Food & Health

Ginseng: The Root of All Good

2010-06-10T10:36:00.000-07:00

The official name - Panax Ginseng C.A. Meyer - was given to Korean ginseng in 1842 by the German-Russian botanist Carl Anton Meyer. Ginseng belongs to the family of Araliaceae plants, such as, for example, ivy.

Korean ginseng originally grew only in the mountain forests of China and Korea. A mature plant is about 60-80 cm high and, at its tips, and has finger-like leaves which open up like a hand. The root has an almost human form and this is how ginseng got its name: “ginseng“ derives from the Chinese “jen shen“ which can be translated as “human root“.

The name “Panax“ stems from the Greek language and means “all-healing“. It is referred to as 'true' ginseng because, from the medical perspective, it is by far the most valuable of all the ginseng varieties. In Germany, only preparations from the true Korean ginseng are licensed for use as a medicine.

How Ginseng Works

Adaptogenic Action

Ginseng is beneficial to health as a restorative and fortifying medicine suitable for those who suffer from tiredness or weakness, or who show a decline in performance and concentration. Likewise, its use is recommended for generally preventing typical illnesses caused by today's lifestyle and has been shown to offer protection against the effects of ageing.

The action of ginseng is not directed against specific diseases and disorders. A healthy body shows no apparent reaction to ginseng. But appearances are deceptive: when the body is subjected to stress, it can cope with this much better as it is able to protect itself against disruptive and illness-inducing influences from outside (adaptogenic action).

This protection can be effective against every form of negative influence: physical, chemical and biological stress (e. g. radiation, allergy-inducing environmental poisons or pathogens) and, likewise, against psychological stress, such as that experienced at work or in difficult family situations.

The Balancing Effect

Ginseng has both stimulating and rebuilding properties, as well as calming properties. An explanation for this is provided by the active ingredients contained in ginseng, the ginsenosides. One knows from the two best studies of ginsenosides that they are antagonists - which harmoniously compliment one another, just like Yin and Yang in Chinese medicine.

One increases blood pressure, has a stimulating action, and promotes performance and the ability to react. Its antagonist reduces blood pressure, soothes agitation and helps one to switch off.. The most important site of action of the ginsenosides is probably the hypothalamus – a region in the interbrain (diencephalon ), from which all hormonal and neuronal processes are regulated that serve the maintenance of a state of equilibrium in the body.

Areas of Experience

Hardly any medicinal plant has been so intensively studied as ginseng. Researchers throughout The World have taken experience gained from Asia over many centuries as the basis for their investigations, in order to provide orthodox medicine with a foundation for new therapies.

Immune System:

Ginseng strengthens the immune system, amongst other ways, by increasing antibody production and increasing the activity of different immune cells. People who suffer from allergies can therefore benefit to a high degree from regular participation in a course of treatment with ginseng.

Cardiovascular System:

Ginseng produces a strengthening of heart performance and regulates blood pressure. Ginseng thus counteracts those factors causing arteriosclerosis and thrombosis. Those who suffer from circulatory disorders, dizziness and cold hands or feet will benefit from using ginseng.

Exhaustion:

Ginseng produces an improvement in the energy balance. Available energy reserves are better utilised and, by stimulation of metabolism, additional energy reserves can also be better mobilised. Performance and endurance will increase.

Brain and Memory:

Ginseng has a centrally acting effect on mental ability. The stimulation of brain activity leads to an increase in the ability to concentrate and improved memory, and a greater speed of perception, as well as better relaxation of the nerves.

Disorders of the Metabolism:

People with metabolic disorders, which can be manifested, for example, in increased blood sugar or cholesterol values, can be helped to achieve a generally improved state of health by the restorative properties of ginseng.

Cancers:

The restorative effect of ginseng on the organism and the resistance of the body are especially important in relation to cancer. However, ginseng is not only suitable as a long-term therapy for strengthening the body, it also provides strengthening and fortifying as an accompaniment to chemotherapy and following operations.

Sexual and Reproductive Disorders:

Ginseng stimulates and strengthens the whole organism. In so doing, sexual function is also improved. Sperm achieve greater mobility and increased duration of life.

Ginseng Cultivation

Korean ginseng is a perennial plant which, in winter, sheds the parts of the plant appearing above ground and remains dormant during the winter period.

Ginseng was originally a woodland plant and therefore, can only tolerate little sunlight. Therefore, adequate shading of the ginseng fields is quite important, in order for the plants to thrive. In spring, shortly before the plants sprout, the shade covers are erected. In autumn, they are taken down again, in order to avoid damage to the construction being caused by storms or snow.

A further important aspect of cultivation is the prevention of the accumulation of water in the soil. For this reason, the earth should be very permeable. In addition, the beds are laid out in a manner similar to that used in asparagus cultivation, in mounds, in order to allow the rain to drain away more quickly. A thick layer of mulch ensures that the earth is kept adequately moist. It protects the roots in winter against damage caused by frost and reduces the growth of wild plants.

Only in the Autumn of the sixth year of growth can the ginseng roots be harvested. The plants should be allowed to grow for this long in order to achieve an optimal ginsenoside content in the roots and so fulfil the quality criteria for use as a high grade medicine.

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Government ends Public Hearing on Plan to Prohibit Fishing

2010-03-10T04:29:00.000-08:00

by Robert Montgomery
10th March 2010

Culled Out

Public Input Period for Federal Fishery Strategy has ended

The Obama administration will accept no more public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing some of the nation's oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters.

One sign at the United We Fish rally at the Capital summed

up the feelings of recreational and commercial fishermen

This announcement comes at the time when the situation supposedly still is "fluid" and the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force still hasn't issued its final report on zoning uses of these waters.

That's a disappointment, but not really a surprise for fishing industry insiders who have negotiated for months with officials at the Council on Environmental Quality and bureaucrats on the task force. These angling advocates have come to suspect that public input into the process was a charade from the beginning.

"When the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) completed their successful campaign to convince the Ontario government to end one of the best scientifically managed big game hunts in North America (spring bear), the results of their agenda had severe economic impacts on small family businesses and the tourism economy of communities across northern and central Ontario," said Phil Morlock, director of environmental affairs for Shimano.

"Now we see NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the administration planning the future of recreational fishing access in America based on a similar agenda of these same groups and other Big Green anti-use organizations, through an Executive Order by the President. The current U.S. direction with fishing is a direct parallel to what happened in Canada with hunting: The negative economic impacts on hard working American families and small businesses are being ignored.

"In spite of what we hear daily in the press about the President's concern for jobs and the economy and contrary to what he stated in the June order creating this process, we have seen no evidence from NOAA or the task force that recreational fishing and related jobs are receiving any priority."

Consequently, unless anglers speak up and convince their Congressional representatives to stop this bureaucratic freight train, it appears that the task force will issue a final report for "marine spatial planning" by late March, with President Barack Obama then issuing an Executive Order to implement its recommendations — whatever they may be.

Led by NOAA's Jane Lubchenco, the task force has shown no overt dislike of recreational angling, but its indifference to the economic, social and biological value of the sport has been deafening.

Additionally, Lubchenco and others in the administration have close ties to environmental groups who would like nothing better than to ban recreational angling. And evidence suggests that these organizations have been the engine behind the task force since before Obama issued a memo creating it last June.

As ESPN previously reported, WWF, Greenpeace, Defenders of Wildlife, Pew Environment Group and others produced a document entitled "Transition Green" shortly after Obama was elected in 2008. What has happened since suggests that the task force has been in lockstep with that position paper.

Then in late summer, just after he created the task force, these groups produced "Recommendations for the Adoption and Implementation of an Oceans, Coasts, and Great Lakes National Policy." This document makes repeated references to "overfishing," but doesn't once reference recreational angling, its importance, and its benefits, both to participants and the resource.

Additionally, some of these same organizations have revealed their anti-fishing bias by playing fast and loose with "facts," in attempts to ban tackle containing lead in the United States and Canada.

That same tunnel vision, in which recreational angling and commercial fishing are indiscriminately lumped together as harmful to the resource, has persisted with the task force, despite protests by the angling industry.

As more evidence of collusion, the green groups began clamoring for an Executive Order to implement the task force's recommendations even before the public comment period ended in February. Fishing advocates had no idea that this was coming.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, the New York Times reported on Feb. 12 that "President Obama and his team are preparing an array of actions using his executive power to advance energy, environmental, fiscal and other domestic policy priorities."

Morlock fears that "what we're seeing coming at us is an attempted dismantling of the science-based fish and wildlife model that has served us so well. There's no basis in science for the agendas of these groups who are trying to push the public out of being able to fish and recreate.

"Conflicts (user) are overstated and problems are manufactured. It's all just an excuse to put us off the water."

In the wake of the task force's framework document, the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation (CSF) and its partners in the U.S. Recreational Fishing & Boating Coalition against voiced their concerns to the administration.

"Some of the potential policy implications of this interim framework have the potential to be a real threat to recreational anglers who not only contribute billions of dollars to the economy and millions of dollars in tax revenues to support fisheries conservation, but who are also the backbone of the American fish and wildlife conservation ethic," said CSF President Jeff Crane.

Morlock, a member of the CSF board, added, "There are over one million jobs in America supported coast to coast by recreational fishing. The task force has not included any accountability requirements in their reports for evaluating or mitigating how the new policies they are drafting will impact the fishing industry or related economies.

"Given that the scope of this process appears to include a new set of policies for all coastal and inland waters of the United States, the omission of economic considerations is inexcusable."

This is not the only access issue threatening the public's right to fish, but it definitely is the most serious, according to Chris Horton, national conservation director for BASS.

"With what's being created, the same principles could apply inland as apply to the oceans," he said. "Under the guise of 'marine spatial planning' entire watersheds could be shut down, even 2,000 miles up a river drainage from the ocean.

"Every angler needs to be aware because if it's not happening in your backyard today or tomorrow, it will be eventually.

"We have one of the largest voting blocks in the country and we need to use it. We must not sit idly by."

This is an opinion column from Robert Montgomery. As a Senior Writer for BASS Publications, Montgomery has written about conservation, environment, and access issues for more than two decades.

Article courtesy of ESPN

Patients' Medical Records go online without Consent

2010-03-10T03:58:00.000-08:00

by Kate Devlin
9th March 2010

Patients’ confidential medical records are being placed on a controversial

NHS database without their knowledge, doctors’ leaders have warned

At present 1.29 million people have had their details placed on the

system. A further 8.9 million records are due to be added by June

Those who do not wish to have their details on the £11 billion computer system are supposed to be able to opt out by informing health authorities.

But doctors have accused the Government of rushing the project through, meaning that patients have had their details uploaded to the database before they have had a chance to object.

The scheme, one of the largest of its kind in the world, will eventually hold the private records of more than 50 million patients.

But it has been dogged by accusations that the private information held on it will not be safe from hackers.

The British Medical Association claims that records have been placed on the system without patients’ knowledge or consent.

It follows allegations that the Government wanted to complete the project before the Conservatives had a chance to cancel it.

In a letter to ministers published today, the BMA urges the Government to suspend the scheme.

Hamish Meldrum, its chairman, writes: "The breakneck speed with which this programme is being implemented is of huge concern.

"Patients’ right to opt out is crucial, and it is extremely alarming that records are apparently being created without them being aware of it.

"If the process continues to be rushed, not only will the rights of patients be damaged, but the limited confidence of the public and the medical profession in NHS IT will be further eroded."

At present 1.29 million people have had their details placed on the system. A further 8.9 million records are due to be added by June. By the end of next year, the NHS hopes to have more than 50 million uploaded.

The "summary" records contain basic medical information including illnesses, vaccination history, and could include medication patients have been given. Ages and addresses are also included.

Patients are supposed to be notified by letter at least 12 weeks before their details go live on the system and given the chance to opt out.

The BMA says that letters have gone to the wrong addresses and that many patients have been unsure what they mean.

Doctors point out that there has been no national advertising programme to explain the scheme, as has been the case with other government initiatives.

David Wrigley, from the BMA's GP committee, said: "The concern is that people may not be aware, because they did not receive the letter, they did not read it or they thought it was junk mail and threw it away."

The BMA also criticises the fact that the information packs do not include the form which allows patients to opt out. It can only be obtained via the internet or by calling a helpline.

Katherine Murphy, of the Patients Association, said: "The Health Service should not put in place bureaucratic obstacles to patient choice because they are worried about what patients might choose to do."

Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat health spokesman, said: "The Government needs to end its obsession with massive central databases.

"The NHS IT scheme has been a disastrous waste of money and the national programme should be abandoned."

A spokesman for the Department of Health said that ministers "absolutely support" the right of patients to opt out of the scheme, adding that various options were provided to make this straightforward.

Article courtesy of Telegraph.co.uk

Dutch Government wants to sell Flu Vaccines back

2010-03-10T03:32:00.000-08:00

by Ben Berkowitz
6th March 2010

The Dutch government wants to sell 21 million unused H1N1 flu vaccine doses back to their manufacturers after they proved unnecessary and no other country wanted to buy them, the Health Ministry said on Saturday.

A spokeswoman for the ministry said it had approached manufacturers GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis about buying back the doses.

She added that it was not clear what their total value was. She also declined comment on the status of the talks, saying the ministry would inform parliament of the details at a later date.

