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Tag(s): Agriculture; Corporations; Culture Of Corruption; Culture Of Deception; Farming; Gmo; Health; Health; Monsanto; Monsanto; (more...) Propaganda; Science; Seeds; Technology; Technology; World Hunger; World Issues (less...)
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June 14, 2008 at 05:32:28

Headlined on 6/14/08:
Will the World Survive GM Cultures and the Damage to the Earth's Eco-Systems?

by Siv O'Neall Page 1 of 3 page(s)

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Crossposted from Axis of Logic

Monsanto and the other major biotech companies – Syngenta, Bunge, Cargill, etc. – are all set on owning the world's food supply. Monsanto is by far the leader in this nightmare of destroying organic agriculture and millennia-old biodiversity.

They have no respect whatsoever for the lives and the livelihood of farmers or, for that matter, any concern for the people who are exposed to severe health hazards from eating genetically modified foods. Corporate profit is all that counts.

The greatest long-lasting danger from GMOs is the destruction of the earth's eco-systems – the degradation of the soil, the depletion of water resources and the proliferation of pests that were until now barely known, since they were kept under control by the natural balance of predatory insects keeping those that are harmful to the crops from having their potentially damaging effect. More later about this natural equilibrium.

The bio-tech industries have taken a big and dangerous step towards destroying the earth as it has been known for thousands of years. Organic agriculture, biodiversity and natural pest control have made the earth a place for sustainable farming for millennia. However, at this point of delicate balance for the earth's survival, bio-tech corporations want to put an end to everything that is natural in order to make short-term profit from huge monocultures of the genetically modified products that they are falsely marketing as our saviors from world hunger and poverty.[1]

India is one country that has been severely hit by the bio-tech industry with accompanying disasters.

What follows after the farmers change over to GMO seeds after millennia of planting and making a livelihood in organic farming is a horror story of bad harvests, huge debts, increased costs for herbicides and fertilizers (in spite of the companies' promises of lower costs), and the suicides of thousands of farmers in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala – among the Indian states that are hit the worst.

This has been going on for decades and if it were not for a lot of activism being focused on this problem, there is no chance that anything would change, since the corporations are tied in firmly with the governments in the heavy-handed corporatism that rules the world today. The farmers are lured into buying the GM seeds because of low-interest loans and obscene propaganda about giant harvests, less work and lower costs. Bio-tech PR claims there is no need for pesticides and less need for fertilizers, all of which has proved to be inaccurate. Added to this, these seeds are not adjusted to the eco-systems where they are being planted. They frequently need more water than is available and the results are disastrous.

One woman is in the forefront of the fight against the bio-tech industry. Her name is Vandana Shiva and she is based in Delhi.

Dr. Vandana Shiva, a former particle physicist, has for the past three decades done more than anyone else as an activist to attract the attention of the world to the deadly corporate horror story of genetically modified products. She attacks the problem from all angles, educating and organizing protest demonstrations through her organization Navdanya.

Navdanya means “nine seeds”, and is a movement promoting diversity – fighting against the privatization of water, campaigning against Basmati biopiracy and generally leading a fight for the rights of rural farmers to a decent livelihood, uncompromised through biopiracy such as is taking place in India and all over the world. Biodiversity, the way farmers have been cultivating the land for millennia is her central argument and monocultures at the giant industrial farms are her principal enemy. She talks about food fascism and the bio-tech industry see her as their most prominent enemy in their vicious attempt of controlling the world's food supply.

Vandana Shiva says on her Navdanya website:

"When I found that dominant science and technology served the interests of [the] powerful, I left academics to found the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE), a participatory, public interest research organisation.

"When I found global corporations wanted to patent seeds, crops or life forms, I started Navdanya to protect biodiversity, defend farmers' rights and promote organic farming. "Navdanya/RFSTE's journey over the past two decades has taken us into creating markets for farmers and promoting tasty, healthy, high quality food for consumers. We have connected the seed to the kitchen, biodiversity to gastronomy. And now we have joined hands with Slow Food to celebrate the quality and cultural diversity of our food."

SIU [2] magazine writes about Vandana Shiva:

"In fact, listening to her may make you rethink many of the world’s established social and political paradigms.

"For example, the generally acknowledged argument that the Green Revolution, at the very least, led to an increase in food production is one of them. 'No, it did not increase production. Wheat and rice production increased, not the overall food production,' argues Shiva, and launches into a lecture that concludes that whatever increase there was had nothing whatsoever to do with the Green Revolution, and that overall it has been a disaster for agriculture and food security in India."

The Mealy Bug, the deadly gift from Monsanto

The latest horror news on GMOs is the Mealy Bug that has been said to be "the deadly gift from Monsanto to Vidarbha, set to destroy all crops and plants". Vidarbha is the eastern part of Maharashtra state, in western India. It is India's most developed and urbanized state.

In a press note Kishor Tiwari, President of 'Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti' – a farmers advocacy group – writes that the Mealy Bug is a virus that is imported with the Bt Cotton sold by multinational corporation Monsanto. In the coming summer season it will have an effect on a larger area covering almost all crops and next year it will be set to destroy not only cotton crops but all other food crops as well.

