Global Citizen's Festival, Concert, and Project Everyone - NYC September 26 - End poverty and hunger in the world!

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One of the most effective and aggressive efforts to mobilize people from throughout the world to help others will be launched in just six weeks beginning September 24 when the United Nations is expected to adopt a new set of Sustainable Development Goals to help bring poverty to an end in the world.

The leaders of 193 nations are expected to adopt the new goals for the United Nations, UNICEF, the Global Citizens Festival and Concert, and Project Everyone.  President Obama and Pope Francis are among the world leaders pledging support.  On September 26 the Festival and Concert will be held on the Great Lawn of New York's Central Park.

While the festival and concert will be streamed live around the world, an edited version of the concert with film inserts from around the world will air in a worldwide broadcast on NBC and BBC September 27.  Featured performers include international stars Beyonce, Cold Play, Pearl Jam, and Ed Sheeran.

The Coltons Point Times is proud to be assisting the Richard Curtis team in making this international effort a success.  

A new feature of the world initiative is the addition of Project Everyone to the international team headed by perhaps one of the greatest fundraisers for charitable causes in history, Richard Curtis.  As you will read in this article, Richard Curtis has raised over £1 billion through his charities the past 30 years.  For those of us in the colonies, that  translates to about $1.56 billion.

More about Richard in the next articles, here is the story of the efforts by the Global Citizens and Project Everyone.

Project Everyone was founded by Richard Curtis, filmmaker and founder of Comic Relief. This is why...

In September 2015, the United Nations are launching global goals, a series of ambitious targets to end extreme poverty and tackle climate change for everyone by 2030.

If the goals are met, they ensure the health, safety and future of the planet for everyone on it. And their best chance of being met is if everyone on the planet is aware of them.

So the simple but mighty ambition of Project Everyone - is to share the global goals with 7 billion people in 7 days.

How We Do It

Our mission is to get a short, dynamic and snappy explanation of the global goals onto every website, TV station, cinema, school, radio station, newspaper, magazine, billboard, newsletter, noticeboard, pinboard, milk carton and mobile phone.

The more famous these global goals are, and the more widely they are understood by everyone - the more politicians will take them seriously, finance them properly, refer to them frequently and make them work.

This is a mission for humanity, unified goals that resonate with everyone, everywhere.

Our partners in this mighty plan

Project Everyone is partnering with Global Citizen. Global Citizen is a content, events and campaigning platform for the movement to end extreme poverty by 2030. The objective of Global Citizen is to increase the number of individuals engaging with the global goals, and provide a platform for the NGO sector to increase support for their policy and campaigning objectives. By connecting tens of millions of people to global issues, inspired global citizens take action and generate support for the organisations campaigning to end extreme poverty by 2030.

Our Founding Team

Richard Curtis

Richard Curtis is a film writer and director, responsible for films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’ Diary, Mr Bean, Love Actually, The Boat That Rocked, About Time and most recently Trash and Esio Trot.

In the other half of Richard’s life he is co-founder and vice-chair of Comic Relief, which he started after visiting Ethiopia during the 1985 famine. He has co-produced the 14 live nights for the BBC since 1988 and the charity has made over £1 Billion for projects in Africa and the UK during that time. In 2015, he will bring the massively successful Red Nose Day to the United States with NBC.

Richard was a founding member of Make Poverty History and worked both on that campaign and on Live 8 in 2005. As part of his contribution to the MPH campaign he wrote The Girl In The Cafe for HBO and the BBC - a television drama based around the G8 summit, which won 3 Emmys. In 2012, Phillip Noyce directed Richard’s TV movie “Mary and Martha”, a film about two mothers losing their sons to malaria. It has been shown in 50 countries around the world and used as a campaigning tool by many organisations committed to ending malaria.

