Re: SC59

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7849

Unleashing GMO Seeds: "Food is Power"

...............................Food is Power

Rockefeller Foundation funding was the Gene Revolution's catalyst in 1985 with big aims - to learn if GMO plants were commercially feasible and if so spread them everywhere. It was the "new eugenics" and the culmination of earlier research from the 1930s. It was also based on the idea that human problems can be "solved by genetic and chemical manipulations....as the ultimate means of social control and social engineering." Foundation scientists sought ways to do it by reducing infinite life complexities to "simple, deterministic and predictive models" under their diabolical scheme - mapping gene structures to "correct social and moral problems including crime, poverty, hunger and political instability." With the development of essential genetic engineering techniques in 1973, they were on their way.

They're based on what's called recombitant DNA (rDNA), and it works by genetically introducing foreign DNA into plants to create genetically modified organisms, but not without risks. London Institute of Science in Society chief biologist, Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, explained the dangers because the process is imprecise. "It is uncontrollable and unreliable, and typically ends up damaging and scrambling the host genome, with entirely unpredictable consequences" that might unleash a deadly unrecallable "Andromeda Strain." Research continued anyway amidst lies that risks were minimal and a promised future lay ahead. All that mattered were huge potential profits and geopolitical gain so let the good times roll and the chips fall where they may.

One project was to map the rice genome. It launched a 17 year effort to spread GMO rice around the world with Rockefeller Foundation money behind it. It spent millions funding 46 worldwide science labs. It also financed the training of hundreds of graduate students and developed an "elite fraternity" of top scientific researchers at Foundation-backed research institutes. It was a diabolical scheme aiming big - to control the staple food for 2.4 billion people and in the process destroy the biological diversity of over 140,000 developed varieties that can withstand droughts, pests and grow in every imaginable climate.

Asia was the prime target, and Engdahl explained the sinister tale of a Philippines-based Foundation-funded institute (IRRI). It had a gene bank with "every significant rice variety known" that comprised one-fifth of them all. IRRI let agribusiness giants illegally use the seeds for exclusive patented genetic modification so they could introduce them in markets and dominate them by requiring farmers be licensed and forced to pay annual royalty fees.

By 2000, a successful "Golden Rice" was developed that was beta-carotene (Vitamin A) enriched. It was marketed on the fraudulent claim that a daily bowl could prevent blindness and other Vitamin A deficiencies. It was a scam as other products are far better sources of this nutrient and to get enough of it from any type rice requires eating an impossible nine kilograms daily (about 20 pounds). Nonetheless, gene revolution backers were ready for their next move: "the consolidation of global control over humankind's food supply" with a new tool to do it - the WTO. Corporate giants wrote its rules favoring them at the expense of developing nations shut out........................

.......................Iraq Gets American Seeds of Democracy

Democracy for Iraq meant erasing the "cradle of civilization" for unfettered free market capitalism. Iraq was conquered for its oil but also to make the country a giant free trade paradise. The scheme was diabolical, elaborate and ugly - blitzkrieg "shock and awe," elaborate PsyOps, fear as a weapon, repressive occupation, mass detention and torture, and the fastest, most sweeping country remake in history. It happened in weeks, Iraq no longer exists, the country is a wasteland, its people are devastated, and a blank slate was created for unrestrained corporate pillage on a near- unimaginable scale.

Part of the scheme was for GMO agribusiness giants to have free reign over that part of the economy - to radically transform Iraq's food production system into a model for GMO seeds and plants. One hundred swiftly implemented Bremer laws mandated it, but Iraqis had no say about them as the country is now governed out of Washington and its branch office inside the heavily-fortified Green Zone in the largest US embassy in the world by far.

Bremer laws imposed the harshest ever Chicago School-style "shock therapy" of the kind that devastated countries around the world since first introduced in Chile under Pinochet in 1973. The formula was familiar - mass firings of state employees in the hundreds of thousands; unrestricted imports with no tariffs, duties, inspections or taxes; deregulation; and the largest state liquidation sale and privatization plan since the Soviet Union collapsed.

Corporate taxes were lowered as well from 40% to a flat 15%, and foreign investors could own 100% of Iraqi assets other than oil. They could also repatriate all their profits, had no obligation to reinvest in the country and wouldn't be taxed. They were further given 40 year leases, and the only Saddam era laws remaining were those restricting trade unions and collective bargaining. Foreign transnationals, mainly US ones, swooped in and devoured everything. Iraqis couldn't compete, and the occupation laws assured it.

Consider Bremer Order 81. It covered patents, their duration and stated: "Farmers shall be prohibited from re-using seeds of protected varieties or any variety" the edict covered. It gave plant varieties patent holders absolute rights over farmers' using their seeds for 20 years. They'd be genetically engineered, owned by transnationals, and Iraqi farmers using them had to sign an agreement stipulating they'll pay a "technology fee" as well as an annual license fee.

Plant Variety Protection (PVP) was the core of this order. It made seed saving and reuse illegal. Even using "similar" seeds could result in severe fines and imprisonment. GMO seeds got protection to displace 10,000 years of developed plant varieties being sacrificed.

Iraq's fertile valley between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is ideal for crop planting. Since 8000 BC, farmers used it to develop "rich seeds of almost every variety of wheat used in the world today." They were erased through a GMO modernization and industrialization scheme so agribusiness can get a foothold in the region and supply the world market. While Iraqis suffer and starve, GMO giants run the country's agriculture for export. Iraqi farmers are now agribusiness serfs and are forced to grow products foreign to the native diet like wheat designed for pasta.

Bremer laws mandated it and are inviolable under Article 26 of the US-drafted constitution. It states that the Iraqi government is powerless to change laws a foreign occupier made. To assure it, US-sympathizers are in every ministry with those most trusted in key ones. Engdahl sums up the damage to agriculture: "The forced transformation of Iraq's food production into patented GMO crops is one of the clearest examples of (how) Monsanto and other GMO giants are forcing (these) crops onto an unwilling or unknowing world population." They're infesting the planet with them one country at a time so it's futile trying to undo the damage they cause.................

Its all about the elites getting a new tool to help them control the masses, and make lots of money at the same time.