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 2. - Myths and Truths

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'GMO Myths and Truths' — Report released by genetic engineers

By Anne Sewell

Jul 5, 2012 in Health

In a groundbreaking report, two genetic engineers explain in detail why GMOs are not good for human health or the environment.

The new report has been released today, July 5, and is titled “GMO Myths and Truths”.

The report presents a large body of peer-reviewed scientific and other authoritative evidence of the hazards to health and the environment posed by genetically engineered crops and organisms (GMOs).

While there are many campaigners against GMOs in general, the initiative for this report came not from campaigners, but from two genetic engineers, who believe there are good scientific reasons to be wary of GM crops and food.

One of the genetic engineers involved in the report is Dr. Michael Antoniou of King’s College London School of Medicine in the U.K., which uses genetic engineering for medical applications but warns against its use in developing crops for human food and animal feed.

Dr Antoniou said: “GM crops are promoted on the basis of ambitious claims – that they are safe to eat, environmentally beneficial, increase yields, reduce reliance on pesticides, and can help solve world hunger."

 

 

 

“I felt what was needed was a collation of the evidence that addresses the technology from a scientific point of view."

“Research studies show that genetically modified crops have harmful effects on laboratory animals in feeding trials and on the environment during cultivation. They have increased the use of pesticides and have failed to increase yields. Our report concludes that there are safer and more effective alternatives to meeting the world’s food needs.”

The second author of the report is Dr. John Fagan, a former genetic engineer, who in 1994 returned $614,000 in grant money to the National Institutes of Health, due to concerns about the safety and ethics of the technology. Dr. Fagan then founded a GMO testing company.

He says, “Crop genetic engineering as practiced today is a crude, imprecise, and outmoded technology. It can create unexpected toxins or allergens in foods and affect their nutritional value. Recent advances point to better ways of using our knowledge of genomics to improve food crops, that do not involve GM."

 

 

 

“Over 75% of all GM crops are engineered to tolerate being sprayed with herbicide. This has led to the spread of herbicide-resistant super weeds and has resulted in massively increased exposure of farmers and communities to these toxic chemicals. Epidemiological studies suggest a link between herbicide use and birth defects and cancer."

“These findings fundamentally challenge the utility and safety of GM crops, but the biotech industry uses its influence to block research by independent scientists and uses its powerful PR machine to discredit independent scientists whose findings challenge this approach.”

The third author of the report is Claire Robinson, who is research director of Earth Open Source.

Robinson said, “The GM industry is trying to change our food supply in far-reaching and potentially dangerous ways. We all need to inform ourselves about what is going on and ensure that we – not biotechnology companies – keep control of our food system and crop seeds.

“We hope our report will contribute to a broader understanding of GM crops and the sustainable alternatives that are already working successfully for farmers and communities."

 

An extract from the report reads:

Genetically modified (GM) crops are promoted on the basis of a range of far-reaching claims from the GM crop industry and its supporters. They say that GM crops:

- Are an extension of natural breeding and do not pose different risks from naturally bred crops

- Are safe to eat and can be more nutritious than naturally bred crops

- Are strictly regulated for safety

- Increase crop yields

- Reduce pesticide use

- Benefit farmers and make their lives easier

- Bring economic benefits

- Benefit the environment

- Can help solve problems caused by climate change

- Reduce energy use

- Will help feed the world.

 

 

 

However, a large and growing body of scientific and other authoritative evidence shows that these claims are not true. On the contrary, evidence presented in this report indicates that GM crops:

- Are laboratory-made, using technology that is totally different from natural breeding methods, and pose different risks from non-GM crops

- Can be toxic, allergenic or less nutritious than their natural counterparts

- Are not adequately regulated to ensure safety

- Do not increase yield potential

- Do not reduce pesticide use but increase it

- Create serious problems for farmers, including herbicide-tolerant “superweeds”, compromised soil quality, and increased disease susceptibility in crops

- Have mixed economic effects

- Harm soil quality, disrupt ecosystems, and reduce biodiversity

- Do not offer effective solutions to climate change

- Are as energy-hungry as any other chemically-farmed crops

- Cannot solve the problem of world hunger but distract from its real causes – poverty, lack of access to food and, increasingly, lack of access to land to grow it on.

Based on the evidence presented in this report, there is no need to take risks with GM crops when effective, readily available, and sustainable solutions to the problems that GM technology is claimed to address already exist. Conventional plant breeding, in some cases helped by safe modern technologies like gene mapping and marker assisted selection, continues to outperform GM in producing high-yield, drought-tolerant, and pest- and disease-resistant crops that can meet our present and future food needs.

 

 

Food Price Watch

Highlights

Food prices remain high even after prices of internationally traded food decreased between February and June 2013, the third consecutive quarterly decline.

Higher production, declining imports and increasing stocks pushed down export prices.