Kate Garvey

Kate is a strategic communications and campaigns consultant specialising in promoting global campaigns and issues. Clients and campaigns have included Google; the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games; Product (RED); Live Earth; The Global Fund; UNHCR; the Maternal Mortality campaign; Make Poverty History and the Live 8 concerts. Her career began in politics where, from 1997 until 2005, she worked for Tony Blair at 10 Downing Street in the Prime Minister's Private Office and played an integral role in 3 successful election victories. Kate was also a director at Freud Communications.

Gail Gallie

Gail Gallie is a business leader with a strong sense of social purpose.

Gail’s background is in marketing and advertising. She has worked for both advertisers and agencies, in the public and private sectors.

Gail started her career working for ad agencies, helping to create campaigns for a variety of clients including P&G, the Ministry of Sound, and the Labour Party. She then took a role in marketing at the BBC and over the next eight years was responsible for the strategy and delivery of many major projects, including the launches of CBeebies and BBC Three.

On leaving the BBC Gail co-founded the strategic communications consultancy GaillieGodfrey, delivering corporate campaigns and brand strategy to a mixture of commercial and philanthropic clients, including Sony Music, the Camden Roundhouse, and the Millennium Cities Initiative. During this period Gail also worked as a freelance consultant for Comic Relief.

In 2010 Gail was appointed CEO of the ad agency Fallon, part of the Publicis Group, delivering campaigns for clients including Cadbury, Eurostar and Skoda.

 Amanda Mackenzie

Amanda was a member of Aviva's Group Executive for 7 years and joined Aviva to oversee the rebrand from Norwich Union and to set up a global marketing and communications function.

Amanda has a BSc in Psychology from the University of London, is a graduate of the Insead Advanced Management Programme, a Life Fellow of the RSA and Fellow and past President of the Marketing Society. Amanda has over 25 years of commercial experience, including director roles at British Airways Airmiles, BT and British Gas. She is also a non-executive director of Mothercare Plc. and sits on the audit committee.

She has been on the board of the National Youth Orchestra for 8 years. Amanda is a member of Lord Davies steering group to increase the number of women on boards.

Amanda was awarded an OBE in the 2014 New Year Honours List for services to marketing.

Amanda has joined the Project Everyone team on a 2 year secondment from Aviva.

Join the world’s largest team

Support for the Project Everyone campaign is growing across the globe, so please don’t hesitate to ask more about what we are doing or how we might work together to make the goals famous. Everyone will thank you for it. To learn more about Project Everyone contact
team@project-everyone.org

Citizenship

How Project Everyone will talk to 7 billion people

By Brandon Blackburn-Dwyer on June 26, 2015

In weeks the United Nations General Assembly will hold a historic meeting that will shape the next fifteen years and beyond. Yes, the UNGA meets every year. So what makes this year so special? Stay with me, this story is getting good.

Back in 2000 the UN developed the Millennium Development Goals, a list of 8 goals that were designed to improve the world. Among the MDGs successes was cutting extreme poverty in half. This success was great but it still leaves a lot of work left to do.

Now, the world has a chance to get the job done. The Global Goals, or as policy folks like to say “The Sustainable Development Goals”, are the roadmap to ending extreme poverty and solving climate change by 2030. What will be key to their success, however, is ensuring people know about them, so that world leaders are held accountable.

That’s where Project Everyone comes in. According to the campaign’s website, it’s mission is to share the Global Goals with the world’s 7 billion people, all in the span of 7 days. Sounds crazy, right? Check out the video above to see behind the scenes of this ambitious campaign and see how Project Everyone’s going to make it happen.

Citizenship

Everything You Need to Know About the SDGs

By Natalie Prolman on Jan. 30, 2015

Image via Wikipedia

From now until September, you are going to be hearing a lot of dialogue about the “SDGs” (aka: the Sustainable Development Goals) and how they will be dictating the roadmap of development for the next 15 years. You may be asking yourself..wait, what are those??

Good question.

Long story short, the SDGs (think of them as phase II of the Millennium Development Goals, except even better...we hope) are a universal set of goals and targets that UN member states will be expected to use in framing their political policies and development agendas from now until 2030. These goals are going to be essential in ending extreme poverty and creating a future free from inequality and dangerous climate change. Super important stuff!

