Bill Gates Warns Countries Need To Embrace GMOs Or Citizens Will Starve

By Theodora Filis

Entrenched in action and always on the front lines of saving the world and feeding the hungry, Bill Gates gets right to the “root” of solving the world's food shortage by putting his money where his friends at the Rockefeller Foundation tell him to.

This week, The Associated Press said Bill Gates believes “Countries can embrace modern seed technology and genetic modification or their citizens will starve.” This comment was directed at the naysayer's of genetically modified (GM) seeds and the belief that “high-tech” solutions to world hunger are bad for the environment.

Why are Bill Gates and The Rockefeller Foundation supporting the proliferation of patented seeds, GMOs, and at the same time, investing tens of millions of dollars to preserve every natural seed variety on this planet in a bomb-proof doomsday vault? Wouldn't it be best to cultivate the world's natural seeds, while preserving them, and nourishing and nurturing our world's farms and precious soil?

Is Gates confused and misled? I think not.

The Global Crop Diversity Trust is based in Rome. Its Board is chaired by Margaret Catley-Carlson a Canadian also on the advisory board of Group Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux, one of the world’s largest private water companies. Catley-Carlson was also president until 1998 of the New York-based Population Council, John D. Rockefeller’s population reduction organization, set up in 1952 to advance the Rockefeller family’s eugenics program under the cover of promoting “family planning,” birth control devices, sterilization and “population control” in developing countries.

Other GCDT board members include former Bank of America executive presently head of the Hollywood DreamWorks Animation, Lewis Coleman. Coleman is also the lead Board Director of Northrup Grumman Corporation, one of America’s largest military industry Pentagon contractors.

And so the plot thickens. Are Gates and his GCDT buddies on a mission from God to feed and serve the world's hungry, or are they on a mission to control the world's population through mass planting and distribution of GMOs?

Cables released by WikiLeaks on Wednesday, January 25, 2012, reveal new details of the US effort to push foreign governments to approve GE crops and promote the worldwide interests of agribusiness giants like Monsanto and DuPont.

A key component of the US plan to dominate world agriculture with GM seeds is the absence of labeling of GM foods. No labeling means US consumers can not exercise informed choices in the marketplace, reducing the likelihood of a consumer revolt.

Last year, Miriam E. Sapiro, Deputy US Trade Representative, urged the European Commission to break its longstanding impasse blocking GM foods. Because GM seeds are patented it is illegal for a farmer to retain seeds for next years crops – offering huge financial benefits over traditional seeds.

If I were to gander a guess why Gates is so keen on feeding the hungry, I'd have to go with keeping up appearances as a free-spirited generous guy who's only concern is for the health and advancement of his own, yet to be revealed, agenda.

Fracking Companies Promote Jobs Across The US Hoping To Conceal The Risks

By Theodora Filis

The “Halliburton loophole” was created by Congress in 2005, at the “urging” of then, Vice President, Dick Cheney. Despite serious concerns, from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), that chemicals used in Hydraulic Fracturing (fracking) demonstrated spoiling and contamination of drinking water, Cheney's “energy task force” promoted the benefits of fracking and disregarded any references to human health hazards.

Halliburton, previously led by Cheney, reportedly earns $1.5 billion a year from its energy operations – which relies heavily on its fracking business.

This week, Bloomberg reported “Thirty-four years after Black Monday, the day Youngstown Sheet & Tube announced shutdowns marking the end of the Ohio city’s steel era, a $650 million mill is coming to life thanks to the natural-gas drilling boom.”

The Vallourec SA's V&M Star factory will employee 350 workers and produce seamless pipes used in fracking. “It’s part of a development that an oil and gas industry study calculates will mean more than 200,000 jobs and $22 billion in economic output in Ohio by 2015 -- and which has neighboring states looking to get in on the action.”

According to the Pennsylvania Center for Workforce Information and Analysis, Marcellus shale grew 114 percent in the first quarter of 2011 – up form the same period in 2008.

According to the center, wages in Marcellus industries average $76,036 compared with the state average of $46,222.

Despite reported earthquakes in Youngstown, Ohio – so sever the mayor of Youngstown has decided to take out earthquake insurance on his home – a new mill is being built about 2 miles from where an injection well was closed after 11 earthquakes shook the Youngstown area in 2011.

Last week, AlterNet reported, “To what should be the surprise of no one, earthquakes caused by the junkie gas sector's hydraulic fracturing process, known as fracking, have been cropping up like Freud's repressed. The latest ominously arrived in Republican-dominated Ohio on New Year's Eve, quickly prompting Youngstown's mayor to buy earthquake insurance and lament, "You lose your whole house, that's your life savings, and if you have no money or no insurance to replace it, then what do you do?"

