Seattle Global Justice.org

Seattle, WA – Farmers and civil society organizations around the world are outraged
by the recent discovery of further connections between the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation and agribusiness titan Monsanto. Last week, a financial website published
the Gates Foundation’s investment portfolio, including 500,000 shares of Monsanto
stock with an estimated worth of $23.1 million purchased in the second quarter of
2010 (see thefiling
< http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1166559/000104746910007567/a2199827z13f-hr.txt>
with the Securities and Exchange Commission). This marks a substantial increase
from its previous holdings, valued at just over $360,000 (see the Foundation’s 2008
990 Form < http://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/Pages/financials.aspx> ).

Monsanto has already negatively impacted agriculture in African countries. For
example, in South Africa in 2009, Monsanto’s genetically modified maize failed to
produce kernels and hundreds of farmers were devastated. According to Mariam Mayet,
environmental attorney and director of theAfrica Centre
< http://www.biosafetyafrica.net/index.html/> for Biosafety in Johannesburg, some
farmers suffered up to an 80% crop failure. While Monsanto compensated the
large-scale farmers to whom it directly sold the faulty product, it gave nothing to
the small-scale farmers to whom it had handed out free sachets of seeds. “When the
economic power of Gates is coupled with the irresponsibility of Monsanto, the
outlook for African smallholders is not very promising,” said Mayet. Monsanto’s
aggressive patenting practices have also monopolized control over seed in ways that
deny farmers control over their own harvest, going so far as to sue—and
bankrupt—farmers for “patent infringement.”

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Carolyn Lochhead | SFGate.com

Small farmers in California who have led a national movement away from industrial agriculture face a looming crackdown on food safety that they say is geared to big corporate farms and will make it harder for them to survive.

The small growers, many of whom grow dozens of different kinds of vegetables and fruits, say the inherent benefits of their size, and their sensitivity to extra costs, are being ignored.

They are fighting to carve out a sanctuary in legislation that would bring farmers under the strict purview of the Food and Drug Administration, an agency more familiar with pharmaceuticals than food and local farms.

A bill before the Senate is riding a bipartisan groundswell created by recent outbreaks of E. coli, salmonella and other contamination in everything from fresh spinach to cookie dough.

And the small farmers face opponents in consumer groups, victims of food contamination, large growers and the Obama administration, who say no farm and no food should get a pass on safety.

An even tougher version of the legislation passed the House last summer. Now, a behind-the-scenes battle is raging in the Senate over how to regulate small and organic growers without ruining them - and still protect consumers.

If two versions of the overhaul pass, Congress would work to merge them.

The legislation would mandate a range of programs intended to bolster food safety. The FDA would gain greater authority to regulate how products are grown, stored, transported, inspected, traced from farm to table and recalled when needed.
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Christopher Booker | DailyMail.co.uk

So the Government, as the Daily Mail has revealed, is trying to get rid of £1billion-worth of unwanted swine flu vaccine - because the deadly epidemic they were promising us all last year never materialised.
Several things are shocking about this revelation, not least the charge by the Council of Europe’s head of health that major drug companies might have leaned on the World Health Organisation (WHO) to stoke up last year’s scare by warning that swine flu could be a worldwide ‘pandemic’ killing tens of millions.
Certainly, those companies have made vast fortunes out of selling the vaccines which, at our expense, are now having to be flogged off at give-away prices.

Worthless: The Government is trying to get rid of £1bn worth of swine flu vaccine
But in a way most shocking of all is that this scandalous waste of public money - and the wild over-reaction which gave rise to it - was entirely predictable.
I can say this with confidence because I predicted it on this very page of the Daily Mail in April last year, just when our government, led by the Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson, was cranking up the scare-machine to fever pitch by predicting that swine flu could be as bad as the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 which killed 50million people worldwide.

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Katherine Goldstein | Gazelle Emami | HuffingtonPost.com 

In a study released by the International Journal of Biological Sciences, analyzing the effects of genetically modified foods on mammalian health, researchers found that agricultural giant Monsanto’s GM corn is linked to organ damage in rats.

According to the study, which was summarized by Adam Shake at Twilight Earth, “Three varieties of Monsanto’s GM corn - Mon 863, insecticide-producing Mon 810, and Roundup® herbicide-absorbing NK 603 - were approved for consumption by US, European and several other national food safety authorities.”

Monsanto gathered its own crude statistical data after conducting a 90-day study, even though chronic problems can rarely be found after 90 days, and concluded that the corn was safe for consumption. The stamp of approval may have been premature, however.

