter.

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The Mayan Calendar Explained:

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Mayan 2012 Secrets Revealed pt1/18



2012 Predictions of Galactic Alignment of the Ancient Mayans



2012 Galactic Alignment Scientific Facts on What Will Happen

This Machine Is the Future of Physics

More on the world's greatest experiment in physics!

By Alexis Madrigal
09.10.08

The Large Hadron Collider, the world's most-powerful atom smasher, is an engineering marvel constructed hundreds of feet underground.

Composed of millions of individual pieces, the collider uses more than 9,000 magnets to accelerate two beams of protons to almost the speed of light. When the beams collide, they shatter into their constituent parts, allowing scientists to glimpse particles that don't exist in standard environments.

The hard part, actually, becomes finding the rare and important particles among all the normal ones created in smashing atoms. Toward that end, physicists designed cathedral-size experimental chambers that feature some of the most-precise measurement tools ever created by man. One scientist described them as 150-megapixel digital cameras taking snapshots 600 million times a second.

In this gallery, we take you on a quick tour of the world's most complex scientific machine.

The Globe of Science and Innovation marks the site of the 17-square-mile underground Large Hadron Collider, the biggest physics experiment in the world, which starts smashing atoms ON Sept. 10 2008. (Photo: BUL Collection)


The Globe of Innovation at CERN, the world's largest particle physics laboratory. CERN has 20 European members and 7,931 scientists and engineers.( Photo: CERN)

Taken inside ATLAS, this image shows the Hadronic Endcap Liquid Argon Calorimeter. The calorimeter can measure the loss of energy from a collision, which could be caused by the creation of dark matteR. (Photo: Roy Langstaff)

The ALICE detector, a piece of which is pictured here, will be used in experiments designed to mimic the moments just after the Big Bang. Cosmologists hope to see how the superheated plasma present at the beginning of creation cooled into the particles we see in the world today. More than 1,000 scientists have collaborated on the ALICE experiment.(Photo: Maximilien Brice).

The ATLAS experimental chamber, pictured here, is 150-feet long, 82-feet high and weighs more than 15,000 pounds. It's the largest detector at the LHC and the handiwork of more than 1,700 scientists.(Photo: Claudia Marcelloni)

Unlike most of the other experiments at the LHC, the Compact Muon Solenoid was built above ground and then lowered into place in 15 sections. Here, the last section is brought into place for reassembly underground.(Photo: Maximilien Brice)

One of the final pieces is inserted into the Compact Muon Solenoid, or CMS, one of the largest detectors at the Large Hadron Collider. Built around an enormous solenoid magnet that generates a magnetic field 100,000 times that of the Earth, the CMS will be in on the hunt for the Higgs boson, dark matter and extra dimensions. More than 2,000 scientists from 37 countries will work with the CMS.(Photo: Maximilien Brice)

The Guardian newspaper once wrote, "Particle physics is the unbelievable in pursuit of the unimaginable." Here, we see the unbelievable ATLAS Magnet Toroid Endcap rolling through the streets of the LHC campus. The Endcap is one of three major magnets in the detector's system. (Photo: Claudia Marcelloni)

Here, a technician works on one of the major experimental areas within the Large Hadron Collider: the ATLAS all-purpose particle detector. ATLAS will be used to search for the long-postulated Higgs boson as well as for clues about dark matter and the nature of the universe.(Photo: Roy Langstaff)

The Silicon Pixel detector, pictured under construction, of the ALICE detector recorded the very first particle tracks produced by the LHC back on June 15 during a test run of the machine.(Photo: Maximilien Brice)

Scientists watch the second and final test of the LHC's beam-synchronization systems on Aug. 22.(Photo: Maximilien Brice)

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, which goes by its French acronym, CERN, is home of the Large Hadron Collider, located on the border between Switzerland and France northwest of Geneva.(Courtesy CERN)

Scientists Start World's Biggest Physics Project

I find this piece of news to be truly incredible - sheer advancement in science! If man could actually prove the reality of the 'big bang' theory and thereby confirm the origin of the universe, what next? Will religion be affected? ......

