Guatemala Rejects U.S. Trade Law Protecting Monsanto and GMOs

Heather Callaghan

Big Biotech's promise to feed the world, by squeezing out every other choice against the will of the impoverished people intended as the target - is beyond cruel and exploitative. It is another way that the U.S. occupies other countries. How else are other people in these countries supposed to view multiple soft-sanctions on food, but as an act of war?

The people of Guatemala caught on to the deceptive nature of a U.S. Trade Agreement with Central America which was marketed as a way to "modernize" them. It also pretends to protect new seed varieties and paints the seed bearers in need of protection as small farmers. It is actually a way for big biotech and seed companies like Monsanto, DuPont, Duwest, Syngenta, etc. to assume power and immunity as owners of their food supply.

Guatemala is calling it "Monsanto Law." It does bear resemblance to the "Monsanto Protection Act" which was a rider slipped into a U.S. financial bill last year, now considered dead.

Monsanto can sue farmers when GMO contamination goes over one percent of their crop

Rady Ananda

At the Justice Begins with Seeds biosafety conference held in Seattle August 2-3, it was announced that a recent court decision prevented Monsanto from suing farmers for patent infringement when their crops become genetically contaminated with lab-engineered patented seeds. But the ruling is insufficient to protect farmers in the real world, where contamination events are often much higher than only one percent of a field, as specifically prescribed in the ruling.

The June 2013 decision dismissing OSGATA v. Monsanto discussed in the letter by Jim Gerritsen, president of the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, protects farmers from being sued for “inadvertent contamination” of “approximately one percent” of their crops. Gerritsen sent the letter in lieu of his appearance.

That letter, reproduced at Good Food Web, has now gone viral, leading to some misunderstanding about the significance of the court’s decision and the protections afforded US farmers.

GMOs: What Do the Stars Say Astrologically?

image source

Catherine J. Frompovich

With all that’s going on regarding genetically modified organisms, especially food crops, this writer became intrigued while standing in line at a Whole Foods checkout counter by a magazine’s cover story “Inside Monsanto,” which appears on the Aug./Sept. 2013 issue of The Mountain Astrologer. Online access to the magazine is www.mountainastrologer.com.

Even though being somewhat esoterically inclined, the feature article by Eric Francis Coppolino was a little more than this writer expected. Coppolino, an astrologer, delved deeply into the history of both Monsanto and its founder, John Francis Queeny, in addition to supplying astrological charts for both, which were delineated, cross-referenced to Monsanto history, and from which prognostications also were offered.

Failure of Monsanto Seed Leads to New Rootworm Insecticide Surge

Consultant, Dan Steiner

Heather Callaghan

Are farmers getting disillusioned?

In the Midwest states like Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska, farmers are baffled by a resurgence of corn rootworm that Monsanto technology promised to protect against. A lot of new insight comes from independent farm consultant Dan Steiner whose phone rings off the hook after a storm where farmers face blown over crops because rootworm larvae have destroyed the root systems.

Let it be known that, for awhile, biotech crops did seem to rescue farmers around 2003. Bt corn delivered results with initially satisfactory yields, pest control, and limited chemical use. This has been shortlived, however, and has created more issues than the original problem of decreased crop yields - but still more money for Monsanto in the way of increased insecticide use.

EPA to Raise Allowable Glyphosate Pesticide Levels in Food Crops by 3,000%!

Another win for biotech giant Monsanto equals another loss for humanity.

Melissa Melton

Just days ago, RT.com reported that the U.S. Environmental “Protection” Agency is set to raise the allowable limits of Monsanto’s best-selling glyphosate pesticide Roundup in our nation’s food crops to ridiculously high levels:

Through the EPA’s new standards, the amount of allowable glyphosate in oilseed crops such as flax, soybeans and canola will be increased from 20 parts per million (ppm) to 40 ppm, which GM Watch acknowledged is over 100,000 times the amount needed to induce breast cancer cells. Additionally, the EPA is increasing limits on allowable glyphosate in food crops from 200 ppm to 6,000 ppm.

Supposedly they were able to do this because a two-month open comment period that began May 1st drew little public resistance.