During an energy summit in Columbus, last September, Aubery K. McClendon, chief executive officer of Chesapeake Energy Corp – the most active oil and natural gas driller in the US – said “This will be the biggest thing to hit the state of Ohio economically since maybe the plow.”

While Cheney and his pals over at Hailburton are patting themselves on the back for a very lucrative job well done – thousands of residents across the US are living with, and trying to avoid, the very costly side effects of fracking.

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) called for a study to determine whether fracking is a hazard to people or food sources. The EPA in conjunction with the Interior Department is working now to prepare regulations to govern fracking and plans to study the effect of the hydraulic fracturing on drinking water.

Christopher Portier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, said that studies should be initiated to examine whether waste water from the wells can harm people, livestock and food sources.

Mr. Portier stated: “We do not have enough information to say with certainty whether shale gas drilling poses a threat to public health.”

Lisa Jackson, the EPA’s Administrator told Congress in May that the EPA “will use its authorities to protect local residents if a driller endangers water supplies and the state and local authorities have not acted.” She further stated that President Obama “has made clear that we need to extract natural gas without polluting our water supplies.”

People living close to drill sights will tell you it does cause a very serious health risk to both human and animal life. Many community residents have tested their water and soil and have found it to be contaminated.

UK's Two Main Political Parties Back GMOs And The US Agenda

By Theodora Filis

Last week the Guardian announced that the two main political parties in the United Kingdom (UK), Tories and Labour, were backing genetically modified (GM) food crops.

This came as a surprise and disappointment to many, however, it should not have. The director of Rothamstead Research in the UK, the largest, oldest, and some say, the most important agricultural research station in the world, is Professor Maurice Moloney, a scientist best known for developing the world's first transgenic oilseeds and the genetically modified crop that is grown in Australia, RoundUp Ready(R) Canola.

Professor Moloney argues that GM is all about "feeding a hungry world and says serious scientific bodies have looked at GM technology in recent years and concluded it would be a mistake to exclude the technology from the arsenal of tools needed to deal with both global food security and environmental protection challenges".

The RoundUp Ready System was specifically designed to require the exclusive use of Monsanto's herbicide. Monsanto, considered the Mother of agricultural biotechnology – with nearly 250 million GM RoundUp Ready acres worldwide.

Using Moloney's arguments, politicians from both parties last week announced that “controversial genetically modified food crops” could help to massively increase food production to meet growing populations and consumption.

Last year, opposition to genetically modified foods exploded in UK, and quickly spread to the European continent. At the time, twenty-seven European Union (EU) states pushed back a commission proposal to lift import restrictions on animal foodstuffs containing traces of GM crops, up to a certain threshold, due to opposition from France and Poland.

In a confidential communication, dated Dec. 14, 2007, released by WikiLeaks on Dec. 19th, 2010, the US Ambassador to France at that time, Craig Roberts Stapleton, recommended creating a list if the EU continued to ban biotech seeds.

Agriculture Minister, Jim Paice, said the UK wanted the EU to agree to lift restrictions on trials and sale of GM products, so countries like the UK could "do it's own thing" so "we can use this technology where appropriate".

David Ehrenfield, Professor of Biology at Rutgers University, said "Genetic Engineering is often justified as a human technology, one that feeds more people with better food. Nothing could be further from the truth. With very few exceptions, the whole point of genetic engineering is to increase sales of chemicals and bio-engineered products to dependent farmers".

"In the United States, the widespread adoption of RoundUp Ready crops combined with the emergence of glyphosate-resistant weeds has driven a more than 15-fold increase in the use of glyphosate on major field crops from 1994 to 2005"

It is important to note, that scientists worldwide understand that the cultivation of GMOs will accelerate the loss of the world's food sovereignty and contaminate vital native strains. 

Southern China Reports Cause of Man's Death To Be A Contagious Strain of Bird Flu

By Theodora Filis

On Saturday, December 31, 2011, China's state media reported that a 39 year old man, identified as Xinhua, died on Saturday in Shenzhen, Southern China, from what appears to be a contagious strain of avian flu.

Xinhua Chen was hospitalized, in Shenzhen, on December 21 with a fever. According to China's official news agency, the provincial health department came out with a statement saying Xinhua had tested positive for the H5N1 avian influenza virus.

Perhaps most disturbing of all is that the man had not traveled outside the city, and had no contact with poultry.