At the height of the H1N1 scare, the ministry ordered 34 million doses of pandemic flu vaccine -- enough to give two shots to every person in The Netherlands.

Of the original order, about 11 million doses were administered and another 2.2 million are being kept in reserve for emergencies.

Article courtesy of Reuters

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No Ban on GM Field Trials in India

2010-03-08T16:29:00.000-08:00

8th March 2010

No Ban on Field Trials of GM Crops,
says Environment Minister

The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GAEC) has allowed field trials of genetically modified (GM) crops, including brinjal, even as the government banned commercialisation of Bt brinjal.

The GEAC has allowed field trials of cotton, rice, okra, brinjal, potato, groundnut, tomato, corn, cabbage, cauliflower, mustard and sorghum as well for generation of biosafety data, minister of state for environment and forests Jairam Ramesh informed the Rajya Sabha in a written reply.

GEAC is the apex body notified under the "Rules for Manufacture, Use, Import, Export and Storage of Hazardous Micro Organisms/ Genetically Engineered Organisms or Cells 1989" of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986.

The government, he said, imposed a moratorium on commercialisation of Bt brinjal following apprehensions raised by NGOs and some sections of the scientific and farming communities on the safety of Bt brinjal.

He said the government would take maximum precautions as Bt brinjal is the first GM food crop to be introduced in the country.

He said commercial cultivation of the genetically modified brinjal would be allowed only after independent scientific studies establish the safety of the product from the point of view of its long-term impact on human health and environment, including the rich genetic wealth existing in brinjal in the country.

The GEAC will address the concerns for resolving all scientific issues relating to Bt brinjal, he said.

He said while biotechnology was an important option for higher agricultural productivity and for ensuring food security, the government has to ensure that biotechnology had no adverse effects on human and animal health, and bio-diversity.

He said the environment ministry has been regularly undertaking capacity building activities for enhancing biosafety awareness and regulatory compliance, since 2002.

While the biotech regulator undertakes the work in collaboration with the R & D institutions, agricultural universities across the country have also been trained in the use of new guidelines for confined field trials, safe operation practices, formats for monitoring and recording of data, etc.

The training was funded jointly by the department of biotechnology (DBT) and the minister of environment and forests, he added.

Further, he said, his ministry and the department of biotechnology along with the ministry of agriculture, the an Council of Medical Research and Biotech Consortium India Limited has organised 79 awareness workshops on GM crops with a focus on post-release monitoring in all major cotton growing states during 2006-07 to 2008-09.

He said the ministry has completed capacity building for biosafety under the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Phase I project with GEF-World Bank assistance of $1 million and is developing the GEF phase-II capacity building project on biosafety.

Phase II of capacity build-up for biosafety projects would include: risk assessment and management; handling, packaging and transportation of living modified organisms (LMOs); institutional strengthening for LMO detection; socio economic assessment; public awareness; and training of trainers.

Article courtesy of domain-b

How Food and Water are driving a 21st-century African Land Grab

2010-03-08T06:53:00.000-08:00

by John Vidal in Juba, Sudan
7th March 2010

An Observer investigation reveals how rich countries faced

by a global food shortage now farm an area double the size

of the UK to guarantee supplies for their citizens

A woman tends vegetables at a giant Saudi-financed farm in Ethiopia.

We turned off the main road to Awassa, talked our way past security guards and drove a mile across empty land before we found what will soon be Ethiopia's largest greenhouse. Nestling below an escarpment of the Rift Valley, the development is far from finished, but the plastic and steel structure already stretches over 20 hectares – the size of 20 football pitches.

The farm manager shows us millions of tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables being grown in 500m rows in computer controlled conditions. Spanish engineers are building the steel structure, Dutch technology minimises water use from two bore-holes and 1,000 women pick and pack 50 tonnes of food a day. Within 24 hours, it has been driven 200 miles to Addis Ababa and flown 1,000 miles to the shops and restaurants of Dubai, Jeddah and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Ethiopia is one of the hungriest countries in the world with more than 13 million people needing food aid, but paradoxically the government is offering at least 3m hectares of its most fertile land to rich countries and some of the world's most wealthy individuals to export food for their own populations.

The 1,000 hectares of land which contain the Awassa greenhouses are leased for 99 years to a Saudi billionaire businessman, Ethiopian-born Sheikh Mohammed al-Amoudi, one of the 50 richest men in the world. His Saudi Star company plans to spend up to $2bn acquiring and developing 500,000 hectares of land in Ethiopia in the next few years. So far, it has bought four farms and is already growing wheat, rice, vegetables and flowers for the Saudi market. It expects eventually to employ more than 10,000 people.

But Ethiopia is only one of 20 or more African countries where land is being bought or leased for intensive agriculture on an immense scale in what may be the greatest change of ownership since the colonial era.

An Observer investigation estimates that up to 50m hectares of land – an area more than double the size of the UK – has been acquired in the last few years or is in the process of being negotiated by governments and wealthy investors working with state subsidies. The data used was collected by Grain, the International Institute for Environment and Development, the International Land Coalition, ActionAid and other non-governmental groups.

The land rush, which is still accelerating, has been triggered by the worldwide food shortages which followed the sharp oil price rises in 2008, growing water shortages and the European Union's insistence that 10% of all transport fuel must come from plant-based biofuels by 2015.

In many areas the deals have led to evictions, civil unrest and complaints of "land grabbing".

The experience of Nyikaw Ochalla, an indigenous Anuak from the Gambella region of Ethiopia now living in Britain but who is in regular contact with farmers in his region, is typical. He said: "All of the land in the Gambella region is utilised. Each community has and looks after its own territory and the rivers and farmlands within it. It is a myth propagated by the government and investors to say that there is waste land or land that is not utilised in Gambella.

"The foreign companies are arriving in large numbers, depriving people of land they have used for centuries. There is no consultation with the indigenous population. The deals are done secretly. The only thing the local people see is people coming with lots of tractors to invade their lands.

"All the land round my family village of Illia has been taken over and is being cleared. People now have to work for an Indian company. Their land has been compulsorily taken and they have been given no compensation. People cannot believe what is happening. Thousands of people will be affected and people will go hungry."

It is not known if the acquisitions will improve or worsen food security in Africa, or if they will stimulate separatist conflicts, but a major World Bank report due to be published this month is expected to warn of both the potential benefits and the immense dangers they represent to people and nature.

Leading the rush are international agribusinesses, investment banks, hedge funds, commodity traders, sovereign wealth funds as well as UK pension funds, foundations and individuals attracted by some of the world's cheapest land.

Together they are scouring Sudan, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Malawi, Ethiopia, Congo, Zambia, Uganda, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Mali, Sierra Leone, Ghana and elsewhere. Ethiopia alone has approved 815 foreign-financed agricultural projects since 2007. Any land there, which investors have not been able to buy, is being leased for approximately $1 per year per hectare.

Saudi Arabia, along with other Middle Eastern emirate states such as Qatar, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi, is thought to be the biggest buyer. In 2008 the Saudi government, which was one of the Middle East's largest wheat-growers, announced it was to reduce its domestic cereal production by 12% a year to conserve its water. It earmarked $5bn to provide loans at preferential rates to Saudi companies which wanted to invest in countries with strong agricultural potential .

Meanwhile, the Saudi investment company Foras, backed by the Islamic Development Bank and wealthy Saudi investors, plans to spend $1bn buying land and growing 7m tonnes of rice for the Saudi market within seven years. The company says it is investigating buying land in Mali, Senegal, Sudan and Uganda. By turning to Africa to grow its staple crops, Saudi Arabia is not just acquiring Africa's land but is securing itself the equivalent of hundreds of millions of gallons of scarce water a year. Water, says the UN, will be the defining resource of the next 100 years.

Since 2008 Saudi investors have bought heavily in Sudan, Egypt, Ethiopia and Kenya. Last year the first sacks of wheat grown in Ethiopia for the Saudi market were presented by al-Amoudi to King Abdullah.

Some of the African deals lined up are eye-wateringly large: China has signed a contract with the Democratic Republic of Congo to grow 2.8m hectares of palm oil for biofuels. Before it fell apart after riots, a proposed 1.2m hectares deal between Madagascar and the South Korean company Daewoo would have included nearly half of the country's arable land.

Land to grow biofuel crops is also in demand. "European biofuel companies have acquired or requested about 3.9m hectares in Africa. This has led to displacement of people, lack of consultation and compensation, broken promises about wages and job opportunities," said Tim Rice, author of an ActionAid report which estimates that the EU needs to grow crops on 17.5m hectares, well over half the size of Italy, if it is to meet its 10% biofuel target by 2015.

"The biofuel land grab in Africa is already displacing farmers and food production. The number of people going hungry will increase," he said. British firms have secured tracts of land in Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nigeria and Tanzania to grow flowers and vegetables.

Indian companies, backed by government loans, have bought or leased hundreds of thousands of hectares in Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Senegal and Mozambique, where they are growing rice, sugar cane, maize and lentils to feed their domestic market.

Nowhere is now out of bounds. Sudan, emerging from civil war and mostly bereft of development for a generation, is one of the new hot spots. South Korean companies last year bought 700,000 hectares of northern Sudan for wheat cultivation; the United Arab Emirates have acquired 750,000 hectares and Saudi Arabia last month concluded a 42,000-hectare deal in Nile province.

The government of southern Sudan says many companies are now trying to acquire land. "We have had many requests from many developers. Negotiations are going on," said Peter Chooli, director of water resources and irrigation, in Juba last week. "A Danish group is in discussions with the state and another wants to use land near the Nile."

In one of the most extraordinary deals, buccaneering New York investment firm Jarch Capital, run by a former commodities trader, Philip Heilberg, has leased 800,000 hectares in southern Sudan near Darfur. Heilberg has promised not only to create jobs but also to put 10% or more of his profits back into the local community. But he has been accused by Sudanese of "grabbing" communal land and leading an American attempt to fragment Sudan and exploit its resources.

Devlin Kuyek, a Montreal-based researcher with Grain, said investing in Africa was now seen as a new food supply strategy by many governments. "Rich countries are eyeing Africa not just for a healthy return on capital, but also as an insurance policy. Food shortages and riots in 28 countries in 2008, declining water supplies, climate change and huge population growth have together made land attractive. Africa has the most land and, compared with other continents, is cheap," he said.

"Farmland in sub-Saharan Africa is giving 25% returns a year and new technology can treble crop yields in short time frames," said Susan Payne, chief executive of Emergent Asset Management, a UK investment fund seeking to spend $50m on African land, which, she said, was attracting governments, corporations, multinationals and other investors. "Agricultural development is not only sustainable, it is our future. If we do not pay great care and attention now to increase food production by over 50% before 2050, we will face serious food shortages globally," she said.

But many of the deals are widely condemned by both western non-government groups and nationals as "new colonialism", driving people off the land and taking scarce resources away from people.

We met Tegenu Morku, a land agent, in a roadside cafe on his way to the region of Oromia in Ethiopia to find 500 hectares of land for a group of Egyptian investors. They planned to fatten cattle, grow cereals and spices and export as much as possible to Egypt. There had to be water available and he expected the price to be about 15 birr (75p) per hectare per year – less than a quarter of the cost of land in Egypt and a tenth of the price of land in Asia.

"The land and labour is cheap and the climate is good here. Everyone – Saudis, Turks, Chinese, Egyptians – is looking. The farmers do not like it because they get displaced, but they can find land elsewhere and, besides, they get compensation, equivalent to about 10 years' crop yield," he said.

Oromia is one of the centres of the African land rush. Haile Hirpa, president of the Oromia studies' association, said last week in a letter of protest to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon that India had acquired 1m hectares, Djibouti 10,000 hectares, Saudi Arabia 100,000 hectares, and that Egyptian, South Korean, Chinese, Nigerian and other Arab investors were all active in the state.

"This is the new, 21st-century colonisation. The Saudis are enjoying the rice harvest, while the Oromos are dying from man-made famine as we speak," he said.

The Ethiopian government denied the deals were causing hunger and said that the land deals were attracting hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign investments and tens of thousands of jobs. A spokesman said: "Ethiopia has 74m hectares of fertile land, of which only 15% is currently in use – mainly by subsistence farmers. Of the remaining land, only a small percentage – 3 to 4% – is offered to foreign investors. Investors are never given land that belongs to Ethiopian farmers. The government also encourages Ethiopians in the diaspora to invest in their homeland. They bring badly needed technology, they offer jobs and training to Ethiopians, they operate in areas where there is suitable land and access to water."

The reality on the ground is different, according to Michael Taylor, a policy specialist at the International Land Coalition. "If land in Africa hasn't been planted, it's probably for a reason. Maybe it's used to graze livestock or deliberately left fallow to prevent nutrient depletion and erosion. Anybody who has seen these areas identified as unused understands that there is no land in Ethiopia that has no owners and users."

Development experts are divided on the benefits of large-scale, intensive farming. Indian ecologist Vandana Shiva said in London last week that large-scale industrial agriculture not only threw people off the land but also required chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, fertilisers, intensive water use, and large-scale transport, storage and distribution which together turned landscapes into enormous mono-cultural plantations.

