- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- Part I of "Seeds of Destruction"
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- 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.
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- Special Introductory Online Offer
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- Click to order William Engdahl's book:
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- Seeds of Destruction
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- Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
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- 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.
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