Scientists Start World's Biggest Physics Project:
(D Ravi Kanth / Geneva September 11, 2008, 5:14 IST)
(Business Standard)

Experiments using the Large Hadron Collider could unlock secrets about the universe and its origins. Scientists and engineers today celebrated the successful steering of a beam of protons around a 27-km tunnel that houses the world’s largest collider at the European Nuclear Research Organization situated on the Geneva-France countryside, paving the way for a series of scientific experiments to reveal the early building blocks in the formation of the universe.

“There it is,” Lyn Evans, the leader of Large Hadron Collider project, declared proudly when two white dots of proton beam flashed on the computer screen, amid exultant scenes of triumph in crossing the first step of what is going to be the mother of all experiments in the arena of particle physics.

“It is a fantastic moment,” said Evans, the former British military commander. “We can now look forward to a new era of understanding about the origins and evolution of the universe.”

It required a Herculean effort to ensure that thousands of individual elements that went into the construction of the largest particle collider work in harmony and timings have to be synchronized to under a billionth of a second, said Dr Vinod Chohan, leader of CERN-India collaboration division.

India’s scientific and engineering personnel played a significant role in the construction of the LHC project, especially in providing 1,706 assemblies of cryomagnets that are essential for acceleration functions in the LHC. “Testing and qualification of the magnets at cryogenic temperature is a prerequisite for the installation of the Large Hadron Collider,” said Dr Chohan, suggesting that the Indian assistance is invaluable.

“We are in an era where Indian physicists are full-fledged members of the LHC experiment,” said Chohan, the Indian-origin British physicist.

“It has been a fascinating and rewarding experience for us,” said Vinod C Sahni, director of the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology in Indore. “Overall, Indian contribution to LHC accelerator is Swiss Franc 43 million (about $42.5 million) containing a variety of components and systems besides skilled manpower support for magnetic tests and measurements and help in commissioning LHC subsystems.”

Today’s experiment is a first step to ensure that the proton beams are captured and retained well in heavy magnetic fields that dominate the tunnel. After several experiments of steering the beams both in clockwise and anti-clockwise directions, the ground will be prepared for the collision of protons in the coming months. “The collision and subsequent experiments will reveal the moment when the first building blocks of the universe began to take shape after the big bang,” he argued. “The LHC is a discovery machine,” said CERN’s Director General Robert Aymar, “Its research programme has the potential to change our view of the universe profoundly.”

Once the machine’s acceleration systems are brought into play to create conditions of 7,000 GeV, a measure for huge energy that will be generated, and the conditions of collision will be created, scientists will study the four experiments that are being carried out. The LHC, which is estimated at about $9 billion and has attracted researchers from around 80 countries, will provide ideal conditions for a collision of proton particles at the speed of light, whizzing 11,000 times a second around the tunnel.

The CERN’s four experiments are expected to throw more light on “dark matter”, antimatter and other dimensions. The CMS experiment will provide evidence of the Higgs Boson, which is referred to as the God’s particle, that provides mass to all other particles, and thus to the matter that makes up the universe. According to the theory, particles acquire their mass through interactions with an all-pervading field carried by the Higgs.

The universe is made up of 4 per cent ordinary matter, 23 per cent dark matter and 73 per cent dark energy. The LHC is expected to throw light on this mysterious stuff called the dark matter and dark energy.

Big bang effort:

Following are some facts about the Big Bang and CERN’s particle-smashing experiment:

WHAT IS CERN:
CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, is one of the world's largest and most respected centres for scientific research
Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works
Founded in 1954, CERN now has 20 member states, plus six actively participant observers including the United States and Russia

WHAT IS THE BIG BANG?
The name “Big Bang” was coined in 1949 by British scientist Fred Hoyle. It says the universe expanded rapidly from a highly compressed primordial state, which resulted in a significant decrease in density and temperature
It is the only explanation of an expanding universe, which shows how stars and planets came together out of the primeval chaos that followed

RECREATING THE BIG BANG:
The final tests involved pumping a single bunch of energy particles from the project's accelerator into the 27-km beam pipe of the collider and steering them counter-clockwise around it for about 3 km
The collider aims to simulate conditions milliseconds after the “Big Bang”, which created the universe around 13.7 billion years ago.
The collisions, in which both particle clusters will be travelling at the speed of light, will be monitored on computers at CERN and laboratories around the world by scientists looking for, among other things, a particle that made life possible.