"We are seeing dispossession on a massive scale. It means less food is available and local people will have less. There will be more conflict and political instability and cultures will be uprooted. The small farmers of Africa are the basis of food security. The food availability of the planet will decline," she says. But Rodney Cooke, director at the UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development, sees potential benefits. "I would avoid the blanket term 'land-grabbing'. Done the right way, these deals can bring benefits for all parties and be a tool for development."

Lorenzo Cotula, senior researcher with the International Institute for Environment and Development, who co-authored a report on African land exchanges with the UN fund last year, found that well-structured deals could guarantee employment, better infrastructures and better crop yields. But badly handled they could cause great harm, especially if local people were excluded from decisions about allocating land and if their land rights were not protected.

Water is also controversial. Local government officers in Ethiopia told the Observer that foreign companies that set up flower farms and other large intensive farms were not being charged for water. "We would like to, but the deal is made by central government," said one. In Awassa, the al-Amouni farm uses as much water a year as 100,000 Ethiopians.

Article courtesy of Guardian.co.uk

Bill Gates on 'Vaccines to Reduce Population'

2010-03-08T03:06:00.000-08:00

by F. William Engdahl
4th March 2010

Microsoft founder and one of the world's wealthiest men, Bill Gates, projects an image of a benign philanthropist using his billions via his (tax exempt) Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to tackle diseases, solve food shortages in Africa and alleviate poverty. In a recent conference in California, Gates reveals a less public agenda of his philanthropy-population reduction, otherwise known as eugenics.

Gates made his remarks to the invitation-only Long Beach, California TED2010 Conference, in a speech titled, "Innovating to Zero!." Along with the scientifically absurd proposition of reducing manmade CO2 emissions worldwide to zero by 2050, approximately four and a half minutes into the talk, Gates declares, "First we got population. The world today has 6.8 billion people. That's headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent."

In plain English, one of the most powerful men in the world states clearly that he expects vaccines to be used to reduce population growth. When Bill Gates speaks about vaccines, he speaks with authority. In January 2010 at the elite Davos World Economic Forum, Gates announced his foundation would give $10 billion (circa ¤7.5 billion) over the next decade to develop and deliver new vaccines to children in the developing world.

The primary focus of his multi-billion dollar Gates Foundation is vaccinations, especially in Africa and other underdeveloped countries. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a founding member of the GAVI Alliance (Global Alliance for Vaccinations and Immunization) in partnership with the World Bank, WHO and the vaccine industry. The goal of GAVI is to vaccinate every newborn child in the developing world.

Now that sounds like noble philanthropic work. The problem is that the vaccine industry has been repeatedly caught dumping dangerous-meaning unsafe because untested or proven harmful-vaccines onto unwitting Third World populations when they cannot get rid of the vaccines in the West. Some organizations have suggested that the true aim of the vaccinations is to make people sicker and even more susceptible to disease and premature death.

Dumping toxins on the Third World

In the aftermath of the most recent unnecessary Pandemic declaration of a global H1N1 swine flu emergency, industrial countries were left sitting on hundreds of millions of doses of untested vaccines. They decided to get rid of the embarrassing leftover drugs by handing them over to the WHO which in turn plans to dump them for free on select poor countries. France has given 91 million of the 94 million doses the Sarkozy government bought from the pharma giants; Britain gave 55 million of its 60 million doses. The story for Germany and Norway is similar.

As Dr. Thomas Jefferson, an epidemiologist with the Cochrane Research Center in Rome noted, "Why do they give the vaccines to the developing countries at all? The pandemic has been called off in most parts of the world. The greatest threat in poor countries right now is heart and circulatory diseases while the virus figures at the bottom of the list. What is the medical reason for donating 180 million doses?" As well, flu is a minor problem in countries with abundant sunshine, and it turned out that the feared H1N1 Pandemic "new great plague" was the mildest flu on record.

The pharmaceutical vaccine makers do not speak about the enormous health damage from infant vaccination including autism and numerous neuro-muscular deformities that have been traced back to the toxic adjuvants and preservatives used in most vaccines. Many vaccines, especially multi-dose vaccines that are made more cheaply for sale to the Third World, contain something called Thimerosal (Thiomersol in the EU), a compound (sodium ethylmercurithiosalicylate), containing some 50% mercury, used as a preservative.

In July 1999 the US' National Vaccine Information Center declared in a press release that, "The cumulative effects of ingesting mercury can cause brain damage." The same month, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) alerted the public about the possible health effects associated with thimerosal-containing vaccines. They strongly recommended that thimerosal be removed from vaccines as soon as possible. Under the directive of the FDA Modernization Act of 1997, the Food and Drug Administration also determined that infants who received several thimerosal-containing vaccines may be receiving mercury exposure over and above the recommended federal guidelines.

A new form of eugenics?

Gates' interest in inducing population reduction among black and other minority populations is not new unfortunately. As I document in my book, Seeds of Destruction, since the 1920's the Rockefeller Foundation had funded the eugenics research in Germany through the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institutes in Berlin and Munich, including well into the Third Reich. They praised the forced sterilization of people by Hirtler Germany, and the Nazi ideas on race "purity." It was John D. Rockefeller III, a life-long advocate of eugenics, who used his "tax free" foundation money to initiate the population reduction neo-Malthusian movement through his private Population Council in New York beginning in the 1950's.

The idea of using vaccines to covertly reduce births in the Third World is also not new. Bill Gates' good friend, David Rockefeller and his Rockefeller Foundation were involved as early as 1972 in a major project together with WHO and others to perfect another "new vaccine."

The results of the WHO-Rockefeller project were put into mass application on human guinea pigs in the early 1990's. The WHO oversaw massive vaccination campaigns against tetanus in Nicaragua, Mexico and the Philippines. Comite Pro Vida de Mexico, a Roman Catholic lay organization, became suspicious of the motives behind the WHO program and decided to test numerous vials of the vaccine and found them to contain human Chorionic Gonadotrophin, or hCG. That was a curious component for a vaccine designed to protect people against lock-jaw arising from infection with rusty nail wounds or other contact with certain bacteria found in soil. The tetanus disease was indeed, also rather rare. It was also curious because hCG was a natural hormone needed to maintain a pregnancy. However, when combined with a tetanus toxoid carrier, it stimulated formation of antibodies against hCG, rendering a woman incapable of maintaining a pregnancy, a form of concealed abortion. Similar reports of vaccines laced with hCG hormones came from the Philippines and Nicaragua.

Gates' 'Gene Revolution in Africa'

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, along with David Rockefeller's Rockefeller Foundation, the creators of the GMO biotechnology, are also financing a project called The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) headed by former UN chief, Kofi Annan. Accepting the role as AGRA head in June 2007 Annan expressed his "gratitude to the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and all others who support our African campaign." The AGRA board is dominated by people from both the Gates' and Rockefeller foundations.

Monsanto, DuPont, Dow, Syngenta and other major GMO agribusiness giants are reported at the heart of AGRA, using it as a back-door to spread their patented GMO seeds across Africa under the deceptive label, 'bio-technology,' a euphemism for genetically engineered patented seeds. The person from the Gates Foundation responsible for its work with AGRA is Dr. Robert Horsch, a 25-year Monsanto GMO veteran who was on the team that developed Monsanto's RoundUp Ready GMO technologies. His job is reportedly to use Gates' money to introduce GMO into Africa.

To date South Africa is the only African country permitting legal planting of GMO crops. In 2003 Burkina Faso authorized GMO trials. In 2005 Kofi Annan's Ghana drafted bio-safety legislation and key officials expressed their intentions to pursue research into GMO crops. AGRA is being used to create networks of "agro-dealers" across Africa, at first with no mention of GMO seeds or herbicides, in order to have the infrastructure in place to massively introduce GMO.

GMO, glyphosate and population reduction

GMO crops have never been proven safe for human or animal consumption. Moreover, they are inherently genetically 'unstable' as they are an unnatural product of introducing a foreign bacteria such as Bacillus Thuringiensis (Bt) or other material into the DNA of a given seed to change its traits. Perhaps equally dangerous are the 'paired' chemical herbicides sold as a mandatory part of a GMO contract, such as Monsanto's Roundup, the most widely used such herbicide in the world. It contains highly toxic glyphosate compounds that have been independently tested and proven to exist in toxic concentrations in GMO applications far above that safe for humans or animals. Tests show that tiny amounts of glyphosate compounds would do damage to a human umbilical, embryonic and placental cells in a pregnant woman drinking the ground water near a GMO field.

One long-standing project of the US Government has been to perfect a genetically-modified variety of corn, the diet staple in Mexico and many other Latin American countries. The corn has been field tested in tests financed by the US Department of Agriculture along with a small California bio-tech company named Epicyte. Announcing his success at a 2001 press conference, the president of Epicyte, Mitch Hein, pointing to his GMO corn plants, announced, "We have a hothouse filled with corn plants that make anti-sperm antibodies."

Hein explained that they had taken antibodies from women with a rare condition known as immune infertility, isolated the genes that regulated the manufacture of those infertility antibodies, and, using genetic engineering techniques, had inserted the genes into ordinary corn seeds used to produce corn plants. In this manner, in reality they produced a concealed contraceptive embedded in corn meant for human consumption. "Essentially, the antibodies are attracted to surface receptors on the sperm," said Hein. "They latch on and make each sperm so heavy it cannot move forward. It just shakes about as if it was doing the lambada." Hein claimed it was a possible solution to world "over-population." The moral and ethical issues of feeding it to humans in Third World poor countries without their knowing it countries he left out of his remarks.

Spermicides hidden in GMO corn provided to starving Third World populations through the generosity of the Gates' foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and Kofi Annan's AGRA or vaccines that contain undisclosed sterilization agents are just two documented cases of using vaccines or GMO seeds to "reduce population."

And the 'Good Club'

Gates' TED2010 speech on zero emissions and population reduction is consistent with a report that appeared in New York City's ethnic media, Irish.Central.com in May 2009. According to the report, a secret meeting took place on May 5, 2009 at the home of Sir Paul Nurse, President of Rockefeller University, among some of the wealthiest people in America. Investment guru Warren Buffett who in 2006 decided to pool his $30 billion Buffett Foundation into the Gates foundation to create the world's largest private foundation with some $60 billions of tax-free dollars was present. Banker David Rockefeller was the host.

The exclusive letter of invitation was signed by Gates, Rockefeller and Buffett. They decided to call themselves the "Good Club." Also present was media czar Ted Turner, billionaire founder of CNN who stated in a 1996 interview for the Audubon nature magazine, where he said that a 95% reduction of world population to between 225-300 million would be "ideal." In a 2008 interview at Philadelphia's Temple University, Turner fine-tuned the number to 2 billion, a cut of more than 70% from today's population. Even less elegantly than Gates, Turner stated, "we have too many people. That's why we have global warming. We need less people using less stuff (sic)."

Others attending this first meeting of the Good Club reportedly were: Eli Broad real estate billionaire, New York's billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Wall Street billionaire and Council on Foreign Relations former head, Peter G. Peterson.

In addition, Julian H. Robertson, Jr., hedge-fund billionaire who worked with Soros attacking the currencies of Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea and the Asian Tigen economies, precipitating the 1997-98 Asia Crisis. Also present at the first session of the Good Club was Patty Stonesifer, former chief executive of the Gates foundation, and John Morgridge of Cisco Systems. The group represented a combined fortune of more than $125 billion.

According to reports apparently leaked by one of the attendees, the meeting was held in response to the global economic downturn and the numerous health and environmental crises that are plaguing the globe.

But the central theme and purpose of the secret Good Club meeting of the plutocrats was the priority concern posed by Bill Gates, namely, how to advance more effectively their agenda of birth control and global population reduction. In the talks a consensus reportedly emerged that they would "back a strategy in which population growth would be tackled as a potentially disastrous environmental, social and industrial threat."

Global Eugenics agenda

Gates and Buffett are major funders of global population reduction programs, as is Turner, whose UN Foundation was created to funnel $1 billion of his tax-free stock option earnings in AOL-Time-Warner into various birth reduction programs in the developing world. The programs in Africa and elsewhere are masked as philanthropy and providing health services for poor Africans. In reality they involve involuntary population sterilization via vaccination and other medicines that make women of child-bearing age infertile. The Gates Foundation, where Buffett deposited the bulk of his wealth two years ago, is also backing introduction of GMO seeds into Africa under the cloak of the Kofi Annan-led 'Second Green Revolution' in Africa. The introduction of GMO patented seeds in Africa to date has met with enormous indigenous resistance.

Health experts point out that were the intent of Gates really to improve the health and well-being of black Africans, the same hundreds of millions of dollars the Gates Foundation has invested in untested and unsafe vaccines could be used in providing minimal sanitary water and sewage systems. Vaccinating a child who then goes to drink feces-polluted river water is hardly healthy in any respect. But of course cleaning up the water and sewage systems of Africa would revolutionize the health conditions of the Continent.

Gates' TED2010 comments about having new vaccines to reduce global population were obviously no off-the-cuff remark. For those who doubt, the presentation Gates made at the TED2009 annual gathering said almost exactly the same thing about reducing population to cut global warming. For the mighty and powerful of the Good Club, human beings seem to be a form of pollution equal to CO2.