This is in spite of a flurry of new studies coming out just this month demonstrating the detrimental effects of pesticide on the environment and all manner of things living in it:

Oakland moves forward with citywide surveillance center despite data collection, privacy controversy

image credit:
jean-louis zimmermann/Flickr

Madison Ruppert

Ignoring the concerns surrounding data collection and privacy, Oakland continues to push forward with their federally funded, citywide surveillance project known as the Domain Awareness Center.

Other cities have launched “Domain Awareness”programs, including New York City, where Mayor Bloomberg said that New Yorkers will “never know where our cameras are.”

The project in Oakland will link everything from ever-controversial license plate scanners to surveillance cameras to gunshot detectors, Twitter feeds, and more.

It began as a joint project between the city and the Port of Oakland, part of a nationwide initiative to make ports more secure by placing and networking cameras and other sensors around the port.

The 10 GMO Myths That Monsanto Wants You To Believe

Daisy Luther

Monsanto and their biotech buddies would have you believe that they are super-heroes, set on saving hungry children from starvation wearing a dazzling fake-green cape. In fact, in a recent attack on activists, Monsanto’s CEO Hugh Grant said that because critics “can afford” organic food, we don’t care about the plight of those who can’t afford it. “There is this strange kind of reverse elitism: If I’m going to do this, then everything else shouldn’t exist,” said Grant. “There is space in the supermarket shelf for all of us.”

Even Monsanto’s website is on the defense, with page after page attempting to justify what the biotech industry is doing to our food supply. It must be true if even leading “philanthropists” (and I use this term loosely) like Bill and Melinda Gates are behind the distribution of Monsanto crops across the globe. Right?

Actually, it’s all about the public’s perception. The push for acceptance of GMO foods has, thus far, been all about which team has the most money. Monsanto and their ilk can afford more television ads and more PR than anti-GMO activists can. Because the biotech companies, Big Food, and Big Agri can pay to spread their message, many people are convinced by their pure propaganda that GMOs are a necessary evil if the Third World is to avoid millions of slow, agonizing deaths by starvation. Because biotech is able to afford to blanket the media with their perspective, their view point is accepted as the correct one because that is the only perspective that many people ever hear.

But just because they shout the loudest, that doesn’t make it true.

Military-Industrial Complex Offers New Biotech Passwords for "Health"

image source

Brandon Turbeville

Although talk of biotechnology-based tattoos and nanotech pills has been circulating in the tech world for quite some time, a recent report in the Daily Mail entitled, “The hi-tech tattoo that could replace ALL your passwords: Motorola reveals plans for ink and even pills to identify us,” serves as an official introduction of the technology to a world of trendy consumers who will no doubt gobble up the devices as if they were a hot meal.

Covering the discussions taking place at the D11 conference in California in late May, Victoria Woollaston reports that Motorola announced their intention to release and market the digital tattoos, known as BioStamps, for the purpose of creating an alternative to traditional password logins.

The BioStamp tattoos were actually developed by a Massachusetts-based engineering company known as MC10, for the alleged purpose of helping “medical teams measure the health of their patients either remotely, or without the need for large expensive machinery.”

It should be noted, however, that MC10 is also heavily involved in the defense industry, as virtually all of the firms developing such potentially Orwellian technology almost always are. It is thus interesting indeed to see a company involved in the Defense industry, which is largely concerned with reducing the lifespan of human beings, developing technology under the premise of humanitarian concerns like “monitoring the health of their patients.” That is, unless there is some other ulterior motive for the development of such technology.

Biotech’s next big disaster: seeds that emit multiple pesticides

image source

Jon Rappoport

Tom Laskawy, writing at Grist, points out how the next generation of GMOs is following in the track of present disasters:

“…the growing pest and weed problems for GMOs have caused farmers to turn to seeds that are coated with a different pesticide—a neonicotinoid. If that name rings a bell, it’s because these pesticides… have been implicated in the increasing epidemic of bee deaths.