Because I’m sure you’re as excited as I am about these SDGs, I figured it would be helpful to break them down for you and explain why you should care. And most importantly, how you, global citizens, can get involved.

So, back in June 2012 at Rio 20 (the UN Conference on Sustainable Development that took place in Brazil) countries agreed to establish an intergovernmental process to develop a set of "action-oriented, concise and easy to communicate" sustainable development goals (SDGs).

The main objective? To help drive the implementation of sustainable development. In September of this year, these goals will be made official. Let the countdown begin!

After Rio, a 30-member Open Working Group (OWG) of the General Assembly was tasked with creating a proposal on the SDGs. It was agreed that they must be: action-oriented, concise, easy to communicate, limited in number, aspirational, global in nature and universally applicable to all countries (while taking into account different national realities, capacities, and levels of development as well as respecting national politics and priorities).

Here is what they have come up with so far: 

1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere
As global citizens we can all get behind this one!

2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture
It’s not just about getting food on the table. We need to make sure that everyone has access to healthy, nutritious and affordable food!

3. Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages
As my girl Michelle likes to say, let’s move!

4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
In other words, we have to make sure that people from all backgrounds, regardless of their socio-economic status, age, or geography have access to quality education. Like this awesome lady!

5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
My bff Emma Watson is all about this.

6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
Let Raya from Sesame Street break this one down for you in this helpful intro.

7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
Yup. Sounds good to me!

8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all
All too often people are forced to work under grueling, dangerous conditions for very little pay... this needs to change.

9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation, and foster innovation
If you don’t have safe roads, you can’t get essential things (like vaccines) to the people who need it most! Right?

10. Reduce inequality within and among countries
Talk about a no-brainer.

11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
Who doesn’t want clean streets?

12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
This year let’s commit to the mantra of reduce, reuse, and recycle.

13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts (taking note of agreements made by the UNFCCC forum)
YES!

14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development
THINK ABOUT NEMO!

15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification and halt and reverse land degradation, and halt biodiversity loss!
It's time for global leaders to show off their green thumb.

16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels
Peace, inclusivity, and justice for all. Triple win.

17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development
It’s time we all start working together!

Okay, so now you’re probably asking yourself why should I care about all of this?? As I mentioned before, 2015 is going to be a pivotal year in refining and establishing the SDGs. Once they are put into place, this will be THE framework that determines what sustainable development will look like for the next 15 years. Everything listed above is still tentative.  

From now until September, global citizens have a chance to stand up and collectively raise their voices to make sure that this development agenda represents the needs of those who are most vulnerable. Over the next eight months we will provide plenty of information to educate you on these issues and offer concrete actions that you can take to play a part in making history. We’re all in this together, and with such ambitious goals it's our responsibility to stay informed and do our part! Stay tuned!
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GMO Part 5 - The End Game - Now What?

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After four comprehensive stories of attempting to find remnants of the truth in the avalanche of information, misinformation and, well, downright lies by many special interests involved in the GMO puzzle, I have a headache.

 

Once again we all must face up to the ultimate question and challenge, who can we trust?  Thus we embark on a mission of improving our self-awareness of the "real" world by using our eyes and our brain.  We look at the Internet, see the television news (cable or network), or most probably if we even care about the news, we read the latest Tweets from the Tweeters.

 

That means we have limited our consumption of news stories to no more than 140 characters.  Only humans would have the audacity to say limit all news to two sentences.  Unless, of course, there was some kind of secret coding and the Tweet contained a lot more information we could not see, without special insight.

 

 

In times like this I rely on my mentor, shaman, guru and oracle, all rolled up into one person, Mark Twain.  Never mind the fact he died 103 years ago.  I have my reasons for trusting Mark, do you have reasons for trusting your instinct?

 

So Mark said it right when he observed:

 

“You cannot trust your eyes, if your imagination is out of focus.”

