Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

http://www.countercurrents.org/lendman020108.htm
Reviewing F. William Engdahl's "Seeds of Destruction"
By Stephen Lendman
02 January, 2008
Part I

Bill Engdahl is a leading researcher, economist and analyst of the  
New World Order who's written on issues of energy, politics and  
economics for over 30 years. He contributes regularly to publications  
like Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Foresight magazine, Grant's  
Investor.com, European Banker and Business Banker International. He's  
also a frequent speaker at geopolitical, economic and energy related  
international conferences and is a distinguished Research Associate  
of the Centre for Research on Globalization where he's a regular  
contributor.

Engdahl also wrote two important books - "A Century of War: Anglo- 
American Oil Politics and the New World Order" in 2004. It's an  
essential history of geopolitics and the importance of oil. Engdahl  
explains that America's post-WW II dominance rests on two pillars and  
one commodity - unchallengeable military power and the dollar as the  
world's reserve currency combined with the quest to control global  
oil and other energy resources.

Engdahl's newest book is just out from the Centre for Research on  
Globalization. It's a sequel to his first one called "Seeds of  
Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation" and subject  
of this review. It's the diabolical story of how Washington and four  
Anglo-American agribusiness giants plan world domination by patenting  
life forms to gain worldwide control of our food supply and why that  
prospect is chilling. The book's compelling contents are reviewed  
below in-depth so readers will know the type future Henry Kissinger  
had in mind in 1970 when he said: "Control oil and you control  
nations; control food and you control the people."

Remember also, this cabal is one of many interconnected ones with  
fearsome power and ruthless intent to use it - Big Banks controlling  
the Federal Reserve and our money, Big Oil our world energy  
resources, Big Media our information, Big Pharma our health, Big  
Technology our state-of-the-art everything and watching us, Big  
Defense our wars, Big Pentagon waging them, and other corporate  
predators exploiting our lives for profit. Engdahl's book focuses  
brilliantly on one of them. To fully cover its vital contents, this  
review will be in three parts for more detail and to make it easily  
digestible.

Part I of "Seeds of Destruction"

In 2003, Jeffrey Smith's "Seeds of Deception" was published. It  
exposed the dangers of untested and unregulated genetically  
engineered foods most people eat every day with no knowledge of the  
potential health risks. Efforts to inform the public have been  
quashed, reliable science has been buried, and consider what happened  
to two distinguished scientists.

One was Ignatio Chapela, a microbial ecologist at the University of  
California, Berkeley. In September, 2001, he was invited to a  
carefully staged meeting with Fernando Ortiz Monasterio, Mexico's  
Director of the Commission of Biosafety in Mexico City. The  
experience left Chapela shaken and angry as he explained. Monasterio  
attacked him for over an hour. "First he trashed me. He let me know  
how damaging to the country and how problematic my information was to  
be."

Chapela referred to what he and a UC Berkeley graduate student, David  
Quist, discovered in 2000 about genetically engineered contamination  
of Mexican corn in violation of a government ban on these crops in  
1998. Corn is sacred in Mexico, the country is home to hundreds of  
indigenous varieties that crossbreed naturally, and GM contamination  
is permanent and unthinkable - but it happened by design.

Chapela and Quist tested corn varieties in more than a dozen state of  
Oaxaca communities and discovered 6% of the plants contaminated with  
GM corn. Oaxaca is in the country's far South so Chapela knew if  
contamination spread there, it was widespread throughout Mexico. It's  
unavoidable because NAFTA allows imported US corn with 30% of it at  
the time genetically modified. Now it's heading for nearly double  
that amount, and if not contained, it soon could be all of it.

The prestigious journal Nature agreed to publish Chapela's findings,  
Monasterio wanted them quashed, but Chapela refused to comply. As a  
result, he was intimidated not to do it and threatened with being  
held responsible for all damages to Mexican agriculture and its economy.