In the conclusion of the IJBS study, researchers wrote:

“Effects were mostly concentrated in kidney and liver function, the two major diet detoxification organs, but in detail differed with each GM type. In addition, some effects on heart, adrenal, spleen and blood cells were also frequently noted. As there normally exists sex differences in liver and kidney metabolism, the highly statistically significant disturbances in the function of these organs, seen between male and female rats, cannot be dismissed as biologically insignificant as has been proposed by others. We therefore conclude that our data strongly suggests that these GM maize varieties induce a state of hepatorenal toxicity….These substances have never before been an integral part of the human or animal diet and therefore their health consequences for those who consume them, especially over long time periods are currently unknown.”

Monsanto has immediately responded to the study, stating that the research is “based on faulty analytical methods and reasoning and do not call into question the safety findings for these products.”

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AP

Britain’s University of East Anglia says the director of its prestigious Climatic Research Unit is stepping down pending an investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change.

The university says Phil Jones will relinquish his position until the completion of an independent review into allegations that he worked to alter the way in which global temperature data was presented.

The allegations were made after more than a decade of correspondence between leading British and U.S. scientists were posted to the Web following the security breach last month.

The e-mails were seized upon by some skeptics of man-made climate change as proof that scientists are manipulating the data about its extent.

Patrick J. Michaels | NationalReview.com

Imagine if there were no reliable records of global surface temperature. Raucous policy debates such as cap-and-trade would have no scientific basis, Al Gore would at this point be little more than a historical footnote, and President Obama would not be spending this U.N. session talking up a (likely unattainable) international climate deal in Copenhagen in December.

Steel yourself for the new reality, because the data needed to verify the gloom-and-doom warming forecasts have disappeared.

Or so it seems. Apparently, they were either lost or purged from some discarded computer. Only a very few people know what really happened, and they aren’t talking much. And what little they are saying makes no sense.

In the early 1980s, with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, scientists at the United Kingdom’s University of East Anglia established the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) to produce the world’s first comprehensive history of surface temperature. It’s known in the trade as the “Jones and Wigley” record for its authors, Phil Jones and Tom Wigley, and it served as the primary reference standard for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) until 2007. It was this record that prompted the IPCC to claim a “discernible human influence on global climate.”
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Paul Joseph Watson | InfoWars.com 

Former Redskins cheerleader Desiree Jennings, the woman who suffered a paralyzing neurological disorder after taking a flu shot, has come under ceaseless attack from the medical establishment as well as websites acting as apologists for the pharmaceutical industry, who claim that her entire illness is a hoax despite the fact that her condition has been confirmed as genuine by numerous doctors.

The inserts on flu vaccines clearly state that side-effects can include nervous system disorders, many which are treatable, but pro-vaccine cheerleaders are claiming the Jennings story is a hoax because she has made progress in recovering from her illness. The only hoax here is the one being peddled by these mouthpieces for the medical establishment, who are trying to deny the manfestly provable fact that neurological disorders are a potential side-effect of vaccines.

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Meg Kissinger | JSOnline.com

Chinese factory workers exposed to huge amounts of bisphenol A substantially increased their risk of sexual dysfunction, according to a study released late Tuesday that is expected to add more urgency to the question of the chemical’s safety.

The new study, funded by the U.S. National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, is the first to be designed specifically to test the effects of BPA on humans.

The five-year study examined 634 workers in factories in China, comparing those working in BPA-manufacturing facilities with a control group working in plants where no BPA was made. The study found workers in the BPA facilities had four times the risk of erectile dysfunction, and seven times more risk of ejaculation difficulty.

De-Kun Li, the reproductive and perinatal epidemiologist at Kaiser Foundation Research Institute who co-authored this study, said this work confirms that effects found in animal tests also are being seen in humans.

“I would avoid BPA exposure,” said Li. “In fact, the less, the better.”

The workers were exposed to BPA at levels 50 times higher than the average American consumer faces, the authors of the study noted. Li pointed out that BPA was first developed as an estrogen substitute.

The study comes at a time when there is a push - including in Wisconsin - to ban the chemical in food contact items and as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is reconsidering its earlier finding that BPA is safe for all uses.

A new recommendation is expected to be released by the agency Dec. 1.