 

If all information for human consumption is limited to 140 characters then Moses, when he got the Ten Commandments from God, would have only gotten 1½ Commandments, we would be missing the remaining 20½.

 

 

Ah, you think you caught me, but the Ten Commandments in Christianese are 22 Commandments in Hebrewese.  In other words, the Christian version is 10 Commandments equaling 93 words and 390 characters, while the Hebrew version is 22 Commandments equaling 595 words and 2451 characters.

 

 

 

[That probably explains why any image of the original Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston had to be in Tweets from God because there is no way all 595 Hebrew words could have been engraved on tablets that small.]

Either way we would have lost a whole lot of the original Ten in the Tweet.

As Mark said, "if your eyes are out of focus."  You can't trust anything you see if your eyes are not focused and that includes the Internet, the government, advocacy groups and morons.

Native Americans call it "seeing through the maya, which the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines as; "In Hinduism, a powerful force that creates the cosmic illusion that the phenomenal world is real. The word maya originally referred to the wizardry with which a god can make human beings believe in what turns out to be an illusion, and its philosophical sense is an extension of this meaning."

 

 

 

So if you are truly focused and see beyond the Maya that has surrounded you since you were born then we can draw some sobering conclusions and some needed steps in order to comprehend the GMO puzzle in terms of the value to mankind.

 

My first observation regarding the dangers of GMO consumption is why is the most talked about expose on dangers of GMO based on a study that took place in Italy?

 

It seems to me that Americans would be first to show health problems since we invented the whole GMO field and up to 80% of our food supply now has it since GMOs have been used in America since 1995.  Surely we should be sicker than anyone else on earth as a result.

 

 

No doubt the American government, specifically the Agriculture Department, should know more about GMOs than anyone with their extensive regulation of the drug industry through the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over the past 18 years.

 

Either we know the health effects but are not talking about them, we don't know because we have failed to do due diligence to protect our citizens, or we have delegated the responsibility for regulation to the very industry seeking approval before the government.

 

In our nation's capitol the only thing that talks louder than politicians is money, the other form of capital.  Some time ago our government was hijacked by those who recognized free market capitalism and democracy were not compatible.

 

 

Mayer Amschel Rothschild, founder of the most powerful family dynasty on earth, is credited with a number of quotes along the line that if you control the money, or the issuing of money, you control the government.

 

From his start in banking in 1757 through an international banking network he built with his sons, the private family fortune has amassed a value today some believe is as high as $24 trillion.

 

 

His son Nathan Rothschild, one of five children dispersed throughout the banking world early in the 1800's said, "Own nothing, control everything."

 

It seems such an attitude as the Rothschilds has finally permeated the last holdout from family control in western civilization, the United States.  Did you know the Rothschilds and all the parasites who worship them have relentlessly pursued a way to get control of the money in the United States since the birth of our nation?

 

Amschel Rothschild is consistently voted into the top ten most influential business people of all time by Forbes Magazine and for good reason.

 

 

In America our free market system was protected by the Constitution and was based on competing fairly without harming the general public.  Charity was a large part of our society with most aid for those in need coming from people, churches and charities the rich established.

 

So somewhere along the line that government of the people, by the people and for the people forgot about the path of service and giving, compassion and caring, and adopted the French attitude of Laissez-faire toward the economy.  In other words just leave the capitalists alone.

 

As modern times have demonstrated, when the greedy are left alone the public has suffered.  Fraud, conflicts, ethics violations and downright criminal acts became paths to feed the greed.

 

 

In the last 10 years scandals have rocked the energy, banking, home mortgage, stock market, commodities markets, health care, pharmaceutical, medical, insurance, environmental, and even sports industries.  Ironically, hardly any of the guilty parties have even been prosecuted and when corporations did pay fines it was with no admission of guilt and the fine being tax deductible as a business expense.

 

Billions of dollars in fines have been paid the past decade.  Nice tax deduction for a company who broke the law.  Of course the same companies funnel tens of millions of dollars into the political campaigns of our government leaders.