“And that’s aside from the evidence that biotech’s ‘next big thing’ —seeds that emit multiple pesticides—may be doomed to fail. An international team of researchers, including USDA and biotech scientists, found what they termed ‘cross-resistance’ to these pesticides in [predatory] bugs exposed to the next-generation GMO seeds. Evidence, in other words, that GMO seeds are hitting a bug-covered wall.” The seeds don’t knock out the plant pests.

Yet the venerable journal Nature recently urged patience, because just over the next hill, the biotech giants will surely succeed in bringing us better GMO crops.

Californians: Stop Waiting to Be Helped on GMO Labeling

Ari Smithson

In California, the biotech industry and the industrial food giants are pouring millions into stopping the labeling of the most extreme food toxin ever seen in human history.  And they are succeeding in making the battle close.  They did this before in Oregon where the public was at first massively opposed to GMOs, but the final vote was in favor of industry.

Meanwhile, the people themselves in California seem to be sitting on their hands, expecting the Organic Consumers Association or the Institute for Responsible Technology or a few other groups to do the work to inform everyone.  But those groups are not reaching the poor or the Chinese, the Japanese, the Indian, the Muslim and other communities who either don't have computers or don't speak English, so can't be convinced by videos or phone banking.

Let's get real and personal, Californians. Your lives are at stake here.  How many people have you spoken to?  How many churches, temples, organizations, etc., are you in and have you informed other members?  How many signs have you made yourself and put up?  

New GMO ‘Agent Orange Soy’ Silently Backed by USDA

Mike Barrett
Activist Post

Millions of pounds of herbicides are applied to crops around the nation each year. In one single year, 2006, 96.7 million pounds of glyphosate was sprayed on soybeans alone; this is a 20-fold increase from the 4.9 million pounds in 1994, the year before Monsanto’s Roundup Ready seeds were introduced.

Well, now, biotechnology giant and creator of pesticides and herbicides, Dow AgroSciences is bringing forth brand new GMO soybeans and GMO corn to the market that will ultimately cause more herbicides than ever to be sprayed across the nation. What’s more, the USDA is all over the idea.

2,4-D Herbicide and Super GMO Crops

And perhaps even more startling than the drastic increase in herbicide usage is the fact that Dow AgroSciences’ new genetically modified soy is actually specifically designed to resist an especially toxic herbicide known as 2,4-D, a toxic compound used in the well-known Vitetnam War defoliant Agent Orange. Known to have killed or maimed at least 400,000, and causing an additional 500,000 birth defects according to conservative Viatnamese estimates, Agent Orange is one of the deadliest concoctions on record.

Forensic evidence emerges that European e.coli superbug was bioengineered to produce human fatalities

Mike Adams
Natural News

Even as the veggie blame game is now under way across the EU, where a super resistant strain of e.coli is sickening patients and filling hospitals in Germany, virtually no one is talking about how e.coli could have magically become resistant to eight different classes of antibiotic drugs and then suddenly appeared in the food supply.

This particular e.coli variation is a member of the O104 strain, and O104 strains are almost never (normally) resistant to antibiotics. In order for them to acquire this resistance, they must be repeatedly exposed to antibiotics in order to provide the "mutation pressure" that nudges them toward complete drug immunity.

So if you're curious about the origins of such a strain, you can essentially reverse engineer the genetic code of the e.coli and determine fairly accurately which antibiotics it was exposed to during its development. This step has now been done (see below), and when you look at the genetic decoding of this O104 strain now threatening food consumers across the EU, a fascinating picture emerges of how it must have come into existence.

Australia shuns GM canola in response to consumer demand for non-GMO products

Jonathan Benson
Natural News

The biotechnology industry and its lackeys in the US government may be getting away with pulling a fast one on the American people, but citizens across Europe and in Australia continue to resist the onslaught of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) in their food supply. A recent report from Gene Ethics Media (GEM) explains that two of Australia's largest grain traders are refusing to deal with any GM canola this year, citing intense and increasing consumer opposition to GM grains.

Europeans import much of their canola from Australia, a country that for years had unilaterally held anon-GMO policy for canola. After all, virtually nobody from the countries to whom Australia exports itsgrains wants GM canola, and this has naturally created market conditions in which canola growers have voluntarily chosen to stick with non-GM and organic varieties.