References

Bill Gates, "Innovating to Zero!, speech to the TED2010 annual conference, Long Beach, California, February 18, 2010, accessed in http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates.html

Telegraph.co.uk, Bill Gates makes $10 billion vaccine pledge, London Telegraph, January 29, 2010, accessed in http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/dav

Louise Voller, Kristian Villesen, WHO Donates Millions of Doses of Surplus Medical Supplies to Developing countries, Danish Information, 22 December 2009, accessed http://www.theflucase.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2419%3Awhos

-swine-flu-jab-donations-to-developing-countries-demarks-information-

reports&catid=41%3Ahighlighted-news&Itemid=105〈=en

One is the Population Research Institute in Washington, http://pop.org/

Louise Voller et al, op. cit.

Ibid.

Noted in Vaccinations and Autism, accessed in http://www.mercurypoisoningnews.com/vacautism.html

F. William Engdahl, Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation, Global Research (www.globalresearch.ca), Montreal, 2007, pp. 79-84.

James A. Miller, Are New Vaccines Laced With Birth-Control Drugs?, HLI Reports, Human Life International, Gaithersburg, Maryland; June-July 1995.

Cited in F. William Engdahl, "Doomsday Seed Vault" in the Arctic: Bill Gates, Rockefeller and the GMO giants know something we don't, Global Research, December 4, 2007, accessed in http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7529

Mariam Mayet, Africa's Green Revolution rolls out the Gene Revolution, African Centre for Biosafety, ACB Briefing Paper No. 6/2009, Melville, South Africa, April 2009.

Ibid.

Nora Benachour and Gilles-Eric Seralini, Glyphosate Formulations Induce Apoptosis and Necrosis in Human Umbilical Embryonic, and Placental Cells, Chemical Research in Toxicology Journal, American Chemical Society, 2009, 22 (1), pp 97105.

Robin McKie, GMO Corn Set to Stop Man Spreading His Seed, London, The Observer, 9 September 2001.

Ibid. McKie writes, "The pregnancy prevention plants are the handiwork of the San Diego biotechnology company Epicyte, where researchers have discovered a rare class of human antibodies that attack spermthe company has created tiny horticultural factories that make contraceptivesEssentially, the antibodies are attracted to surface receptors on the sperm," said Hein. "They latch on and make each sperm so heavy it cannot move forward. It just shakes about as if it was doing the lambada."

Ted Turner, cited along with youTube video of Turner in Aaron Dykes, Ted Turner: World Needs a 'Voluntary' One-Child Policy for the Next Hundred Years, Jones Report.com, April 29, 2008. Accessed in http://www.jonesreport.com/article/04_08/28turner_911.html

John Harlow, Billionaire club in bid to curb overpopulation, London, The Sunday Times

May 24, 2009. Accessed online in http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6350303.ece.

Ibid.

United Nations Foundation, Women and Population Program, accessed in http://www.unfoundation.org/about-unf/experts/

Article courtesy of Rense

Ban of controversial Painkiller dramatically cuts Suicides in UK

2010-03-08T02:10:00.000-08:00

by David Gutierrez
8th March 2010

The withdrawal of a popular painkiller from the market in the United Kingdom has led to a dramatic decrease in the number of suicides and accidental overdoses in that country, according to a study conducted by researchers from Oxford University's Centre for Suicide Research and published in the British Medical Journal.

The drug in question is a combination of the narcotic painkiller dextropropoxyphene (in the opioid family) with the over-the-counter painkiller acetaminophen, also known as paracetamol or Tylenol. In the United Kingdom, the drug was marketed as co-proxamol, but it is also known as Darvon with APAP, Capadex, Di-Antalvic, Di-Gesic and Lentogesic.

In 2005, the British Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) decided to remove co-proxamol from the market after statistics emerged suggesting that the drug was particularly dangerous, causing between 300 and 400 self-poisoning deaths every year. Approximately 80 percent of these deaths were intentional suicides.

The agency instructed doctors to phase out use of the drug by 2007, and over that period prescriptions of co-proxamol fell 59 percent and deaths from the drug fell 62 percent. This translated into 295 fewer suicides and 54 fewer accidental overdoses from the drug. Significantly, there was no concurrent increase in suicides or accidental overdoses from other painkillers, even though use of those drugs increased correspondingly.

"This marked reduction in suicides and accidental poisonings involving co-proxamol during this period, with no evidence of an increase in deaths involving other analgesics, suggests the initiative has been effective," lead researcher Keith Hawton said.

"Co-proxamol is extremely dangerous in overdose -- only a small overdose can be fatal, and death can occur very rapidly -- before medical attention can be sought," an MHRA spokesperson said. "[In addition,] there is no robust evidence that co-proxamol offers any advantage over paracetamol or ibuprofen at normal doses."

The FDA is currently considering whether to withdraw the drug from the U.S. market.

Sources for this story include: news.bbc.co.uk

Article courtesy of Natural News

Faked Pandemic

2010-03-06T20:26:00.000-08:00

by Louise Voller, Kristian Villesen
27th December 2009

Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, the Chair of the Health Committee
in The European Council: Swine-Flu Pandemic Interview

”We have had a mild flu - and a false pandemic,” says Wolfgang Wodarg, the chair of the Health Committee in The European Council. The German parliamentarian is also an epidemiologist and former health director in Flensburg. For that reason he has followed the H1N1-pandemic closely since June 11 and up to the present. He calls the pandemic "one of the greatest medical scandals of the century”, and for that reason he has decided to take the case to the European Council:

"In January, we will arrange an emergency debate about the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on the WHO, and 47 parliaments all over Europe are going to be informed. Following this, we will initiate an investigation and hearings involving those responsible for the pandemic emergency,” says Wolfgang Wodarg.

"The aim is that none of the pharmaceutical companies under any circumstances must be allowed to make their influence felt on pandemic emergencies,” he says and adds that rules for patenting also will be checked:

"Vaccines are also an ethical issue. The pharmaceutical industry should not be allowed to get a patent to develop a preparation which is so important for our society.”

DEFINITION OF A PANDEMIC

As early as 2004, during the avian flu, Wolfgang Wodarg (at that time a German parliamentarian for the SPD) went to see WHO to ask for proof that a pandemic emergency was required:

"The avian flu was more dangerous than the H1N1, but far less contagious, and accordingly the arguments for a coming pandemic were thin to put it mildly. But the avian flu helped create an atmosphere of panic, and it influenced many countries to create a pandemic emergency plan. Furthermore Germany, Denmark and many other countries have bought large stocks of Tamiflu, even though it has not been sufficiently tested,” he says, and criticises also the vaccine contracts that many countries entered into in the period after the avian flu:

"The governments have sealed contracts with vaccine producers where they secure orders in advance and take upon themselves almost all the responsibility. In this way the producers of vaccines are sure of enormous gains without having any financial risks. So they just wait, until WHO says "pandemic” and activate the contracts."

For that reason, Wolfgang Wodarg also finds it suspicious that WHO changed it’s definition of a pandemic on it’s homepage at the end of May this year:

"From June 2009 it is no longer necessary, that "an enormous amount of people have contracted the illness or died” - there simply have to be a virus, spreading beyond borders, and one that people have no immunity towards,” he says.

THE PATENT HOLDERS ARE THE WINNERS

Every year a new flu comes into existence - and every year you accordingly mix existing vaccine with the new virus in order to inoculate the population against the new seasonal flu.

Wolfgang Wodarg holds the opinion, that you could have used the same method to vaccinate the population against swine flu in a much cheaper fashion.

"If you simply had added H1N1 virus to the flu vaccines we already have in stocks, then there would have been no need for at pandemic emergency - but some of the additives in the vaccines are patented, and therefore nobody from the industry is interested in mixing the old vaccine with the new one,” he says and adds:

"Furthermore the producers recommended, that you inoculate twice, which is not normal. It is self evident that they earn more money in that way. Therefore several things made me suspicious.”

NO CONTROL OVER WHO

Wolfgang Wodarg chose to consult all the other members of the European Council because at the end of the day there is no control with the WHO. Only governments can exercise influence through the annual assembly in WHO. Today, a majority of the Health Committee in the European Council agree on an independent investigation of the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on WHO.

In Russia a Russian parliamentarian has suggested a boycot of the WHO until transparency is established. What do you think about that idea?

Wodarg:"Everybody who knows about epidemiology should have questioned the way WHO handled this case from the beginning.”

How will we ensure we have technical knowledge about vaccines, if the industry is not allowed to participate?

Wodarg:"Independent institutes which are controlled by the parliaments of the member countries, and which maintain complete transparency so that the public can follow what is going on. They will have to set the standard for how much money is going to be used on vaccines. In Germany alone, we have spend 700 millions euros on pandemic emergency and in Europe it is around two billions euros. It is emormous amount of money. But furthermore vaccines are an ethical topic. A vaccine which is that important should not be patented. Everyone, who technically is capable of doing so should produce vaccines as quickly as possible when an emergency arises. In that way we can save more lives when a true pandemic arrives.”

Is it realistic to remove the industry totally from the WHO?

Wodarg: "No, and therefore we have to insist on transparency. Furthermore they don’t have to participate in the committees, which in reality decide when we have a pandemic, and who is going to be inoculated. They just have to answer how quickly they can deliver vaccines. And only when asked,” says Wolfgang Wodarg.

WHO gives 180 million doses to third world countries, which they have got from the member countries surplus stocks. What do you thing about that?

Wodarg:"I find it completely senseless, and if we don’t maintain the control with untested additives then it may cause more harm than good."

Source: www.information.dk/219754 (danish)

Article courtesy of Dr. med. Wolfgang Wodarg

>>>> U.S. Congressman Dr. Ron Paul on the recent Swine Flu Scare >>>>

Fury as EU approves GM Potato

2010-03-05T04:55:00.000-08:00

by Martin Hickman and Genevieve Roberts
4th March 2010

Critics claim Plant could spread

antibiotic-resistant Diseases to Humans

The introduction of a genetically modified potato in Europe risks the development of human diseases that fail to respond to antibiotics, it was claimed last night.

German chemical giant BASF this week won approval from the European Commission for commercial growing of a starchy potato with a gene that could resist antibiotics – useful in the fight against illnesses such as tuberculosis.

Farms in Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic may plant the potato for industrial use, with part of the tuber fed to cattle, according to BASF, which fought a 13-year battle to win approval for Amflora. But other EU member states, including Italy and Austria and anti-GM campaigners angrily attacked the move, claiming it could result in a health disaster.

During the regulatory tussle over the potato, the EU's pharmaceutical regulator had expressed concern about its potential to interfere with the efficacy of antibiotics on infections that develop multiple resistance to other antibiotics, a growing problem in human and veterinary medicine. Amflora contains a gene that produces an enzyme which generally confers resistance to several antibiotics, including kanamycin, neomycin, butirosin, and gentamicin.

The antibiotics could become "extremely important" to treat otherwise multi-resistant infections and tuberculosis, the European Medicines Authority (EMA) warned. Drug resistance is part of the explanation for the resurgence of TB, which infects eight million people worldwide every year.

"In the absence of an effective therapy, infectious Multiple Drug Resistant TB patients will continue to spread the disease, producing new infections with MDR-TB strains," an EMA spokesman said. "Until we introduce a new drug with demonstrated activity against MDR strains, this aspect of the TB epidemic could explode at an exponential level."

After member states become deadlocked on the potato's approval, the European Commission approved it for use in industries such as paper production, saying it would save energy, water and chemicals. Once the starch has been removed, the skins can be fed to animals, whose meat would not have to be labelled as GM.

The EC, whose decision was backed by the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa), said there was no good reason for withholding approval. Health and consumer policy commissioner John Dalli said: "Responsible innovation will be my guiding principle when dealing with innovative technologies."

"Stringent" controls would ensure none of the tubers were left in the ground, ensuring altered genes did not escape into the environment. Opponents fear bacteria inside the guts of animals fed the GM potato – which can cause human diseases – may develop resistance to antibiotics.

Some member states were furious. "Not only are we against this decision, but we want to underscore that we will not allow the questioning of member states' sovereignty on this matter," said Italy's Agriculture Minister, Luca Zaia. Austria said it would ban cultivation of the potato within its borders, while France said it would ask an expert panel for further research.

Campaigners accused Brussels of failing to follow the precautionary principle. Friends of the Earth's Heike Moldenhauer said: "The commissioner whose job is to protect consumers has, in one of his first decisions, ignored public opinion and safety concerns to please the world's biggest chemical company."

Campaigners suspect Brussels is in favour of the widespread planting of GM crops despite opposition by some member states. Yesterday it also announced its intention to allow states more leeway in backing GM organisms.

Article courtesy of The Independent

>>>> discuss this topic @ The Independent >>>>

U.S. Congressman Dr. Ron Paul on the recent Swine Flu Scare

2010-03-04T12:12:00.000-08:00

by Neil Kerslake
4th March 2010

Dr. Ron Paul, a highly respected long-term member of the U.S. Congress and physician, talks about the recent Swine Flu 'Pandemic' and puts it into context with other diseases, such as Tuberculosis. He also recounts the last Swine Flu Scare that occurred in 1976, the year he became a Congressman, where the only deaths were caused by the Flu Vaccine itself.