 

The real Green Machine in America is the flow of money from the public to the private sector to the pockets of the politicians and it does not matter whether they are Democrat, Republican, Independent, Environmental, or even Socialist.  Green is gold when it comes to greed.

 

So the current state of affairs does not look good for the public as you could see when President Obama earlier this year signed an appropriations bill approved by Congress that contained an innocuous amendment also approved by the House and the Senate stating the chemical companies involved in genetic engineering of our food supply could not be sued by the public or governments for any problems resulting from the use of GMOs.

 

If GMOs are so good for the world why did the industry pursue this guarantee from the government they can't be sued?

 

 

Money clearly rules in America as the GMO government protection is now at the same level as all the other industries who nearly destroyed the economy of America and the world in pursuit of their greed.

 

That "waiver of liability" for GMOs must be repealed.

 

Second there must be mandatory product labeling of GMO products.

 

Next government must independently test GMOs for long term health effects and long term environmental effects on humans, insects, animals and the earth.

 

Congress must also investigate and expose any deceptions in the pursuit of a GMO world such as:

GMOs were supposed to increase the supply of food in the world.  Why hasn't it happened in 15 years?

 

 

Were GMOs pursued by the chemical companies as a vehicle to assure the continued use of antibiotics and pesticides by transferring the poison to our food supply?

 

I mean, if a GMO seed is resistant to a pesticide then more pesticide can be put on the plant without harm to the seed.

 

In my stories I showed how 1.6 billion people still rely on local farms or their own for food in the world, mostly in the third world countries.  This is the new target for GMO sales by the chemical companies throughout the world.  Their reckless expansion should be stopped until we get the definitive results of the independent testing.

 

The truth is the government is the only group capable of independent testing since the entire private sector is beholden to money one way or the other.  A government lab like those of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) should be established to keep the private sector honest.

 

Remember, the antibiotic and pesticide market is $110 billion a year.  The GMO field is totally dominated by the owners of the antibiotic and pesticide products.

 

 

If biological research can benefit mankind it should be pursued but it must benefit far more than just corporate profits and stockholders equity.

 

Abraham Lincoln never let the world forget that the Civil War involved an even larger issue. This he stated most movingly in dedicating the military cemetery at Gettysburg: "that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

 

We, the people, must restore this principle to our government by scrutiny, oversight and action at the polls and in the courts if necessary.

 

GMO could very well be a lifeline to saving the 870 millions that are chronically undernourished every year or it could be a profit-ploy to line the pockets of the greedy and their politicians.

 

 

One final note for the critics of GMO activity, the United States is a leader in the sale of GMO seeds in the world but only four of the top ten chemical companies involved in GMOs are from America.  All should be put under the microscope in our search for the truth.

 

Often times what we don't know is far more important than what we know.  Such is the current case with GMOs.  When there is doubt or confusion about something so important that it impacts on every living human being, the insect and plant world and the earth as a whole, then we need answers before we make fatal mistakes.

 

 

 

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 For more stories on the Rothschilds check the following links:

The Coltons Point Times

Birthplace of Religious Freedom ----------"Veritas vos liberabit"

 

Index

 

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

 

A Trillionaires Delight - The 21st Century of Rothschild, Morgan and Rockefeller

 

http://coltonspointtimes.blogspot.com/2010/07/trillionaires-delight-21st-century-of.html

 

 

 

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

 

Obama, Rothschild's "Chosen One" Closer to being President of New World Order

 

http://coltonspointtimes.blogspot.com/2009/10/obama-rothschilds-chosen-one-closer-to.html

 

 

 

Thursday, August 13, 2009

 

Capitalism Rothschild Goldman Style - An Idea Whose Time is Done

 

http://coltonspointtimes.blogspot.com/2009/08/capitalism-rothschild-goldman-style.html

 

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GMO Part 1. - America's Health - Obama's Achilles Heel!

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From Health Treatment to Food Supply

 

When it comes to long term health concerns in America and the world we are inundated with controversy over two principal issues, the health care system in America and the food production system in America.