Sebelius-backed biotechnology firm reorganizing under criminal probe

KBA urged Homeland Security to locate bioweapons lab in Tornado Alley  

Sebelius and Thornton / 2008 Topeka Capital-Journal image

Rady Ananda, Contributing Writer 
Activist Post 

The head of Health and Human Services not only denies that Americans have a right to bodily health and food of their choice, but Kathleen Sebelius is hell bent on spending taxpayer money to promote genetically modified food and drugs. One of her projects, Kansas Bioscience Authority, a publicly funded venture enterprise developed to promote biotechnology, is currently under criminal investigation. CEO Tom Thornton has resigned. 

KBA also lobbied the Dept. of Homeland Security for the highly controversial bioweapons and cattle disease lab in the state, along with former Governor Sebelius, now President Obama’s Cabinet Secretary. Under her governorship and full support, the Kansas Economic Growth Act of 2004 passed, funding KBA’s mission with $581 million in tax revenue to develop a bioscience industry in Kansas. 

Monsanto and Gates Foundation have major control over large seed bank in Norway

Center For Food Safety-My first experience with the perils of large scale seed banks was the scandal that erupted over the Fort Collins collection in the mid 1980s.  Journalists had published stories dramatically detailing the grossly negligent manner in which deposits to the seed bank were treated.  Numerous seed deposits were spilling out onto the floors of the facility, the facility was woefully understaffed, there was no testing of the seed and a virtually complete failure of required regeneration — in short a seed saving disaster. A legal petition by my organization to rectify the decision seemed to get the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) attention. But when no real action resulted we litigated. I was a very active member of that legal team. As such I reviewed much of the material in the case that documented USDA’s complete disregard for the safety and integrity of the seeds under its care. This litigation ultimately forced a settlement where USDA agreed to do an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and conditions at the seed bank improved somewhat.

Since that first experience I learned that bigger is definitely not better or safer when it comes to seed saving. As noted elsewhere on this site, the Center for Food Safety (CFS) strongly advocates for in situ protection of plant diversity, and when ex situ seed saving is required it should reside at the most local and ecologically appropriate level. This has been one of the bases for CFS’ longstanding concerns about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Not surprisingly these fears have recently been justified. In December 2010 NordGen, the entity overseeing Svalbard, fired its Director Jessica Kathle.  Some at NordGen believed that she was a “scapegoat” for the seed bank’s well known problems including continuing deficits, significant understaffing, and failure to do routine tests on the deposited seed to determine viability. (http://dagendresen.wordpress.com/about/Dot.) Sadly it seems like the Fort Collins fiasco redux.

There is however yet another important concern about Svalbard.  The Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT), which supports the operational costs of Svalbard, has received almost $30 million dollars in support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (Global Diversity Trust, “Funding Status 1-1-2011.”http://www.croptrust.org/main/funds.php)This is by far the largest support of any non-governmental entity.  As is well known, the Gates Foundation has very close working ties to Monsanto. The Gates Foundation invested $23 million in Monsanto in 2010 to help the company through some financial woes, and has been a determined supporter of spreading Monsanto’s genetically engineered crops throughout the developing world. In 2006 the Gates Foundation hired Rob Horsch, a former Monsanto Vice President and a key scientist involved in the creation of the company’s Round Up Ready crops in the 1980s, as their Senior Program Officer for their International Agriculture Development Program.  This Monsanto connection to Svalbard is very troubling as the corporation owns almost a quarter of all the world’s commercial seeds and is the world’s leader in the genetic engineering of crops and the patenting of plant genetics (including plant genes, cells and seeds). Monsanto has also had a decade long history of persecuting and prosecuting thousands of farmers for saving seeds.