The Future of Medicine in the Age of Biotech

Everything you wanted to know about the future of health care industry and related themes. Keynote speech plus videos below by Dr Patrick Dixon (physician and futurist) for gene technology companies and biotech analysts / investors in Zurich. Audience of 150 - October 2002

How scientists will attempt to slow down or stop the ageing process - video
Comment by Dr Patrick Dixon on science of ageing, health care, life expectancy, medical advances, pensions, retirement, lifestyles and government policy.

Themes: The future of medicine and health care. Major trends impacting every area of health care. How genetics will create new patterns of drug discovery and drug development. New cures and treatments. Ethical and social issues of biotech. Gene testing for insurance, genetic predictions of disease and related issues. Human cloning and reproductive technologies. How public mood towards biotech is changing. Media pressures and single issue activism. Laws, regulations and moral debates.

Human Cloning - How Clones Will Be Made, Stem Cells & Future Researchc:


Dr Patrick Dixon lecture to biotech venture capital investors about future medicine and health care, gene therapy, biotechnology, and the pharmaceutical industry. Dr Dixon is a physician and trends analyst.

Future Of Malaysian Economy

By Dr Patrick Dixon: Futurist, "Europe's Leading Futurist" - Press Assocation
"Global Change Guru" - Wall Street Journal, "One of the 20 most influential business thinkers alive today" Thinkers 50 survey in 2005.

Future Of Malaysian Economy:


Future Of Malaysia :

What's at risk: the future of human life on planet Earth

By Mike Adams:

n this cartoon, the farmer character is fretting over something the entire human race is going to suddenly realize one day: Playing God with seeds and the food supply for the purpose of extracting maximum corporate profits is to plae the very future of humankind at extreme risk. Suppose the terminator gene crops somehow cross-pollinate staple food crops that now feed the world... what happens then? Imagine all the wheat grown in the United States suddenly self-destructing after a single growing season. Mass starvation would quickly ensue, followed by economic collapse, military action and quite possibly the collapse of the nation itself. And the same is true in Europe, Australia, Asia and South America, too.

This is what's at stake with terminator gene technology. For the sake of maximizing corporate profits, the Monsanto corporation is willing to place the very future of humankind at risk. But it's no surprise to learn Monsanto is behind this crime against nature -- this is the same corporation that tried to patent the pig, claiming it owned the genetic code of hogs. This is also the same corporation that promoted aspartame to the world by purchasing a company called Searle, whose CEO was a man named Donald Rumsfeld. He strong-armed the FDA to get aspartame approved as "safe," and we've seen alarming increases in brain tumors and neurodegenerative diseases ever since.

I believe there is no natural law that evil corporations led by greedy men will not violate in order to increase their own power or profits. Corporations have proven they will poison the environment, kill members of the public, bribe politicians, violate federal law, engage in competitive espionage, threaten critics, bribe the media, endanger lives, wipe out animal species and sacrifice the very future of life on planet Earth in order to squeeze out one more quarter of filthy profits. And they will do it with a straight face, while actually claiming they are "green."

There will be a day when the people will rise up against the corruption and overreaching power of the corporations. In time, they will reclaim their natural right to seeds, a clean environment, and natural health remedies. Today's patent laws -- which give ownership over virtually all commonsense ideas to corporations -- will crumble, and governments that colluded with corporations to strip power, health and dollars from the people will pay the price.

Until that day, of course, it's business as usual in the free market: Screw the people, violate the planet, desecrate nature and keep that share price propped up as high as possible. That's business as usual in the United States, a nation that has sold its soul to the highest bidder on eBay and now stands as an alarming historical example of what happens when a free market economic abandons basic ethics and human rights.