However, the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services are spending a lot of money on an advertising campaign to brand anyone that feels the same about the Swine Flu Vaccine as Dr. Paul as a 'crazy conspiracy theorist'. The following Video was hastily removed from their YouTube Channel following an article at Prison Planet exposing their inability to seperate fact from fiction and pointing out that the Head of the Council of Europe’s Sub-committee on Health, Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, labeled the 'Pandemic', “One of the greatest medical scandals of the century”.

This excellent analysis of the Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) used in the Ad Spot was provided by Wesley @YouTube:

(1). It opens up with a sign that goes by too quickly for you to read it, and has a dude pass by that masks it. To the right, there is a softball league sign-up sheet with just one spot left. Makes you wanna go jump on, just in case it "runs out".

(2). The arrow on the sign leads you from the sign-up sheet, to the "H1N1 Flu Shots TODAY!" sign, over to the official looking document on the left, symbolizing strength. The dude who walks by, just happens to be walking to the left also, strengthening that line. The dude walks by the group talking over a water cooler. He looks over at the conversation and seems interested, but it's more important to him to go get the shot than waste time talking and thinking about it.

(3). The guy walking up intently in the background serves to distract your mind a little bit from what's really going on. The first girl seems to be their target, the general skeptical public. She is speaking with the rest of the public, the two girls, who have no dialogue of their own. She poses possibly the least radical bit, that she heard it's made from platypus milk.

(4). Lots of stuff is made from natural sources, your brain is like wtf, okay that might be true, but like, wtf. It is now in a receptive mode to consider a new idea to enter it. She begins the discussion, and is curious about the facts. The guy walking up jumps in the scene from the girl's left side to her right, and trips your brain. So they put you in a confused but receptive state, and then took your conscious focus away from the conversation. You are utterly defenseless at this point.

(5). The second guy looks generally like a mad scientist. I think that's an alien on his cup, but the video quality is a little low so I could be wrong. He also has large glasses, a couple pens in his pocket, and a large tie. The alien symbolizes the man's association with another well talked about topic that is considered ridiculous by the general public, and everyone who talks about it is also considered ridiculous.

(6). The scientist look just serves to discredit the people who are doing actual research on the vaccination. The two girls who symbolize the general public almost have their backs turned to him, indicating that they feel he is ridiculous. He almost interrupts their discussion to tell the first girl that she is completely wrong, and that the swine flu vaccine was given to the earth by a mystical power. She immediately is like wtf, this researcher is crazy.

(7). He almost interrupts their discussion to tell the first girl that she is completely wrong, and that the swine flu vaccine was given to the earth by a mystical power. She immediately is like wtf, this researcher is crazy.

(8). The third guy comes in and begins talking about hypnotic suggestion, and you watch him going into that trance state. The camera remains centered on him, and the the viewer resonates with this state, putting them into that same hypnotic trance that man is talking about. Other than when they show their website, that camera shot is the longest in the commercial.

(9). The viewer, still resonating with that trance state, is shown the first girl, who is like "okay wtf. Yeah everyone who opposes it is crazy. I shouldn't have even brought it up. I'm gonna go get the shot now OK. Bye." The next voice tells you absolutely no facts. it provides no argument because the whole idea is to get the public not to argue, and just think that everybody who opposes it is ridiculous. Period.

(10). Actually throughout the entire commercial, no actual information about the vaccination is shared. While the voice is talking, the dude in the middle is pointing up at some nothing in the sky and everyone is looking up, and he is waving his hands in an outward motion, totally distracting and splitting the mind of the viewer.

They actually did a really good job. it's even possible that they designed it so that we would think it's just ridiculous and not do the work to pick it apart.

How to fight this:

The average American after watching this is probably going to say something like, "these flu shot skeptics, some of their arguments are just ridiculous". The best thing to do is ask them what specifically seems ridiculous to them. They probably won't have the slightest idea. Allow them a chance to speak their side, if they even have one. This will give them a chance to see the error in their own thinking, before they feel like they are being force fed something.

Sometimes they will have an argument. Come armed with knowledge. Gently provide them with facts, but don't overload. The idea is not to start a battle, but get them to retreat when they see that they have absolutely zero credible facts.

If a battle begins and you are not armed, retreat by telling them to do their own research. It's better than starting an argument and then having absolutely nothing to back yourself up with. Just suggest they look it up before getting a shot. Most reasonable people will agree with you here, and the argument will end, and hopefully they will go out and look it up.

Article by Neil Kerslake for crazations.tv

Videos courtesy of Congressman Ron Paul and johngrover77 @YouTube

>>>> Faked Pandemic >>>>

100% of Fish in U.S. Streams found contaminated with Mercury

2010-03-04T11:47:00.000-08:00

by David Gutierrez
3rd March 2010

In a new study conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), every single fish tested from 291 freshwater streams across the United States was found to be contaminated with mercury.

"This study shows just how widespread mercury pollution has become in our air, watersheds and many of our fish in freshwater streams," said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that builds up in the food chain at ever higher concentrations in predators such as large fish and humans. It is especially damaging to the developing nervous systems of fetuses and children, but can have severe effects on adults, as well. The pollutant enters the environment almost wholly as atmospheric emissions from industrial processes, primarily the burning of coal for electricity. It then spreads across the plant and settles back to the surface, eventually concentrating in rivers, lakes and oceans, where it enters the aquatic food chain.

The number one cause of human mercury poisoning in the United States is the consumption of fish and shellfish.

Researchers tested the water, sediment and fish of the 291 streams between 1998 and 2005. Fish tested were mostly larger species near the top of the food chain, such as largemouth bass.

All fish were contaminated with mercury, more than 66 percent of them at levels higher than those set by the Environmental Protection agency as a "level of concern for fish-eating mammals," according to Reuters. More than 25 percent of the fish were contaminated at levels higher than those set as the threshold for human consumption.

The study is the first to focus on mercury contamination of streams, rather than lakes, reservoirs, wetlands or oceans. The researchers found the highest mercury concentrations in fish from the coastal blackwater streams of the Southeast. Apparently the combination of pine forests and wooded wetlands found in these regions transforms mercury very effectively into its more toxic organic form (methylmercury). Mercury concentrations were also high in streams fed from areas with a history of mining.

Article courtesy of Natural News

'Risk Reloaded' Summary

2010-03-04T11:04:00.000-08:00

26th October 2009

'Risk Reloaded' has been described as "a hugely important report - very well-informed and thoroughly researched and referenced". Here we provide a simple summary of the information it contains on food safety testing arguments re the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

The GM lobby has long claimed that, unlike in the U.S., GM food safety risk assessments in the EU are overly rigorous. This report shows this claim to be completely untrue.

Risk Reloaded

Risk Analysis of Genetically Engineered

Plants within the European Union

A report by Testbiotech e.V.

Institute for Independent Impact Assessment in Biotechnology

Authors: Christoph Then, Christof Potthof

October 2009

Summary points compiled by GMWatch

GM food safety testing

*European Food Safety Authority's (EFSA) concept of risk assessment of genetically modified (GM) plants is essentially based upon guidelines that were developed by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) as early as 1993 on the assumption that the risks posed by GM plants are the same as those posed by conventional plants.

*But the differences between conventional breeding and genetic engineering of plants are becoming clearer in the light of current genome research. Experience gained from conventional breeding cannot be applied to GM plants.

*Changes in the activity of plant genes in the genetic engineering process are not an expression of natural gene regulation but an indication of disruption.

*The outdated risk assessment methods for GM plants mean that their safety, predictability and controllability are not examined properly in the approvals procedure.

*GM plants are tested much more superficially than irradiated food, pesticides, chemicals and medicines. To prove the safety of radiated food, for example, feeding trials were conducted on mice, rats, dogs, monkeys and even humans. Feeding trials were performed over several years to investigate growth, carcinogenicity and effects on reproduction. GM plants have undergone no such investigations.

*Overall the risk assessment process for GM plants as defined by the EFSA does not even meet the requirements of the EU for comprehensive testing. It replaces actual risk testing by a system of assumptions.

*More and more cases are being documented showing that independent risk research is being hampered. In many cases it is not even possible to access necessary testing materials. Even the publication of findings is being obstructed.

*Society, politicians, and approval boards should no longer close their eyes to the fact that GM technology uses methods that are largely outdated and riskier than was originally thought. It is not the fear of new products that make a critical appraisal of GM technology necessary, but rather the fact that its scientific principles have been called more and more into question by new findings.

*More than ten years after the first commercial cultivation of GM plants, there is no generally agreed perception about the risks posed by those plants or about how to conduct proper risk assessment.

*The concept of 'substantial equivalence' (the assumption that a GM plant is substantially equivalent to its non-GM counterpart) was introduced by the OECD in 1993 and has come under harsh criticism from scientists. However, it is still seen as the starting point for the EFSA's risk assessment, thereby influencing its outcome.

*Even in cases when significant differences between transgenic plants and their counterparts are observed, they are mostly dismissed by the EFSA as being not of "biological significance" – without attempts to verify or further investigate these differences to detect unintended effects.

*The EFSA does not think that feeding trials with GM plants (or derived food and feed) are necessary.

*GM plants of complex makeup cannot be assessed by analysing some of their isolated components, as is habitually done by industry in its own testing of its GM plants. Testing of whole GM plants is especially necessary on the new generation of GM crops, which have several 'stacked' GM traits. But feeding trials using whole transgenic plants are not required by EFSA.

*Scientists point out that testing should be extended to include whole-plant/whole-food testing in both toxicity and allergenicity studies in order to more reliably detect unintended and detrimental effects of genetic modification.

*These arguments are not followed by the EFSA. EFSA only suggests more detailed investigations in connection with products such as Golden Rice (where market authorization has not yet been applied for). According to the EFSA the metabolism of these plants can be regarded as being changed on several levels, so feeding trials with whole plants should be performed in order to avoid negative health effects. In this argument, EFSA contradicts the position of the Golden Rice team. But EFSA at the same time assumes that transgenic plants where approval for commercialisation is currently being applied for should be seen as harbouring only minor risks. EFSA does not consider feeding trials to be necessary even in the case of stacked events.

*EFSA states, incorrectly, that one introduced gene produces one gene product, with no other knock-on effects on the plant: "The current generation of GM plants cultivated for commercial purposes has been modified through the introduction of one or a few genes coding for herbicide tolerance, insect resistance or a combination of these traits. In these plants the genetic insert leads to the production of a gene product, which does not interfere with the overall metabolism of the plant cell, and does not alter the composition of the GM plant except for the introduced trait." The truth is that genes interact with each other in complex ways and their function is defined by the environment.

*Risks to human health of products such as radiated food, pesticides and pharmaceuticals have to be investigated to prove their safety without anything being presumed. But in the case of GM plants the risks first have to be proven before detailed investigations are made. The approach chosen by the EFSA turns around the burden of proof: GM plants are assumed to be safe until the opposite is proven.

*Just how much the science of GM has moved on from the outdated assumptions made by EFSA is clear from the patent applications of companies such as Monsanto. Here's Monsanto's patent application WO2004053055, which claims unintended effects(!) in GM plants: "Nonetheless, the frequency of success of enhancing the transgenic plant is low due to a number of factors including the low predictability of the effects of a specific gene on the plant's growth, development and environmental response, the low frequency of maize transformation, the lack of highly predictable control of the gene once introduced into the genome, and other undesirable effects of the transformation event and tissue culture process."

Summary courtesy of GMWatch

>>>> download the full Report as a PDF File >>>>

Brazilian Farmers declare War on Monsanto

2010-03-04T10:14:00.000-08:00

9th February 2010

Growers in the Brazilian State of Mato Grosso have declared war against Monsanto, the multinational corporate owner of the GMO soya technology known as RR (Roundup Ready). After exhausting all attempts to engage the company in dialogue, the growers are now considering legal action. In Cuiaba, Aprosoja (the Association of Soya and Corn Producers Association of the State of Mato Grosso) is preparing a lawsuit. In Sinop (500km North of Cuiaba) the growers are looking to sue the company as well.

Aprosoya wants to determine if the [patent] royalty fee paid by the soya growers is actualy due. "We want to know what sort of patent is generating this type of fee, because depending on the type, the company does not have the right to charge us anything at all. We also need to know the patent's validity period," explains the President of Aprosoja, Mr. Glauber Silveira.

In Mato Grosso, growers increased the cultivated area of GMOs from 2.6 million hectares (2008/09 crop) to approximately 3 million hectares in this year's crop. The expansion of the area will increase Monsanto's profit from R$39 million (*15.2m) to R$45 million (*15.6m), an increase of 15.38%. According to calculations made by the producers, the fee Monanto charged for the use of its patent amounts to R$15.00 (*5.85) per hectare.

Aprosoja intends to issue a notification demanding that Monsanto provide proper justification regarding the royalty fees. "We have been informed that Monsanto is inducing the seed producers of Mato Grosso to provide only GMO seeds", denounces Mr. Silveira. In Mato Grosso the GMO plantation now occupies half of the entire cultivated area of soya, comprising about 6 million hectares.

SINOP - Following several meetings without any positive results, the Sinop Rural Union is also planning to sue Monsanto. Approximately 50% of the crop fields in the Northern Region of Mato Grosso are currently cultivated with GMO varieties. These differ from the conventional because of their resistance to herbicides containing glyphosate, used in desiccation before and after planting to eliminate all kinds of weeds.