The review began after the FDA’s own advisory board ruled last year that the agency had not considered the available body of science in its initial ruling. That ruling was based on two studies, both of which were paid for by BPA makers.
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Nicholas Kristoff | NYTimes.com Your body is probably home to a chemical called bisphenol A, or BPA. It’s a synthetic estrogen that United States factories now use in everything from plastics to epoxies — to the tune of six pounds per American per year. That’s a lot of estrogen.More than 92 percent of Americans have BPA in their urine, and scientists have linked it — though not conclusively — to everything from breast cancer to obesity, from attention deficit disorder to genital abnormalities in boys and girls alike.Now it turns out it’s in our food.Consumer Reports magazine tested an array of brand-name canned foods for a report in its December issue and found BPA in almost all of them. The magazine says that relatively high levels turned up, for example, in Progresso vegetable soup, Campbell’s condensed chicken noodle soup, and Del Monte Blue Lake cut green beans.The magazine also says it found BPA in the canned liquid version of Similac Advance infant formula (but not in the powdered version) and in canned Nestlé Juicy Juice (but not in the juice boxes). The BPA in the food probably came from an interior coating used in many cans.Should we be alarmed?The chemical industry doesn’t think so. Steven Hentges of the American Chemistry Council dismissed the testing, noting that Americans absorb quantities of BPA at levels that government regulators have found to be safe. Mr. Hentges also pointed to a new study indicating that BPA exposure did not cause abnormalities in the reproductive health of rats.But more than 200 other studies have shown links between low doses of BPA and adverse health effects, according to the Breast Cancer Fund, which is trying to ban the chemical from food and beverage containers. Read the rest of this entry »

Steve Watson | PrisonPlanet.com 

Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko has all but declared martial law in the country as he announced yesterday that the National Security and Defense Council will become the supreme ruling authority in the wake of a mystery epidemic sweeping the country.

Yushchenko has made high ranking health ministers members of the NSDC, a government body consisting of the president himself, the chairman of parliament, the prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko (pictured), the head of the Security Service of Ukraine and other high ranking ministers.

Yushchenko told reporters Wednesday night that “the non-fulfillment of its decisions will be prosecuted,” adding “We need to change the system. We need to change the whole system of the state power organization in Ukraine. We have no time for remonstrance no time for waiting”.

The President reiterated his statements in an official address to the Ukrainian peopleyesterday, in which he states “Failure to comply with [NSDC] orders will immediately result in application to the law enforcement authorities.”

“I instruct the Government and the Ministry of Health to immediately start preventive and promotional work in areas where there is no epidemic, targeting primarily the special risk groups,“ the address reads.

The address also announced orders for the arrest of public health officials who have allowed public gatherings to continue and failed to ban the movement of people, calling it “a display of criminal irresponsibility”.

“I have addressed the Prosecutor General of Ukraine with the request to institute criminal charges of negligence committed by first of all the Chief Sanitary Inspector, Kyiv City Sanitarian and the officials, who, despite having daily information on the epidemic situation in the country, neglected it in pursuit of political dividends and ambition,“ the statement reads.

A further report from Interfax Ukrainia Agency says the Ukrainian Health Minister Wasilij Kniazevicz has asked the country’s top prosecutor to open criminal proceedings against those who are opposed to the implementation of the mass flu vaccination campaign.

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UNfcc.int

Arthur Max | AP

Developing countries don’t trust wealthy nations’ promises that they will help them meet the challenges of climate change, the U.N.’s top climate official said Monday, adding that means any new global warming deal must have legal force.

The legal status of an agreement and whether nations will be sanctioned for failing to meet their commitments are contentious issues in talks on controlling the world’s emissions of carbon and other heat-raising greenhouse gases.

“We live in a world of broken promises,” said Yvo de Boer, the U.N. climate chief, told The Associated Press. Developing countries are concerned “they will commit to targets and not deliver.”

He spoke as negotiators resumed work Monday on a draft agreement for approval at a major U.N. conference next month in the Danish capital of Copenhagen.

The talks among some 180 countries focus on emissions targets by industrial nations and on actions the developing countries can take to slow the growth of their own emissions without impairing their development. Delegates also must determine how to raise and manage some $150 billion (euro100 billion) a year to help poor countries adapt to climate change.

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Daniel Taylor | OldThnkerNews.com

Tax exempt foundations, banks and philanthropic organizations have been hard at work in the United States for decades molding the country to their liking. The schooling system, media, medical institutions, and foreign policy of the United States have all been influenced by them. Today, these foundations are partnering with global banking powerhouses in order to create the “Global Impact Investing Network” (GIIN) which aims to spearhead a new form of investment.