Must-see documentary: The Corporation. Watch this if you really want to know the truth about how corporations threaten the very future of humankind.

What can you do about all this? Grow heirloom plants, buy organic, non-GM foods and refuse to do business with corporations that use GM foods.

The Future of Food

By Mike Adams :

Corporations like Monsanto are playing God with the food supply. Did you ever wonder what happens when all the genetically modified, pesticide-compatible, gene-terminated, laboratory-concocted Frankenfoods end up genetically contaminating the natural crops we depend on for a sustainable food future? In this comic, I explore this important concept by showing the plight of a farmer fretting over an empty bag of seedless watermelon seeds.

You may find this surprising to learn, but U.S. corporations have actually designed, patented and aggressively promoted "gene terminator" plant technology that causes second-generation plants to self-destruct. By doing this, the corporation can control intellectual property (seed patents) and demand royalties on seeds from poor farmers in third world countries. It eliminates the whole practice of "saving seeds" and propagating food from one plant generation to the next -- a practice that humankind has depended on for survival since the beginning of human history.

In doing so, this gene terminator technology is a crime against both nature and humanity. To deny farmers the ability to propagate seeds from one generation to the next is to enslave humanity in a system of corporate control that violates the laws of nature and God. Care to take a guess which U.S. corporation is engaged in this activity? If you guessed Monsanto, you're right. Click here to read news about Monsanto's terminator gene at the Organic Consumers Association.

You can also follow the news on this topic at BanTerminator.org.

If you buy seedless watermelons, or seedless grapes, or GM soy products, you're already supporting the corporations that are altering the food supply.

Seedless grapes are not natural, and they remove the very part of the grape that contains powerful cardiovascular medicine. Have you ever heard of the nutritional supplement called grape seed extract? Guess where it comes from? ... Grape seeds, of course. It's some of the best cardiovascular medicine known to modern science, far more potent than any prescription drug, yet with zero negative side effects. Yet food companies have removed it from the food supply and promoted "seedless grapes" as a benefit to consumers! (Of course, grape skins also contain powerful medicine called resveratrol, but grape seeds contain different medicines called proanthocyanidins and PCOs, which you can read about at the Physician's Desk Reference).

'Terminator Technology' Plants? Read On!

Monsanto May Commercialize Terminator - Biotech Giant Revises Pledge on Sterile Seed Technology as Global Alliance Calls for a Ban

MONTREAL, Feb. 21 /CNW Telbec/ - Monsanto, the world's largest seed and agro-biotech company, made a public promise in 1999 not to commercialize 'Terminator Technology' - plants that are genetically engineered to produce sterile seeds. Now Monsanto says it may develop or use the so-called 'suicide seeds' after all.

The revised pledge from Monsanto now suggests that it would use Terminator seeds in non-food crops and does not rule out other uses of Terminator in the future. Monsanto's modified stance comes to light as the biotech and seed industry confront peasant and farmer movements, Indigenous peoples and their allies in an escalating battle at the United Nations over the future of Terminator.

The Future Of Food:


In 2000 the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)adopted a de facto moratorium on sterile seed technologies, also known as Genetic Use Restriction Technologies (GURTs). But at next month's high-level meeting of the CBD in Curitiba, Brazil (20-31 March 2006) the biotechnology industry will intensify its push to undermine the six-year old de facto moratorium.

In response, over 300 organizations today declared their support for a global ban on Terminator Technology, asserting that sterile seeds threaten biodiversity and will destroy the livelihoods and cultures of the 1.4 billion people who depend on farm-saved seed.

"The world's farmers cannot trust Monsanto," said Stewart Wells, President of the National Farmers Union (NFU) of Canada Monsanto's broken promise is a deadly betrayal because Indigenous peoples and farmers depend on seed saving for food security."

Bad Seed: The Truth About Our Food


The Ban Terminator campaign today announces the names of over 300 organizations worldwide that are demanding a ban on Terminator technology.