Svalbard’s ties to the Gates Foundation and Monsanto are not the only issue. Only two private corporations have donated to the GCDT.  Dupont/Pioneer Seeds has donated $1 million as has Syngenta. (Global Diversity Trust, “Funding Status 1-1-2011.”http://www.croptrust.org/main/funds.php)Together these two companies own another 25% of the world’s commercial seeds and are also among the leaders in agriculture biotechnology and in patenting of plant genetics. So a major question looms. Why this interest by these biotech companies and their surrogates in paying the operational costs of Svalbard? These companies have no record of altruistic concern for the integrity and diversity of seeds and have in fact been destroying that diversity through genetic engineering and patenting for decades. The most obvious hypothesis is that these corporations see in Svalbard an opportunity to gain further control of the world’s plant genetics — being able to utilize the seed bank as a resource for germplasm that can be used for creating patentable hybrid or genetically engineered seed varieties.

To test that hypothesis I requested that the CFS legal team investigate the deposit agreements at Svalbard. The point of this analysis was to see if in some way the contract between Svalbard and depositors created an advantage for these corporations in their efforts to control and patent seed genetics. As the legal memorandum reveals, the answer to the question is “yes.” The Svalbard agreement does provide corporations seeking to patent plant genetics additional advantages in their efforts.

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New Scientist Magazine plants false story that Pope approves GM crops

More biotech science lies

Rady Ananda, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

Talk about psyops. If you can’t get the people to eat your dangerous, unwanted frankenfoods, just lie and say the Pope approves it. On November 30, the magazine, New Scientist, published “Vatican scientists urge support for engineered crops,” which the Vatican immediately denied.

“The Vatican did not endorse an 11-page final statement in favor of easing restrictions on and allowing more widespread use of genetically modified crops, especially in poorer nations,” a Vatican official said in a statement published by Catholic News Service.

In fact, “the Vatican has never taken a formal position supporting or opposing genetically modified foods,” reported CNS.

The study group who issued the report mostly include people with financial ties to genetically modified foods. Four employees of Monsanto graced that panel.

There are an estimated 1.2 billion Catholics in the world who now have more reason to distrust biotech scientists.

The New Scientist also quoted an outrageous lie by one of the report scientists:

“There has not been a single documented case of harm to consumers or the environment,” says Potrykus.

It then links to a 2005 article which says the opposite. Whatever. Ingo Potrykus is a Swiss scientist who developed a variety of GM rice.

There are numerous scientific studies condemning the use of GM foods which have been linked too rgan damage and sterility in mammals, while others correlate rising diabetes and obesity rates with GMO introduction. There’s also the question of allergic reaction to GM foods, proof of which is hidden by lack of labeling.


GM crops (trees, too) are genetically modified to produce or tolerate pesticides. Glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, has been linked to birth defects, cancer and miscarriages in humans. Pesticides are suspected in causing or contributing to mass bee, bat and butterfly die-off, as well as a pandemic amphibian decline. Their use is also linked to 11 million acres of superweeds in the U.S.

Finally, GM crops cannot be contained. They’ve spread in nations all over the world, even becoming established in the wild.

For any scientist to say that no environmental damage is linked to GM crops is unconscionable. Given the biotech industry’s penchant for suppressing science, it’s not surprising to find them extending their lies to the social realm.

Confronting the oft-quoted malarky that GM crops can solve world hunger, CNS reported:

“The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, said earlier this year that it was not a coincidence that in 2009 the use of genetically modified food crops grew by 13 percent in developing countries and that GM crops covered almost half of the world’s total arable land. And yet ‘the number of hungry people in the world has for the first time reached 1 billion people,’ the paper said.”

CNS further noted that, “Pope Benedict XVI has denounced the continued scandal of hunger in the world, saying its root causes have more to do with problems of distribution and sharing than with there not being enough food in the world.”

Rady Ananda’s work has appeared in several online and print publications. She holds a B.S. in Natural Resources from The Ohio State University’s School of Agriculture. Using years of editorial experience and web publishing, Rady now promotes the ideas and work of a select group of quality writers and artists at Food Freedom and COTO Report. 

Related Articles by Rady Ananda:
Tester Amendment To Food "Safety" Bill Puts Lipstick On A Pig 
Patriot Act For Food: A Close Look at Bizarre Propaganda For S. 510 Elderly Man Evicted From His Land For Living Off The Grid

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