 

The first was supposed to be resolved by passage of Obamacare yet nothing has been resolved to date as implementation of the massive federal law, after it was approved by Congress and signed by the president, has been, well, about as effective as Congress.

 

 

Far more activity took place in the food production business far from the front pages of newspapers and harking of political pundits.  Obama has clearly done a lot in this area but to date the principal beneficiary is not the public, or middle class, but the six giant agrichemical companies that control the growing of food in the world.

 

As Obama looks forward to his last 3 years in office perhaps he will be more concerned that his legacy is shaping up as a stark reminder of his abandonment of the very people he claimed to be championing.

 

Political talk has always been cheap.  Political action has always been lacking.  The Obama administration has given us more talk and less action on these issues than any president in recent history and his legacy may be as the first president to guarantee liberty and justice for some but certainly not all Americans.

 

These areas are complex, the players are muddled and the public interest is secondary to corporate greed and unfortunately the opposition is fragmented, prone to lack facts and figures, and far too easily seduced by the sensational when cold, hard facts tell us all we need to know.

 

 

World hunger drives the production of genetically engineered seeds.  The estimates for deaths from hunger each year are all over the place ranging from 1.5 million to 15 million children worldwide and maybe 5 million others.  While no deaths should be allowed, the extent of hunger is massive and millions surely die every year.

 

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that nearly 870 million people, or one in eight people in the world, were suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2010-2012. Almost all the hungry people, 852 million, live in developing countries, representing 15 percent of the population of developing counties. There are 16 million people undernourished in developed countries.

 

The number of undernourished people decreased nearly 30 percent in Asia and the Pacific, from 739 million to 563 million, largely due to socio-economic progress in many countries in the region. The prevalence of undernourishment in the region decreased from 23.7 percent to 13.9 percent.

 

 

Latin America and the Caribbean also made progress, falling from 65 million hungry in 1990-1992 to 49 million in 2010-2012, while the prevalence of undernourishment dipped from 14.6 percent to 8.3 percent. But the rate of progress has slowed recently.

 

The number of hungry grew in Africa over the period, from 175 million to 239 million, with nearly 20 million added  in the last few years. Nearly one in four are  hungry. And in sub-Saharan Africa, the modest progress achieved in recent years up to 2007 was reversed, with hunger rising 2 percent per year since then.

 

In order to meet the vast and tragic food needs of the world we have the producers of genetically engineered seeds.

 

And this is where our president faces a quagmire with grave consequences because in March he signed an appropriations bill which included seemingly innocuous language regarding the Farmer Assurance Provision.

 

 

The "Monsanto Protection Act" is the name opponents of the Farmer Assurance Provision have given to this terrifying piece of policy, and it's a fitting moniker given its shocking content.

 

President Barack Obama signed a spending bill, HR 933, into law on March 26, 2013 that includes language that has food and consumer advocates and organic farmers up in arms over their contention that the so-called "Monsanto Protection Act" is a giveaway to corporations that was passed under the cover of darkness.

 

There's a lot being said about it, but here are five terrifying facts about the Farmer Assurance Provision -- Section 735 of the spending bill -- to get you acquainted with the reasons behind the ongoing uproar:

 

 

1.) The "Monsanto Protection Act" effectively bars federal courts from being able to halt the sale or planting of controversial genetically modified (aka GMO) or genetically engineered (GE) seeds, no matter what health issues may arise concerning GMOs in the future. The advent of genetically modified seeds -- which has been driven by the massive Monsanto Company -- and their exploding use in farms across America came on fast and has proved a huge boon for Monsanto's profits.

 

But many anti-GMO folks argue there have not been enough studies into the potential health risks of this new class of crop. Well, now it appears that even if those studies are completed and they end up revealing severe adverse health effects related to the consumption of genetically modified foods, the courts will have no ability to stop the spread of the seeds and the crops they bear.