Thelist of organizations and other background materials are available at www.banterminator.org

"We are alarmed that Monsanto's edited pledge no longer rejects commercialization of this dangerous technology." said Lucy Sharratt of the international Ban Terminator Campaign. "We are calling on national governmentsto dismiss Monsanto's tactic in favour of an all-out ban on Terminator. We invite all civil society and social movements to join with us for the battle against Terminator next month in Brazil."

Vandana Shiva on Terminator Seed - Part 1

The End of Cheap Food

6 July 2007
By Gwynne Dyer

The era of cheap food is over. The price of corn (maize) has doubled in a year, and wheat futures are at their highest in a decade. The food price index in India has risen 11 percent in one year, and in Mexico in January there were riots after the price of corn flour (used in making the staple food of the poor, tortillas) went up fourfold. Even in the developed countries food prices are going up, and they are not going to come down again.

Cheap food lasted for only fifty years. Before the Second World War most families in the developed countries spent a third or more of their income on food (as the poor majority in developing countries still do). But after the war a series of radical changes, from mechanisation to the Green Revolution, raised agricultural productivity hugely and caused a long,steep fall in the real price of food. For the global middle class, it was the Good Old Days, with food taking only a tenth of their income.

It will probably be back up to a quarter within a decade, and it may go much higher than that, because we are entering a period when three separate factors are converging to drive food prices up. The first is simply demand. Not only is the global population continuing to grow (about an extra Turkey or Vietnam every year), but as Asian economies race ahead more and more people in those populous countries are starting to eat significant amounts of meat.

Early this month, in its annual assessment of farming trends, the United Nations predicted that by 2016, less than ten years from now, people in the developing countries will be eating 30 percent more beef, 50 percent more pig meat and 25 percent more poultry. The animals will need a great deal of grain, and meeting that demand will require shifting huge amounts of grain-growing land from human to animal consumption -- so the price of grain and of meat will both go up.

The global poor don't care about the price of meat, because they can't afford it even now -- but if the price of grain goes up, some of them will starve. And maybe they won't have to wait until 2016, because the mania for "bio-fuels" is shifting huge amounts of land out of food production. One-sixth of all the grain grown in the United States this year will be "industrial corn" destined to be converted into ethanol and burned in cars, and Europe, Brazil and China are all heading in the same direction.



The attraction of bio-fuels for politicians is obvious: they can claim that they are doing something useful to combat emissions and global warming (though the claims are deeply suspect), without actually demanding any sacrifices from business or the voters. The amount of US farmland devoted to bio-fuels grew by 48 percent in the last year alone, and hardly any new land was brought under the plough to replace the lost food production. In other big bio-fuel producers like China and Brazil it's the
same straight switch from food to fuel. In fact, the food market and the energy market are becoming closely linked, which is very bad news for the poor.

As oil prices rise (and the rapid economic growth in Asia guarantees that they will), they pull up the price of bio-fuels as well, and it gets even more attractive for farmers to switch from food to fuel. Nor will politics save the day. As economist Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute told the US Congress last month: "The stage is now set for direct competition for grain between the 800 million people who own automobiles, and the world's two billion poorest people." Guess who wins.

Soaring Asian demand and bio-fuels mean expensive food now and in the near future, but then it gets worse. Global warming hits crop yields, but only recently has anybody quantified how hard. The answer, published in "Environmental Research Letters" in March by Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, California and David Lobell of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is quite simple: for every 0.5C (0.9F) hotter, crop yields fall between three and five percent. So two degrees C hotter (3.6F), the lower end of the range of predicted emperature rise in this century, means a twelve to twenty percent fall in global food production.

This is science, of course, so that answer could be wrong -- but it could be wrong by being too conservative. Last year in New Delhi, I interviewed the director of a think tank who had just completed a contract to estimate the impact on Indian food production of a rise of just two degrees C in global temperature. The answer, at least for India, was 25 percent. That would mean mass starvation, for if India were in that situation, every other major food-producing country would be too, and there would be no imports available at any price.

In the early stages of this process, higher food prices will help millions of farmers who have been scraping along on very poor returns for their effort because political power lies in the cities, but later it gets uglier. The price of food relative to average income is heading for levels that have not been seen since the early 19th century, and it will not come down again in our lifetimes.
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Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.