He went ahead, nonetheless, and when his article appeared in the  
publication on November 29, 2001 the smear campaign against him began  
and intensified. It was later learned that Monsanto was behind it,  
and the Washington-based Bivings Group PR firm was hired to discredit  
his findings and get them retracted.

It worked because the campaign didn't focus on Chapela's  
contamination discovery, but on a second research conclusion even  
more serious. He learned the contaminated GM corn had as many as  
eight fragments of the CaMV promoter that creates an unstable  
"hotspot." It can cause plant genes to fragment, scatter throughout  
the plant's genome, and, if proved conclusively, would wreck efforts  
to introduce GM crops in the country. Without further evidence, there  
was still room for doubt if the second finding was valid, however,  
and the anti-Chapela campaign hammered him on it.

Because of the pressure, Nature took an unprecedented action in its  
133 year history. It upheld Chapela's central finding but retracted  
the other one. That was all it took, and the major media pounced on  
it. They denounced Chapela's incompetence and tried to discredit  
everything he learned including his verified findings. They weren't  
reported, his vilification was highlighted, and Monsanto and the  
Mexican government scored a big victory.

Ironically, on April 18, 2002, two weeks after Nature's partial  
retraction, the Mexican government announced there was massive  
genetic contamination of traditional corn varieties in Oaxaca and the  
neighboring state of Puebla. It was horrifying as up to 95% of tested  
crops were genetically polluted and "at a speed never before  
predicted." The news made headlines in Europe and Mexico. It was  
ignored in the US and Canada.

The fallout for Chapela was UC Berkeley denied him tenure in 2003  
because of his article and for criticizing university ties to the  
biotech industry. He then filed suit in April, 2004 asking  
remuneration for lost wages, earnings and benefits, compensatory  
damages for humiliation, mental anguish, emotional distress and  
coverage of attorney fees and costs for his action. He won in May,  
2005 but not in court when the university reversed its decision,  
granted him tenure and agreed to include retroactive pay back to  
2003. The damage, however, was done and is an example of what's at  
stake when anyone dares challenge a powerful company like Monsanto.

The other man attacked was the world's leading lectins and plant  
genetic modification expert, UK-based Arpad Pusztai. He was vilified  
and fired from his research position at Scotland's Rowett Research  
Institute for publishing industry-unfriendly data he was commissioned  
to produce on the safety of GMO foods.

His Rowett Research study was the first ever independent one  
conducted on them anywhere. He undertook it believing in their  
promise but became alarmed by his findings. The Clinton and Blair  
governments were determined to suppress them because Washington was  
spending billions promoting GMO crops and a future biotech  
revolution. It wasn't about to let even the world's foremost expert  
in the field derail the effort. His results were startling and  
consider the implications for humans eating genetically engineered  
foods.

Rats fed GMO potatoes had smaller livers, hearts, testicles and  
brains, damaged immune systems, and showed structural changes in  
their white blood cells making them more vulnerable to infection and  
disease compared to other rats fed non-GMO potatoes. It got worse.  
Thymus and spleen damage showed up; enlarged tissues, including the  
pancreas and intestines; and there were cases of liver atrophy as  
well as significant proliferation of stomach and intestines cells  
that could be a sign of greater future risk of cancer. Equally  
alarming - this all happened after 10 days of testing, and the  
changes persisted after 110 days that's the human equivalent of 10  
years.

GM foods today saturate our diet. Over 80% of all supermarket  
processed foods contain them. Others include grains like rice, corn  
and wheat; legumes like soybeans and soy products; vegetable oils;  
soft drinks; salad dressings; vegetables and fruits; dairy products  
including eggs; meat and other animal products; and even infant  
formula plus a vast array of hidden additives and ingredients in  
processed foods (like in tomato sauce, ice cream and peanut butter).  
They're unrevealed to consumers because labeling is prohibited yet  
the more of them we eat, the greater the potential threat to our health.