This kind of resistance enables the growers to apply the herbicide on the soya only, thus reducing their production costs and the number of herbicide applications. But the sectors' questions concern the royalty fees imposed by Monsanto for their use of the seed.

The president of the Union, Mr. Antônio Galvan, explained that two collections are made: The first one being when the seed is bought (by bank order). "In January they charged R$0.45 per kilo of seed, which is equivalent to 30% of the price of each sack.

The main questioning lies on the second collection which is made when the product is leaving the fields. When it arrives at the warehouses the grain is tested and identified as GMO or non-GMO. The problem occurs when, in many cases, conventional oleaginous seeds are contaminated and the growers end up having to pay royalties without having acquired any GMO seeds in the first place.

This contamination occurs in the fields by means of pollination or at the time of planting, as well as at the time of stocking the harvest. "Cross pollination may take place if there's a field of GMO soya next to a Non-GMO one at flowering time. Contamination can also take place if the machines are not well cleaned at harvest time, and some GMO beans remain. In this way, they will be considered GMO when they are tested".

Article courtesy of Organic Consumers Association

Monsanto 'faked' Data for approvals claims its ex-chief

2010-03-04T10:01:00.000-08:00

by Dinesh C. Sharma
9th February 2010

The debate on genetically modified (GM) brinjal variety continues to generate heat. Former managing director of Monsanto India, Tiruvadi Jagadisan, is the latest to join the critics of Bt brinjal, perhaps the first industry insider to do so.

Jagadisan, who worked with Monsanto for nearly two decades, including eight years as the managing director of India operations, spoke against the new variety during the public consultation held in Bangalore on Saturday.

On Monday, he elaborated by saying the company "used to fake scientific data" submitted to government regulatory agencies to get commercial approvals for its products in India.

The former Monsanto boss said government regulatory agencies with which the company used to deal with in the 1980s simply depended on data supplied by the company while giving approvals to herbicides.

"The Central Insecticide Board was supposed to give these approvals based on the location and crop-specific data from India. But it simply accepted foreign data supplied by Monsanto. They did not even have a test tube to validate the data and, at times, the data itself was faked," Jagadisan said.

"I retired from the company as I felt the management of Monsanto, USA, was exploiting our country," Jagadisan, 84, said from his home in Bangalore.

"At that time, Monsanto was getting into the seed business and I had information that a 'terminator gene' was to be incorporated in the seeds being supplied by the firm. This meant that the farmer had to buy fresh seeds from Monsanto at heavy cost every time he planted the crop," he said.

Jagadisan said the parent company also retracted from the assurance given to then minister for chemicals and fertilisers, Vasant Sathe, on setting up a manufacturing unit in collaboration with Hindustan Insecticides for the herbicide butachlor.

"The negotiations went on for over a year and in the meantime, Monsanto imported and sold large quantities of the product and made huge profits," he said.

Asked to comment on Jagadisan's allegations, a Monsanto spokesperson said: "We have full faith in the Indian regulatory system, which has its checks and measures in place to ensure accuracy and authenticity of data furnished to them." On approval of GM crops, the spokesperson said the regulatory process was stringent and "no biotech crops are allowed in the market until they undergo extensive and rigid crop safety assessments, following strict scientific protocols".

Article courtesy of India Today

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Indian Law would make criticizing GM Crops an Imprisonable Offence

2010-03-04T09:29:00.000-08:00

by Imran Khan
26th February 2010

Criticising GM Crops may land you in Jail

Criticising Genetically Modified (GM) products could land you in jail — if the draconian draft Biotechnology Regulatory Authority Bill (BRAB) of 2009, which will be tabled in the current session of the parliament by the UPA government, is passed.

In an unprecedented muzzle on the right to freedom of speech of the citizen, Chapter 13 section 63 of the draft bill says, “Whoever, without any evidence or scientific record misleads the public about the safety of the organisms and products…shall be punished with imprisonment for a term that shall not be less than six months but which may extend to one year and with fine which may extend to two lakh rupees or with both.” The BRAI Bill drafted by the department of bio-technology under the Ministry of Science and Technology comes on the heels of a moratorium on Bt Brinjal announced by the Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh.

“What they are doing is much worse than what Hitler or Mussolini did. Through this bill, they want to take absolute authority. They are behaving like a vendor instead of a regulator,” Pushpa M Bhargava, a member of the Supreme Court appointed Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) said.

There are also other provisions in this bill which are disconcerting.

Article 27 (1) of the bill seeks to keep the information related to the research, approval and science of the GM Products out of the purview of the Right to Information ( RTI) Act.

In other words, farmers, NGO’s and Environmental groups that have been on the forefront of the campaign against BT Brinjal and other genetically modified crops, can longer obtain information about it.

Not only that, the three member experts of the Department of Biotechnology will override any existing legislation about GM technology in the states.

The draft bill also states that the BRAI will set up its own appellate tribunal which will have the jurisdiction to hear arguments on the issues concerning biotechnology. In case of any disputes, petitioners can only approach the Supreme Court of India.

"The BRAI bill is more draconian than what the nation faced during the Emergency" says Devinder Sharma, writer and Food Policy Analyst. “If the Bill was already in force, I would have been in jail.

Jairam Ramesh too would have been in jail for challenging the health and environmental claims of the company developing Bt Brinjal,” he said. The bill demonstrates the extraordinary hold the multinational companies have over the UPA government, he added. Kavitha Kurugunti of Kheti Virasat Mission said that this bill is just a way to silence the voices who are opposed to GM technology.

Article courtesy of Express Buzz

>>>> discuss this topic @ Express Buzz >>>>

EU Commission approves cultivation of first GM Crop in 12 years

2010-03-04T07:32:00.000-08:00

by Leigh Phillips
3rd March 2010

The European Commission on Tuesday (2nd March) approved the first genetically modified crop for cultivation in Europe in 12 years, provoking the ire of environmental groups and some member states and cheers from the biotech industry.

The EU executive gave the green light to the growing of the Amflora potato, produced by Germany's BASF, the largest chemical company in the world, alongside the entry onto the European market of three GM maize products.

Austria denounced the decision, declaring that Vienna would immediately ban the potato, while Italy's agriculture minister warned that the commission had overstepped its authority.

"We will not allow the questioning of member states' sovereignty on this matter," he said.

In the past, a majority of EU member states has opposed the authorisation of the potato, which is not intended for human consumption. Rather, its starch would be used in industrial processes. Critics say however that the crop could cross with potatoes that humans do eat.

EU health commissioner John Dalli announced the decision saying the EU executive was committed to a "science-based union authorisation system."

"It is clear to me that there were no new scientific issues that merited further assessments ... All scientific issues, particularly those concerning safety for human and animal health and the environment have been fully addressed."

He added that the delays to approval were inhibiting innovation: "My guiding principle in the context of innovative technologies will be that of responsible innovation. It is innovation that will give our citizens the best guarantee of safety and the strongest impetus for economic growth."

Green groups however are worried that the BASF potato contains a gene that confers resistance to some antibiotics.

While the European Food Safety Authority has given the potato a passing grade on a number of occasions, the World Health Organisation and the European Medicines Agency have warned of the "critical importance" of the antibiotics affected by the Amflora potato, Greenpeace said in reaction to the commission green light.

"Releasing BASF's GM potato into the environment could raise bacterial resistance to life-saving medicines, including drugs used for the treatment of tuberculosis," said the group's agriculture campaigner, Marco Contiero.

"In six years, [EU Commission President] Barroso has been unable to bury scientific evidence questioning the safety of this GM potato," he continued, but now "health commissioner Dalli has agreed to this cold-blooded approval that flies in the face of science, public opinion and EU law."

In 2001, the EU adopted legislation phasing out products containing antibiotic resistance genes.

BASF for its part was happy with the decision. "After waiting for more than 13 years, we are delighted that the European Commission has approved Amflora," said Stefan Marcinowski, a member of the BASF board.

The company said commercial cultivation of the potato could begin as soon as this year. The potato is intended for industrial processes rather than human consumption. Its starch gives paper a higher gloss, and makes concrete and adhesives stay wet for a longer period of time, reducing the consumption of energy and raw materials.

Europabio, the European biotech industry trade association, said: "Today's approvals represent a step in the right direction and a return to science-based decision making. This is essential if European farmers are to be given the freedom to choose whether or not to cultivate innovative GM crops."

Article courtesy of EU Observer

Aspartame is now being marketed as a Natural Sweetener

2010-02-19T11:45:00.000-08:00

by Ethan Huff
12th February 2010

In response to growing awareness about the dangers of artificial sweeteners, what does the manufacturer of one of the world's most notable artificial sweeteners do? Why, rename it and begin marketing it as natural, of course. This is precisely the strategy of Ajinomoto, maker of aspartame, which hopes to pull the wool over the eyes of the public with its rebranded version of aspartame, called "AminoSweet".

Over 25 years ago, aspartame was first introduced into the European food supply. Today, it is an everyday component of most diet beverages, sugar-free desserts, and chewing gums in countries worldwide. But the tides have been turning as the general public is waking up to the truth about artificial sweeteners like aspartame and the harm they cause to health. The latest aspartame marketing scheme is a desperate effort to indoctrinate the public into accepting the chemical sweetener as natural and safe, despite evidence to the contrary.

Aspartame was an accidental discovery by James Schlatter, a chemist who had been trying to produce an anti-ulcer pharmaceutical drug for G.D. Searle & Company back in 1965. Upon mixing aspartic acid and phenylalanine, two naturally-occurring amino acids, he discovered that the new compound had a sweet taste. The company merely changed its FDA approval application from drug to food additive and, voila, aspartame was born.

G.D. Searle & Company first patented aspartame in 1970. An internal memo released in the same year urged company executives to work on getting the FDA into the "habit of saying yes" and of encouraging a "subconscious spirit of participation" in getting the chemical approved.

G.D. Searle & Company submitted its first petition to the FDA in 1973 and fought for years to gain FDA approval, submitting its own safety studies that many believed were inadequate and deceptive. Despite numerous objections, including one from its own scientists, the company was able to convince the FDA to approve aspartame for commercial use in a few products in 1974, igniting a blaze of controversy.

In 1976, then FDA Commissioner Alexander Schmidt wrote a letter to Sen. Ted Kennedy expressing concern over the "questionable integrity of the basic safety data submitted for aspartame safety". FDA Chief Counsel Richard Merrill believed that a grand jury should investigate G.D. Searle & Company for lying about the safety of aspartame in its reports and for concealing evidence proving the chemical is unsafe for consumption.

Despite the myriad of evidence gained over the years showing that aspartame is a dangerous toxin, it has remained on the global market with the exception of a few countries that have banned it. In fact, it continued to gain approval for use in new types of food despite evidence showing that it causes neurological brain damage, cancerous tumors, and endocrine disruption, among other things.

The details of aspartame's history are lengthy, but the point remains that the carcinogen was illegitimately approved as a food additive through heavy-handed prodding by a powerful corporation with its own interests in mind. Practically all drugs and food additives are approved by the FDA not because science shows they are safe but because companies essentially lobby the FDA with monetary payoffs and complete the agency's multi-million dollar approval process.

Changing aspartame's name to something that is "appealing and memorable", in Ajinomoto's own words, may hoodwink some but hopefully most will reject this clever marketing tactic as nothing more than a desperate attempt to preserve the company's multi-billion dollar cash cow. Do not be deceived.

Sources:

Ajinomoto brands aspartame 'AminoSweet' - FoodBev.com
Aspartame History Highlights - Janet Starr Hull
FDA's approval of aspartame under scrutiny - The Globe and Mail (Canada)
An Overdue Ban On A Dangerous Sweetener - Huffington Post

Article courtesy of Natural News

Aspartame: A Bittersweet Symphony

2010-02-19T11:20:00.000-08:00

by Neil Kerslake
19th February 2010

Donald Rumsfeld orchestrated the poisoning of The World with Aspartame

(also known as AminoSweet, NutraSweet, Spoonful, Equal, Canderel and E951)

Yes, that Donald Rumsfeld – the ex-US Secretary of ~~Offense~~ Defense – the one that holds his fellow man in such high regard; he thinks its OK to torture innocent Iraqis to death; hold anyone at Guantanamo Bay, without trial, indefinitely; and was a founding member of The Project for a New American Century, which calls for worldwide population reduction !!!

In December 1965, Jim Schlatter, a scientist working for the US Drug Company Searle licked some of a new ulcer drug from his fingers and discovered the ultra-sweet taste of Aspartame. Eureka!!! His boss, Dr. Bob Mazur, realised that selling this chemical as a food additive to hundreds of millions of healthy people every day would mean Billion$ of Dollar$ profit for $earle.

Searle’s early tests of the substance showed it produced microscopic holes and tumours in the brains of mice, epileptic seizures in monkeys, and was converted by animals into dangerous substances, including Formaldehyde.