The GIIN, headed by Antony Bugg-Levine, the current director of the Rockefeller Foundation, will “help solve social and environmental problems” by encouraging investment that will bring both profit and produce real world change. According to the GIIN website, “The Global Impact Investing Network was conceived in October 2007, when the Rockefeller Foundation gathered a small group of investors to discuss the needs of the emergent impact investing industry.” The website states,

“In June 2008, a broader group of 40 investors from around the world met to discuss what it would take for the impact investing industry to be able to solve more social and environmental challenges with greater efficiency. They organized behind a number of initiatives, including the creation of a global network of leading impact investors, the development of a standardized framework for assessing social and environmental impact, and a development of a working group of investors focused on sustainable agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa.”

In other words, the establishment is seeking to direct the wealth of the world’s most powerful foundations and individuals towards the realization of their agenda. This has already been happening for decades in a shrewd and veiled manner, but this new initiative is an open gathering of these globalist interests. The GIIN will undoubtedly be used as a public relations stunt for banks and moneyed elites to brush up their stained image through “socially conscious” investments. If it succeeds, GIIN will attempt to mold industry and business by “screening” out investments for Co2 emitters and others deemed to be unworthy.

A few of the banks and organizations involved with GIIN include: Acumen Fund, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Calvert Foundation, Capricorn Investment Group, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Equilibrium Capital, Generation Investment Management, Gray Ghost Ventures, IGNIA, J.P. Morgan, Lundin for Africa, Lunt Family Office (Armonia), Omidyar Network, Prudential, The Rockefeller Foundation, Root Capital, Shorebank/NCIF, Trans-Century, Triodos Investment Management, and Wolfensohn & Company.

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Paul Joseph Watson | InfoWars.com

The New York Times has lifted the lid on how Al Gore stands to benefit to the tune of billions of dollars if the carbon tax proposals he is pushing come to fruition in the United States, while documenting how he has already lined his pockets on the back of exaggerated fearmongering about global warming.

As is to be expected, the article is largely a whitewash and takes an apologist stance in defense of Gore.

However, the NY Times‘ John M. Broder does reveal how one of the companies Gore invested in, Silver Spring Networks, recently received a contract worth $560 million dollars from the Energy Department to install “smart meters” in people’s homes that record (and critics fear could eventually regulate) energy usage.

“Kleiner Perkins and its partners, including Mr. Gore, could recoup their investment many times over in coming years,” states the report, highlighting the fact that Gore is “well positioned to profit from this green transformation, if and when it comes.”

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AP | MSNBC.com 

Did you know that Lunesta will help you fall asleep just 15 minutes faster? Or that a higher dose of the osteoporosis drug Zometa could damage a cancer patient’s kidneys and raise their risk of death?

Chances are you didn’t, and neither did yourdoctor. Much of what the Food and Drug Administration knows about a drug’s safety and effectiveness is not included on the label, say two drug safety experts who are calling on the agency to make that information more accessible.

In this week’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers from Dartmouth College argue that drug labels don’t reflect the nuanced decisions the FDA makes when deciding to approve a drug. The editorial from Drs. Lisa Schwartz and Steven Woloshin recommends easy-to-read fact boxes to help patients weigh the benefits and risks of medications.

If drug labels sometimes exaggerate benefits and play down drug risks, the authors say there’s a very good reason: they are written by drugmakers.

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Anne Marie Riha | Whithouse.blogs.foxnews.com

President Obama’s school age daughters have not been vaccinated against the H1N1 flu virus. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says the vaccine is not available to them based on their risk.

The Centers for Disease Control recommend that children ages 6 months through 18 years of age receive a vaccination against the H1N1 flu virus. At this time only children with chronic medical conditions are receiving the vaccination because their immune system is not strong enough to fight off the strain. The CDC also says a regular seasonal flu shot does not protect against the virus.

Patricia Zengerle | Reuters.com 

President Barack Obama has declared 2009 H1N1swine flu a national emergency, the White House said on Saturday.

The declaration will make it easier for U.S. medical facilities to handle a surge in flu patients by allowing the waiver of some requirements of Medicare, Medicaid and other federal health insurance programs as needed, the White House said in a statement.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday that swine fluhas become widespread in 46 of the 50 U.S. states, a level comparable to the peak of ordinary flu seasons but far earlier and with more waves of infection expected.

Obama signed the statement on Friday night.