Today, we're all lab rats in an uncontrolled, unregulated mass human  
experiment the results of which are unknown. The risks from it are  
beyond measure, it will take many years to learn them, and when  
they're finally revealed it will be too late to reverse the damage if  
it's proved GM products harm human health as independent experts  
strongly believe. Once GM seeds are introduced to an area, the genie  
is out of the bottle for keeps.

Despite the enormous risks, however, Washington and growing numbers  
of governments around the world in parts of Europe, Asia, Latin  
America and Africa now allow these products to be grown in their soil  
or imported. They're produced and sold to consumers because  
agribusiness giants like Monsanto, DuPont, Dow AgriSciences and  
Cargill have enormous clout to demand it and a potent partner  
supporting them - the US government and its agencies, including the  
Departments of Agriculture and State, FDA, EPA and even the defense  
establishment. World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade-Related Aspects  
of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) patent rules also back them  
along with industry-friendly WTO rulings like the February 7, 2006 one.

It favored a US challenge against European GMO regulatory policies in  
spite of strong consumer sentiment against these foods and  
ingredients on the continent. It also violated the Biosafety Protocol  
that should let nations regulate these products in the public  
interest, but it doesn't because WTO trade rules sabotaged it.  
Nonetheless, anti-GMO activism persists, consumers still have a say,  
and there are hundreds of GMO-free zones around the world, including  
in the US. That and more is needed to take on the agribusiness giants  
that so far have everything going their way.

In "Seeds of Deception," Jeffrey Smith did a masterful job explaining  
the dangers of GM foods and ingredients. Engdahl explains them as  
well but goes much further brilliantly in his blockbuster book on  
this topic. It's the story of a powerful family and a "small socio- 
political American elite (that) seeks to establish control over the  
very basis of human survival" - future life through the food we eat.  
The book's introduction says it "reads (like) a crime story." It's  
also a nightmare but one that's very real and threatening.

This review covers the book in-depth because of its importance. It's  
an extraordinary work that "reveals a diabolical World of profit- 
driven political intrigue (and) government corruption and coercion"  
that's part of a decades-long global scheme for total world  
dominance. The book deserves vast exposure and must be read in full  
for the whole disturbing story. It's hoped the material below will  
encourage readers to do it in their own self-interest and to marshal  
mass consumer actions to place food safety above corporate profits.

Engdahl's book supplies the ammunition to do it and is also a sequel  
to his earlier one on war, oil politics and The New World Order and  
follows naturally from it. It covers the roots of the strategy to  
control "global food security" that goes back to the 1930s and the  
plans of a handful of American families to preserve their wealth and  
power. But it centers on one in particular that above the others  
"came to symbolize the hubris and arrogance of the emerging American  
century" that blossomed post-WW II. Its patriarch began in oil and  
then dominated it in his powerful Oil Trust. It was only the  
beginning as the family expanded into "education of youth, medicine  
and psychology," US foreign policy, and "the very science of life  
itself, biology, and its applications" in plants and agriculture.

The family's name is Rockefeller. The patriarch was John D., and four  
powerful later-generation brothers followed him - David, Nelson,  
Laurance, and John D. III. Engdahl says the GMO story covers "the  
evolution of power in the hands of an elite (led by this family),  
determined (above all) to bring the entire world under their sway."  
They and other elites already control most of it, including the  
nation's energy, the US Federal Reserve, and other key world central  
banks. Today, three brothers are gone, David alone remains, and he's  
still a force at age 92 although he no longer runs the family bank,  
JP Morgan Chase. He's active in family enterprises, however,  
including the Rockefeller Foundation to be discussed in Part II of  
this review.

F. William Engdahl is the author of Seeds of Destruction, the Hidden  
Agenda of Genetic Manipulation just released by Global Research. He  
is also the author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics  
and the New World Order, Pluto Press Ltd.. To contact him by e-mail:  
info@engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.

-----------

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at  
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at  
sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Steve Lendman News and  
Information Hour on TheMicroEffect.com Mondays at noon US Central time.