In 1974, however, in spite of the information in its files, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Aspartame as a dry-food only additive. But the Agency also made public, for the first time, the data supporting a food-additive decision. This data was subsequently reviewed by renowned brain researcher, Dr. John W. Olney from Washington University in St. Louis, and many other scientists. Dr. Olney petitioned the FDA for a Public Hearing as he had already shown that Aspartic Acid (just one Aspartame component) caused microscopic holes in the brains of rats after each feeding. Aspartame also includes Phenylalanine and Methanol which are neurotoxins.

Faced with this array of possible health dangers, the FDA granted the hearing requests. In lieu of withdrawing its Aspartame approval, the Agency prevailed on Searle to refrain from marketing the sweetener until after completion of the hearing process. It then proposed that a Public Board of Inquiry (PBOI) review the matter.

In July of 1975, as the FDA prepared for the PBOI, an FDA Inspector conducted a routine review of the Searle's testing facilities in Skokie, Illinois, and found many deviations from proper procedures. This Report led the FDA Commissioner to create a Special Commissioner's Task Force to review Searle's Labs.

In December of 1975 the Task Force reported serious problems with Searle research on a wide range of products, including Aspartame. It found 11 pivotal studies conducted in a manner that was so flawed as to raise doubts about the safety of Aspartame and create the possibility of serious criminal liability for Searle!

The FDA then halted Aspartame's approval. It also contracted with a group of university pathologists (paid by Searle) to review most of the studies. The FDA set up a Task Force to review three studies and asked the US Attorney for Chicago to seek a Grand Jury review of the ‘Monkey Seizure’ Study.

The pathologists paid by Searle only reviewed its failure to properly report data and not the study's design or its conduct. Surprise, surprise, they found no serious problems! However, the FDA Task Force found Searle's key Tumour Safety Study unreliable, but was ignored. The US Attorney let the Statute of Limitations run out, then he (along with two aides) proceeded to join Searle's law firm. Just a coincidence, absolutely nothing to worry about.

In October 1980, even based on its limited review, the FDA Board blocked Aspartame marketing until the Tumour Studies could be explained. Only the FDA Commissioner could overrule the Board, but he didn't and the matter was now closed.

If it's so dangerous, how did it get FDA Approval ??

In November 1980, the United States elected a friend and benefactor of the Searle family, Ronald Reagan, President. Enter Donald Rumsfeld, president of Searle since January 1977, who joined the Presidential Transition Team and a concerted campaign against the FDA Board decision began.

In January 1981, Rumsfeld told a Searle Sales Meeting, according to one attendee, that he would “call in his chips to get Aspartame approved by the end of the year.” On January 25th, the day the new President took office, the previous FDA Commissioner's authority was suspended by Reagan, and the next month the Commissioner's job went to Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes Jr. Just another coincidence, nothing to worry about.

Transition Records do not show why the administration chose Hayes, a professor and Defense Department contract researcher. In July, Hayes, defying his FDA advisors, approved Aspartame for dry foods - his first major decision. In November 1983 he approved Aspartame for soft drinks - his last decision at the FDA.

In November 1983 Hayes, under fire for accepting corporate gifts, left the FDA and went to Searle's public-relations firm as a Senior Medical Advisor. Later Searle lawyer, Robert B. Shapiro, renamed Aspartame to NutraSweet; Monsanto (you know, the nice people that gave us genetically-modified food) purchased Searle; Rumsfeld received a $12 Million bonus and Shapiro became Monsanto President. Just a few coincidences, nothing to worry about.

Shortly after the FDA soft-drink approval, Searle began test marketing, and complaints began to arrive at the FDA of reactions such as dizziness, blurred vision, headaches, and seizures. The complaints were more serious than the Agency had ever received on any other food additive. At the same time, scientists began looking more closely at this manufactured chemical sweetener.

In 1985, the FDA asked the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to review the first 650 complaints (there are now well over 10,000 and the FDA estimate much less than 1% of complaints are actually reported to them). The CDC found that the symptoms in approximately 25% of the complainants had stopped and then restarted, corresponding with having stopped and then restarted (either purposely or by accident) their Aspartame consumption.

The day the FDA released the CDC Report, Pepsi Cola announced its switch to Aspartame with a worldwide multi-million dollar media blitz. Donald Rumsfeld owed a debt of gratitude to former White House confidante and friend Donald M. Kendal, Pepsi's chairman. The Pepsi announcement and aggressive marketing made NutraSweet a household brand name. Just another coincidence, hardly anything to worry about.

In May 1992, the US Navy and Air Force published an Article in Navy Physiology and Flying Safety with this warning: "several researchers have found Aspartame can increase the frequency of seizures, or lower the stimulation necessary to induce them. This means a pilot who drinks diet sodas is more susceptible to flicker vertigo, or to flicker-induced epileptic activity. It also means that all pilots are potential victims of sudden memory loss, dizziness during instrument flight, and gradual loss of vision."

According to data released in 1995, Human Brain Tumours like those in the Animal Studies have risen by 10% and previously benign Tumours turned virulent. Searle and the FDA's Deputy Commissioner, Dr. Michael A. Friedman, said the data posed no problem and was probably the result of improved diagnosis techniques. Later, Dr. Friedman became Senior Vice President of Clinical Research for Searle. Just one more coincidence, not much to worry about.

From 1985 to 1995, researchers did about 400 Aspartame studies. An analysis of peer reviewed medical literature using MEDLINE and other databases was conducted by Ralph G. Walton, MD (Chairman, The Center for Behavioral Medicine, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine). Dr. Walton analyzed 164 studies which were felt to have relevance to human safety questions. Of the 90 non-industry-sponsored (independent) studies, 83 (92%) identified one or more problems with Aspartame. Of the 74 Aspartame industry-sponsored studies, all 74 (100%) claimed that no problems were found with Aspartame! Just too many coincidences, time to start worrying!!!

How does Aspartame cause Long-Term Damage ??

Aspartame is comprised of two Amino Acids; Aspartic Acid and Phenylalanine. Aspartic Acid acts as an "excitatory" Neurotransmitter, or chemical messenger, stimulating neurons to fire. Problems can arise when Aspartic Acid is out of balance with "inhibitory" Amino Acids that calm things down. Phenylalanine also easily enters the brain, where it is transformed into Neurotransmitters that can further interfere with normal brain function.

This is a likely reason why Aspartame lowers the threshold for seizures, mood disorders, and other nervous system problems. This altered brain chemistry may also be responsible for the addictive nature of Aspartame. Some report that it takes more willpower to give up diet soft drinks than cigarettes!

The remaining component, which makes up 10 percent of Aspartame, may be the most dangerous part. It is a Methyl Ester that breaks down after ingestion into Methanol, a nervous system toxin also known as Free Methyl Alcohol or Wood Alcohol, which is extremely harmful to the Optic Nerve. An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) assessment of Methanol states that it "is considered a cumulative poison due to the low rate of excretion once it is absorbed. In the body, Methanol is oxidized to Formaldehyde and Formic Acid; both of these metabolites are toxic."

Formaldehyde is known to cause gradual damage to the nervous system, the immune system and has recently been shown to cause irreversible genetic damage at long-term, low-level exposure. The calculated level of formaldehyde exposure is approximately 61.3 mg for every litre of Aspartame ingested. That is over twice the level necessary to cause irreversible genetic damage in humans and several times the level shown to cause chronic neurological, cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, and other symptoms in long-term industrial exposure research. The damage caused by formaldehyde from Aspartame may be worsened by other Aspartame breakdown chemicals, especially the aspartic acid.

Aspartame causes slow, silent damage in those unfortunate enough to not have immediate reactions and hence a good reason to avoid it. It may take one year, five years, ten years, or more, as it causes some reversible and many irreversible changes in health.

What Health Problems does Aspartame cause ??

In February of 1994, the United States Department of Health and Human Services released the following List of the reactions caused and / or severely aggravated by Aspartame as reported to the FDA. Adverse Aspartame Reactions accounted for more than three-quarters of ALL Reports to the Adverse Reaction Monitoring System in the preceding year.

The last one on the List, Weight Gain, is ironic as Aspartame is primarily marketed as a Low-Calorie alternative to sugar and is in every ‘diet’ soft drink! Before Aspartame, the number of people in the United States who were overweight was static at 24% of the population. However, from the mid 1980s to the present, this number has more than doubled to 54% !!!

What can we do ??

Donald Rumsfeld and his corrupt friends don’t care about you; your health means absolutely nothing to them. You’re helping to make them very rich people and the only way to stop them is if for everybody to say no to Aspartame.

That means reading the (usually very small print) labels on everything you buy as it’s in many thousands of products. It will then take at least 60 days to reverse the non-permanent changes to your body that have been caused by this powerful neurotoxin.

STOP consuming any product containing Aspartame NOW !!!

Images courtesy of David Dees

Article by Neil Kerslake for crazations.tv

>>>> Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World >>>>
>>>> The World according to Monsanto >>>>
>>>> Aspartame is now being marketed as a Natural Sweetener >>>>

Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World

2010-02-02T20:00:00.000-08:00

A close examination into what many consider to be a "hoax": aspartame toxicity. This documentary attempts to look at what is 'definitively' known about aspartame and discovers that the label "hoax" in this case is a dangerous misconception. In a journey through interviews with varous doctors, lawers, activists and victims, filmmaker Cori Brackett discovers symptoms to a much larger problem:

Our institutions designed to protect the public from harmful substances have failed us.

In Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World, victims are found throughout the country and are finally given a voice. A close examination of the process for approving aspartame by the FDA leads to earllier examples of revolving door activity and how powerful corporations are influencing once trusted institutions. Today, resistance to aspartame continues, as a portrait of this poisoned world also offers hope and remedy.

Video courtesy of Sound and Fury Productions

CounterThink: Truth about Chemotherapy and the Cancer Industry

2010-01-29T09:50:00.000-08:00

Patrick Swayze's death came as a shock to many people. But not to his own cancer doctor: They know that the five-year survival rates of people being treated with chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer are virtually zero. And Swayze was only the latest in a long list of celebrities dying after being treated with chemotherapy and other toxic forms of western medicine:

Farrah Fawcett died following chemotherapy used to treat anal cancer and liver cancer:

Famed newscaster Peter Jennings died from chemotherapy treatments for lung cancer.

Former White House press secretary Tony Snow died after receiving chemotherapy for colon cancer.

Celebrities still battling Cancer

Desperate Housewives actress Kathry Joosten is currently battling lung cancer. It's not clear whether she has undergone chemotherapy yet, or plans to, but she did have cancer surgery in 2001 which obviously didn't "cure" the cancer because it has now returned.

Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs looks deathly ill after undergoing not only chemotherapy but also a complicated cancer surgery that removed a part of his pancreas and digestive tract.

Sheryl Crow is battling breast cancer, but she famously decided to support her immune system with natural medicine by turning to a Traditional Chinese Medicine wellness center called Tao of Wellness (http://www.taoofwellness.com). No doubt her outcome will be vastly improved by this integrative approach. Unfortunately, her hubby Lance Armstrong is more into the conventional drugs-and-chemo approach, and most people probably don't realize the two things that saved Armstrong's life were intense exercise and regular exposure to sunshine during his cycling training (creating vitamin D, a powerful anti-cancer nutrient). (And wearing those little yellow Livestrong bracelets only tags you as being completely brainwashed about cancer and the cancer industry.)

Article courtesy of Mike Adams @ Natural News

World without Cancer

2010-01-29T09:15:00.000-08:00

"A clear and revolutionary insight into both the science and politics of cancer therapy."
-- Dean Burk, Ph.D. Former Head of Cytochemistry. National Cancer institute

"Mr. Griffin has lifted the veil of mystery from Laetrile."
-- Dr. Ernst T. Krebs, Jr. Discoverer of Vitamin B17

"A milestone of careful research and penetrating analysis."
-- John A. Richardson, M.D. Albany, California

This documentary by G. Edward Griffin explains the scientific rationale for natural therapy. It presents evidence that cancer, like scurvy or pellagra, is a deficiency disease. It is not caused by the presence of some mysterious virus or X- factor, but by the lack of an essential food factor which, increasingly, is deleted from the menus of modern man.

The native diets of those cultures where cancer is rare is examined and found to be 200 times more rich in this substance than the diet of industrialized society. The missing food factor is called amygdalin or vitamin B17, but in its concentrated and purified form developed specifically for cancer therapy, it is known as Laetrile.

A theoretical model for the biological action of Laetrile is presented. Included are dramatic case histories of terminal cancer patients who have recovered using this therapy.

Based upon the book of the same name.

Video courtesy of G. Edward Griffin

>>>> read World without Cancer @ Scribd >>>>

>>>> WorldWithoutCancer.org.uk >>>>

CounterThink: Feeding the Young

2010-01-22T08:01:00.000-08:00

Humans are the only species on the planet who actually go out of their way to feed their children crap. All other animals instinctly seek out the best nutrition they can find. Birds find grubs, worms and insects to feed their young, honeybees painstakingly collect pollen and create a nutrient-rich superfood that gives rise to a living queen bee, and even dogs, cats and cows try to find the most nutrient-rich foods to offer their offspring.

But humans? Most of them "reward" their children with junk food, sugary sodas, candy laced with petrochemical coloring additives and refined sugars that promote obesity and diabetes. Most parents don't even make any real effort to follow nutritional discipline at home -- they simply buy whatever their children saw advertised on television, caving in to the all-powerful "nag factor" that junk food companies fully exploit when marketing to children.