Last summer, the United Nations (UN) warned of a possible resurgence of the virus, which peaked in 2006 – infecting people in 63 countries. The UN warned there were indications a mutant strain may be spreading in Asia. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that a variant strain of H5N1, which could bypass the defenses of current vaccines, appeared in late August 2011, in Vietnam and China.

Mutations of various flu strains have been occurring recently worldwide. The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) reported, Alongside last week’s confirmation of another novel flu infection with an H3N2 variant, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) launched a series of documents to advise health and lab workers on how to identify and report new cases.

On Dec 23, 2011 the CDC confirmed two more novel flu infections, including in a West Virginia child with a swine-origin H3N2 reassortant strain (H3N2v) that includes the M gene from the 2009 H1N1 virus. The child was in contact with an H3N2v case reported on Dec 9, and the newly confirmed case pushed the nation’s H3N2v total to12 so far.

The other novel flu infection involved a swine-origin H1N1 variant (H1N1v) that had also acquired the M gene from the 2009 H1N1 virus. The CDC said the patient, an adult from Wisconsin who had occupational exposure to swine, was the first detection of the H1N1v strain in a human. On the same day the CDC announced the two novel flu cases, it released documents that address preventing seasonal and H3N2v in healthcare settings, interim guidance on H3N2v specimen collection and testing, and interim case definitions for investigating H3N2v infections.

Most H3N2v infections have been mild, and only 3 of the 12 patients were hospitalized, the CDC said. Though it’s not clear if cases will become more common, it’s possible that healthcare providers will care for patients who have H3N2v infections.

Governments worldwide have been preparing for a pandemic since 2009. The World Health Organization (WHO) said, in USA Today, that Tamiflu is useless:

“In 2007/2008, a different A(H1N1) influenza virus developed Tamiflu-resistance,” explained WHO research scientist Aeron C. Hurt, who reported the spike. “On that occasion, it was first detected in large numbers in Europe. However, within 12 months the virus had spread globally, such that virtually every A(H1N1) virus around the world was resistant to this drug,” he explained.

“This previous situation demonstrated the speed and potential for a Tamiflu-resistant virus to spread worldwide,” Hurt added. “Our concern is that this current pandemic 2009 A(H1N1) Tamiflu-resistant virus may also spread globally.”

Meanwhile in the US multiple new cases of H1N1 were reported at the same time the US government warned about a potential bioweapon attack.

Syngenta Corn Gluten Feed Held Up In Europe Over Concerns They Contain GMOs

By Theodora Filis

GMO corn and corn byproducts have become a lightning rod for controversy these days. European traders say the latest problem is with the new genetically modified organism (GMO) corn gluten feed – MIR162 Agrisure Viptera – from Swiss group Syngenta, approved for cultivation in the US in 2010, but has not been approved in the EU.

Last month, Imports of US gluten feed were held up by the European Union (EU) because of concerns they might contain unapproved GMOs. European trading houses are not importing corn gluten feed from the US in case the new GMO variety appears in large volumes and the ship gets refused permission to unload.

As of August 2011, 37 GMO crops were approved for import into the EU for either human use or animal feed, according European biotech association EuropaBio. In the US alone, 90 GMO crops have been approved for markets in the US.

Many argue corn gluten feed is contrary to the natural eating habits of animals and pets, and nothing more than cheap filler material, and not very digestible. As a pesticide active ingredient, corn gluten meal is intended for residential non-food use on lawns to prevent emergence of grassy and broad-leaved weeds, and is common in many food/feed products and in dietary supplements for humans and animals. Corn gluten meal is used extensively by the poultry industry as a source of protein and xanthophyll. GPC corn gluten meal is used in poultry rations to produce poultry products with that “healthy golden glow” consumer’s demand.

The EU policy on GMO crops has long been politically fraught, with a majority of European consumers opposed to GMOs. The EU's dependence GMO animal feed – approx. 30 million tonnes each year – has compelled them to legalize imports of new GMO crops to secure farm feed supplies.

With consumer resistance strong, the EU approval process for new GMO crops is much slower than in the US and South America, disrupting international trade as US farmers grow, and market, new GMO crop types which are unapproved in the EU and illegal to import.

As a processed product traders cannot know the source of all ingredients in corn gluten. To avoid disruptions to animal feed imports, the EU adopted rules, in 2011, allowing tiny amounts of 0.1 percent of unapproved GM crops in shipments often picked up in transport.

A decision is not expected on the Syngenta corn until at least mid-2012, allowing European purchases of the US 2012 crop, but not from the 2011 crop.