Engdahl covered pertinent information on the industry that might otherwise have gone unnoticed - that the three US GMO giants have a long sordid association with the Pentagon supplying massively destructive chemicals like Agent Orange, napalm and others. They now want to be trusted with the most important things we ingest - our food and drugs in the face of strong evidence their GMO varieties harm human health and their history of public safety concern is atrocious.
Like it or not, they're advancing their agenda, and a 2004 Rockefeller Foundation report shows it. GM crop production achieved nine consecutive double digit year increases since 1996. More than eight million farmers in 17 countries now plant them, over 90% in developing nations. Far and away, the US is the world's leader "with aggressive Government promotion, absence of labeling, and the domination of US farm production." Here, "genetically engineered crops (have) essentially taken over the American food chain." In 2004, over 85% of soybeans were genetically modified, 45% of corn, and since animal feed is mainly from these crops "the entire meat production of the nation (and exports) has been fed on genetically modified animal feed." What animals eat, so do humans.
It gets even worse. Wind and air proliferate GM seeds to adjacent fields, including organic ones that are now to some degree contaminated. Engdahl explained that "after just six years, an estimated 67% of all US farm acreage has been (irremedially) contaminated with genetically engineered seeds. The genie was out of the bottle" as nothing known to science can reverse this condition.
It renders the notion of pure organic impossible except from perhaps very isolated farms that comprise a small percent of the industry. Even so, organic crops are safer than chemically-treated ones and hugely preferable to any that are genetically modified. That said, as the Gene Revolution advances worldwide, the future of organic farming is imperiled to the horror of people like this writer dependent on them.
Consider further the way GMO giants gain market share with government and WTO backing. It's also helped by imposing rigid licensing and technology agreements on farmers who must pay annual fees. They're binding and enforced through Technology Use Agreements farmers have to sign, and by so doing, entrap themselves in a "new form of serfdom." Each year, they must buy new seeds, and they're forbidden to reuse any from previous years as was customary before GMO introductions. Failure to observe the agreements can result in severe legal damages or even imprisonment and possible loss of their land.
Complicit government agencies and clever marketing schemes aid the "Gene Revolution" through "lies and damn lies" that GMO crops have higher yields and can solve world hunger problems. The evidence proves otherwise. In addition, resistant "superweeds" develop over time, crop yields drop, farmers must use greater amounts of herbicides, they're locked into high user fees, and they end up losing money. Bottom line - the case for "genetically engineered seeds for agriculture had been based on a citadel of scientific fraud and corporate lies." This information is hidden from the public, and it's too late once unwary farmers learn they've been had.
Besides that, Russian science showed GMOs harm unborn babies as over half the rat offsring fed a genetically modified soybean diet died in their first three weeks of life - six times the normal rate. Evidence was growing on GMO dangers, and the industry was alarmed. In 1999, it "required an extraordinary intervention by its patron saint, the Rockefeller Foundation," to pull its fat out of the fire.
Population Control - Terminators, Traitors, Spermicidal Corn
Crucial to its strategy, GMO giants needed a "new technology which would allow them to sell seed that would not reproduce." They developed one called GURTs (Genetic Use Restriction Technologies) that became known as "Terminator" seeds. The process is patented, it applies to all plant and seed species, and replanting them doesn't work. They won't grow. It's the industry's solution to controlling world food production and assuring themselves big profits as a result. What a discovery. Terminator corn, soybean and other seeds have been "genetically modified to 'commit suicide' after one harvest season" by a toxin-producing inbuilt gene.
A closely related technology is called T-GURT seeds, or second generation Terminators, nicknamed "Traitor." The technology relies on controlling both plant fertility and its genetic characteristics with "an inducible gene promoter" called a "gene switch." GMO pest and disease-resistant crops only work by using a specific chemical compound companies like Monsanto make. Farmers buying seeds illegally won't get the compound to "turn on" the resistant gene. Traitor technology thus creates a captive new market for the GMO giants, and Traitor is cheaper to produce than Terminator seeds.
Combined, these two technologies give agribusiness giants unprecedented powers. "For the first time in history, it (lets) three or four private multinational seed companies....dictate terms to world farmers for their seed." It's a biological warfare tool almost "too good to believe" in the face of open citizen opposition the industry and US Department of Agriculture (USDA) aim to quash.
Engdahl quoted USDA spokesman Willard Phelps from a June, 1998 interview saying the agency wanted Terminator technology to be "widely licensed and made expeditiously available to many seed companies." Hidden was the reason why - to introduce these seeds to the developing world as the prime Rockefeller Foundation strategy. Engdahl called it a "Trojan Horse for Western GMO seed giants to get control over Third World food supplies in areas with weak or non-existent patent laws." It became an urgent Foundation priority to spread the seeds worldwide to irreversibly capture world markets. USDA fully backed the scheme.
That kind of muscle (along with WTO rules) is overwhelming. It's the tactic used when the US departments of state and agriculture coordinate famine relief using genetically engineered US surplus commodities. Farmers getting GMO seeds aren't told what they are, they plant them unwittingly for the next harvest, get hooked, and the proliferation isn't restricted to Africa. Through coercion, bribery and other illegal tactics, the industry's goal is to introduce them everywhere but especially in highly indebted developing states. In the case of Poland, it was in a country with some of the richest European soil that's now spoiled by genetic contamination.
Consider how the scheme ties in with Rockefeller Foundation population control strategy. In 2001, it was aided when the privately-owned biotech company, Epicyte, announced it successfully developed the "ultimate GMO crop" - contraceptive corn. It was called a solution to world "over-population," but news about it vanished after Biolex acquired the company.
One way or other, the Rockefeller Foundation aims to reduce population through human reproduction by spreading GMO seeds. It's doing it cooperatively with the UN World Health Organization (WHO) by quietly funding its "reproductive health" program through the use of an innovative tetanus vaccine. Combined with hCG natural hormones, it's an abortion agent preventing pregnancies, but women getting it aren't told. Neither is anything said about the Pentagon viewing population reduction as a sophisticated form of "biological warfare" (to) solve world hunger."
I am a 72 year old, retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.
Figuratively, I am trying to push down my hair back to its normal position on my head. From time to time I have read hints at what is going on with agribusiness, but never so comprehensively as Engdahl must tell it, and how incisively Lendman projects the thrust of the book.
Thank you, Mssrs. Engdahl and Lendman, for the alert on this near-unbelievable creeping conquest of the earth.
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MyTwoCents (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 36 comments)
on Monday, January 7, 2008 at 3:21:23 PM