 

2.) The provision's language was apparently written in collusion with Monsanto. Lawmakers and companies working together to craft legislation is by no means a rare occurrence in this day and age. But the fact that Sen. Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, actually worked with Monsanto on a provision that in effect allows them to keep selling seeds, which can then go on to be planted, even if it is found to be harmful to consumers, is stunning. It's just another example of corporations bending Congress to their will, and it's one that could have dire risks for public health in America.

 

3.) Many members of Congress were apparently unaware that the "Monsanto Protection Act" even existed within the bill they were voting on. HR 933 was a spending bill aimed at averting a government shutdown and ensuring that the federal government would continue to be able to pay its bills. But the Center for Food Safety maintains that many Democrats in Congress were not even aware that the provision was in the legislation:

 

“In this hidden backroom deal, Sen. [Barbara] Mikulski turned her back on consumer, environmental and farmer protection in favor of corporate welfare for biotech companies such as Monsanto,” Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, said in a statement. “This abuse of power is not the kind of leadership the public has come to expect from Sen. Mikulski or the Democrat Majority in the Senate.”

 

4.) The President did nothing to stop it, either. Obama signed HR 933 while the rest of the nation was fixated on gay marriage, as the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument concerning California's Proposition 8. But just because most of the nation and the media were paying attention to gay marriage doesn't mean that others were not doing their best to express their opposition to the "Monsanto Protection Act." In fact, more than 250,000 voters signed a petition opposing the provision He signed it anyway.

 

5.) It sets a terrible precedent. Though it will only remain in effect for six months until the government finds another way to fund its operations, the message it sends is that corporations can get around consumer safety protections if they get Congress on their side. Furthermore, it sets a precedent that suggests that court challenges are a privilege, not a right.

 

 

And this takes us to the role of agrichemical drug companies in our food production business.  Who are these companies and what do they do?  For one thing they hold a worldwide monopoly on seed production.

 

For the record those six agrichemical businesses are chemical giants Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow Agrosciences, BASF, Bayer, and Pioneer (DuPont).

 

In practically every case the company rose to become multi-billion dollar behemoths by supplying the pesticides used to fertilize our vast agricultural economy.  For decades these companies supplied the sometimes deadly chemicals used to control bugs, droughts, weeds and other obstacles to increased crop production.

 

But in the last 20 years, as it became more and more obvious that some of these very chemicals were causing dangerous side effects, the chemical companies began to take over the seed production and agricultural research businesses and used them to create seeds resistant to the very chemicals they supplied.

 

Now they were in a position to dominate both the seed production and chemical business.  For example, Monsanto is the world's largest seed company and 5th largest agrichemical company.  Syngenta is the world's third largest seed company and second largest agrichemical company.

 

 

Here is what they stand for!

 

Top Ten Seed Companies in World

 

1.  Monsanto     USA     $7.3 billion annual sales

2.  DuPont (Pioneer)     USA     $4.6 billion annual sales
3.  Syngenta     Switzerland     $2.6 billion annual sales
4.  Groupe Limagrain     France     $1.2 billion annual sales
5.  Land O' Lakes/Winfield Solutions     USA     $1.1 billion sales
6.  KWS AG    Germany     $997 million annual sales
7.  Bayer CropScience     Germany     $700 million annual sales
8.  Dow AgroSciences     USA     $635 million annual sales
9.  Sakata     Japan     $491 million annual sales
10. DLF-Trifolium A/S     Denmark     $385 million

The Big Six (agrichemical) companies generate $50 billion a year in sales of seeds and agrichemicals.

They spend $4.7 billion on agricultural research and development.

They cross license between each other to eliminate competition.

They control 76% of the world's private sector R & D spending for seeds and chemicals.

The top ten seed companies control 73% of the world's commercial seed market.

The top three companies control over 50% of the proprietary seed market and 75% of all patents issued between 1982 and 2007.

Of the $22.9 billion spent on seeds annually, $16.8 billion goes to chemical companies and $6.1 billion to farmer saved seeds.

1.4 billion people still depend on farmer saved seeds.

Part 2 of this series seeks the truth behind the myths for and against this type of activity.
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