The White House statement said the declaration was intended to prepare the country in case of “a rapid increase in illness that may overburden health care resources.” It was similar to disaster declarations issued before hurricanes hit coastal areas.

“It’s important to note that this is a proactive measure — not a response to a new development,” an administration official said.

“H1N1 is moving rapidly, as expected. By the time regions or healthcare systems recognize they are becoming overburdened, they need to implement disaster plans quickly,” he said.

Seasonal flu normally peaks sometime between late November and early March and kills about 36,000 Americans in an average year.

Swine flu has hit young adults and children the hardest, while seasonal flu normally is more dangerous for people over age 65.

H1N1, declared a public health emergency earlier in the year, has killed more than 1,000 people in the United States and put more than 20,000 in the hospital since it emerged earlier this year, the CDC said. But health officials are quick to note that the actual number of cases cannot be measured.

The new declaration clears the way for waivers of federal requirements that, for example, could prevent hospitals from establishing off-site, alternate care facilities that could help them deal with emergency department demands, the White House said.

The Health and Human Services Department is trying to deliver vaccines against H1N1 but says production is falling short of projections because companies are having trouble making them.

HHS has also moved to make available stockpiles of antiviral drugs oseltamivir, made by Roche AG under the brand name Tamiflu, and zanamivir, an inhaled drug made by GlaxoSmithKline under the brand name Relenza.

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Mercola.com

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states on their main flu Web site http://www.cdc.gov/flu/ that flu activity is increasing in the United States, with most states reporting “widespread influenza activity.”

The CDC goes on to say, and I quote:
“So far, most flu is 2009 H1N1 flu (sometimes called “swine flu”).”

But wait stop the presses.

A three-month-long investigation by CBS News, released earlier this week that included state-by-state test results, revealed some very different facts. The CBS study found that H1N1 flu cases are NOT as prevalent as feared. A CBS article even states:
“If you’ve been diagnosed “probable” or “presumed” 2009 H1N1 or “swine flu” in recent months, you may be surprised to know this: odds are you didn’t have H1N1 flu. In fact, you probably didn’t have flu at all.“

Obviously CBS News and the CDC are completely contradicting each other. So who is right?

Well, CBS reports that in late July 2009 the CDC advised states to STOP testing for H1N1 flu, and they also stopped counting individual cases.
Their rationale for this, according to CBS News, was that it was a waste of resources to test for H1N1 flu because it was already confirmed as an epidemic.

So just like that virtually every person who visited their physician with flu-like symptoms since late July was assumed to have H1N1, with no testing necessary because, after all, there’s an epidemic.

It’s interesting to note that at the same time as the CDC decided the H1N1 epidemic warranted no further testing for cases due to its epidemic status, Finnish health authorities actually downgraded the threat of swine flu.

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Derrick Ward, Matthew Stabley | NBCWashington.com

Desiree Jennings thought it would be a good idea to get the seasonal flu shot. Her job offered incentives for it, and she didn’t want to get sick.
Ten days after she got the shot at a Reston Safeway, she did get sick.

“I got flu-like symptoms — nausea, vomiting, body aches, fever — then was lethargic for a week and started blacking out,” said Jennings, an AOL employee and Washington Redskins ambassador hoping to one day be a cheerleader for the team, the Loudoun Times-Mirror reported.

Doctors couldn’t figure out why her ability to speak and walk were so adversely affected. She saw neurologists, physical therapists and psychologists.

“I was hoping for Lyme, praying for lupus, even Graves’ disease,” she said. “Unfortunately they were all ruled out.”
Finally, doctors at Johns Hopkins figured it out, diagnosing dystonia, a rare neurological condition with no cure brought on by infections, brain trauma or, as is believed in her case, reaction to medication. It causes body jerks and abnormal or repetitive movements.

“A simple conversation with two people — you and I could converse on the couch, and if the phone were to ring it would send her into a violent convulsion,” said her husband, Brendan Jennings.

Strangely enough — as she can’t walk forward five feet without stumbling — with some effort, she can perform one of her life’s passions: running. And she walks backward with ease — oddly empowering, now. After her ordeal began, “My insurance wasn’t going to pay for another hospital visit. Matter of fact, they called us as we were driving to Johns Hopkins not to offer a specialist but instead to offer a hospital bed and a wheelchair for our house. I told them I wanted to know what was happening to me and that I didn’t want to be in a wheelchair.”

Her reaction is one in a million, doctors said.
“I would’ve much rather won the lottery and bought that ticket instead of gotten the flu shot if I knew that risk existed,” she said.