 

Uncertain weather conditions and domestic policy decisions still warrant close monitoring going forward.

 

World Bank Says Food Prices Dropping From All-Time Highs

Prices of internationally traded food declined for the third consecutive quarter since their historical peak in August of 2012. Increased production, declining imports and increasing stocks are exerting downward pressure on export prices, but international prices remain tight for maize.

Prices remain high and with recent price increases in May and June, uncertainties surrounding unstable weather conditions and domestic policy decisions among key food producers warrant close scrutiny.

Domestic policies worth watching include public procurement policies, but also consumer price subsidies, which, far from being a thing of the past, continue to be used – even though subsidies often bring meager benefits to the poor, high fiscal costs, corruption episodes and unproven nutritional effects.

Food Price Watch, July 2013

 

 

 

 

Mystery of the disappearing bees: Solved!

 

By Richard Schiffman

APRIL 9, 2012

 

 

If it were a novel, people would criticize the plot for being too far-fetched – thriving colonies disappear overnight without leaving a trace, the bodies of the victims are never found. Only in this case, it’s not fiction: It’s what’s happening to fully a third of commercial beehives, over a million colonies every year. Seemingly healthy communities fly off never to return. The queen bee and mother of the hive is abandoned to starve and die.

 

Thousands of scientific sleuths have been on this case for the last 15 years trying to determine why our honey bees are disappearing in such alarming numbers. “This is the biggest general threat to our food supply,” according to Kevin Hackett, the national program leader for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s bee and pollination program.

 

Until recently, the evidence was inconclusive on the cause of the mysterious “colony collapse disorder” (CCD) that threatens the future of beekeeping worldwide. But three new studies point an accusing finger at a culprit that many have suspected all along, a class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids.

 

In the U.S. alone, these pesticides, produced primarily by the German chemical giant Bayer and known as “neonics” for short, coat a massive 142 million acres of corn, wheat, soy and cotton seeds. They are also a common ingredient in home gardening products.

 

 

 

Research published last month in the prestigious journal Science shows that neonics are absorbed by the plants’ vascular system and contaminate the pollen and nectar that bees encounter on their rounds. They are a nerve poison that disorient their insect victims and appear to damage the homing ability of bees, which may help to account for their mysterious failure to make it back to the hive.

 

Another study published in the American Chemical Society’s Environmental Science and Technology journal implicated neonic-containing dust released into the air at planting time with “lethal effects compatible with colony losses phenomena observed by beekeepers.”

 

Purdue University entomologists observed bees at infected hives exhibiting tremors, uncoordinated movement and convulsions, all signs of acute insecticide poisoning. And yet another study conducted by scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health actually re-created colony collapse disorder in several honeybee hives simply by administering small doses of a popular neonic, imidacloprid.

 

But scientists believe that exposure to toxic pesticides is only one factor that has led to the decline of honey bees in recent years. The destruction and fragmentation of bee habitats, as a result of land development and the spread of monoculture agriculture, deprives pollinators of their diverse natural food supply. This has already led to the extinction of a number of wild bee species. The planting of genetically modified organism (GMO) crops – some of which now contain toxic insecticides within their genetic structure – may also be responsible for poisoning bees and weakening their immune systems.

 

 

 

Every spring millions of bee colonies are trucked to the Central Valley of California and other agricultural areas to replace the wild pollinators, which have all but disappeared in many parts of the country. These bees are routinely fed high-fructose corn syrup instead of their own nutritious honey. And in an effort to boost productivity, the queens are now artificially inseminated, which has led to a disturbing decline in bee genetic diversity. Bees are also dusted with chemical poisons to control mites and other pathogens that have flourished in the overcrowded commercial colonies.

 

In 1923, Rudolph Steiner, the German founder of biodynamic agriculture, a precursor of the modern organic movement, predicted that within a hundred years artificial industrial techniques used to breed honey bees would lead to the species’ collapse. His prophecy was right on target!

 

Honey bees have been likened to the canaries in the coal mine. Their vanishing is nature’s way of telling us that conditions have deteriorated in the world around us. Bees won’t survive for long if we don’t change our commercial breeding practices and remove deadly toxins from their environment. A massive pollinator die-off would imperil world food supplies and devastate ecosystems that depend on them. The loss of these creatures might rival climate change in its impact on life on earth.

 

Still, this is a disaster that does not need to happen. Germany and France have already banned pesticides that have been implicated in the deaths of bees. There is still time to save the bees by working with nature rather than against it, according to environmentalist and author Bill McKibben:

 

“Past a certain point, we can’t make nature conform to our industrial model. The collapse of beehives is a warning – and the cleverness of a few beekeepers in figuring out how to work with bees not as masters but as partners offers a clear-eyed kind of hope for many of our ecological dilemmas.”

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