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6 comments

Siv O'Neall was born and raised in Sweden where she graduated from Lund University. She has lived in Paris, France and New Rochelle, N.Y. and traveled extensively throughout Europe, the U.S. and other continents, mainly several trips to India. Siv retired after many years of teaching French in Westchester, N.Y. and English in the Grandes Ecoles (Institutes of Technology) in France. In addition to her own writing, Siv has also provided Axis of Logic with translation services. She has been living ...

to see more of bio, click on member name
Siv O'NeallSiv O'Neall was born and raised in Sweden where she graduated from Lund University. She has lived in Paris, France and New Rochelle, N.Y. and traveled extensively throughout Europe, the U.S. and other continents, mainly several trips to India. Siv retired after many years of teaching French in Westchester, N.Y. and English in the Grandes Ecoles (Institutes of Technology) in France. In addition to her own writing, Siv has also provided Axis of Logic with translation services. She has been living ...

to see more of bio, click on member name

GMOs, the danger to the world's eco-systems

Americans and for that matter, the rest of the world (who may be a little better aware of the enormous danger) must be made to see the huge danger in giving in to GM seeds and foods. People have been farming the earth with organic seeds, self-renewing for the next year's harvest, for millennia and biological engineering is likely going to destroy the earth if not stopped in time.

by Siv O'Neall (23 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 29 comments) on Saturday, June 14, 2008 at 8:41:37 AM

August Adams is a CPA and holds a Masters Degree in Psychology. He is an activist striving to create a fair and just world for all.
August AdamsAugust Adams is a CPA and holds a Masters Degree in Psychology. He is an activist striving to create a fair and just world for all.

How do we stop the Corporate Destruction

Monsanto is just another example of the corporate plundering going on in the world. When our House of Representatives, our Senate, our President, his cabinet, the courts our protective agencies like the FDA are all stocked full of corporate insiders - then how are we ever going to be able to rid ourselves of them.

Corporations have to be held to a higher level of accountability and must be much more transparent.

Today, they are protected by their corporate veils, they openly act in board rooms, they strategically plan profit maximization, they use our representatives and our nations treasure to further their aims.

And we, elect the selected few, through a process that ensures the corporate winners take office.

We write letters, we call, we hold protests, but their few, far and impotent.

The Media, owned by the corporations ignores these attempts and raising awareness. They have learned, that by controlling our news sources, all they need to do is nothing. Say nothing, barely acknowledge the progressive stories, and make big things like impeachable offenses by our leaders and an illegal criminal war go away by simply ignoring the story.

Journalists have long been attempting to tell the story of Monsanto, and Big Media has made it go away. The muck rakers, even when they are telling the truth, cannot find jobs. Big Media fails to stand behind the stories.

These large multinational corporations need to be broken up into tiny bits.

But is that really going to happen?

We can't impeach an obviously criminal President. With corporate insiders in the White House. Halliburton 's former CEO. Chevron's Board member.

And we say we hate mercenary, unaccountable contingents like Al Qaeda, but we created Black Water, and fund Black Ops around the world. The leaders of these companies are accountable to no one. They do the dirty work. And they have in their arsenal some of the best trained military personnel. They do the bidding of the corporate and financial elite.

We, the People...

have no effective representation, vote once every 4 years, get form letter 8 week responses from our representatives, get the ride of our lives once they are elected, watched our government become privatized, launch and illegal war, stonewall on the truth, watched government services become increasingly expensive (because they are privatized), and our national treasure completely squandered.

And no one is held accountable.

I can barely stand it, the lack of any kind of fundamental visible change.

It's brewing, it's in the air, it's on the internet, but it's not in the streets, not in the government, not visible outside of cyberspace.

That's the next step I guess.

We need not one leader, but thousands of leaders, acting locally, organizing nationally, taking back our government permanently.

by August Adams (10 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 442 comments) on Saturday, June 14, 2008 at 10:58:28 AM

How do we stop the Corporate Destruction

August Adams - Oh how I agree with everything you're saying. We are fighting against the corporatism that's ruling the world and since they are the ones who own everything, including the corporate media that do absolutely nothing to inform, but only spew out simplistic bs, advertising and propaganda, I don't know where we would begin to make the world livable again. As far as I can see, it takes a LOT of work to inform the masses of the future we're heading for, the totally unlivable world that is our future unless we ACT. PROTEST and spread the truth about the criminality of the corporate rulers.

by Siv O'Neall (23 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 29 comments) on Saturday, June 14, 2008 at 12:31:59 PM

American Expat in Asia
pftAmerican Expat in Asia

Sense

None of it makes sense until you understand that their objective is to create famines in the coming years.

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

The good news is they have Mother Natures sees stored in the doomsday seed vault in Norway (courtesy of Bill Gates and Monsanto) . Those that survive what is to come will then have seeds to grow food for future generations.

6.66 billion people will be reduced to 666 million people . Thats the plan. You can take it the the bank, but unless you have the mark of the beast, 666, they won't give you credit.

by pft (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 466 comments) on Saturday, June 14, 2008 at 7:40:45 PM

Susan Guest retired from Citigroup in 2000. She currently operates a small working farm in Virginia.
Susan GuestSusan Guest retired from Citigroup in 2000. She currently operates a small working farm in Virginia.

August - The Peoples Mandate

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

by Susan Guest (3 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 79 comments) on Sunday, June 15, 2008 at 6:10:05 AM

The Peoples Mandate

Susan Guest - I am not American and I don't know the Constitution by heart, but this doesn't seem to be it. What's the source please of this good quote? The spelling indicates that it is of some age.

by Siv O'Neall (23 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 29 comments) on Sunday, June 15, 2008 at 7:19:48 AM