As a result, human children are the least healthy youngsters of any species on the planet. Baby dolphins are healthier than baby humans, for example, and they are born with healthier nervous systems, fewer toxins and a lot more common sense.

Speaking of common sense, nearly all mammals have the common sense to feed their children their own mother's milk. A kitten, for example, will drink cat's milk from its mother. A puppy will drink dog's milk from its mother. A baby horse will drink horse's milk from its mother. But humans? We're sorta stupid. We mostly drink cow's milk. (And the dairy industry insisted for decades it was better for infants than human milk!)

Of all the mammals on planet Earth, only humans are dumb enough to seek out the mammary gland juice of another species while shunning the breast milk of their own species. And did we choose the milk of a species SMARTER than us that might have more brain-boosting nutrients? Nope. We get our milk from a low-IQ species well suited to pulling a plow. Cow's milk ain't exactly brain nutrition, folks. Some people have a hard time understanding that because they've been drinking too much of the stuff and those mushy neurons crammed into their thick skulls are firing a bit on the slow side. (A lack of DHA does wonders for boosting stupidity scores.)

Humans, by the way, are not only so collectively short-sighted that they feed their children crap foods and beverages, they actually still haven't figured out why so many of their children are obese and diabetic! It's like beating yourself on the hand with a hammer and wondering why your fingers hurt. Gee, the evidence isn't that difficult to figure out, folks. If you feed your kids sugar, white flour, toxic chemical additives, mind-altering pharmaceuticals and toxic shampoos, lotions and toothpaste, you're gonna end up with mutant children who aren't exactly Nobel Prize material.

Article courtesy of Mike Adams @ Natural News

McLibel

2010-01-22T07:37:00.000-08:00

The story of two people who wouldn't say McSorry

McLibel is the inside story of how a single father and a part-time bar worker took on McDonald's in the longest trial in English history. Filmed over three years, the documentary follows Helen Steel and Dave Morris as they are transformed from anonymous campaigners against the fast food giant into unlikely global heroes.

Struggling to defend themselves in the longest trial in English history, the pair face infiltration by spies, secret meetings with corporate executives, 40,000 pages of background reading and a visit from Ronald McDonald. Using interviews with witnesses and reconstructions of key moments in court, the film examines the main issues of the trial - nutrition, animals, advertising, employment, the environment - and the implications for freedom of speech.

Videos courtesy of Spanner Films

>>>> McSpotlight >>>>

CounterThink: Business is Booming

2010-01-22T06:16:00.000-08:00

Today, about one-fifth of the U.S. economy is based on treating disease or providing so-called "health care." The trend is increasing, too. In another ten years, our economy will see more than one out of every four dollars spent on disease. It is, by far, the highest percentage of GDP spent on disease by any nation in the world.

If you look at all the numbers from an economist's point of view, you might conclude, "Business is booming!" But what kind of business is it, really?

This comic graphically illustrates what I call the "Disease Economy." It's an economy based on all the various businesses and industries that cause disease, combined with those that treat it.

In the U.S., it starts with the chemical manufacturers and junk food companies whose products directly promote cancer, diabetes, birth defects, nervous system disorders and 'mystery' diseases like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Next, it moves to the for-profit disease management industries like hospitals, medical clinics, cancer centers and pharmaceutical companies, where no diseases are ever really cured, they're just "managed" or "controlled" in order to extract a lifetime of profits from sick people. Finally, it concludes with the hugely profitable "death industry" that includes funeral homes and organ transplantation businesses.

Put it all together, and you have an economy that looks great on paper but is actually disastrous to the quality of life of real people. When businesses generate profits at the expense of public health, there's a net loss to the people. Politicians can stand before the podium and proclaim the economy is doing great, but in reality, the people are increasingly diseased, dependent on drugs, living in chronic pain and facing bankruptcy due to medical bills.

A little over a year ago, I wrote the popular story, Welcome to the Town of Allopath that explains this as a fable. It's a fun read and has been quite popular across the web.

How do we solve this mess?

As we move forward and try to create a happier, healthier society for future generations, the question we should all be asking ourselves is, "Which businesses genuinely serve the greater good?" Having individual corporations generate massive profits for themselves at the expense of everyone else is no longer acceptable. Profits must be balanced with social responsibility, and ideally, the entire for-profit model of health care should be scrapped and replaced by one that seeks to keep people healthy and prevent disease rather than waiting for them to become disease-ridden profit centers for greedy corporations and corrupt bureaucrats.

In the United States, if we focused on disease prevention rather than disease profits, we could slash health care costs by a whopping 90 percent in a single generation, all while radically boosting the health, happiness and abundance of the American people. Of course, Big Pharma would never let that happen. Cancer is simply too profitable to allow anyone to effectively prevent it, which is why the FDA has raided, prosecuted or otherwise discredited anybody offering genuine cancer treatments or products.

Gotta keep that economy pumping! It's the Disease Economy, and it depends on sickness for its health. If we actually prevented cancer in this country (which is really easy to prevent, by the way), just think of how many people in the cancer industry would lose their jobs!

This is why preventing disease can never be allowed to happen. At least, not while Big Pharma, the FDA and the American Medical Association are in power. The current medical monopoly will stop at nothing to protect the drug racket that dominates medicine today.

Article courtesy of Mike Adams @ Natural News

Super Size Me

2010-01-22T05:48:00.000-08:00

A Film of Epic Proportions

Super Size Me is an Academy Award-nominated 2004 documentary film, directed by and starring Morgan Spurlock, an American independent filmmaker. It follows a 30-day time period (February 2003) during which Spurlock subsists exclusively on McDonald's fast food and stops exercising regularly.

The film documents this lifestyle's drastic effects on Spurlock's physical and psychological well-being and explores the fast food industry's corporate influence, including how it encourages poor nutrition for its own profit. During the filming, Spurlock dined at McDonald's restaurants three times per day, sampling every item on the chain's menu at least once. He consumed an average of 5,000 calories (the equivalent of 9.26 Big Macs) per day during the experiment.

In February 2005, Super Size Me Educationally Enhanced DVD edition was released. It is an edited version of the film designed to be integrated into a high school health curriculum. MSNBC has also broadcast an hour long version of the film, in addition to the regular version.

Videos courtesy of Morgan Spurlock

CounterThink: The Future of Food

2010-01-22T04:29:00.000-08:00

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).

What's at risk: the future of Human Life on Planet Earth

In 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.

Inform yourself with these online resources:

Seed Savers Exchange

The International Seed Saving Institute

Save Our Seeds

See the movie The Future of Food or buy the DVD.

Read this great article by Devvy Kidd on the future of food.

Eating organic frozen food? Buy from Amy's Kitchen, which uses no genetically modified ingredients.

Article courtesy of Mike Adams @ Natural News

>>>> The Future of Food >>>>

The Future of Food

2010-01-22T04:16:00.000-08:00

Do you know what you are eating ??

The Future of Food, a groundbreaking documentary by Deborah Koons Garcia released in 2004, distills the complex technology and key regulatory, legal, ethical, environmental and consumer issues surrounding the troubling changes happening in the food system today—genetically engineered foods, patenting, and the corporatization of food—into terms the average person can easily understand. It empowers consumers to understand the consequences of their food choices on our future.

In 2009 as we take note of where we stand and look toward the future, the issues raised in The Future of Food are more pressing than ever. The corporate control of agriculture and the seed supply is meeting more and more resistance from the sustainable food movement that has risen up around the world. Food and agriculture have become central in discussions about climate change, sequestering carbon, health and the preservation of biological diversity.

Factual error: The narrator claims, during the scene showing the Government seed bank, that companies can patent old seeds simply by being first to the patent office. This is not true, the patent office only grants patents to newly discovered or newly created seeds.

Videos courtesy of Lily Films

>>>> Official The Future of Food Movie Website >>>>

CounterThink: FDA Vision Test

2010-01-22T02:47:00.000-08:00

Of all the cartoons we've ever done on the FDA, this is the one that people seem to like the best. It addresses the issue of FDA conflicts of interest. The Food and Drug Administration, an agency that suffers under the hallucination that it protects the public from dangerous foods and drugs, has actually become the marketing department of Big Pharma. It actually takes money from drug companies in exchange for evaluating and approving their drugs, and the decisions concerning which drugs to approve almost always come down to a panel of "experts" who have strong financial ties to the very companies impacted by their decisions.

It's sort of like asking car companies to vote on what the federal automobile emissions standards should be. The decisions that do get made at the FDA almost always favor the profits of drug companies at the expense of public health. The situation is so bad that the FDA's efforts to reform itself involve things like limiting the level of corruption of drug panel experts so that they can only accept $50,000 / year from the drug companies instead of, say, $200,000 / year. They can still vote on the approval of the drugs, mind you, they just can't take more than $50,000 in bribes while doing so.

The idea of having NO conflicts of interest isn't even being considered by the FDA. It's unthinkable. But to normal (honest) people, eliminating conflicts of interest is a common sense concept. Politicians voting on bridge construction contracts shouldn't own the construction company. Cops who bust drug dealers shouldn't be dealing drugs themselves. A real estate agent who represents the seller of a house shouldn't simultaneously represent the buyer. You get the idea. And doctors who vote to approve drugs at the FDA shouldn't be on the payroll of the companies that profits from those drugs.

It only makes sense, right? But the FDA is blind to conflicts of interest. That's the point of this cartoon: the FDA Vision Test. I find this cartoon particularly hilarious because the top of the eye chart starts with the word "CON," and the Food and Drug Administration is, of course, a grand CON being perpetrated on the American people. What's the con? The idea that the FDA is doing anything whatsoever to actually protect the American public from overzealous food, drug and cosmetic companies who routinely poison consumers through the use of toxic chemicals and unsafe substances in their products.

Article courtesy of Mike Adams @ Natural News

The World according to Monsanto

2010-01-21T16:54:00.000-08:00

"The US is already the world leader in 'biotechnologoy', and we want to keep it that way. In 1991 alone, it was a 4 billion dollar industry; it should reach at least 50 billion dollars by the year 2000, as long as we resist the spread of unnecessary regulation." -- Dan Quayle

The World according to Monsanto is directed by independent filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin, and paints a grim picture of a company with a long track record of environmental crimes and health scandals. The story starts in the White House, where Monsanto often got its way by exerting disproportionate influence over policymakers via the “revolving door”.

One example is Michael Taylor, who worked for Monsanto as an attorney before being appointed as deputy commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1991. While at the FDA, the authority that deals with all US food approvals, Taylor made crucial decisions that led to the approval of Genetically-Modified (GM) foods and crops. Then he returned to Monsanto, becoming the company’s vice president for public policy. In July 2009, Taylor was re-appointed to the FDA by the Obama Administration. and he exemplifies the revolving door between the food industry and the government agencies that regulate it.

Thanks to these intimate links between Monsanto and government agencies, the US adopted GM foods and crops without proper testing, without consumer labeling and in spite of serious questions hanging over their safety. Not coincidentally, Monsanto supplies 90 percent of the GM seeds used by the US market. Monsanto’s long arm stretched so far that, in the early nineties, the US Food and Drugs Agency even ignored warnings of their own scientists, who were cautioning that GM crops could cause negative health effects. Other tactics the company uses to stifle concerns about their products include misleading advertising, bribery and concealing scientific evidence.

Videos courtesy of National Film Board of Canada

>>>> Official The World according to Monsanto Movie Website >>>>

CounterThink: Honest Food Labels

2010-01-21T16:27:00.000-08:00

Every time I visit a grocery store, I'm always struck by the degree to which food and beverage manufacturers lie about their products through deceptive labels and packaging. In this comic, I decided to show you what a grocery store might really look like if all the food products were honestly labeled.

Each of these product names is based on solid nutritional science, by the way. The "heart disease spread" actually causes heart disease due to its hydrogenated oils (trans fatty acids). The "colon cancer dogs" contain sodium nitrite, a cancer-causing additive used in virtually all processed meat products, including hot dogs. The "obesity pop" actually promotes obesity and diabetes, thanks to its high-fructose corn syrup. And the question mark at the end of the "choose food?" label is, indeed, intentional. Is it really food? And if so, why do they have to add "food" to the product name?

The mom character doing the shopping is confused, as most moms are when trying to shop for more healthful foods at the grocery store. They don't know which food labels to trust, or which health experts to believe. All the while, their kids are screaming for more sugar-coated cereals and candies, all of which help promote mood disorders and ADHD labels that will eventually earn them Ritalin prescriptions.

This comic shows you what I see when I walk into a grocery store. I look at products on the shelf and can instantly tell you what toxic ingredients (or unintentional chemicals) they contain. Most people, however, just see whatever ridiculous health claims the food manufacturers want them to see, and the truth about processed foods remains hidden to them.

Article courtesy of Mike Adams @ Natural News

FOOD, Inc

2010-01-20T15:16:00.000-08:00

How much do we really know about the food we buy

at our local supermarkets and serve to our families ??

In FOOD, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment.

We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield's Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms' Joel Salatin, FOOD, Inc. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here...

Videos courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

>>>> Official FOOD, Inc. Movie Website >>>>
>>>> Robert Kenner Films Website >>>>
>>>> Watch the Full Documentary >>>>